The Scoundrel is a drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Ben Hecht

Ben Hecht

Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films and as a prolific storyteller, authored 35 books and created some of...

 and Charles MacArthur

Charles MacArthur

Charles Gordon MacArthur was an American playwright and screenwriter.-Biography:Charles MacArthur was the second youngest of seven children born to stern evangelist William Telfer MacArthur and Georgiana Welsted MacArthur. He early developed a passion for reading...

, and starring Noël Coward

Noël Coward

Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...

, Julie Haydon

Julie Haydon

Julie Haydon was an American actress who performed on Broadway and in films.-Early career and films:Born Donella Donaldson in Oak Park, Illinois, Haydon began her acting career when she was 19, touring with Minnie Maddern Fiske in Mrs. Bumstead Leigh...

, Stanley Ridges

Stanley Ridges

Stanley Ridges was a British-born actor who made his mark in films by playing a wide assortment of character parts...

, and Lionel Stander

Lionel Stander

Lionel Jay Stander was an American actor in films, radio, theater and television.-Early life and career:Lionel Stander was born in The Bronx, New York, to Russian Jewish immigrants, the first of three children...

. It was Coward's film debut, aside from a bit role in a silent film. It deals with supernatural redemption in a way rather similar to Ferenc Molnár

Ferenc Molnár

LanguageFerenc Molnár was a Hungarian dramatist and novelist. His Americanized name was Franz Molnar...

's Liliom

Liliom

Liliom is a 1909 play by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár. It was very famous in its own right during the early to mid-20th century, but is best known today as the basis for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.- Plot :...

, and drew inspiration from the life of publisher Horace Liveright

Horace Liveright

Horace Brisbin Liveright was an American publisher and stage producer. With Albert Boni, he founded the Modern Library and Boni & Liveright publishers. He published books from numerous influential American and British authors...

, who had died in September 1933.

Plot

Anthony Mallare (Coward) is a publisher who (it appears) wishes to ruin the life of every person he comes in contact with. Every sentence he says is like a poisoned dart aimed for the greatest damage, and delivered in cold lifeless tones. He is under no illusion regarding his own personality, remarking to his staff at large that he has found the perfect woman - one as empty as he is: "I must marry her......it would be like two empty paper bags belaboring one another". He finally manages to completely destroy the career and life of an aspiring young author (Ridges) and his girlfriend (Haydon), who curses him with the hope that he will die friendless. Shortly afterwards he is killed when his plane crashes into the ocean—Haydon's character, upon hearing of the tragedy, remarks, "I've just found out there IS a God!"

Faced with the prospect of damnation he is allowed to go back to earth to find one person who will mourn for him - which person turns out to be Haydon. (Those around him are astonished to see him apparently alive and back at work, but gradually become aware that something supernatural is afoot.)

The Scoundrel won the 1935 Academy Award for Best Original Story

Academy Award for Best Story

The Academy Award for Best Story was an Academy Award given from the beginning of the Academy Awards until 1957, when it was eliminated in favor of the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay, which had been introduced in 1940.-1920s:...

 by writing team Hecht and MacArthur. It is an early role for Lionel Stander

Lionel Stander

Lionel Jay Stander was an American actor in films, radio, theater and television.-Early life and career:Lionel Stander was born in The Bronx, New York, to Russian Jewish immigrants, the first of three children...

 (his first year in pictures) and is a rare film role for columnist Alexander Woollcott

Alexander Woollcott

Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine and a member of the Algonquin Round Table....

 typecast as an acid-tongued writer.

The Scoundrel had its copyright renewed in 1962 (R297413 25 Jun 62) and for several years has been available on several pirated VHS

VHS

The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....

 and DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 copies. In March 2008, the Noël Coward Society screened a 16mm copy of the film at the Paley Center for Media in New York City. (Renewal notice in Minus and Hale, Film Superlist, vol. 8, p. 747)