The shakedown of size

I've mentioned the TCM Saturday Matinee block on several occasions, although for the most part I haven't done posts on many of the movies. Part of that is that the timing on some of them isn't always accurate, as I noticed when I recorded The Big Shakedown. The recording missed the opening credits, but the recording started early enough that I didn't miss any key action.

Bette Davis plays Norma Nelson, who works at one of those big-city full-service drug stores from the era when pharmacists actually compounded the drugs themselves and the stores did a lot more. However, it's not a particularly successful store. Norma is in business with her boyfriend the pharmacist, Jimmy Morrell (Charles Farrell), and they'd get married if only he had enough money to support her. Why they couldn't keep working together until Norma got pregnant isn't mentioned; it's just assumed that Norma would stop working upon marriage since it's the early 1930s.

One day, Dutch Barnes (Ricardo Cortez) comes into the drugstore. He's a bootlegger, or at least was a bootlegger. Prohibition has recently been repealed, putting a crimp in the lifestyles of a bunch of makers of illicit booze. Dutch starts talking with Jimmy about his job, and how the chemical makeup of some of the products they sell isn't all that complicated. It's just expensive because the stuff has a brand name. Well, that's not the only reason, but brand reputation is a thing, and the capital needed for mass production is substantial.

But Dutch has some of that capital, having made a substantial bit of money during Prohibition. So he gets the idea of piggybacking off the established brands, making knockoff counterfeit goods! And Jimmy is dumb enough that at first he doesn't get that this is what he's doing for Dutch. At least he's honest enough about it, however, to have some moral qualms when he learns what Dutch is really up to. He also tells Dutch that he can't quite copy some products, since schlub pharmacists like him can't get all the materials. Dutch basically bribes Jimmy: here's enough money to marry Norma!

One person who isn't happy with any of this is Lily (Glenda Farrell), Dutch's former girlfriend. She learns what's going on, and goes to the authorities, getting murdered by Dutch's henchmen for her troubles. The plot spirals from there, with Jimmy having to make ever faker drugs, which is a much bigger problem than just counterfeit cold cream. Fake antibiotics, for example, could get patients killed. And, of course, you know that one of those patients is going to be Norma.

The Big Shakedown is a good example of the sort of B movie that Warner Bros. churned out in the early to mid-1930s, once they got the sound quality up to a level where the camera could be somewhat more fluid. It's nothing more than a B movie, but it moves swiftly and has some surprisingly shocking moments. Sure, you can see why someone like Bette Davis would grow tired of the roles Warner Bros. was giving her, and a movie like this could be seen as an example of it. But for the most part, The Big Shakedown does everything the studio could ask a B movie to do.