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In watching the early Paramount talkies with William Powell it never ceases to amaze that Powell stage trained voice that he had apparently knew instinctively how to modulate for the new medium of talking motion pictures. It was why he was able to have three successful Philo Vance films and Street Of Chance is in the same mode.

Powell's character of 'Natural' Davis is of course modeled on the legendary Arnold Rothstein who gambled with quite a bit more than just games of chance. This is the life Powell has chosen for himself and he and wife Kay Francis are content. He's the best at what he does in a business filled with uncertainty.

But this is not a life he wants for his brother Regis Toomey who comes into town wanting to try the gambling world and be the best like 'Natural Davis. That's not what Powell wants for his kid brother, he wants Toomey to be and stay respectable. Tragedy results when Powell tries some desperate means to keep Toomey from the life.

Powell and Francis are at the top of their game and Toomey registers well as the eager younger brother. Jean Arthur is here as well, but she's really not the Jean Arthur who developed later on in those Thirties screwball comedies, she took quite a while to develop as a screen personality.

Street Of Chance shows William Powell at really good advantage in a carefully delineated role. For his fans definitely catch this one.

New York businessman William Powell (as John "Jack" B. Marsden) is really the city's notorious underworld gambler "Natural Davis" (modeled after the infamous Arnold Rothstein). While very successful at what he does (due to playing the percentages), Mr. Powell wants to get out of the racket. He has received a separation summons from model-ish posing Kay Francis (as Alma), who is tired of being the stay-at-home gambler's wife. Powell is also feeling some remorse about having a lowly compatriot (Brooks Benedict) shot dead. He prides himself on being honest, and will kill those who don't play by the rules. Nobody welches.

Powell promises Ms. Francis he will give up gambling, and they plan a second honeymoon.

Then, Powell's similarly gambling-addicted kid brother Regis Toomey (as Alan "Babe" Marsden) arrives from San Francisco. Newly married to Jean Arthur (as Judith), he is in New York to gamble Powell's cash wedding gift into bigger bucks - and he wants to do it in the company of the legendary "Natural Davis" (not knowing "Natural" is his brother). This is, of course, an eyebrow-raising plot development, since Mr. Toomey should probably be thinking he will lose his shirt in such a match-up - so, let's just call him overconfident. Well, Powell concocts a plan to quit gambling, re-gain his wife, and cure his brother's gambling itch...

"Street of Chance" is a typically spotty production for the times, but it does contain some great-looking moments, courtesy of director John Cromwell and photographer Charles Lang. Howard Estabrook received an "Academy Award" nomination for cleverly white-washing this story of a real life gambler; he uses natural dialogue - answering "Good morning" with "What's good about it?" And, quotes from popular songs (like "Button Up Your Overcoat)" certainly ticked some fancy. Powell is a commanding lead, and the incidental characters are colorful; as "Tony" the one-armed newspaper salesman, John Risso is most memorable.

******* Street of Chance (2/3/30) John Cromwell ~ William Powell, Kay Francis, Regis Toomey, Jean Arthur

William Powell is on the "Street of Chance" in this 1930 film also starring Kay Francis, Jean Arthur, and Regis Toomey.

I will admit right off that I did not recognize either Arthur or Toomey in this film.

Powell plays "Natural" Davis, a character modeled on the famed gambler Arnold Rothstein. The film portrays a couple of incidents in Rothstein's life, but in my opinion, the character is very loosely based on Rothstein.

Natural Davis is a professional gambler, and as a result, his wife Alma (Kay Francis) is divorcing him. He begs her to stay with him, eventually promising her that he will not only quit gambling, but go away with her on an extended trip..

When is brother Babe (Toomey) comes to town, Natural learns that his wedding gift of $10,000 has been spent gambling. Babe is a big winner and now has $50,000. He's in New York to gamble for $100,000 more so he can buy into a partnership.

Let me pause for a minute. The amounts of money these people are talking about are unbelievable. In 1930, $100,000 was 1,611,946.11 in today's money! Usually in films people are robbing banks for $5,000 or trying to get $50 from someone.

To continue - Natural does not want his brother to pursue the life of a gambler, so he's determined to make sure Babe is cleaned out. He arranges for his associates to help him, joining Babe in a game. It doesn't quite work out as he hoped. In a bind, he has to break his promise to Alma temporarily, but she doesn't buy it.

Powell is natural and very effective, and the film moves quickly, with people picking up their dialogue cues. Often in early talkies, actors were still adjusting to sound. As a result you get pauses between lines of dialogue, and, because of stage training, big gestures and loud voices. Powell has none of this. He's tough yet elegant and sympathetic yet ruthless.

Francis doesn't have much to do as Natural's suffering wife, but she's very good. The rest of the acting is fine, but you could have knocked me over with a feather when I learned that Babe was Regis Toomey and his wife was Jean Arthur! Arthur had none of the characteristics she later developed. Here, she's pure ingenue.

One of the most interesting things about these precode films is that because there is no Hayes code, the ending is not predictable as it is in many later films. The end of this kind of surprised me.

