''Payment Deferred'' is a 1932 American

pre-Code Pre-Code Hollywood was an era in the Cinema of the United States, American film industry that occurred between the widespread adoption of sound in film in the late 1920s and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorship gui ...

crime drama film Crime film is a film belonging to the crime fiction genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and fiction. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine with many other genres, such as drama or gangster film, but al ...

directed by

Lothar Mendes Lothar Mendes (19 May 1894 – 24 February 1974) was a German-born screenwriter and film director. His two best known films are ''Jew Süss (1934 film), Jew Süss'' (1934) and ''The Man Who Could Work Miracles'' (1936), both productions for Briti ...

and starring

Charles Laughton Charles Laughton (; 1 July 1899 – 15 December 1962) was a British and American actor. He was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and first appeared professionally on the stage in 1926. In 1927, he was cast in a play wi ...

Maureen O'Sullivan Maureen Paula O'Sullivan (May 17, 1911 – June 23, 1998) was an Irish actress who played Jane in the ''Tarzan'' series of films during the era of Johnny Weissmuller. She starred in dozens of feature films across a span of more than half a ...

and

Dorothy Peterson Bergetta "Dorothy" Peterson (December 25, 1897 - October 3, 1979) was an American actress. She began her acting career on Broadway before appearing in more than eighty Hollywood films. Early years Peterson was born in Hector, Minnesota, the ...

. Laughton portrays a man so desperate for money, he resorts to murder. It was based on the 1931 play of the same name by

Jeffrey Dell John Edward Flowers "Jeffrey" Dell (7 May 1899 – 24 February 1985) was a British writer, screenwriter, and film director. He is also remembered for his 1939 novel '' Nobody Ordered Wolves'', a satire on the British film industry. His other n ...

, which was in turn based on the 1926 novel of the same name by

C. S. Forester Cecil Louis Troughton Smith (27 August 1899 – 2 April 1966), known by his pen name Cecil Scott "C. S." Forester, was an English novelist known for writing tales of naval warfare, such as the 12-book Horatio Hornblower series depicting a Royal ...

. Laughton also played the lead role in the play, which opened on Broadway on September 30, 1931 and ran for 70 performances.Internet Broadway Database
/ref>

Plot

London

bank clerk A bank teller (often abbreviated to simply teller) is an employee of a bank whose responsibilities include the handling of customer cash and negotiable instruments. In some places, this employee is known as a cashier or customer representative. T ...

William Marble (

) is deeply in debt. When his boss learns of a

lawsuit A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties (the plaintiff or claimant) against one or more parties (the defendant) in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today ...

for an overdue bill, he warns Marble that he will be dismissed if he cannot settle the matter quickly. The same day, a co-worker provides Marble with a currency-market tip that could solve all his financial troubles if only he had any money to speculate with. Then Marble is visited by a rich nephew from

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

whom he has not seen in many years, James Medland (

Ray Milland Ray Milland (born Alfred Reginald Jones; 3 January 1907 – 10 March 1986) was a Welsh-American actor and film director. He is often remembered for his portrayal of an alcoholic writer in Billy Wilder's ''The Lost Weekend'' (1945), which wo ...

). All evening, Marble tries to convince Medland to lend him the necessary money, either to share in the currency profits or as a simple loan; but the increasingly uncomfortable Medland is not interested. Driven to desperation, Marble offers him a glass of whisky laced with some

cyanide In chemistry, cyanide () is an inorganic chemical compound that contains a functional group. This group, known as the cyano group, consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. Ionic cyanides contain the cyanide anion . This a ...

that he bought for developing photographs, and under cover of darkness buries his body in the back yard. Marble uses the large amount of cash that the dead man was carrying to speculate on

margin Margin may refer to: Physical or graphical edges *Margin (typography), the white space that surrounds the content of a page * Continental margin, the zone of the ocean floor that separates the thin oceanic crust from thick continental crust *Leaf ...

based on the tip he received, and makes £30,000, enough that he can immediately retire. However, fear of his crime being discovered makes him consistently nervous and irritable. He rejects any suggestion of moving to a more expensive home; he buys books about crime and poisons and keeps rereading a page about cyanide. His wife Annie (

) knows something is wrong, but assumes he has embezzled from the bank. To relieve his nervous tension, he sends Annie and their daughter Winnie (

) away on a three-week vacation. While they are gone, local shopowner Rita Collins ( Verree Teasdale) seduces Marble into an affair so she can borrow £300 from him. Winnie returns a day early and discovers Collins in the house, but keeps quiet about it. Despite their new financial wealth, troubles continue to grow for the Marble family. Annie sees a small newspaper advertisement asking about Medland's whereabouts, and notices how the book falls open to the page about cyanide. Glancing at her husband's bottle of cyanide, she realises what he has done, but stands by him. Meanwhile, Winnie becomes something of a snob, consorting with a higher social class of people and sneering at her parents. When she runs away one night, Annie chases after her in the rain and becomes very ill. However, under Marble's loving care, she begins to recover. Then Collins shows up and blackmails Marble for another £500. Annie overhears, learns about the affair, and commits suicide with some more of the same cyanide used on Medland. After Marble is convicted for her murder, a tearful Winnie visits him in his cell on the day of his execution, he reassures her that he did not kill Annie, but says that he is nonetheless at peace with his fate. He is convinced he is paying a bill that was only deferred.

Cast

Production

In the original novel, William and Annie also have a son John, who does not appear in the play or film.

Box office

The film grossed a total (domestic and foreign) of $304,000: $169,000 from the US and Canada and $135,000 elsewhere resulting in a loss of $32,000.

Preservation status

On December 14, 2011,

Turner Classic Movies Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie channel, movie-oriented pay television, pay-TV television network, network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcas ...

aired a print of this film which restored the five cuts in the film made for the 1939 re-release to satisfy the

Production Code The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of industry guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was applied to most motion pictures released by major studios in the United States from 1934 to 1968. It is also popularly known as th ...

. Some local censorship boards had objected to the use of the word "cyanide" in its original 1932 release.

References

External links

* * *
1946 ''Theatre Guild on the Air'' radio adaptation of original play
at

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

1949 ''Theatre Guild on the Air'' radio adaptation of original play
at

{{Lothar Mendes 1932 films 1932 crime drama films 1930s American films 1930s English-language films American black-and-white films American crime drama films American films based on plays English-language crime drama films Films based on works by C. S. Forester Films directed by Lothar Mendes Films set in England Films set in London Films scored by William Axt Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films