This unbelievable (but no less enjoyable) legal soap opera comes complete with dark family secrets, coincidental encounters, tragic misunderstandings, and a courtroom finish Hitchcock might have loved, in which the fate of a man perhaps wrongly charged with murder waits to be decided by a butler's sense of smell. Paul Newman stars as a young lawyer rising through Philadelphia society using his wits, his charm, and a few unscrupulous tactics never taught in law school, and Barbara Rush is the hot-and-cold love interest. But Robert Vaughn steals the film playing an unfortunate friend who, in less than two hours of screen time, descends from an amiable barfly to a crippled war veteran to a skid row derelict facing the electric chair.
Review of The Young Philadelphians
