Cross Streets (1934) On DVD

Adam Blythe is a brilliant medical student, voted Clifton University's most likely to succeed, when he is blindsided by his beautiful girlfriend, Anne. Unwilling to wait while Adam establishes a practice, she returns his ring and runs off to marry the son of a millionaire. Adam is devastated and turns to the bottle. Descending into unbridled alcoholism, things hit rock bottom when he botches a surgery and the patient dies. Years later, he wanders the streets, a homeless drunk, when an old college chum recognizes him and holds out a slim chance for redemption.

A college football star who left a career as a professional athlete for Hollywood, Johnny Mack Brown found work as a leading man opposite starlets such as Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford. His portrayal of Billy the Kid in the 1930 King Vidor western of the same name marked a change in direction for Brown, who would continue on for two decades as a successful cowboy star. In Cross Streets he is ably supported by a fine cast featuring Anita Louise, Kenneth Thompson, Josef Swickard, Edith Fellows and Tommy Bupp. Director Frank Strayer is known for many independent features including The Vampire Bat, Condemned To Live and The Ghost Walks, as well as at least twelve entries in the long-running "Blondie" series.

Invincible Studios' CROSS STREETS is something of a watershed film, providing leading roles for fading silent stars Claire Windsor and Kenneth Thomson and relative newcomers Johnny Mack Brown and Anita Louise. The story is the old saw about the brilliant surgeon who disappears from view after a fatal misdiagnosis. Twelve years later, the surgeon, now a shabby hobo, returns home, where he redeems himself by performing a life-saving operation. But there's no happy ending for our hero, who through a convoluted plot twist is shot by the jealous husband of the Doc's prospective mother-in-law! CROSS STREETS might easily have been titled CROSSED WIRES, what with its tangled web of complex plotlines.