Note: This article originally appeared on a site devoted to comparing two different versions of the same story. I decided to discontinue the site because the amount of work that went into the articles was well beyond the attention they received. I’m republishing this one here because it pertains to a film that I’ve already discussed on this blog but from a different perspective.
Before we get started, I should point out that both of these films are a little difficult to find. Afraid to Talk is online in a terrible copy. It was shown at the Noir City Film Festival and on TCM, so you might get a chance to see that one. Hotelboy Ed Martin isn’t available at all right now. Also, it’s never had English subtitles added to it, so you’ll need to speak some German to follow it. I should also point out this article contains major spoilers. There are major differences between the endings of the play, the Hollywood version, and East German version, and they are all revealed here.
Both films are based on Merry Go Round, a play by Albert Maltz and George Sklar. Maltz and Sklar wrote the play while attending the drama school at Yale. Both were communists and helped organize the Theater Union in New York City. Both men were talented writers with several plays and stories to their names. Maltz in particular had a special knack for portraying the injustices in the world in both his plays and his short stories.
Merry Go Round details the misadventures of Ed Martin, a bellhop who is working at a ritzy hotel when he accidentally witnesses a murder. The murderer was Jig Zelli, a notorious crime boss (the city is left unnamed). Ed dutifully, if reluctantly, reports the crime, but when Zelli is arrested, Zelli’s brother shows the Attorney General the proof he has of the corruption of several city officials. Not wanting this to be made public, the AG drops the case against Zelli and arrests Ed Martin instead. To strengthen their case, Martin is beaten into signing a confession. Crusading attorney Harry Berger sees through this charade, and decides to take Ed Martin’s case. To prevent the case from coming to court, the powers that be arrange to have Martin killed and make it look like suicide. Ed Martin is found hanging in his jail cell, which is treated as a confession and the case is closed.
The play was an uncompromising attack on corruption in American government, showing the futility of fighting against a system that, as far as Albert Maltz and George Sklar were concerned, was corrupt to the bone. This cynical view gained the play a fair amount of attention from the press and political officials at the time. New York License Commissioner James F. Geraghty tried to shut down the play, but all this did was increase the public’s curiosity about it and improve the play’s box office.
The 1932 Film
A few months later, the play was made into a movie. The title was changed to Afraid to Talk to avoid confusion with another film titled Merry-Go-Round. On stage, the beleaguered bellhop Ed Martin was played by Elisha Cook Jr., well known to film noir fans for his roles in The Maltese Falcon, Phantom Lady, The Big Sleep, and many, many others. At this point, however, Cook had no Hollywood credentials, and the part was given to the considerably more handsome but less talented Eric Linden. Actually, most of the Broadway cast was replaced, except for Ian McClaren, who had been singled out by the New York Times play reviewer for his lousy performance. On the plus side, Edward Arnold was enlisted to play the evil Jig Skelli (Zelli in the original play), and he is sensational.
The Hays Code wasn’t in effect yet, so the film could have kept true to the play, but even then, the folks in Hollywood didn’t care much for downer endings. In the film version, Ed Martin gets to live, having been rescued just in the nick of time. One pre-code aspect that wasn’t changed for the film was that the corrupt officials remained in power at the end of the story. A couple years later the Breen Office would have made them change that as well.
The director of Afraid to Talk was Edward L. Cahn, a talented director who treated directing as a craft rather than an art. Cahn would go on to fame in the fifties for his ability to quickly churn out horror and science fiction movies for the drive-in circuit. He usually managed to come up with enjoyable films, in spite of having to work with budgets that would barely cover the cost of the film stock. Making these films did no favors to his reputation as a director. Nowadays, you’ll often see him referred to as a “shlock” director. His movies from this period include, Creature with the Atom Brain (immortalized by Roky Erickson in song of the same name), It the Terror from Beyond Space (largely credited as the inspiration for Alien), and Invisible Invaders (reportedly the inspiration for George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead).
Cahn’s directing was always lean and efficient, he followed the same approach as Howard Hawks, moving the camera when it needed moving and letting it stand still when things were standing still. Like David Lean, Robert Wise, and Hal Ashby, Ed L. Cahn worked as an editor before becoming a director. His knowledge of film and editing stood him in good stead when he sat down in the director’s chair. His early films were noir long before the French defined the genre. While film historian Imogen Sara Smith might think Cahn “worked his way to the bottom” with his later poverty row films, the fact is even these are well put together, hampered only by the staggering lack of money available to do them properly.
The screenplay was written by Tom Reed, who worked on several thrillers including The Homicide Squad (co-directed by Cahn), The Case of the Velvet Claws, and Two Tickets to London, as well as working uncredited as a script doctor on The Bride Frankenstein and The Man Who Talked Too Much. Afraid to Talk was shot by Karl Freund, one of the all-time great cinematographers. That same year, Freund would also step out from behind the camera and direct The Mummy.
The 1955 Film
Meanwhile, in 1953, Merry Go Round was performed on stage in East Germany under the title Hotelboy Ed Martin.1 Two years later, the play was turned into a film, co-directed by Ernst Kahler and Karl-Heinz Bieber. How much each of these men contributed to the final result is hard to say, but Kahler was already familiar with the play, having directed it on stage. Primarily a stage director, Kahler nonetheless directed several feature films, shorts, and TV-movies in East Germany. He died in Berlin in 1993.
Karl-Heinz Bieber, on the other hand, came from a film background, and was probably there to deal with the cinematic issues. It was Karl-Heinz Bieber’s first feature film as director for DEFA; it was also his last. Bieber made three more films, all TV movies, before defecting to West Germany. It would be another seven years before he got a chance to direct a film again, starting with the West German TV-movie, Der gelbe Pullover (The Yellow Sweater). He went on to make several more TV movies. In 1978, he moved back to feature film making with Der Tiefstapler (a slang term for a person who understates their abilities). Critics trashed the film, calling it one of the worst German films ever made. It would be Bieber’s final film.
Ed Martin is played by Ulrich Thein, one of East Germany’s best actors. Thein’s father was a theater bandleader. The young Ulrich continued in his father’s footsteps, studying music and working at the Staatstheater Braunschweig after graduation. Although a West German by birth, he moved to the GDR in 1951 to work at the renowned Deutsches Theater. In Hotelboy Ed Martin, he reprised the role he had played on stage.
After the fall of the Wall, Thein found that most of the films he was offered were lousy. In his words, “I won’t make the shit producers are offering me.” (“Ich will den Scheiß nicht machen, der mir von einigen Produzenten angeboten wird.”). He retired from filmmaking in 1992, and took up teaching.
In the Final Analysis…
Each of these films has its merits. If taken without consideration to the original play, the 1932 version is the better movie. Cahn opened up the play so it never feels like a stage production. While it doesn’t keep the grim ending, it still manages to be subversive with a strong message against money-driven corruption.
On the other hand, the 1955 film is a better record of the original play as it was performed on stage. It does omit the hanging, which was shown in silhouette on stage in the original production, but perhaps that is the way they chose to perform it on stage in East Germany. That’s not to say that the film is simply a record of the stage play. It does have cinematic touches with Dutch angles to show the cockeyed situation, and close-ups for dramatic scenes, but it still feels like a missed opportunity.
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1. No longer used, Hotelboy was the German word for a hotel porter.
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