Four con artists in San Francisco: John Wray, who can twist himself into a pretzel, and wrack the heart of alms givers; Ned Sparks, who can pick any pocket, lift any pocket watch; Sylvia Sidney, who can weep people into giving her the fare to get home; and Chester Morris, who runs the operations, including paying off Boris Karloff, until he catches Karloff peeking through Miss Sidney's keyhole, and throws him down three flights. So he has to get out of town fast.
He winds up in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, where they don't even have a doctor. Hobart Bosworth is a faith healer who can cure anything. So Morris figures out a new swindle. He puts Miss Sidney in Bosworth's home as his newly-found great-niece; he sets Sparks to tout the miracle healer far and wide; he sets Wray to crawl to Bosworth so his 'recovery' can be public. Then he'll collect money from the suckers to build a shrine, and the four of them can skip with the money. Except when Bosworth performs his 'miracle' on Wray, he also gets crippled Robert Coogan to throw away his crutches and run, and wheelchair-bound Virginia Bruce to stand up and walk.
This is as close as we can get to seeing the 1919 version, which made a star of Lon Chaney and arguably Betty Compson too. It's easy to see how, with John Wray's performance in Chaney's role as a man able to fix himself into a contorted shape. It didn't make Wray a star, but he did work steadily through his death as a character actor in a huge variety of roles.
The show also plays expertly with Ned Sparks, starting with his urban cynic, who ends up humbled and content in his humility. The other major roles are well cast, with Hobart Bosworth at his hoariest, Chester Morris at his pre-code nastiest, and giving Sylvia Sidney, Paramount's low-class weeper, a chance to show her dazzling smile at the end.
That's because it's a comedy, despite its religious basis; a comedy is, after all, a story where the situation at the end is better than at the beginning. We have a tendency to confuse comedy and farce, because so many farces are comedies. Even if you are not actuated by belief in god, you can recognize redemption, and a decision to live a better life as a good thing. It's easy, like St. Dismas, to repent on the cross: Heaven guaranteed and no chance of backsliding! How much more difficult and admirable it is to know that you will live years, decades, and strive to do better in the world, no matter what the motivation!
