Lawyer Man

Directed by William Dieterle, Lawyer Man follows an ambitious attorney (William Powell’s Anton Adam) as he and his loyal secretary (Joan Blondell’s Olga Michaels) climb the ranks in the legal world. It’s a seemingly straightforward premise that’s employed to mostly engaging and periodically surprising effect by Dieterle, as the filmmaker, armed with a script by Rian James and James Seymour, delivers a briskly-paced drama that benefits substantially from the top-notch efforts of its stars – with Powell and Blondell’s predictably charming and compelling work heightened by their natural, palpable chemistry together. And while the movie admittedly does contain a very small handful of lulls, Lawyer Man‘s fairly propulsive narrative, coupled with its smattering of engrossing sequences (eg Anton’s impassioned speech about his career) and memorable lines (eg “you two rod-handlers will burn browner than overdone hamburger”), ensures that it remains compulsively watchable (albeit somewhat uneven) right through to its satisfying conclusion.

**1/2 out of ****