The character of Diamond Jim Brady was certainly larger than life, and so was the actor who played him in two different movies - Edward Arnold. This large girthed man was one of the great character actors of the golden age of cinema, playing wealthy patriarchs, opportunists who made it good, and evil industrialists who thought to destroy those who stood in his way with morality as their defense. With his role of Diamond Jim Brady in this film and later on in the 20th Century Fox musical lily and Russell, he left a piece of himself in the immortality of on screen biographies, and while this film is certainly very enjoyable, it takes half the film for it to truly get off the ground.
The first half of the movie focuses on the two different women in his life - Binnie Barnes as Lillian Russell and Jean Arthur as two different women who came in and out of his life. As seen with Alice Faye in the musical of Lillian Russell, he stood by her even though his love was returned, but her loyalty towards him never ceased. That is pretty much the same thing here, but the film insinuates that she loved him just as much as he loved her, but for some reason obstacles kept them from being together. Binnie Barnes does get to sing briefly as Lillian Russell, and has a much higher voice than Alice Faye. If there are any surviving recordings of the actual Lillian Russell singing it would be difficult to tell because of sound recording issues as to who she really sounded like. Cesar Romero appears in one of his early roles as Arnold's rival for Arthur. There is also a brief appearance of real life fighter John L. Sullivan whose individual story would be made into a movie on its own.
However, the romance is not the interesting part of the story line. That explodes when the stock market crash causes Arnold to give a speech as to the importance of keeping the economy alive, and even though he has lost all his money, he takes a gamble and wins. I don't think that it was as easy as all that, because history has shown that massive financial losses do not just return overnight, and even with our Great Depression, it took several years into the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt to fix the economy.
There is also a rather disturbing scene where two trains are heading towards each other at breakneck speed, one of them having both Arthur and Arnold on the train, and when the two collide, both trains fly into the air, but the injuries on both survivors of the train are minimal. The film does go into detail about Arnold's voracious appetite, and when he orders a table filled with oysters, lobsters and a large guinea hen, it is almost a disgusting meal to imagine. For Arnold's strong and entertaining performance, this is definitely worth seeing but the larger-than-life appetite for both life and food makes Arnold and Jim Brady a character that I would not want to have over for dinner. it is also ironic that a prologue at the beginning of the film says that the running time could never hope to present all of Diamond Jim Brady entire life, but what is really interesting doesn't appear until much later in the films. That makes it pretty much episodic from the beginning, with a twist in the middle. Is a total different structure than what the audience had gotten initially.
The first half of the movie focuses on the two different women in his life - Binnie Barnes as Lillian Russell and Jean Arthur as two different women who came in and out of his life. As seen with Alice Faye in the musical of Lillian Russell, he stood by her even though his love was returned, but her loyalty towards him never ceased. That is pretty much the same thing here, but the film insinuates that she loved him just as much as he loved her, but for some reason obstacles kept them from being together. Binnie Barnes does get to sing briefly as Lillian Russell, and has a much higher voice than Alice Faye. If there are any surviving recordings of the actual Lillian Russell singing it would be difficult to tell because of sound recording issues as to who she really sounded like. Cesar Romero appears in one of his early roles as Arnold's rival for Arthur. There is also a brief appearance of real life fighter John L. Sullivan whose individual story would be made into a movie on its own.
However, the romance is not the interesting part of the story line. That explodes when the stock market crash causes Arnold to give a speech as to the importance of keeping the economy alive, and even though he has lost all his money, he takes a gamble and wins. I don't think that it was as easy as all that, because history has shown that massive financial losses do not just return overnight, and even with our Great Depression, it took several years into the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt to fix the economy.
There is also a rather disturbing scene where two trains are heading towards each other at breakneck speed, one of them having both Arthur and Arnold on the train, and when the two collide, both trains fly into the air, but the injuries on both survivors of the train are minimal. The film does go into detail about Arnold's voracious appetite, and when he orders a table filled with oysters, lobsters and a large guinea hen, it is almost a disgusting meal to imagine. For Arnold's strong and entertaining performance, this is definitely worth seeing but the larger-than-life appetite for both life and food makes Arnold and Jim Brady a character that I would not want to have over for dinner. it is also ironic that a prologue at the beginning of the film says that the running time could never hope to present all of Diamond Jim Brady entire life, but what is really interesting doesn't appear until much later in the films. That makes it pretty much episodic from the beginning, with a twist in the middle. Is a total different structure than what the audience had gotten initially.