King for a Night (1933)
A.D.S.
Published: December 11, 1933
A hooded figure swings inertly from an improvised gibbet on each side of the Mayfair box-office. You may not think it relates too carefully to the prizefight melodrama "King For a Night," which is revealed inside, but it does. For the new film, after forty minutes of the routine pleasantries that accompany a young man on his way to the middleweight championship, takes an unexpectedly grim turn.
It places the hero in a death cell for a murder he did not commit; it permits his broken father to rise from a paralytic's bed to read the service for the dead with his boy; and, finally, the young man goes gravely and deliberately to the electric chair while the audience waits to hear of the Governor's pardon that never arrives.
It is a shocking and somewhat effective conclusion for an amiable little film which seems content for most of its length to be rather pallidly imitative of "The Prizefighter and the Lady." The story is of the loud-mouthed small-town fighter who, unknown to himself, is boosted to the top by the circumstance that his sister is being pleasant to the big promoter. On the night of the championship fight be learns the truth and sets out to kill the promoter. But his sister gets there first. Arranging the evidence to save her name, the fighter persuades a jury to convict him of the murder and, as reported, goes tight-lipped to his death.
Chester Morris, although he is no more convincing in the ring than most Hollywood leading men, touches a number of scenes with reality. Helen Twelvetrees as the sister and Grant Mitchell as the father are helpful, and Alice White delivers an uncomfortably convincing portrait of a tough little chorus girl.
KING FOR A NIGHT, based on a story by William Anthony McGuire; directed by Kurt Neumann; a Universal production. At the Mayfair.
Bud Williams . . . . . Chester Morris
Lillian Williams . . . . . Helen Twelvetrees
Evelyn . . . . . Alice White
Walter Douglas . . . . . John Miljan
Reverend John Williams . . . . . Grant Mitchell
Hymie . . . . . George E. Stone
John Williams . . . . . George Meeker
Dick . . . . . Frank Albertson
Goofy . . . . . Warren Hymer
