Disbarred

Otto Kruger is a criminal defense attorney who has just been disbarred for being caught doing all the things he shouldn't. He bids gangster Sidney Toler goodbye and flies off to be a rich gentleman of leisure. However, his plane is forced down in a small city. There he sees novice lawyer Gail Russell get a man off and comes up with a plan. He'll set up his own mob and use Miss Russell as a front, lawyering to get his gangsters out of prison, doing all the jury tampering, false witnesses and so forth without telling her. ADA Robert Preston is convinced she's honest, but smells a dead fish somewhere.

It's an uninspiringly written script by Lillie Hayward and Robert Presnell Sr., but it's been given the imprimatur of J. Edgar Hoover, claiming that it's bad lawyers who are ruining the country. I say it's dull scripts, with not one witty line nor character that varies noticeably from a stereotype, for whom we are supposed to cheer. Kruger's suave rotter is all right, but Miss Russell's smart lawyer who can't figure anything out is a waste of celluloid.