The Star Witness (1931)
Directed by William A. Wellman

Film Review

The Star Witness just about qualifies as a companion piece to The Public Enemy, since both films were made by William A. Wellman  for Warner Brothers in 1931 and both deal with gangsterism at the time of prohibition in America.  Yet whereas The Public Enemy is a serious crime drama that confronts its social themes with intelligence and unremitting sobriety, The Star Witness is a muddled mix of farce and melodrama that looks as if it was knocked out in a hurry without any thought as what its moral point is.  What could have been an extremely dark drama is reduced to a mildly entertaining piece of vaudeville, presumably because neither Wellman nor his screenwriters had the courage to confront head-on the gruesome reality of prohibition era gangsterism. 

Certainly, watching the film today is an uncomfortable experience.  The indifference that the district attorney (Walter Huston) shows to the family he has cajoled into testifying against a hoodlum is shocking and it is hard to take seriously his callous reaction when a small boy is kidnapped and threatened with death if his parents appear in court.  A more serious mistake, perhaps, was Wellman's decision to allow Charles 'Chic' Sale to completely steal the film as a spirited octogenarian civil war veteran.  Whilst Sale's over-the-top performance is amusing in some scenes, the actor is completely out of place in this film and robs it of the dignity and seriousness that it deserves.  Wellman's directorial flair - best illustrated in the gangster shoot out near the start of the film - just about redeems the film, but it is something of a Frankenstein concoction, the boisterous knock-about comedy sitting very ill alongside the bursts of graphic violence and tacky moralising. William Wellman's socially-oriented films are better represented by Safe in Hell (1931), Frisco Jenny (1932) and Wild Boys of the Road (1933).

Film Synopsis

The Leeds family are sitting down to dinner one evening when they hear shooting from the street.  Before they know it, gangster boss Maxey Compo and one of his henchmen have burst into their house and threaten violence if they speak to the police, before they make a quick getaway.  Having arrested Compo, district attorney Whitlock is determined to send him to the electric chair as an example to the other hoodlums in the city.  He persuades Pa Leeds to identify Compo as the man he saw shoot dead a cop and informer in the street.  When Pa Leeds is abducted and tortured by Compo's henchmen, the family have second thoughts.  They refuse point-blank to give evidence when their young son, Donny, is kidnapped.  The oldster Grandpa Leeds, a veteran of the American civil war, is undeterred and agrees to be Whitlock's star witness.  But then, on the day of the trial, Grandpa Leeds goes missing...