Actors and Sin

In two short features released as one picture, written and directed by Ben Hecht. In the first, Marsha Hunt becomes a Broadway star to the great admiration of her father, Edward G. Robinson. She throws it all away in affairs and booze; her murder leads Robinson to assemble a cohort of possible assassins. In the second, agent Eddie Albert sells a script to mogul Alan Reed, who's convinced this is going to be the greatest picture Hollywood ever produced. When it turns out the author is nine-year-old Jenny Hecht (daughter of Ben), there's a lot of covering-up to do.

It's the last of seven movies that Hecht directed himself. He seemed to have gotten it into his head that Hollywood got everything wrong, and wished to make films with the writer having the final say, the way they did in the theater. There's something in that, but his attempts at doing serious movies wound up being pompous and not particularly popular; well, he got paid amazing sums of money for his writing by the people he despised.

That pompousness shows up in the first story. The second, a burlesque of the way Hollywood was doing business and thinking it art, is acidic and often very funny. Reed is hilarious in his mock humility, and Albert's businesslike demeanor with secretary Tracey Roberts until they suddenly start necking is also very funny. The first story is disappointing, but the second makes up for it.