Somewhat the outsider among all the British and the one American, Marlene nevertheless couldn’t appear in a movie and not sing and dance. She does both—and has a chance to show off those famous legs, at least one of them through a convenient tear in her clothes during a beer hall brawl. As Donald Spoto wrote in Blue Angel, his biography of Marlene, “ . . . it was the last glimpse, in film history, of this Prussian cheesecake.” Written for her, the single song, “I May Never Go Home Any More,” was belted out in typical Dietrich style. Music by Ralph Arthur Roberts, lyrics by Jack Brooks.
Laughton, consummate actor though he was, didn’t know if he could be a convincing heart patient and so staged an attack in his Hollywood pool, with presumably satisfactory results. Ironically, it was Tyrone Power who had a heart problem. Less than a year after the film’s premiere, Power died during a duel with George Sanders on the set of Solomon and Sheba. Laughton would die from cancer in 1962.
During his courtroom scenes, Sir Wilfrid idly lines up his assortment of pills and deliberately shows nurse Plimsoll in the gallery that he’s taking his pill with the “lukewarm” cocoa. His manservant had earlier replaced it with an identical Thermos of brandy and Sir Wilfrid believes he has outwitted the eagle eye of his female nemesis.
Amid the hypothesis of a possible burglary, revelations about blood types, voices heard in the next room and a dramatic, plot-changing surprise at the end, the underlying humor of the film is maintained in the trial, much of it to do with Janet. The best moment, aside from her query of the judge as to why the government hadn’t sent her hearing aid, is her response to Sir Wilfrid’s suggestion that she might be antagonistic toward Leonard Vole. “I’m not agonistic to him,” she replies. “He’s a shiftless, scheming rascal, but I’m not agonistic to him.”
Reminiscent of a technique Alfred Hitchcock would use for Psycho publicity in 1960—denied admittance after the film had started and warned not to reveal the shower scene—everyone connected with Witness, even visitors like [intlink id=”35″ type=”category”]William Holden[/intlink] and Noel Coward, were sworn to secrecy. There was a large, poster-size affidavit which everyone had to sign, not to reveal the dramatic turnabout at film’s end.
And, likewise, so shall that surprise not be revealed here.
But, oh, why not divulge that last line of the film, the one belonging to nurse Plimsoll? All along, she was on to “Wilfrid the fox,” as she dubbed him when she found three cigars stashed inside his walking cane. That final line, just before the two left the courtroom, now arm in arm, is, as she held up the Thermos——
“Sir Wilfrid, you’ve forgotten your brandy!”