Ewald André Dupont Movies

Famed German filmmaker E. A. Dupont, who in his peak years was responsible for such classics as Variety, merely goes through the motions in this updated sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Instead of Jim Hawkins, the film offers Jim's beautiful female descendant Jamesina (Dawn Addams), who manages to get her hands on Captain Flint's fabled treasure map. This makes Jamesina the target of a variety of scurrilous fortune-hunters, including phony archeologist Harris (Porter Hall) and the malevolent, sightless Newman (James Seay). It is handsome archeological student Clive Stone (Tab Hunter) who helps Jamesina locate the treasure and elude the villains. At least Return to Treasure Island wasn't intended to be taken seriously. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In a mountain home, Dr. Cliff Groves (Robert Shayne) is working hard on the theories that have driven him to the point of overbearing obsession, frightening his sister Jan (Joyce Terry), who lives with him. When the local game warden is shocked to see what looks like a saber-tooth tiger in the area, he consults scientist Dr. Ross Harkness (Richard Crane) about the mysterious animal, and the two men decide to find the tiger and kill it. Meanwhile, Groves' experimentation has escalated. One night he injects himself and turns into a savage Neanderthal man who commits a murder and a rape then quickly returns home and transforms back into Groves. When Dr. Harkness finds evidence to incriminate Groves, he confronts the madman, who transforms again, kidnapping a woman and fleeing into the woods. Unfortunately for Groves, a second saber-tooth tiger, created by injecting a housecat with his own formula, tears him to pieces; transforming back to himself, he murmurs "It's better this way," as he dies.
This wearily routine variation on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was directed by E.A. Dupont, who once had a substantial reputation, based on his film Variety; his work here is indistinguishable from that of any standard low-budget hack. However, the dialogue by producers Aubrey Wisberg and Jack Pollexfen is, if nothing else, highly identifiable -- they wrote some of the most ponderous, hard-to-say lines in movie history. "All I can say," poor Robert Shayne has to say, "is that I cannot determine now which I admire less in you, your humor or your wit." The makeup transformations are weirdly elaborate, though the end result -- the Neanderthal Man himself -- is rendered by a standard rubber mask. The script is not only badly written, it's clumsily organized, with way too much time spent on the saber-tooth tiger, and very little, relatively speaking, on the menace of the title.
Intrigued, Ross heads up to the town, and meets Ruth Marshall (Dorris Merrick), Groves' fiancee, who has him drive her to the Groves home. Groves himself becomes furious when a group of Los Angeles scientists refuse to believe his theory that Neanderthal Man had a larger brain than human beings today. He stays furious when he meets Harkness, and when the game warden and Ross kill the saber-tooth tiger, he's initially still angry -- but is in a better mood when the body proves to have vanished. ~ All Movie Guide

Mercedes McCambridge plays a singing waitress named Cash-and-Carry Connie in The Scarf. This alone should be enough to keep the viewer's interest, but in fact the film has much to please the eye and ear. John Ireland stars as John Barrington, an escapee from a institution for the criminally insane. Actually, Barrington is not a looney tune, but instead the victim of an insidious plot orchestrated by a clever murderer. The only person who believes Barrington's story is turkey-farmer Ezra Thompson (James Barton), who hides Our Hero from the authorities. Things really get hopping when the aforementioned Connie unwittingly provides the clue that will prove Barrington's innocence. Co-starring in The Scarf is Emlyn Williams as an all-too-cooperative psychiatrist. The film was directed by E. A. Dupont, whose American career never quite scaled the heights of his years in the German film industry. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Love on Toast was one of several mid-1930s Hollywood films helmed by E. A. DuPont, a once-celebrated German filmmaker then on the skids. The plot concerns a female press agent who must select a "Mr. Manhattan" and "Miss Brooklyn" for an ad campaign mounted by a soup company. The Mr. Manhattan chosen is a singing soda jerk, who doesn't want to play along until he is given the honor of choosing his own Miss Brooklyn. He picks a brash radio songstress, who ends up causing all sorts of trouble at a banquet thrown in her honor -- but who cares now that Mr. Manhattan has fallen in love with the pretty press agent. John Payne, who'd emerged as a singing star the year before, is the hero; radio soubrette "Sugar" Kane (that was her billing!) is the troublesome gal from Brooklyn; and the press agent who sets the plot in motion is a movie newcomer named Stella Ardler, who under her given name of Stella Adler later established herself as one of America's foremost acting coaches. