The Whole Town’s Talking (1935)

The Whole Town’s Talking is an American comedy thriller film first released in 1935, directed by John Ford.  The film is based on a novel by W.R. Burnett and stars Edward G. Robinson, Jean Arthur, Arthur Hohl, Arthur Byron and Wallace Ford.  It has also been released under the title: Passport to Fame.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Arthur Ferguson Jones is a mild-mannered office clerk whose closest companions are his cat and his canary.  For months, he has had a secret crush on one of his colleagues, Miss Clark, but he is too shy to speak to her.  However, on the day that Miss Clark is fired for arriving late at the office, Arthur finds the courage to invite her out to lunch.  It proves to be an eventful day, but not in the way he planned it.  Unbeknown to Arthur, he is the spitting image of a notorious gangster, Killer Mannion, who has just escaped from prison.  Mistakenly arrested by the police, Arthur fails to convince them of his identity until Killer Mannion strikes again.  To avoid further mistakes, the police issue Arthur with an identity card, but the adventure is far from over.  Returning to his apartment, Arthur finds he has an unexpected visitor: Killer Mannion!

Possibly the most overlooked and underrated of John Ford’s early films, The Whole Town’s Talking is a superb, highly entertaining parody of the 1930s gangster thriller, a film which gave Edward G. Robinson plenty of scope to prove his versatility as an actor.  John Ford is not particularly known as a director of film comedies, but this stylish gangster romp shows that he can make a film of this kind that is every bit as good as any of his contemporaries.  

Whilst first and foremost a comedy – and one with some great gags – the film also manages to evoke the grim mood and realism of the early gangster films.  Between the farce set-pieces there are some chillingly dark moments, such as the heart-stopping scene where Mannion first confronts his double and then later when Arthur is driven to act like Mannion to save his own life.  The film manages simultaneously to play dutiful homage to the gangster film and also to gleefully send it up – which is no small feat when you consider subsequent parodies of popular genre films.  

The Whole Town’s Talking marked a turning point in the career of Edward G. Robinson.   He had become famous for playing sadistic hoodlums since his appearance in the seminal gangster film Little Caesar (1931).  In this film, the charismatic chubby faced actor gets to play a double role – a gangster and an ordinary office clerk, two characters that could hardly be more different.  The degree to which Robinson manages to delineate the two character is extraordinary.  When they appear on screen together – through the miracle of split screen photography – it is hard to believe they are played by the same man.  Even more impressive is how Robinson makes his two characters change in the course of the film, with Arthur and Mannion each picking up each other’s traits as a result of having to impersonate one another.   It is a terrific performance which allowed Robinson to widen his repertoire considerably in the years that followed.

© James Travers 2008

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