WATCH IT HERE! Forgotten Books on Film: THE GLASS KEY starring George Raft (1935)

I talked about this film back in 2014, the first time I found it on YouTube. Well, now it's back, at least temporarily, so I'm repeating those remarks. If you want to see it, don't dawdle. You never know when it might vanish into the ether again.

Before watching this first screen version of The Glass Key, I hauled out the novel and read it for the fifth or sixth time. So how did they stack up? Well, it's still a dang good book, and pretty dang good movie too.

Nothing short of a ten hour mini-series could hope to present all the scenes, characters and storylines of the novel, but director Frank Tuttle did a fine job of boiling the mystery plot down into a feature film. The screenplay, attributed to two folks I've never heard of, retains many lines of Hammett dialogue, and there are several scenes lifted almost word for word from the book. Even the stuff Hammett didn't write sounds like he did. And there's a bit Hammett probably wished was his, when Beaumont clips a girl on the jaw, knocking her out to prevent her blabbing nonsense to the press.

Not surprisingly, because The Glass Key is an almost humorless book, the film added a little comic relief - in the form of a yegg attempting to perform card tricks. The big surprise is what the movie did not add, that being a full-blown romance between the two leads, George Raft and Claire Dodd.

Raft plays Ed (renamed from the novel's Ned) Beaumont, right-hand man and best friend of political boss Paul Madvig, portrayed by Edward Arnold. Madvig is hopelessly in love with Janet Henry (Claire Dodd), the daughter of a senator he's trying to get re-elected. The surface story is a murder mystery, revolving around the death of the senator's son (and Janet's brother), who just happened to be fooling around with Madvig's daughter. That's the part this movie focuses on, and does it well.

Beneath the surface, though, is the love triangle involving Madvig, Janet and Beaumont. That triangle is the driving force behind the story, and brings the novel to a bleak, unhappy conclusion. For Paramount, that simply wouldn't do. So for purposes of this film, they simply eliminated the growing relationship between Beaumont and Janet. Despite Raft and Dodd cozying up on the movie posters, the two characters hardly even meet. Once the crime is solved, instead of facing a shattered friendship and walking away with the leading lady, Beaumont goes on a date with Madvig's sister.

I also did a post on the book back then, and you can read it yourself right HERE.

UPDATE: THE MOVIE WAS ON YOUTUBE WHEN THIS WAS POSTED MAY 15. IT HAS NOW BEEN REMOVED, BUT YOU CAN STILL WATCH IT ON OK.RU. HERE'S THE LINK:

https://ok.ru/video/1233832249858

George Raft with You-Know-Who and director Frank Tuttle