'Natural' Davis (William Powell) is a respected gambler who follows a ruthless code of honour with those who cheat against him. His wife Alma (Kay Francis) wants to divorce him because of his addiction and lifestyle but they agree on a reconciliation and 2nd honeymoon together and 'Natural' promises to give up gambling. However, his plans change when his brother 'Babe' (Regis Toomey) arrives in town...............

This is a well acted film with William Powell very good in the lead role and Kay Francis a little irritating at times with her facial over-emoting. However, Powell carries the film and pulls it into the "good" category. It has a slightly downbeat ending.

This was quite enjoyable on a few levels. The lead actors in general has good strong performances, with Kay Francis having a few bad scenes. I blame the director for choosing those because other scene with her were totally believable. At first the story seemed a little confusing but quickly was understandable. A couple favorite scenes of mine were where William Powell finishes talking to Kay Francis and then walks out. Most films of the time would have cut the moment he walked out, but the camera kept rolling and we saw Francis slump down in dispare. The other favorite was the top down card scene towards the end. Overall, I would mainly recommend this to fans of the Thin Man series or other serious "black and white fans." It's definitely a hidden gem.

Unlike a lot of very early talkies, this was made by a director for whom the introduction of sound didn't make him forget how to make films. It's clearly not as technologically advanced as pictures made just a year later but it's a remarkably professionally executed and well acted film.

Like the previous picture John Cromwell made for Selznick, THE DANCE OF LIFE, this also has none of those awful traits which blighted the very early talkies. It's dynamic, it's realistic and its dialogue feels natural. Scenes are allowed to develop and play out - there's none of that: switch the camera on - say the lines - switch the camera off technique common in say some Warner Brothers pictures where every foot of celluloid had to be accounted for. You're given the luxury to fully absorb what you're seeing - and indeed hearing. Such a pace could in a lesser movie result in a static, talky meandering malaise but fortunately this film's lively script and realistic characters keep your interest.

In an era of often simplistic stories, this is a surprisingly mature and intelligent offering. It's a serious and somber film about serious and somber issues but it successfully manages to distill all of that neatly into ninety minutes. Many years later Warners tackled the problem of gambling with its Edward G Robinson vehicle, DARK HAZARD. That had a much more light hearted approach which made it more accessible but although this isn't as enjoyable - you'll not smile much watching this - it's just as engrossing.

It's a real revelation to see William Powell not playing the usual debonair sophisticated cool guy. For a change, he's a somewhat damaged and unpleasant character but William Powell of course is just so likeable you're immediately on his side. The one loose wheel in this picture is, as is so often the case, Kay Francis. She was pretty good in a few films but her default affected acting style, gazing wistfully into the distance to speak her lines feels out of step with the rest of this film. I don't think she was quite ready for a lead part just yet in her career.

It's a good film, it's entertaining and it skilfully builds up the tension to an astonishing level towards the end but it's perhaps a film you appreciate more than you actually enjoy.

When, many moons ago, I interviewed director John Cromwell for an article I was preparing on the first big gangster-film star of the late Twenties/early Thirties, George Bancroft, I mentioned STREET OF CHANCE (Paramount; 1930) to him as an aside, it not containing Bancroft. His initial response was to confuse its genesis with gambler Nicky Arnstein, who, if I recall correctly, was married to Fannie Brice; but upon my putting forth Arnold Rothstein as the more likely source, he agreed. Arnstein was a gambler and apparent scoundrel; Rothstein also a gambler albeit far more notorious, infamously credited with having fixed a baseball World Series; his shooting death in 1928 was never solved. In STREET OF CHANCE, the shooting of the William Powell gambler is implied without being shown; his dying words, given in an ambulance rushing him to a hospital in response to an attendant's bet that he'll live, signals the film's final fadeout, these being, "You lose." When I complimented the director on this powerful, yet understated finale, he modestly responded something like, "Well, that's the kind of thing we were trying to do then." If, as John implied, such creativity was the order of the day, I've seen scant examples worthy of this one! Paramount remade the film in 1937 as HER HUSBAND LIES, starring Ricardo Cortez as the ill-fated gambler. A good little film, but lacking the tour-de-force quality engendered by the original which, sad to say, is a virtually forgotten motion picture.

Regards, Ray Cabana, Jr.

William Powell is 'Natural' Davis, an honest gambler on the Great White Way. Wife Kay Francis has just had him served with separation papers and he's trying to get her to take him back, promising to give up gambling. She agrees, and he goes to collect his remaining I. O. U.s, only to discover that kid brother Regis Toomey is in town, trying to run up his $10,000 wedding gift, now $50,0000, from Powell into one hundred fifty grand. To cure him from gambling fever, Powell sets him up in the toughest game he knows, but the kid keeps winning. So Powell steps into the game.

It's a morality play, and Powell is not very good with the longer speeches in this one. Director John Cromwell offers some nice shots, and the visuals are quite good -- the mayoral race is on, with Walker against LaGuardia in the process shots. While the cast is always interesting, this doesn't show anyone off to advantage. With Jean Arthur and Stanley Fields.

