The Whole Town's Talking (1935)

BACKGROUND
 

Edward G. Robinson originally turned down The Whole Town’s Talking telling Columbia Pictures that he didn’t want to do another gangster film. When he read the script however, he changed his mind and requested that John Ford be loaned out from Fox Pictures to direct. The script was written by two left-leaning screenwriters that later became known for their work with Frank Capra: Jo Swerling (It’s a Wonderful Life, Lifeboat) and Robert Riskin (It Happened One Night, Lost Horizon, You Can’t Take It With You, Meet John Doe). The only reason the two writers were not blacklisted was due to the fact that in 1950 Swerling moved to New York to work in theater and Riskin was struck by a debilitating stroke.
 

Critic Jean Mitry called the film: “...wonderfully cut and mounted, supercharged, taut like a spring, it is a work of total perfection in its genre.” Robinson wrote of working with Jean Arthur in his autobiography, All My Yesterdays: ”She was whimsical without being silly, unique without being nutty, a theatrical personality who was an untheatrical person. She was a delight to work with and to know.”

PLOT SUMMARY

A humble accountant who resembles a famous mobster is given a letter to prove his identity in case of false arrest which is then used by the real gangster to mask a crime spree.