The Mouthpiece 1932

Vincent Day is a prosecutor on the fast track to success. When a man he zealously prosecuted all the way to the electric chair is later found to be innocent, Day is distressed and quits. At the suggestion of a friendly bartender, Guy Kibbee, he switches teams and becomes a defense attorney specializing in the representation of gangsters and other unsavory people. He will use any tactic to get his clients acquitted, up to and including drinking a slow-acting poison from a bottle of evidence to prove that the substance isn’t lethal, a gambit that leads the jury to acquit the accused before Day rushes to a mob doctor’s office for a pre-arranged stomach pump.

Celia Farraday is a young secretary recently arrived in the city from a small town in Kentucky. When Day makes play for her, she spurns his advances, loyal to her fiancé, Johnny Morris. But when Johnny is framed for a crime committed by one of Day’s clients, Day’s growing affection for Celia prompts him to defend Johnny by implicating his client in the crime, and to reconsider his life of getting criminals out of jail sentences. Yet his associates send him a message that his departure will not be allowed. Day reveals that he has all of their secrets in a safe-deposit box, with instructions for the bank to forward the contents to the District Attorney in the event of his unnatural death. They call his bluff, and he is shot while leaving his office to attend Celia’s wedding. On the way to the hospital, Day tells his secretary Miss Hickey that the information will be sent to the DA. The film closes on an unsettled note, leaving open the question of whether Day will survive his wounds.