ANOTHER FACE (1935)

Infamous gangster Broken Nose Dawson, a rather ugly chap, is wanted for murder but he arranges with a plastic surgeon to have his looks altered and comes out looking downright handsome. But once a gangster, always a gangster, and Dawson kills everyone who knows he had the surgery, even the doctor, except for Mary, the nurse, who, disgusted that she was forced to be a part of the whole thing, leaves town before the killing starts and heads out to California to be with cowboy star Tex Williams, who fell in love with her when she treated him after a fall from a horse during a show in New York. Coincidentally, Dawson also heads west, under the identity of playboy Spencer Dutro, with plans to become an actor. Arriving at Zenith Studios, he tries out for a gangster part only to be told he's not the gangster type. But PR man Joe Haynes thinks he can make a success of Dutro by marketing his playboy background. Soon, Dutro is treated as a rising star, but one day, Mary recognizes Dutro as Dawson and troubles ensue.

This is an uneasy blend of comedy and drama, unusual for its day, and it doesn't quite come together successfully, partly due to the character of Dawson, played by Brian Donlevy. Had we seen Dawson become more civilized and more sympathetic, the mix might have been more palatable. Or if someone like James Cagney had played Dawson, he probably could have had us rooting, to some degree, for the bad guy. But the characterization is flat, as is Donlevy's performance. The de facto good guy is Wallace Ford as PR man Joe and he's fine, but again his character is fuzzy and occasionally unpleasant, as in the long sequence in which Joe keeps Mary locked up in his office closet to protect her from Dawson while he tries to work a PR angle around the situation. He's wooing an actress, played by Phyllis Brooks, but she's another bland and unfocused character. This leaves Mary, the put-upon nurse (Molly Lamont) and her cowboy Tex (Jack Randall) as the two most sympathetic characters, but they really have all that much screen time, so the upshot is that we spend most of the movie with folks we don't really care about. What I enjoyed most about this movie was seeing Erik Rhodes; he's mostly known for playing comically exotic foreigners (THE GAY DIVORCEE, TOP HAT) but here, he's as American vanilla as they come, and it's fun to see him playing against type. Best line delivery: Hattie McDaniel, maid to Phyllis Brooks, hears Brooks tell someone on the phone about her upcoming marriage to a "publicity director," and she disgustedly mumbles, "Press agent." [TCM]