Zeus

Police Court (1932)

• Director
  • Louis King
• Writer
  • Stuart Anthony(scenario)
• Stars
  • Henry B. Walthall
  • Leon Janney
  • Lionel Belmore

  Aging has-been silent star Henry B. Walthall plays an aging has-been silent star in this low-budget drama from Monogram Pictures. D.W. Griffith's erstwhile "Little Colonel" is Nathaniel Barry, a once admired actor now facing a magistrate (Edmund Breese) on a charge of drunken disorder. Barry's young son Junior (Leon Barry) steps in and convinces the judge that Nat has a job waiting for him. But the old actor's fondness for the bottle once again makes him unemployable and he is soon reduced to playing Abraham Lincoln in a traveling sideshow. Junior, meanwhile, lands the starring role in a film called "Father and Son" and convinces the studio owner (Lionel Belmore) to cast Nat in the other title role. The veteran star delivers a moving performance before dying in his son's arms right on the set. Perhaps because of Walthall's reputation, Police Court was reviewed by the staid New York Times (as Fame Street), an honor not awarded many Poverty Row productions.