Producer: Jack Cummings. Copyright 17 May 1938. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Picture. New York opening: 19 May 1938. U.S. release: 27 May 1938. Australian release: 18 August 1938. 83 minutes.
NOTES: The stage play opened at the Martin Beck on 6 March 1934, running a modest 79 performances. Guthrie McClintic directed James Stewart (in the role played by Montgomery on screen), John Miltern, Geoffrey Kerr, Sam Levene, Myron McCormick, Eddie Acuff, Barton MacLane, Eduardo Ciannelli, Robert Keith, Millard Mitchell, Whitford Kane, Lloyd Gough, George Nash and Katherine Wilson.
COMMENT: Despite the top cast, this is a "B" film, unimpressively directed by George B. Seitz from a slackly written and very stagey screenplay by Edward Chodorov, based on the stage play Sidney Howard wrote in collaboration with Paul de Kruif. Maybe M-G-M made this film to cash in on Howard's name as screenwriter for Gone With the Wind, though the stage play itself won several critics' awards.
Alas, Montgomery is allowed to give another of his phony impressions of low-life subjects and the art direction by Cedric Gibbons and Eddie Imazu is drab and uninspired. And as entertainment, the slow-moving, gloomy story is rather lacking in all the qualities picture-goers have come to expect of M-G-M. True, the support actors give it a damn good shot, but this isn't enough to get Yellow Jack over the line.
NOTES: The stage play opened at the Martin Beck on 6 March 1934, running a modest 79 performances. Guthrie McClintic directed James Stewart (in the role played by Montgomery on screen), John Miltern, Geoffrey Kerr, Sam Levene, Myron McCormick, Eddie Acuff, Barton MacLane, Eduardo Ciannelli, Robert Keith, Millard Mitchell, Whitford Kane, Lloyd Gough, George Nash and Katherine Wilson.
COMMENT: Despite the top cast, this is a "B" film, unimpressively directed by George B. Seitz from a slackly written and very stagey screenplay by Edward Chodorov, based on the stage play Sidney Howard wrote in collaboration with Paul de Kruif. Maybe M-G-M made this film to cash in on Howard's name as screenwriter for Gone With the Wind, though the stage play itself won several critics' awards.
Alas, Montgomery is allowed to give another of his phony impressions of low-life subjects and the art direction by Cedric Gibbons and Eddie Imazu is drab and uninspired. And as entertainment, the slow-moving, gloomy story is rather lacking in all the qualities picture-goers have come to expect of M-G-M. True, the support actors give it a damn good shot, but this isn't enough to get Yellow Jack over the line.