Commenting upon the many relatives on the payroll of Carl Laemmle's Universal Pictures, poet Ogden Nash once wrote "Uncle Carl Laemmle/Has a large faemmlee." One member of that faemmle was
Edward Laemmle, director of the courtroom melodrama A Notorious Gentleman.
Charles Bickford plays the diabolically brilliant attorney Kirk Allen, who plans to use his knowledge of the law to get away with the murder of his hated rival Clayton Bradford (
Sidney Blackmer). Not only does Allen escape prosecution, but he manages to pin the killing on someone else. Smelling a rat, district attorney John Barrett (
Onslow Stevens) cooks up a devilishly clever plot of his own to hoist Allen on his own petard. The Legal Ethics Committee probably wouldn't approve of A Notorious Gentleman, but audiences were less critical. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide