Blast from the Past: John Barrymore Revisited
Warner Bros. was so pleased with the commercial appeal of the John Barrymore vehicle, Svengali, that they rushed The Mad Genius into production, and released it on November 7, 1931.
Grade: B
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Directed by Michael Curtiz, this pre-Cde drama stars, in addition to Barrymore, Marian Marsh, Donald Cook, Charles Butterworth, and in small roles, Boris Karloff and Frankie Darro.
The film is based on the 1929 play The Idol by Martin Brown, which opened in Great Neck, Long Island but never played on Broadway.
Barrymore plays a crippled puppeteer, Ivan Tsarakov (Barrymore), a frustrated man who realizes that he will never dance ballet.
He adopts a protégé, Fedor Ivanoff (Darro as child, Cook as adult), whom he makes into the world’s greatest dancer.
Fedor falls in love with a dancer, Nana Carlova (Marsh), but fearing that she will ruin Fedor’s career, he ries to separate them and ultimately fires Nana from the troupe.
Fedor runs away with Nana to Paris, but Tsarakov, now blacklisted, cannot get ballet jobs and is reduced to working in a cabaret.
Nana begs Tsarakov to give Fedor his job back, and Tsarakov agrees, if Nana will leave Fedor and marry another man. Fedor, embittered, refuses to dance. Tsarakov threatens to kill him, but the ballet master, under the influence of drugs kills Tsarakov. Fedor is reunited with Nana.
In the film Svengali, released earlier the same year, Barrymore played a similar role, an aggressive man who manipulated the life of a female singer, also played by Marian Marsh.
Despite the similarties, Mad Geniuss was not as popular with Viewers as Svengali, which went on to become a defining picture of Barrymore career and a cult movie on its wn right.
Cast
John Barrymore as Vladimar Ivan Tsarakov
Marian Marsh as Nana Carlova
Charles Butterworth as Karimsky
Donald Cook as Fedor Ivanoff
Luis Alberni as Sergei Bankieff
Carmel Myers as Sonya Preskoya
Andre Luguet as Count Robert Renaud
Frankie Darro as Young Fedor
Credits:
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Written by Harvey Thew, J. Grubb Alexander, based on The Idol, 1929 play by Martin Brown
Cinematography Barney McGill
Edited by Ralph Dawson
Music by David Mendoza, conducting the Vitaphone Orchestra
Distributed by Warner
Release date: Nov 7, 1931
Running time: 89 minutes
Budget $441,000
Box office $400,000
