Counsellor at Law
1933 · Movie · 82 min. · United States
A successful lawyer struggles to deal with his wife's unfaithfulness and his own hidden past. At the bustling Manhattan law offices of Simon and Tedesco, highly successful Jewish attorney George Simon, who has risen from the slums of New York, returns to his roots when he bails out Sarah Becker's son Harry, a young Communist who has been brutalized by the police, but grows rich on sensational cases like the murder trial of Mrs. Zadorah Chapman and the breach of promise suit of the seductive Lillian La Rue. Simon's devoted secretary, Regina "Rexy" Gordon, is always at his side, and secretly loves him. Simon's socialite wife Cora is embarrassed by his notoriety and uncomfortable with his heritage. She begs him to decline a $100,000 case against one of her society friends. He reluctantly agrees but is soon threatened with disbarment when upper-class attorney Francis Clark Baird discovers that years before he created a false alibi for Johan Breitstein, another friend from his old neighborhood.
Direction William Wyler
Cast John Barrymore · Bebe Daniels · Doris Kenyon · Isabel Jewell · Melvyn Douglas · Onslow Stevens · Thelma Todd · Clara Langsner · Mayo Methot · John Hammond Dailey
Screenplay Elmer Rice
Cinematography Norbert Brodine
Original title Counsellor at Law
6.9
40 votes (FilmAffinity)
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