I've seen this film listed somewhere as "Boxoffice poison" It's one of my favorite films and always has been. Ben Hecht was famed as the "script doctor" who was called in when a script needed fixing. MacArthur was actress Helen Hayes' husband. These folks belonged to the Algonquin Club. The film "The Man Who Came to Dinner" featured Monte Wooley who played Alec Woolcott of that club. I was 10 when "The Scoundrel " came out in a local third run theater and saw it six times that week. Forty years later, the UCLA film archives let me see "The Scoundrel" once more. I still appreciate it. My favorite actors: Anton Walbrook and Conrad Veidt and favorite film is "The Red Shoes". Everything gets dated particularly in the arts and at moments, "The Scoundrel" does too. I wonder if the theme has something to do with Coward's possible sexual "perversion" guilt at that time.
Review of The Scoundrel
