Actor Spotlight: Edward Arnold

(Note: This is my entry in the What a Character! Blogathon, hosted by Outspoken & Freckled, Paula's Cinema Club, and Once Upon A Screen.)

Nowadays, the Hollywood rule for greedy businessmen in movies is that be you tall or short, slim or round, redeemable or diabolic, you must be shouting into a cellphone. Hence will the moviegoers know you as the face of cold-hearted capitalism. But back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, Hollywood had a different shorthand for businessmen. You had to be fat.

To struggling audiences during the Depression, nothing said money like middle-aged men who seemed to be eating too well. Bankers, politicians, newspaper owners, and factory owners. They were all “fat cats” in the eyes of the public, men gorging themselves on the labor of others. In Hollywood, the portrayal of these men wasn’t always negative. On the contrary, the screwball comedies were full of bumbling, well-meaning businessmen, who could be rescued from their selfish existence. Generally, redemption would come in the blonde, husky-voiced form of Jean Arthur, who would arrive to provide daughterly support and some no-nonsense lecturing (Easy Living, The Devil and Miss Jones, The More the Merrier). Other times though, these men were surface-level sharks, insatiable villains out to grab everything in sight. Whether he leaned good or evil, the businessman archetype was ridiculously popular during those lean years, enough so that a whole class of talented character actors could make a living just from playing him. And of those character actors, for me, the most interesting and varied of the lot is Edward Arnold.

Within the ranks of Hollywood’s fat men, Walter Connolly was the cuddliest, Eugene Pallette was the grumpiest, and Charles Coburn the wiliest, but Edward Arnold always came off as the smartest. Many character actors gain success by having the biggest reactions, the most outsize expressions. And there’s nothing wrong with that, as any fan of Edward Everett Horton, Marie Dressler, Una O’Connor or Eric Blore will tell you. But Arnold’s special talent came from holding just a little back. When an Edward Arnold character gets bad news, he goes very still, with only his eyes giving away his despair. When the news is good, he responds with a boisterous laugh, but it never takes him long to get serious again. Arnold excelled in playing cool-headed businessmen and politicians, men who were cautious, controlled, and ambitious. A Coburn character could get away with playing dumb but Arnold couldn’t.

Even in the part of the bumbling millionaire in Easy Living, he’s sharp and snappy. Watching him spar with Jean Arthur over compound interest is like watching two trains collide at top speed and then miraculously keep right on going. “I pay eight dollars a month, there are four weeks in a month,” Arthur tells him. “I beg your pardon, madam, there are four and one third weeks in a month!” Arnold counters. “Otherwise we’d only have forty-eight weeks in a year!” “Oh,” Arthur says, her face brightening, “You mean leap year?” Arnold’s face instantly collapses like a sinking sponge cake. “No, NO, I don’t mean leap year!” he shouts, turning a howl of frustration into something that’s almost a sob.

But while Arnold could do comedy, his talents were more often put to use in drama. For Frank Capra, he was the face of ruthless opportunism and in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Meet John Doe, he plays essentially interchangeable villains. Capra could never muster up as much interest for his bad guys as his heroes so Arnold gets little to do. Still, he manages to convey the coiled-up cruelty of these men by keeping his body still and his movements subtle, with a predatory gaze from behind his glasses. It’s a rule in Edward Arnold movies that, unlike Clark Kent, Edward Arnold always gets ten times more dangerous whenever he has glasses on. 

Capra would also use Arnold as the greedy but ultimately goodhearted businessman in You Can’t Take It With You. This is a movie I find hard to stomach. It’s one of those leaden confections where obnoxious free spirits run around following their dreams and turning up their noses at people who try to do dull things like paying bills. But Arnold, who is the closest thing the movie has to a real person, managed to sneak one genuine laugh out of me. During a chaotic dinner party, Arnold’s wife gets jabbed over her spiritualism by a clueless Spring Byington. “Everyone knows spiritualism’s a fake!” Byington says. “Now, Penny, you’ve got hobbies of your own,” Lionel Barrymore reminds her. “Yes, but not silly ones!” Byington answers innocently. Arnold’s been looking like grim death the whole evening, but at this remark he lifts his eyes up and suddenly beams like a blissful baby. 

In repose, Edward Arnold’s face was ordinary, but watch him smile and the features turn into a sharply angled geometry problem. The nose is a positive beak; you could imagine Arnold elbowing aside Burgess Meredith to play the Penguin. The eyes squint into specks while the mouth curls up until it almost disappears under the nose. If he’d wanted, no doubt Arnold could have parlayed that expression into a character actor’s trademark, but his overall demeanor was too serious to caricature. 

