Illegal

Edward G. Robinson is, in my mind, one of those actors who can take second-rate material and make it worth watching. "Second-rate" may be a bit harsh for describing our next movie, but Robinson's presence still elevates the film: Illegal. It's a film that I saw quite a few years back, but for whatever reason never blogged about it. So when it showed up on TCM agan, I recorded it to be able to finally write up that post.

Robinson stars as Victor Scott, a district attorney who uses histrionics and stunts to help sway juries emotionally. That is, until he prosecutes a man named Clary (DeForest Kelley in a bit part) in a capital case and sends Clary to death row. An hour before the execution, another man gets shot by police and confesses to the crime that Clary is just about to be executed for. The other guy then dies, but it's too late anyway to get another stay for Clary. Victor decides that he's going to quit as DA, and start drinking heavily.

This continues until he gets into a drunk and disorderly, something that probably ought to bring him before the state bar on ethics charges, and possibly even disbarred. But in night court for his hearing, he sees another man who has a preliminary hearing for a manslaughter charge and realizes the he knows exactly how he would get this man off if he were the man's defense attorney. He takes the case and wins, and starts taking other cases and winning using the same underhanded and manipulative tactics that prosecutors use. He should know, having been one himself.

And then, a man comes to Scott's office. The man, Parker, has embezzled $90,000 from his employer and already spent $30K of that money. Scott comes up with a scheme where Parker will return $50,000 of the money with the rest being Scott's fee, in exchange for the employer not pressing charges, which they may just agree to because they want to avoid the bad publicity. However, the employer in question is really a front company for mobster Frank Garland (Albert Dekker), and Garland is pissed. So Garland tries to scheme a way to get Scott more or less on his payroll.

Complicating things is that Garland is also trying to compromise the DA's office. Garland has one of Scott's former underlings, Ray Borden (Hugh Marlowe) on his payroll. Ray is married to co-worker Ellen (Nina Foch), who was in love with Victor, although it was unrequited and frankly icky considering the thirty year age difference between the two stars. This leads to the new DA trying to set a trap for the leak, with Ellen getting caught up in it and put on trial in a way that threatens everybody.

Illegal is an entertaining enough little movie, and Edward G. Robinson is worth watching all by himself. But it certainly has its flaws. It's another of those films where there's not really a good way to resolve everything and satisfy the Production Code. It also feels like material that's been done before, and I don't just mean this as the fact that it uses a story that had already been done two other times.

There's also a few points of trivia I should mention. One is the presence of DeForest Kelley, which I already mentioned above. Another is that Robinson supplied some of the works of art he owned for a scene in which he discusses art with the Dekker character. But there are also connections with other movies. At one point, a marquee shows the movie Miracle in the Rain, which coincidentally had the same producer as Illegal. There's also a scene in which Robinson walks into the DA's office to meet the new DA, with a certain movie prop very noticeable:

Not the horrendous Fox game show

Tubi, and to an extent the other FAST services, have a wealth of obscure stuff that I'd assume fell into the public domain available to stream on demand. I've got several early talkies in my watch list, and recently saw one starring Edward G. Robinson even before Little Caesar. The movie in question is The Hole in the Wall.

Robinson is technically not given star billing here -- he's billed fourth -- but he's the male star here, playing a character called "The Fox". The Fox is the leader of a gang that fleeces the rich under the guise of using a medium going by "Madame Mystera" (an actress named Nellie Savage who astonishingly gets third billing despite only being in the movie for one or two scenes at the beginning. The reason she's in only a small number of scenes is because after finishing work one day, she gets on an el train to go home. That train derails in a spectacularly amateurish bit of special effects model work, killing any number of passengers, including Mamade Mystera.

The Fox realizes he shouldn't identify Mystera at the morgue since the gig would be up, so in a humorous sequence he suggests partner-in-crime Goofy (Donald Meek, looking as bald as he did his entire a career) put on Mystera's robes! That sure isn't going to do, but the gang is in luck as somebody comes in the door looking for a job with Mystera. That young woman is Jean Oliver, played by Claudette Colbert at the very beginning of her career. She's recently gotten out of prison, and is looking for a job, and was given Mystera's name by a mutual acquaintance.

