I bet you never heard of this one either. But thanks to the magic of Tivo Suggests, I ended up with 1940’s The Earl of Chicago on my playlist and on a whim watched it. Robert Montgomery plays the title character, a Chicago mobster who becomes an English lord through an accident of birth, with a kind of Edward G. Robinson pseudo-impersonation and an odd little nervous laugh. Edward Arnold plays the lawyer who Montgomery framed and then befriends. Edmund Gwenn plays the perfect English butler. I thought this was a comedy, to be honest, until the ending.
Director Richard Thorpe, who started in mass-produced silent Westerns and went on to make some classics and some Elvis flicks, doesn’t do much in this movie at all but that’s not too surprising since Earl is one of three movies he directed in 1940. Lesser Samuels wrote the screenplay and he ought to get the blame, I suppose. Not recommended
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