Warren William was the pre-Code cad with the beautiful voice: the lawyer, the tycoon, the charlatan you were not supposed to like and did. When the Production Code arrived, it took his parts with it.
Fi1m perspective
The Warren William character talks first and thinks later. He is a lawyer or a tycoon or a swindler, he wants something that is not his, and he explains why he should have it in a voice so well made that you agree before you know what to. He was often compared to John Barrymore, and you can see why: the profile, the crisp diction, a man who has never had to raise his voice to be heard. What William added was speed. His cads did not brood. They moved.
He came to films late, after more than twenty Broadway plays and two silents, and Warner Bros signed him in 1931. The Mouthpiece (1932) set the type: Vincent Day, a fast-talking attorney who defends mobsters. Employees' Entrance (1933) is the one most often named for what pre-Code Hollywood let its leading men get away with: charm and sleaze in the same suit. He was a millionaire snob in Gold Diggers of 1933, and in 1934 he played Julius Caesar in Cleopatra and the romantic lead in Imitation of Life, both opposite Claudette Colbert. Joan Blondell made five films with him.
The one we would send you to first is the exception. In Frank Capra's Lady for a Day (1933) he is Dave the Dude, the gangster who passes an apple seller off as a society lady, and he plays it as a man embarrassed to be kind who does it anyway. It was one of his few sympathetic parts before the Code, and perhaps the best use of him, since the voice and the dash now work against the man's decency rather than for his greed. He moved us more than we expected, and it was the embarrassment that did it: a man who has spent his life getting away with things discovers he cannot get away with being good, and is irritated about it. Ned Sparks and Guy Kibbee take the bigger laughs and William, sensibly, does not compete.
Then came the Production Code, and the parts that had made him went with it. There was no longer room for the amoral lawyer the audience was allowed to enjoy, and William, typecast as exactly that, moved down the bill. He was the first screen Perry Mason, in The Case of the Howling Dog (1934), played the Lone Wolf nine times, and was Dr Lloyd in The Wolf Man (1941). It is respectable work and not what he was for. His last film was in 1947.
To see why the pre-Code years are talked about as they are, start with William: a leading man whose whole appeal was that he should not have been allowed. Begin with Lady for a Day, where he is on his best behaviour and hates it, then work backwards to the men who were not.
Biography
Warren William (born Warren William Krech) was an American stage and screen actor. He was born on 2 December 1894 in Aitkin, Minnesota, and died on 24 September 1948 in Hollywood, California. He trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and appeared in more than twenty Broadway productions between 1920 and 1931 before moving to Hollywood.
William became a leading man in early 1930s pre-Code films and was later nicknamed the 'King of Pre-Code'. He is known for roles including Dave the Dude in Lady for a Day (1933), Lawrence in Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Julius Caesar in Cleopatra (1934), Stephen Archer in Imitation of Life (1934), and Dr Lloyd in The Wolf Man (1941). He was the first actor to portray Perry Mason on screen.
