Cinema Revisited: The Star Witness (1931)

With a screenplay by Lucien Hubbard (Smart Money, Three on a Match) and direction by William Wellman (The Public Enemy, Wild Boys of the Road), Star Witness is a very strong, atmospheric, and action-oriented precode crime drama.

Walter Huston plays a district attorney who wants to capture a notorious gangster (Ralph Ince) and send him to the electric chair. He thinks he has an opportunity when the gang shoots and kills two men, a policeman and police informant. The event takes place outside the Leeds home, and the gangsters barge into their house, assault an elderly relative, and go out the back way. The Leeds family is ready to cooperate, so the DA plans to put them in protective custory, but the gangs responds more quickly and captures the Leeds father (Grant Mitchell) by having one of their gang pose as a DA assistant. When he won’t accept a bribe, Mr Leeds is savagely beaten and tossed out. He makes it home, and while recovering under protective custody, has misgivings about continuing to cooperate.

A particularly brutal crime drama, even for a precode, The Star Witness moves quickly during its 68 minutes and doesn’t waste a second. The family is established in the opening scene, with the fastidious Mr Leeds expressing some chagrin at his son’s lack of work ethic, and also the sudden visit by his wife’s father, who lives at an old soldier’s home. Grandpa (Chic Sale) enjoys drinking and can be something of a social embarrassment, but the young children (Dickie Moore, George Ernest) adore him. The brutality of the shooting that takes place outside their home is on a grand scale. There are handguns and machine guns, rapidly moving cars crashing into light poles, and it is pouring rain. Director Wellman films most of this in an overhead shot that is supposed to be from the vantage point of the family looking out the window.

When Mr Leeds is beaten into keeping quiet, one of the henchmen (Nat Pendelton) grabs his legs and slams his head into a wall repeatedly, as Leeds begs for mercy. It is another scene that is striking in its brutality. Later, when one of the younger Leeds boys is kidnapped with the threat that he’ll be killed if the family offers any evidence, he is shown in the gangster’s hideout coming back to consciousness, inferring that he has been struck by one of the kidnappers.

When The Star Witness was released, some of the ads featured that city’s district attorney talking about how impressively realistic the movie is. The teaming of Chic Sale and Dickie Moore was compared in the advertising with the teaming of Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan in The Kid ten years earlier. But it was sold as a clean family picture despite its brutality, perhaps because in the precode Hollywood era, tough films like this were common.

Grant Mitchell, who specialized in playing fastidious businessmen (The Man Who Came To Dinner, Blondie’s Holiday) is perfectly cast as the patriarch torn between his civic duty and the protection of his family, especially the child being held. Chic Sale, playing an old codger, was actually only in his mid 40 when he made the film (he died in 1936 at only 51). This might be his best film and performance, as grandpa stands up for turning in the gangsters despite any dangers, and he is the one who agrees to stand trial. He eventually emerges as the hero. And it is a good chance to see Ralph Ince, so good as the head racketeer, whose career was cut short but a fatal car accident in 1937.

Walter Huston anchors the proceedings with a strong performance as the DA. He seems more interested in capturing the gangster than the family’s safety but he realizes these gangsters are willing to “cut the boy’s throat.”

The Star Witness is a quintessential precode crime drama; it has a great cast, writer, director, and is made for the best studio for this sort of film. There are some dated elements, but over all it is a strong, and recommended, film. It is available on DVD from Warner Archive.