Angel on My Shoulder
About Angel on My Shoulder
Fresh out of prison, gangster Eddie Kagle is shot by his partner Smiley Williams and lands in Hell. Nick, the Devil, needs someone who looks exactly like Judge Frederick Parker, an honest man running for governor. He puts Kagle into Parker’s body so the judge’s name can be ruined, and so Kagle can go after Williams. Every mean thing Kagle tries makes Parker look better. He falls for Barbara Foster, the judge’s fiancée, and turns on Nick. Given a chance to shoot Williams, he tells him the truth instead. Williams backs out a window and dies. Nick says Kagle is using up Parker’s life with Barbara. Kagle gives the body back. In Hell he blackmails Nick, who has bungled the job, into making him a trusty.
Cast & crew
More about Angel on My Shoulder
Archie Mayo’s last film. Charles R. Rogers and David W. Siegel produced it independently. Harry Segall and Roland Kibbee wrote it. The first title was Me and Satan. The producers dropped that, afraid audiences would skip a picture about the Devil. United Artists released it on 20 September 1946. James Van Trees photographed. Dimitri Tiomkin wrote the music. It runs 100 minutes. Paul Muni is Kagle and Parker. Claude Rains is Nick. Anne Baxter is Barbara.
Themes
Making
Rogers and Siegel would not ship a film called Me and Satan. The released title puts an angel on a picture whose plot is a Devil’s bargain that fails.
Look
James Van Trees shot Muni’s double role and Rains’s Nick, including the Hell bargain and the window Williams falls from.
Music
Dimitri Tiomkin composed the score.
Preservation
A 100-minute print survives.
Notes
- Muni plays both the gangster and the judge. They have the same face, which is Nick’s whole scheme.
- Onslow Stevens, George Cleveland, Erskine Sanford, James Flavin, and Fritz Leiber are in the cast.
- Williams is not shot. He falls from the window after Kagle faces him.
- Kagle’s price for silence about Nick’s mistakes is a trusty’s job in Hell.
Scenes
- Smiley Williams kills Kagle just after the prison gate.
- Nick offers Parker’s body in exchange for a ruined campaign and a revenge.
- Kagle’s dirty tricks keep coming out as good government.
- Williams steps backward out of the window.
- Kagle leaves Barbara so Parker can have his life, then bargains for a trusty’s badge.
Also available
- Internet Archive (angel_on_my_shoulder)
- Wikimedia Commons (Angel on My Shoulder (1946).webm)
