“Philosophic Guide”

[From Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (dir. Gordon Douglas, 1950). Click for a larger view.]

“You sure we’ve come to the right place?”

It's one of the stranger moments in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye : psychopathic gangster Ralph Cotter (James Cagney) and flunkie Joe “Jinx” Raynor (Steve Brodie) come to Dr. Darius Green’s address for helping in finding the right kind of lawyer. But it turns out that Dr. Green has closed up shop as a sketchy man of medicine. He now heals minds, he says, not bodies.

This visit is reminiscent of the visit to the Tabernacle of the Sun in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much 1934): there, too, the visitors, Bob Lawrence (Leslie Banks) and his friend (Hugh Wakefield), stand looking at a signboard (a much simpler one) before entering.

You can compare the two scenes via YouTube: this one and that one.