Atwill

BEGGARS IN ERMINE-1934-Steel works industrialist Flint Dawson (Lionel Atwill) loves his work so much he always has lunch with his factory employees. He's against a merger so board director Jim Marley (Jameson Thomas) plots to do away with him. He has molten steel dropped on Dawson but it doesn't kill him, only leaving him cripple. Mrs. Dawson (Astrid Allwyn) was in on it too and she and Marley steal everything and go to England with Dawson's young daughter. 

In the hospital (where he smokes a pipe constantly) Dawson meets Marchant, a blind beggar (Henry B. Walthall) who he teams up with and forms an organization of beggars who's money he wisely invests to help them live. Years later Dawson's daughter (Betty Furness), who he's taken care of anonymously, is engaged to Marley's nephew (James Bush) after Mrs. Dawson committed suicide. Eventually through stock manipulations and help from the beggars Dawson gets his revenge (he kind of makes Marley commit suicide) and wins back his company. Very cheap Monogram picture worth seeing for Atwill. 

Russian born director Phil Rosen (a founding member of the American Society of Cinematographers) was a well regarded silent film director but in the sound era he worked mainly in cheap independent films. He made THE SPHINX another curious low budget film with Atwill the year before. Later he made PHANTOM OF CHINATOWN starring Keye Luke, SPOOKS RUN WILD with Lugosi and The East Side Kids and several Charlie Chan entries. He died in 1951. Screenwriter Tristram Tupper , who also wrote the non-horror Karloff vehicle NIGHT KEY, based his screenplay on a novel by Esther Lynd Day.