The Fox has the sad duty of informing Jean that Mystera died, but then has a flash of inspiration, which is to use Jean as Mystera. She proves adept at learning the tricks of the trade and how to cheat the people who are going to be her clients, so the Fox hires her, going down to the morgue and identifying Mystera's body as Jean Oliver so that nobody has to worry about Jean's past coming back to haunt them. Of course, Jean has reasons of her own for wanting to work for the Fox's gang.

Some time back, Jean was working as a maid for wealthy Mrs. Ramsay (Louise Closser Hale) when she fell in love with Ramsay's son. Mrs. Ramsay doesn't approve of the relationship for class reasons, so she has Jean framed for robbing her and sent to prison, which is why Jean was just getting out of prison when she shows up at the Fox's place looking for Mystera. Jean's plan is even more sinister than anything the Fox has ever thought of. She wants to kidnap Ramsay's granddaughter and raise the little girl to hate people like the Ramsays, which is a fairly wild plot even for a pre-Code.

As you can guess, things get complicated from there, especially when the Fox finds himself having reason to believe that perhaps Jean does have real clairvoyant powers, leading to a reasonably exciting finale. There's also the obligatory-for-the-era plot device of the intrepid reporter who in this case thinks he recognizes Mystera as someone he knew from childhood; of course that chldhood friend was one Jean Oliver.

The Hole in the Wall was released in early 1929, and it has all the hallmarks of a talking picture released that early in the sound era. The pacing and the elocution feel ancient compared to what we would see even in pictures from two or three years later. On the other hand, the plot is fun, and the art direction for Mystera's apartment is excellent. Fans of early sound music will probably enjoy The Hole in the Wall.

The quality of Tubi movies

I've mentioned a couple of times how, in addition to a ton off stuff on my DVR, I've also got a bunch of movies on my watch list on a couple of the FAST services, especially Tubi and Pluto. However, I have to admit that Tubi gets some pretty doubtful prints. I noticed this when I was watching an old MGM movie that I don't think I've ever seen show up on TCM: A Lady to Love.

The lady in question is played by Vilma Bánky, who was big in the silent era but quickly tailed off in the sound era because of her severe accent. We don't hear her for a while, howver, even though this is a sound film. That's because the movie starts with the male lead, Edward G. Robinson. He plays Tony, an Italian immigrant vintner in northern California, although the movie doesn't say anything about when it's set, what with it having been released at the height of the Prohibition era. Tony is getting to the point where he's really getting ready to find a wife so he can have some kids and keep the family business going. So, as he tells a priest as well as his second-in-command Buck (Robert Ames), he's going to go to San Francisco and find himself a wife.

While in San Francisco, Tony eats at a restaurant and meets waitress Lena (that's Vilma Bánky), whose accent is explained as her being a Swiss immigrant. He decides that this is the woman for him, and when he gets back to the winery has Buck help him write a letter proposing marriage and inviting her to the vineyards to start a new life. However, Buck points out that he should send a picture so Lena will remember who this is. Tony sees himself in the mirror and realizes he's no prize, while Buck is reasonably good-looking for the standards of the early 1930s. So Tony send's Buck's photo so that Lena won't reject him.

Fast forward to the day of the wedding. Tony has already bought a wedding cake, despite Lena not being there yet. Apparently, she's going to arrive in town at the train station and come home to be married immediately. Except that Tony never makes it to the train station, as we see Lena at the station waiting for somebody to show up and pick her up. The mailman brings her from the station to Tony's home, with Tony still not there. However, Buck is there, so when het gets to the car, Lena sees him and thinks he's Tony, since Tony sent Buck's photo, not his own.

Everybody but Buck goes out to look for Tony, leaving Buck and Lena alone long enough for them to develop a bit of an emotional attachment to each other. And then, just as Buck is explaining that he's not Tony, everybody else brings Tony back -- with two broken legs from a car accident. Now Lena feels a duty to Tony to marry him even though she would prefer Buck if she could have a normal choice.

