Almost a Gentleman (1939)

Young lawyer Dan Preston (James Ellison) holds a bitter grudge against the affluent family which prevented his marriage with their daughter because he didn't meet their standards. He adopts a dog they were going to have killed, feeling a kinship to it, and is adversarial to the family whenever he gets the chance. His bitterness is encouraged by the son who insists both class and breeding are all that matter. He visits the family and in an awkward moment realizes his life is passing him by. Though he starts a promising romance, he still cant let go of his anger.Two events take place - a murder and kidnapping, which allows Dan to both defend his dog as well as justify his existence and ideals. While the kidnapping is a contrived plot device, it provides the shared goal for two antagonists to make amends.It is not often you see an embittered character study on this scale - Bright Leaf, In A Lonely Place, and Ben-Hur come to mind. Actor James Ellison usually starred in Westerns (and one of the first werewolf movies, "Undying Monster"), but here plays a contemporary character, and is quite good. Ace the dog is protectively vicious - that is, he isn't playing cute, so he matches the emotional grimness of the main character.

I tuned into this shortly after it started so I missed a few things at the start, but I could see that this was an appealing story about a man's devotion to a dog that is severely tested when the dog is unjustly accused of attacking a local man on the night of a bloody murder where the victim's throat was torn.JAMES ELLISON is the man who must prove that his dog is not vicious and would never have committed the crime. A subplot involving a kidnapping is also solved by the dog, but that seemed more like an added ingredient tacked onto the screenplay and comes after the dog has been acquitted of the murder.HELEN WOOD is the leading lady, a pretty brunette who evidently retired early from the screen, and ROBERT KENT is the man who charges the man's dog with the crime.Nicely done, very dated in many respects and clearly a product of its time, but not bad for a little programmer that probably played the bottom half of double bills back in 1939.Ellison is the kind of sturdy looking, solid kind of low-key actor who reminds me somewhat of JAMES CRAIG, without the mustache. Apparently he spent most of his career in westerns and B-films, although he did have a big film to his credit when he starred opposite Alice Faye in THE GANG'S ALL HERE ('45).

Ace the Wonder Dog stars in his third movie, assisted by embittered James Ellison. Ace is accused of murder -- although it is Mr. Ellison who is accused of harboring a vicious animal which needs to be destroyed.Although there is considerable talent in this RKO programmer -- and Ace the Wonder Dog is a handsome animal -- it doesn't quite work. Leslie Goodwin, the director, was working his way out of the short subjects department and does his best. But the inherent difficulty of producing an interesting animal star and fitting it into a sound feature makes unreasonable demands on the plot to the point of occasionally disruptive silliness. Nor are the actors the best of RKO's players, producing a certain amount of untoward emotional reticence about the humans. These factors make the movie less than good.