Gambling is a risky business. No gambler, no matter how good, stays on top forever. John Marsden aka Jack aka J. B. aka Natural Davis (William Powell) was an ace gambler. He was so lucky he could win at any game of chance. He fronted as a bonds trader to make his huge bankroll seem legitimate.

His wife, Alma (Kay Francis), wanted nothing more to do with Jack and his gambling and his lies. She wanted a straight-laced husband, one she could go to dinner with, one whose friends she could meet, one who was on the right side of the law, and one who wasn't always lying to her.

John was all set to get out of the gambling racket and leave town with his wife until his brother whizzed into town. His brother, Allan 'Babe' Marsden (Regis Toomey), was a good gambler too and he wanted to bolster his wealth by playing the great Natural Davis. Natural, however, was determined to make sure Babe left gambling alone for good, even if that meant forestalling his wife and potentially losing her.

It reminded me of another Kay Francis movie, "The House on 56th Street," when Kay was an ace gambler and she wanted to stop her daughter from getting into gambling.

What Babe didn't know was that Natural Davis was his own brother. And he also didn't know that Natural would go through almost any lengths to make sure he went back home to San Francisco broke and cured of gambling.

"Street of Chance" ended up being a pretty intense movie. I didn't quite expect the suspense at the end. I liked it. It was different and different can be good at times. I got to see William Powell as other than the uber-cool character he always is.

Free on Odnoklassniki.

In this film, the always debonair William Powell plays a businessman leading a double life as "Natural" Davis, an elite gambler with a penchant for winning because he "knows the percentages." He deals with gangsters and can summon up toughness when he needs to, but he also has personal integrity and treats people with fairness, at least, per his world's code. He's thus another example the common (and rather dubious) film trope of a guy who's operating outside the law, but lives by a moral code and is established as virtuous anyway. Here that's somehow true even when we see him order another gambler to be murdered because he's caught him stealing from him. Naturally, the violence isn't depicted.

Trouble comes to Natural Davis in two forms: (1) his wife (Kay Francis) is fed up with his late nights and threatens to call it quits, and (2) his little brother (Regis Toomey) comes to town looking to gamble himself, not knowing that the legendary Natural Davis is his own brother. Natural tries to do the right thing on both fronts, that is, to make drastic changes to preserve his marriage, and to attempt to dissuade his brother from the sordid life of gambling. His idea is a little trickery to do the latter, leading to a pretty fine scene of the brothers in a high stakes poker game together.

The film is certainly stronger towards the end, but it's a little mechanical getting there, stretching its simplistic plot out to fill the runtime. It's not clear how this nominated for a Best Writing Oscar, but 1930 was not a particularly strong year for films, with filmmakers still adapting to sound (the following years up to the end of the pre-Code era are certainly better). Regardless, from where I sit, Kay Francis and Jean Arthur (who plays the brother's wife) were largely wasted, their characters mostly just planets in orbit around Powell's. There is drama leading to a great final line from Powell, but the story line for the brother was unsatisfactory because it seemed far too tidy (wow, cured just like that, despite the temptation on the train!).

With that said, the film is worth seeing if you're a fan of the stars, and there were also various little things from the era that caught my eye. Mostly these are shots in New York, including the light streaming through the windows of Grand Central Station, and the big billboards for James J. Walker, a Tammany Hall mayor who was forced to resign a couple of years later. I also liked the neon sign advertising Spider-Web Hosiery in the background of the scene Powell has with Arthur. Lastly, it was interesting to see the swastika on some of the poker chips, but while the Nazis had already appropriated the symbol by this time, it appears these types of chips had been made for decades in America, and mercifully no fascist sympathies were being subtly expressed.

... with "The Czar of Broadway" being a different film made in the same year loosely based on the famous gambler's life.

John Marsden (William Powell) is a big time professional gambler who goes by the name "Natural Davis" when gambling. He has an office where he is supposed to be buying and selling bonds that acts as a front. John has a baby brother "Babe" (Regis Toomey) who lives on the west coast and who has very recently married Judith (Jean Arthur). They have come to New York City on their honeymoon. What Judith doesn't know is that Babe has run up John's wedding gift to them of ten thousand dollars to fifty thousand dollars by gambling and intends to continue gambling in New York to get the 150K that he needs to buy into the partnership of a firm. At the same time, John's wife Alma (Kay Francis) has served him with divorce papers after a six month separation, and she will not consider reconciling unless John retires as a professional gambler and leaves town with her.

John agrees to stop gambling and leave town with his wife, but shortly thereafter finds out that his brother is getting way in over his head gambling with the kinds of hoods who work along Broadway, and he's put in the position of either having to stop his brother and save him from the path he's been on all of these years, or have one last chance with his wife. Complications ensue.

William Powell played villains through 1928 at Paramount as his looks - if you knew nothing about his voice - allow him to look rather menacing. This was one of those films in which he was playing a bigger role than the types he had in the silent era, yet he is still playing a rather dark character. In spite of some of his more dastardly deeds, though, he is a relatable and even sympathetic protagonist.

I wish this film was better known, and I'd recommend this one. It has plenty of atmosphere - it's almost noirish in style and substance rather than a precode - and it is a good showcase for the talent of the main players, although Jean Arthur is almost unrecognizable here.