True Confession

Director: Wesley Ruggles Wesley Ruggles

Overview

A straight arrow lawyer has his hands full when his wife, a habitual liar, implicates herself in a murder she didn't commit. When a blackmailer gets involved, the story becomes more comical and convoluted.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/05/2014
UPC:	0025192235924
Original Release:	1937
Source:	ALLIED VAUGHN
Presentation:	[Full Frame]
Language:	English
Time:	1:25:00
Sales rank:	42,967

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Carole Lombard	Helen Bartlett
Fred MacMurray	Kenneth Bartlett
John Barrymore	Charles "Charley" Jasper
Una Merkel	Daisy McClure
Porter Hall	Prosecutor
Edgar Kennedy	Darsey
Lynne Overman	Bartender
Fritz Feld	Krayler's Butler
Richard Carle	Judge
John T. Murray	Otto Krayler
Tom Dugan	Typewriter Man
Garry Owen	Tony Krauch
Toby Wing	Suzanne Baggart
Hattie McDaniel	Ella
Bernard Suss	Pedestrian
Pat West	Juror
Herbert Ashley	Juror
Dudley Clements	Juror
Walter Soderling	Juror
Jim Toney	Juror
Gertrude Simpson	Juror
Chester Clute	Juror
Irving White	Juror
George Ovey	Juror
Elmer Jerome	Juror
Peggy Meon	Juror
Jane K. Loofbourrow	Juror
George French	Juror,Juror
Anne Cornwall	Juror
Harry Fleischmann	Policeman
Jack Isley	Policeman
Bradley Metcalfe	Autograph Hunter
Wesley Giraud	Autograph Hunter
Billy O'Brien	Autograph Hunter
Carmencita Johnson	Autograph Hunter,Autograph Hunter
Rosita Butler	Autograph Hunter
Beaudine Anderson	Autograph Hunter
Charlotte Dabney	Newspaper Sketch Artist
Wally Maher	Assistant Prosecutor
C.L. Sherwood	Door Attendant
Martin Faust	Door Attendant
Don Roberts	Court Attendant
Nick Copeland	Guard
Monte Vandergrift	Guard
Frank Austin	Caretaker
Irving Bacon	Coroner
Byron Foulger	Ballistic expert
Arthur Lake	Attendant
Sharon Lewis	Yvonne Bolero
Peggy Montgomery	Autograph hunter
Gwen Kenyon	Uncredited
Friedrich Hollaender	Composer

Technical Credits

Claude Binyon

Wesley Ruggles	Director
Claude Binyon	Screenwriter
Albert Lewin	Producer
Earl Hayman	Sound/Sound Designer
Don Johnson	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

One looks at Wesley Ruggles' True Confession and wonders precisely what all concerned could have had in mind. It was highly regarded in some quarters in its own time, and there is the kernel of a potentially entertaining comedy, of errors, mix-ups, misunderstandings, half-truths, and out-and-out lies which, with the proper pacing and tone, could have worked. But director Wesley Ruggles never really does more than let it take flight just a few feet above the ground, and always brings everything down to earth (with a thump), and to a lugubrious halt, whenever it's time for Fred MacMurray's righteous young attorney/husband to sound all righteous with his pathological liar wife (Carole Lombard). Some of it is the fault of MacMurray's limitations as an actor at the time -- in later years, in movies such as The Caine Mutiny, and The Apartment, he showed himself perfectly capable of being deadly serious without deadening the pace of a scene; and his first scene in his office in this picture works well; but whenever he's with Lombard, it's as though any range and flexibility he possesses as an actor flees from him. Carole Lombard seems equally ill-at-ease with her role as a pathlogical liar -- perhaps even at the time of its production, there was some unease with so morally- and, really, mentally-challenged a role on the part of the actress; but she seldom seems to step inside of the character as she did in pictures such as Hands Across The Table, in which she's every bit as morally ambiguous but has a better script and also a better director (in Mitchell Leisen) to work with. And John Barrymore, for all of his talent and ability to dominate the screen and a scene, is more an annoying presence than anything else in True Confession, his abilities wasted in the role of a comic, larcenous drunk whose scenes lie there flat, only coming to life when he is sparring with Lynn Overman as a cynical bartender and in his final confrontation with MacMurray's young hero. The whole notion behind True Confession might have worked better on-stage, but whatever was intended, neither the cast nor the director ever finds the right approach to pulling off what was probably intended as a rollicking screwball farce.