The Glass Key **** (1935, George Raft, Claire Dodd, Edward Arnold) – Classic Movie Review 4928

Frank Tuttle’s 1935 crime mystery film The Glass Key is the excellent first movie of the 1931 Dashiell Hammett classic thriller novel, with its stars George Raft and Claire Dodd ideally paired. 

‘He asks no questions because he knows all the answers!’

Director Frank Tuttle’s little-known 1935 crime mystery film The Glass Key is the excellent first movie adaptation of the 1931 Dashiell Hammett classic thriller novel, with its stars George Raft and Claire Dodd ideally paired. It was one of Raft’s biggest box-office hits of the 1930s.

Raft plays Ed [Ned] Beaumont, the sidekick of the politician Paul Madvig (Edward Arnold), who is charged with murder. Dodd plays Janet Henry, the enigmatic blonde femme fatale in the case. Madvig gives his support to Janet’s father in a political campaign and plans to marry her.

[Spoiler alert] The young Ray Milland pays Janet’s brother Taylor, a gambler heavily in debt to gangster Shad O’Rory (Robert Gleckler), whose club Madvig plans to shut. Then Taylor, who has been romancing Madvig’s younger sister Opal (Rosalind Keith), is found dead.

Raft and Arnold are nigh on perfect, but Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams steals their limelight and nearly steals the show as Jeff, a sadistic bodyguard who works for O’Rory.

It is tough-for-its-day, gripping entertainment that plays true to the hard-boiled spirit of Hammett. The Glass Key has a great plot, and it is unravelled well here.

Also in the cast are Charles Richman as Senator John T Henry, Tammany Young as Clarkie, Harry Tyler as Henry Sloss, Charles C Wilson as District Attorney Edward J Farr, Emma Dunn as Mom Madvig, Matt McHugh, Pat Moriarty, Mack Gray, Ann Sheridan, Irving Bacon, George Reed and Herbert Evans.

Filming started on 25 February 1935 at Paramount Studios, 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, and it was released on 15 June 1935.

It was remade as The Glass Key in 1942 with Brian Donlevy, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.

It nearly starred Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard. In 1931 Paramount announced Gary Cooper would star as Ed Beaumont in a film adaptation then called Graft, but he was embroiled in a contract dispute with the studio, and Carole Lombard was the then choice as Janet Henry.

The cover of the first edition of The Glass Key.

The Glass Key was first published as a serial in Black Mask magazine in 1930 and then was collected as a novel in 1931 and published in London, with the American edition following three months later. Paramount paid $25,000 for the the film rights to the novel when it was still in galley form in September 1930.

A radio adaptation of The Glass Key starring Orson Welles as Paul Madvig and Paul Stewart as Ned Beaumont aired on 10 March 1939, and the book was a major influence on the Coen Brothers’ 1990 film Miller’s Crossing.

The Glass Key is directed by Frank Tuttle, runs 80 minutes, is made by Paramount Pictures, is released by Paramount Pictures, is written by Kubec Glasmon, Kathryn Scola and Harry Ruskin (additional dialogue), shot in black and white by Henry Sharp, produced by Henry Herzbrun (executive producer) and E Lloyd Sheldon and scored by John Leipold (composer: stock music), Tom Satterfield (composer: stock music) and Heinz Roemheld (composer: title music), with Art Direction by Hans Dreier and A Earl Hedrick.

Frank Tuttle went on to direct Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in This Gun for Hire (1942).

Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Glass Key is preceded by The Maltese Falcon and followed by The Thin Man, both books also turned into film classics, The Maltese Falcon (1931) and The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Thin Man (1934).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 4928

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