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A remake of 1929's The Greene Murder Case, Paramount's Night of Mystery was the first "Philo Vance" thriller not to use the words "Murder Case" in the title. The story is set in the Greene Mansion in midtown New York, where a passel of greedy relatives attend the wealthy and reclusive Mrs. Tobias Greene (Elizabeth Patterson). When murder inevitably rears its ugly head, dilettante sleuth Philo Vance (Grant Richards) shows up to investigate, condescendingly second-guessing DA Markham (Purnell Pratt) and Sgt. Heath (Roscoe Karns). Among the clues is a revolver which keeps appearing and disappearing, seemingly at will. Part of the appeal of the original Greene Murder Case was the offbeat casting of then-ingenue Jean Arthur. In Night of Mystery, the Arthur role is filled by Ruth Coleman, who is almost as ill-suited for the part as is the colorless Grant Richards as Philo Vance. Strange that director E. A. Dupont, one of the giants of the German silent cinema, couldn't inject any more excitement into this weary yarn. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Forgotten Faces is the third of four versions of the old chestnut Heliotrope Harry. Herbert Marshall stars as Harry Ashton, a gambler-turned-jailbird saddled with a vindictive ex-wife named Cleo (Gertrude Michael). Seventeen years after the break-up, an impoverished Cleo, now a cheap burlesque performer, searches for her daughter Sally (Jane Rhodes), whom she gave up for adoption. She blackmails Sally's foster parents, threatening to tell the girl that her real mother is a tramp and her real father has just served a long prison term. But Harry, recently paroled, stops Cleo in her tracks by killing her. This grand gesture also costs him his own life, but at least he can shuffle off his mortal coil secure in the knowledge that his daughter will be spared the truth. Director E. A. Dupont is at his Germanic best in Forgotten Faces, which is altogether suitable to the melodramatic nature of the storyline. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Edmund Gwenn makes his American film debut in this lighthearted adaptation of Frederick Jackson's stage play The Bishop Misbehaves. The central character is a Bishop (Edmund Gwenn) who harbors a fondness for detective stories. This harmless pastime gets him mixed up in the travails of heroine Hester (Maureen O'Sullivan), who hopes to wreak vengeance against the man who stole her father's invention. The key to the plot solution is a packet of valuable patent papers, for which the Bishop, Hester, and handsome American tourist Donald (Norman Foster) put their lives on the line. Hester and Donald are briefly kidnapped by a team of holdup men, but they escape in time to beard the villain in his den -- with, of course, the considerable aid of the "misbehaving" Bishop. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Throughout his directorial career, E. A. Dupont endeavored to match the success of his 1926 silent classic Variety. Like the earlier film, Salto Mortale has a circus background and is predicated on a romantic triangle, but that's where the resemblance ends. The title refers to a particularly treacherous acrobatic feat, which is performed four times in the picture as a sort of connecting link. The protagonists are three acrobats, two men and a woman. The fact that both men are in love with the woman results in some pretty tense moments under the Big Top, leading to a near-tragedy in the middle of a performance of the "salto mortale." Heading the cast are Anna Sten and Adolf Wohlbrueck (aka Anton Walbrook), both of whom went on to brief Hollywood careers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Just before making his talkie directorial debut with Atlantic, director E.A. DuPont dashed off the silent "backstage" drama Piccadilly. By the time the film was released in 1929, talking pictures had taken a firm hold of the British film industry, obliging DuPont to reshoot much of the picture with dialogue. American screen favorites Anna May Wong and Gilda Gray (the girl who popularized the "shimmy dance") head the cast, the former as Shosho, a dishwasher in the London nightclub where the latter, cast as dancer Mabel Greenfield, performs nightly. Jealous of Mabel's dancing partner Victor Smiles (Cyril Ritchard), club owner Wilmot (Jameson Thomas) fires Victor, whereupon business drops off dramatically. In desperation, Wilmot takes Shosho out of the kitchen and puts her on stage, where she scores a big success. Feeling threatened by Shosho, Mabel heads to her rival's apartment with blood in her eye. A shot rings out, Shosho falls dead, and Mabel is accused of murder. But during the trial, it turns out that Shosho was done in by her Chinese sweetheart Jim (Kim Ho Chang). In his first feature film appearance, Charles Laughton performs an outrageous bit as a rowdy night club patron; also seen in a minuscule role is young Ray Milland. The talkie version of Piccadilly wasn't released in the U.S. until 1932. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide