That I May Live

1937's "That I May Live" today survives in a 45 minute TV print shorn of 25 minutes, resulting in the loss of Lon Chaney's unbilled role as an engineer. The basic plot survives intact however, as convicted safecracker Dick Mannion (Robert Kent) falls in with the same gang that railroaded him for his earlier crime, joining up rather than be killed, only to be neatly framed yet again, this time for the murder of a bank guard. Disguising a monkey wrench as a gun fails to impress a strong willed waitress named Irene Howard (Rochelle Hudson), who intuits the stranger's compassion and soon has him on the path to success in partnership with a wandering peddler, Tex Shapiro (J. Edward Bromberg). Marriage and a baby find the couple suddenly in danger once more, so Tex devises a plan to guarantee Dick's safety while Irene returns to her waitressing roots to entrap the gang that framed her husband. There's no way of knowing just how much is missing from current prints, though much of it deals with the courtship of Irene and Dick. Lon Chaney fans can only hope that a complete version pops up someday, otherwise this one will be lumped in with other Fox titles that found him on the cutting room floor - "Love is News," "Born Reckless," and "Walking Down Broadway." Director Allan Dwan did work with Lon on "One Mile from Heaven," "Josette," and "Frontier Marshal," his opinion on this film summed up in a single word: "horrible."