Orson Welles gets a real chance to flex his acting muscles playing a successful lawyer who is threatened by an event from his past. It’s the same role played by John Barrymore on screen, entirely appropriate since the two men were mates and had a similar hammy charisma (I’m not sure if they played the same role many times; I think Welles played Hamlet on radio, and both were up for the lead in The Man Who Came to Dinner.)Welles isn’t very convincing as a son of an immigrant mother who speaks with an accent (played here by Gertrude Berg), but he is well cast as a lawyer who is successful but feels as though he is a charlatan. He has to have something of a nervous breakdown, something we’re not used to seeing – sorry, hearing – from Welles, who is best known for acting with charming aplomb. He doesn’t quite hit it out of the park – he tries, it’s not bad, but for me there is something in Welles’ acting which stops him from reaching the top rank. I think he was a great star, a tremendous personality – but agree with Simon Callow that something happened in his development as an actor to stop him going all the way. Aline McMahon reprises her screen role as the ever-loving secretary.
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