ILLEGAL (1932)

Gambling addict Franklyn Dean has spent his wife Evelyn's inheritance (from her first husband), and, as she has two children from her first marriage to raise, she has finally had enough. She pays off one last debt and sends him off to exile in Cape Town. Her kindly neighbor Albert, a former headwaiter, commiserates with her until winnings from that last gambling debt are delivered. With that windfall, she buys the restaurant where Albert used to work, updates it to include a secret gambling room and illegal after-hours booze availability (though she kicks the hookers out), calls it the Scarecrow Club, and with Albert at her side, makes a huge success. A few years later, thinking that gambling and drink had threatened to cheat her daughters out of their place in life, she uses her profits to send the kids to a good boarding school, while keeping her living secret from them. More years later, as the daughters are ready to graduate, the cops bust the Scarecrow Club for gambling and Evelyn is sentenced to three months in jail. When the girls discover this, they come home and decide to keep the club running, legally. As the same time as Evelyn is about to be released, their stepfather arrives in London and puts the moves on one of the daughters. Tragedy ensues. This melodrama from a British unit of Warner Brothers, like many other films from the early 30s, is stagy and static in the dialogue scenes, though the nightclub sequences have some energy in performance and in camera movement. Isobel Elsom, who played high society ladies throughout the 40s and 50s, is a bit of a drab stick as Evelyn; the character has our sympathies but I never really cared that much about her situation. But Ivor Barnard as Albert pretty much saves the show; he's funny and appealing, and as no romance develops between him and Evelyn, I read him as a gay-coded character, which made things a bit more interesting. The last ten minutes or so cram a lot of plot and detail in, as though they suddenly realized that they only had one more day on the studio lot. Not a bad movie but not easy to recommend. Pictured are Elsom and Barnard. [TCM]