An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.
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Reviews
CinemaSerf
7
By CinemaSerf
Tyrone Power is at his most alluring in this compelling story of "Stanton Carlisle". He starts out working as a general factotum with a travelling show where he meets "Zeena" (Joan Blondell). She is part of the mind-reading act with "Bruno" (Mike Mazurki) - a man who hits the bottle just once too often. She begins to teach him the tricks of their trade and soon they are the toast of society - fleecing the green and the gullible. It is at one such show that he alights on "Ruth" (Helen Walker) - a professional psychiatrist who is not averse to a little bribery and corruption herself. Soon she is feeding him confidential information that enables "Stan" to try to trick the mourning millionaire "Ezra Grindle" (Taylor Holmes) out of $150,000. Edmund Goulding has created a very well paced, frequently enthralling adaptation of Gresham's novel - we are shown the tough, gritty and frequently violent life on the road faced by the circus folks and all too readily understand why these two want to escape that routine. It is also good to see Power playing a meatier, almost sociopath role, and he works well with both Blondell and Walker treading his tightrope that sees him pretty much abandon all semblance of human decency. The ending seemed oddly fitting - and I think this is well worth a watch.