The image of Arnold that’s been passed down to us is the stern businessman, but take a look at Edward Arnold when he was young. You could imagine that man playing Lorenzo in Merchant of Venice, which was actually Arnold’s debut role. The part must have made a great impression on him, because he titled his autobiography Lorenzo Goes to Hollywood. I’ve always loved that little detail, which gives you some insight into Arnold’s mind. No matter how many greedy fat cats he played, he still saw himself as the young man under the stars, whispering poetry into the ears of his beloved.

By far my favorite Edward Arnold role is his turn in The Devil and Daniel Webster, playing the courageous and eloquent Webster to Walter Huston’s Devil. Originally Thomas Mitchell was going to play Daniel Webster and while Mitchell was a superb performer, I can’t help but think his take on the part would have been much warmer and more approachable than Arnold’s. Arnold is certainly boisterous and fun-loving as the beer-swigging orator, but there’s a calculating glint in the eye that never goes away. When he says, “I’d fight ten thousand devils to save a New Hampshire man,” there’s nothing folksy about it. It’s cold and quiet and utterly resolute. Our first glimpse of Arnold is of a tired man scratching away with his quill in the dark, while the Devil’s voice whispers in his ear. Arnold’s face betrays how tempted he is to abandon principle for power. It’s a moment that adds a measure of depth to every scene afterwards. No matter how hail-fellow-well-met Webster acts, he is still fundamentally alone, trying to help people more inclined to worship him than treat him as an equal. 

Arnold had a gift for tackling long, weighty speeches and making it seem easy. The Devil and Daniel Webster shows him at the top of his form, but if you want to watch him in a game of serve-and-volley dialogue, look no further than Von Sternberg’s 1935 adaptation of Crime and Punishment. Next to a prickly, tormented Raskolnikov (played by Peter Lorre), Arnold is a smoothly confident Inspector Porfiry. Lorre speaks slowly, his eyes haunted, while Arnold plays the detective with an air of boundless good cheer, as if he’s genuinely enjoying his quarry’s company. The movie was disowned by Von Sternberg for being a routine assignment with little feel for the source material, but Lorre and Arnold are still a pleasure to watch.

In a long and prolific career, Arnold did get some interesting lead roles, although they were rarely in top-flight films. In Come and Get It, Edward Arnold plays the part of yet another greedy businessman, except this time we get to see his character develop. He goes from being a boisterous lumber man to a dissatisfied tycoon, hopelessly trying to recapture his youth. In the first half of the film (by far the better half) Arnold is overshadowed by Frances Farmer’s throaty, wistful bar singer. But an odd thing happens. When the movie gets duller and the pacing begins to lag, Arnold actually gets better. As his character tries vainly to recreate his lost love in the form of Frances Farmer’s identical daughter, Arnold manages to make a creepy, unpleasant man seem genuinely tragic. 

While Arnold could carry a film, I feel like his particular brand of underplayed scene-stealing is most interesting when it comes as a surprise. Take a run-of-the-mill assignment like 1941’s Johnny Eager. In Johnny Eager, Arnold nearly gets sidelined by all the compulsively watchable antics of his costars. When you’re in a movie with Lana Turner as a sociology student falling into madness, Van Heflin tossing out drunk Shakespeare quotes, and Robert Taylor telling all the ladies in the audience that he’s bad, oh yes, he’s never known love and no woman will ever find a way into his heart, you could be turning cartwheels in the background and still not get noticed. 

Arnold gets the unenviable role of the good-guy D.A., who tries to keep his stepdaughter Turner from falling into the clutches of Taylor’s womanizing gangster, only to end up blackmailed and broken. But he still manages to add a few interesting touches. In a scene with Taylor, Arnold snaps, “Remember what I told you, thief!” Arnold lingers on the word “thief” as if it’s the worst sobriquet known to man. “You mean ex-thief,” Taylor counters. “Get out, thief!” Arnold barks, more like a cashier brandishing a baseball bat than a dignified D.A. When he orders Taylor to stoop down and pick up a dollar bill, it’s no surprise that Taylor does it, after getting a glimpse of such primal hatred. The D.A. actually becomes more dignified when he becomes powerless and his final scene with the gangster is a flash of pure heartbreak. “My daughter always trusted me,” he says and Arnold pauses to swallow down his inconvenient emotions. “But she doesn’t anymore.” Taylor tersely tells him not to cry. “You’ll not have that pleasure,” Arnold responds, looking back with resigned misery.

If there’s one way to sum up an Edward Arnold character, it’s that he always has total conviction that what he’s doing is the only right thing to do, whether it’s arguing a man’s soul away from Hell or blasting boy scouts with hoses or trying to explain compound interest. I like to think that it was Arnold’s own conviction and determination that shone through in his roles, the conviction of a man who gave his best years to Hollywood and never lost that look of bright, watchful intelligence.

