Two Films by Edward L. Cahn: Two-Dollar Bettor (1951) and Afraid to Talk (1932)

One thing I learned as a graduate student in art history was that there is no artist so obscure that he won't at some point be rediscovered.  This is also true of film directors, especially in this age of the DVD.  While there are many fine films still under copyright that have not yet made it into the market there are many in the public domain that are available in the grey market. When I told someone recently that I am not about to give up cable TV only because of Turner Classic Movies they suggested that all the films shown on TCM were on DVD anyway.  Would that it were so!  I did a somewhat arbitrary count of one month of TCM and found that only about 20% were available on DVD.  Of the remaining 80% a small number are available for purchase in the grey market.

Which brings us to the case of Edward L. Cahn, who made more than 100 movies in his thirty-year career (1932-62), some of them quite inspired, most of them at least workmanlike, including Law and Order, about the Earp Brothers, made in 1932.  Also made in 1932 was Afraid to Talk, one of the most uncompromising films ever about political corruption.  When gangster Edward Arnold murders someone in a hotel room he is let off because he has compromising evidence about the corruption of everyone from the mayor on down.  Because the assistant D.A., played by the ever-sleazy Louis Calhern, has to prosecute someone he beats up a bellboy in order to get a confession from him and then tries to hang him in his cell.  The only ones who drink more than the reporters are the politicians, who plot everything at their cocktail parties.  Headlines are not shown on newspapers but rather electronic news ticker, with citizens commenting in crowded streets about their inability to find a job.

Cahn's Two-Dollar Bettor was made in 1951 and contrasts a banker father who becomes addicted to gambling with his wholesome daughter (whose mother is dead), who plans to marry the boss's son, a recent Princeton graduate, and at first the father wins enough bets to buy things for his daughter  When the father is smitten by the bookie's messenger, femme fatale Marie Windsor, she convinces him to steal money to bet on a sure thing and she plans to leave town with the money and her boyfriend,  The father kills them both and in turn is killed himself.  It's an effectively downbeat story about greed and lust in 50's America, a common theme in Cahn's films.