Another penthouse

It wasn't uncommon for studios back in the studio era to remake their old properties. They had the scripts lying around, and since there wasn't much opportunity to see those old films until television came along, a lot of movie goers might not remember the original. Another example of this is Society Lawyer.

Walter Pidgeon plays the title character here, playing a character named Christopher Durant who's nominally a society lawyer in that he works for the high-class sort of law firm. But he's known to get terribly drunk at parties he hosts, which seems to me to run the risk of ethics violations. Also, he's taken on the defense of Tony Gazotti (Leo Carrillo), who is the nightclub-owning sort of gangster but still, someone with the sort of connections a firm of the sort Durant works for wouldn't want to associate with.

Durant's personal life is also a bit difficult in that he's got a fiancée Sue Leonard (Frances Mercer) but the two are about to break up partly because of those gangster ties. The other part of it is that for Sue, there's another man in the form of Phil Siddall (Lee Bowman), who himself has an ex-girlfriend Judy Barton (Ann Morriss). Ann seems to have fallen for the wrong sort of man and wants to rub Phil's face in it. So she invites him to a swanky party, only for her to get murdered at the party by an unseen assailant who drops the gun to make it look like Phil was the only one there. Even more stupidly, Phil picks up the gun so he'll be caught with it and anyway, his fingerprints would have been on it!

So obviously Phil is held for booking, and Sue is out of her mind not knowing what to do about her boyfriend facing a murder rap. So she goes to Durant for help getting Phil off. After all, if Durant can get someone like Gazotti off, surely he can prove Phil's innocence. Meanwhile, someone's calling Durant up telling him not to take the case.

Gazotti, for his part, has an idea that the murder was committed at the behest of a rival underworld type, Jim Crelliman (Eduardo Ciannelli). So Gazotti is willing to help Durant with what one would guess is the ulterior motive of getting a rival out of the way. Gazotti has a nightclub singer Pat Abbott (Virginia Bruce) in his employ who also lived in the same building as the murdered woman and who might be able to help Durant. However, there are any number of red herrings and Pat herself may or may not be a 100% trustworthy character. Pat and Durant both continue to face threats until the case is solved, which it be since this one was made in 1939, well after the Production Code started being strictly enforced.

Society Lawyer is a remake of a pre-Code called Penthouse, which I blogged about all the way back in 2012 and frankly don't think I've seen since, which might explain why I didn't notice the connection until looking up the reviews for Society Lawyer. The remake is more than adequate, although it's only a programmer and once again not meant to be anything special. Just another movie that kept the audiences of 1939 entertained until the next movie came off the assembly line. Not that it's bad by any means, however.

One other thing is worth mentioning, and that's Durant's butler played by Herbert Mundin. Mundin was a character actor whose credits include a fun turn in The Adventures of Robin Hood where he's the love interest of Una O'Connor. Unfortunately, Mundin was killed in a car accident before Society Lawyer was released, obviously ending his career.