Movie Review: The Devil and Daniel Webster

The Devil and Daniel Webster/All That Money Can Buy*  (1941)
directed by William Dieterle, starring James Craig, Walter Huston, Edward Arnold

*The Devil and Daniel Webster is the original title of this movie; it was changed to All That Money Can Buy for its first release. Later releases of the film would revert back to the former title and that's the one I will use for this review.

(Note: This film review is my entry for the Fabulous Films of the 1940s Blogathon, hosted by The Classic Movie Blog Association.)

Nothing seems to go right for Jabez Stone (James Craig). His farm is failing, he's in debt to a greedy moneylender, and no matter what he does, he'll always be poor. In a fit of anger, he vows he'd sell his soul to the devil for two cents. Well, quick as a wink, a silver-tongued gentleman appears with a contract all ready and waiting. The Devil (Walter Huston) assures Jabez that for seven years, he can have "all that money can buy" and then his soul will belong to Hell. Tempted by the sight of gold coins pouring out of the earth, Jabez accepts. With the help of the gold, he suddenly find himself able to do everything he ever wanted. He can loan money to his needy friends, buy his wife Mary (Anne Shirley) a new bonnet, and treat himself to the best of everything. But his mother (Jane Darwell) is suspicious of his miraculous wealth: "When a man gets his money in a bad way...the Devil's in his heart."

As time passes, Jabez goes from being a simple, honest man into a greedy, arrogant bully, egged on by the Devil's kindly advice. His moral dissolution is also hastened by the arrival of the mysterious Belle Dee (Simone Simon), sent to be his child's nursemaid. With soft words and seductive smiles, Belle soon ousts the goodhearted Mary from her husband's life. But Mary, driven to desperation, enlists the help of Daniel Webster (Edward Arnold), the politician that everyone respects for his oratory and loyalty to the working man. Webster vows he'd "fight ten thousand devils to save a New Hampshire man." But it will take all of Webster's eloquence and all of Jabez's desperate, sincere repentance to win the trial for a man's soul. And when you're going up against the Devil, don't expect it to be a fair fight...

This simple morality tale, adapted from Stephen Vincent Benét's short story, is yet another superb movie from 1941. Yes, there were a lot of them that year, weren't there? Directed by the underrated William Dieterle, with cinematography by Joseph H. August and musical scoring by Bernard Herrmann, The Devil and Daniel Webster is one of those rare films that's a perfect example of classic Hollywood filmmaking and yet doesn't really feel like any other movie. The filmmakers take Benét's relatively simple narrative and expand it with humor, depth, and an imaginative perspective on eternal damnation. Believe me when I say that after watching this, you will never look at moths, recruitment posters, or "Pop Goes the Weasel" the same way again. But more than that, The Devil and Daniel Webster is a movie that can turn the old tale of good versus evil into something truly fascinating.

Something about tales of the fantastic and otherworldly seemed to strike a chord with director William Dieterle since his other great film of the 40s, Portrait of Jennie, was also about the arrival of the uncanny into ordinary life. Also made with the help of August and Herrmann and damn, why didn't those three collaborate more often? But while Jennie was lushly romantic, Devil is archly funny and straight-faced, lulling the audience in with its portrait of bygone America before it takes you by surprise. The visuals here are some of the most striking I've ever seen in a film. Like the first entrance of Satan, backlit and glowing more like an angel than the Prince of Darkness. Or the way Dieterle and August show the final temptation of Jabez, with the man caught in a crowd of whirling dancers, the play of light and shadow on their bodies slowly morphing into the image of hellfire. Even a relatively simple romantic moment between Jabez and his wife becomes something more, with the already-corrupted Jabez leaning over Mary in dark silence and her looking back with an expression that hints both at fright and sensual surrender. It's like the Tippi Hedren close-up from Marnie, twenty years before Hitchcock ever thought of it.

If Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it," then it's just as fair to say that this movie is very much of the Devil's party and is fully aware of that fact. Oh sure, we're rooting for Jabez to free his soul, but who could begrudge Walter Huston's incredibly charismatic Devil the chance to make some mischief? Like Ray Milland would find out in Alias Nick Beal (another great Faustian film), playing the Devil is just about as much fun as an actor can have. Huston's grin is so wide it doesn't quite seem attached to his face. He's a joking, courteous Devil ("I won't come to the christening...it would be in wretched bad taste"), running rings around Jabez with ease. The sinister aspect comes not so much from Huston trying to project real menace but from the good-natured satisfaction he has when explaining his position. Huston's performance as the unhappily married millionaire in Dodsworth is one of my personal favorites but this film shows he's just as wonderful when he plays it broad as when he plays it subtle. He was nominated for Best Actor (losing to Gary Cooper), but I wish it had been in the supporting category where he might have had a better chance. 

