Counsellor at Law, the hit of the Broadway 1931 season, established PAUL MUNI as America's leading young actor. But afraid of being identified as an actor of Jewish roles he had played for many years of the Yiddish stage, he chose not to make his film debut in Counsellor.

After much turmoil, BARRYMORE was engaged.  He was paid $25,000 per week.  Because of this expense, WYLER, then a very young director, was pressured to shoot John's scenes as quickly as possible.  WYLER recalls, "It was mad. In every scene I shot only Barrymore, skipping close-ups of anybody talking to him for later.  It's a terrible way to make pictures."

John was finished shooting in less than 4 weeks.

After his shooting of Counsellor at Law, John completed LONG LOST FATHER. He was then called back to reshoot one sequence with JOHN QUALEN on 30 October 1933.  He supposedly had not been drinking but could not remember his lines.  After 9 attempts, a break was called so John could relax and consult the script.  Attempting the scene again, John failed time after time. (Gene Fowler claims there were 56 takes and that John was up all the following night talking his friend and neighbor JOHN GILBERT out of committing suicide.)After giving up for that day, the next morning John made it through the sequence.

If COUNSELLOR AT LAW had been John's last picture, it would have been a marvelous farewell.  It is one of his finest performances.  After it he made 19 more films: 1 comic masterpiece, 1 rather maudlin tale that contains a few moments that recall hisformer gift, a couple of oddities that contain bit parts for him, and 14 or 15 clinkers.

Miraculously, despite John's precarious physical and mental health, what he conveys more than anything else in the first half of the film is boundless energy and vitality.  Remarkably close to a collapse, he was still able to effervesce.  From his production schedule it is evident that John possessed a manic self-destructive energy almost up until his death 9 years later.

In typical 1930s Hollywood fashion, pages of dialogue are rattled off at breakneck speed, but John, unlike most actors in such roles, further accelerates the pace by his extraordinarily rich physical performance.  In this respect he is the modern screen actor par excellence.  His emotions photograph.  When kissed by an aggressive female client his distaste is conveyed more in his body than his words.  The emotional distance separating him from his wife and children is never mentioned but is quickly evident from how John physically relates to them.  His closeness and ease with his mother is abundantly but naturally self-evident in the way he sits with her and touches her.  On hearing of the death of the young anarchist his repressed grief and horror is projected not through dialogue but by small movements, particularly the nervous fidgeting of his hands. But the greatest extremes in his physicalizing emotions is the difference between his carriage and physical life before and after he is accused of fixing a case. When he speaks of how being disbarred would end his reason for living, the lines are superfluous.  Defeat and shame are written all over him.  His dejection when deserted by his wife is so clear from his physical attitude that there are no lines at all.  The depth of his hurt is conveyed not by broad stylized motions or even weeping, but by very slight facial expressions and changes in posture.

The wordless acting of John is perfection.