Have I mentioned how much I love Edward Arnold? He was the consummate character actor, a man who could play outsized comic parts or dead-eyed villains with equal mastery. But he shone brightest when he could play it smart. He had a way of sizing someone up with one quick, shrewd glance, saying nothing but letting his presence speak for him. In von Sternberg's adaptation of Crime and Punishment, Arnold was a surprisingly effective Inspector Porfiry, smilingly working at poor Peter Lorre's nerves the way an old woman would wind up a ball of yarn. Here he has the immense task of creating a Daniel Webster that lives up to all the hype. The Webster in this tale is a noble and courageous politician, a  man whose fiery rhetoric is in service to the people, not his own ambition. In short, he's the kind of man we dream of, not the man we ever meet.

In Arnold's hands however, Daniel Webster is a very enjoyable hero, clever and funny but with an air of real experience that makes his nobility seem hard-earned. Part of it can be attributed to the script, which allows Webster to be a little less than perfect. He's an overly enthusiastic drinker and smoker. He allows himself to get carried away by arrogance at times. And we can see that he too has to live with the Devil at his elbow, always tempting him with promises of the Presidency. Thomas Mitchell was slated for the role of Webster before breaking his leg. He would have been superb, but Arnold's performance is there already. When he makes his speech at Jabez's trial, we can see both the very real fear of a man facing the Devil himself and the deeper courage and fire that all of us would want to see raised in our defense.

There's a surplus of other great supporting perfomances in The Devil and Daniel Webster, from Jane Darwell's no-nonsense Ma Stone to John Qualen's hauntingly frightened Miser Stevens, the last man to make a bargain with the Devil. But by far the one you can't take your eyes from is Simone Simon as Belle Dee. She's ravishingly sexy here, so much so that it's no surprise that poor, simple Jabez falls for her charms in the space of about five seconds. Simon's French accent gives a strange, sing-song quality to her lines that's totally appropriate to a character that's meant to be otherworldly. "I'm from over the mountain," Belle says, in lieu of any other explanation. As attractive as Belle is, she's also quite creepy, with her constant smiles and ability to insinuate herself completely into the Stone household, replacing Mary entirely. It's hard to look at Simon's performance here and not imagine that Val Lewton was thinking of it when she was cast as the equally sexy and supernatural Irena in Cat People.

With Huston and Arnold holding up the smart, comic side of things and Simon handily taking care of the sex, there isn't much left over for our simple lead couple, James Craig and Anne Shirley. They represent the good American Everyman and his wife; two people that were meant to lead ordinary, uneventful lives. Craig gets the potentially interesting challenge of depicting Jabez's disintegration from true-hearted farmer into greedy, immoral layabout. But Craig doesn't have the ability to give any kind of complexity to the part. He's not bad, but he can only feel one thing at a time. Whether he's beaten down with remorse or trembling with greed, well that's all he feels. I feel that an actor like Joel McCrea or James Stewart could have made Jabez seem less like a pantomime character and more like a tormented, recognizable human being.

Anne Shirley is even less interesting than Craig and no wonder, she gets the worst part in the movie. The fact is that Mary Stone is such a monument of patience and sincerity that I doubt even Teresa Wright could make her credible. She waits in hopeless obedience for her husband to return to the path of goodness for seven years. She bows her head even when he forbids her from disciplining their son. She loves him even when he kicks her out of the new house so he can live there with his mistress. The only direct action she can take is to implore Daniel Webster to help her, crying that her lousy husband's behavior must be her fault somehow. Shirley does what she can (she tended to get stuck with these winsome ingenues time after time) and you can believe that she's a devout, loving woman and all that. But after all she endures, it's close to impossible to believe that she could ever trust and respect her husband again. There's too much poison between them.

In the end, we know that good will triumph and villainy will slink away unrewarded. Still this film is all about the journey we take to get there and it's a fun, fantastic trip all the way. It has rich performances, witty lines, and an imaginative use of sound and shadow that will linger in your memory. It deserves to be classed as one of the great films of the 1940s. And I suggest you spread the word about it right now, before Walter Huston makes you his next victim.

Favorite Quote:

"Oh, come, come now. Just because you sold your soul to the devil that needn't make you a teetotaler."

Favorite Scene:

The party at Jabez Stone's new mansion. While spoilers don't really apply to a straightforward plot like The Devil and Daniel Webster, I think it's best when Dieterle and August's uncanny visuals are left as a surprise. So I won't give too much away about what happens at the party and what we see. Suffice to say that it's one of the most memorable parties in cinema, one to put alongside The Masque of the Red Death. We get to see the final sum of all that Jabez has hoped for, along with his well-deserved comeuppance. We get to see the Devil's sharp assessment of the man he has caught: "I could fit your soul in my vest pocket." We see Belle's true nature revealed as she leads the revelry of the damned. And we're left with the haunting image of what happens when the Devil chooses to bring you into the dance.

Final Six Words:

Bewitching tale of dark fantasies fulfilled