A Lady to Love was based on a stage play, and much of it does have a stagey feel to it, although part of that is also due to the early talkie nature of the film. There was a remake in the late 1930s, They Knew What They Wanted, that I haven't seen either. As for the movie, it's interesting enough, although the sort of thing where I can see why people who aren't already movie buffs are going to have trouble getting into a movie like it. Robinson does well enough, although I feel like he's really overdoing the accent here.

I mentioned the quality of the print above, and one really weird thing about this one is that, about 20 minutes in, there's... a vintage TCM bug in the lower right (the old banner logo before the rectangle with the .com address). It also has the quality of a 16mm print for TV, but then a lot of early sound films don't have great picture quality.

Barbary Coast

A few months back, I was looking through some of the offerings on Tubi, and saw an old movie I don't think I'd heard of, one with some pretty big stars in it: Howard Hawks' 1935 version of Barbary Coast. I finally got around to watching it, and it's one that doesn't have any indication of being about to expire.

Miriam Hopkins is the star here, playing Mary Rutledge. But before we meet her, we get a prologue informing us of how gold was discovered in California in 1848 and how that brought a ton of men to what the US had recently gained in the war against Mexico, and would soon become a state. Following those men is Mary, who is about to get off the boat in San Francisco in order to meet again with her fiancé, Dan Morgan. Unfortunately, she's informed by the denizens of San Francisco that Mr. Morgan is quite dead.

Taking Mary under his wing is Louis Chamalis (Edward G. Robinson). Now, if Barbary Coast were a pre-Code, Mary would have been his mistress, but the movie was released in 1935, when such a relationship couldn't be depicted. Louis runs one of the local gaming houses, and is a pretty big cheese in Frisco. So while Louis takes Mary on and gives her room and board, and presumably expects to start a romantic relationship with her, he also gives her a job as a croupier.

Of course, the roulette wheels are crooked, as that's just one way Louis makes his money and keeps it. There's not much real law here yet, so Louis has a bunch of henchmen led by Knuckles (Brian Donlevy) to mete out force so Louis can keep what's his, and he intends to get a bunch of that gold for himself without having to mine it. A lot of people are unhappy with this arrangement -- Dan Morgan would have been one such man, but he's dead now. One of Mary's fellow passengers, Col. Cobb, is also unimpressed, so he buys a printing press and vows to start a muckracking newspaper. Louis, unsurprisingly, threatens him.

That finally pushes Mary over the line, and she decides to go out by herself for a horseback ride just to get away for a day and clear her head. But the weather isn't good and, San Francisco not being a big city yet, Mary gets lost. She finds what she thinks is an abandoned cabin, except that it's being used by prospector Jim Carmichael (Joel McCrea). He lets her come in and dry off, and as this happens you know he and Mary are going to fall in love. Jim has finally hit gold, and is planning to head back to New York.

But in San Francisco while waiting for the boat, he learns what Mary does for a living, and this makes the two hate each other for some reason. Mary takes all of Jim's money at the roulette wheel, while Col. Cobb decides to start on a campaign of vigilante justice to get at Louis. Mary and Jim eventually get caught in all this, and it threatens to end tragically for the two of them.

Except, of course, that Barbary Coast was released in 1935. Had it been a pre-Code, you might possibly get at least an ambiguous ending. But because of the Code, you know that Louis is going to get what he deserves for his crimes, while Mary is going to find a way to expiate her sins.

Barbary Coast is another of those movies where the big problem I have with it is the fact that the Code forces a certain ending on them. Having read a bit more about the movie, it was based on a novel with a plot that, if not entirely different, at least is able to handle things with a much more grown-up sensibility. Joe Breen and friends were apparently thoroughly displeased, and forced all sorts of script changes, which are decidedly not to the movie's benefit, which is a huge shame given the cast.

Still, that does make Barbary Coast the sort of movie you should watch to see how the Production Code could hurt a Hollywood movie.

As if some men in westerns aren't in fact violent

Barbara Stanwyck was one of the people honored in TCM's Summer Under the Stars last August, and there are quite a few of her movies that I still haven't seen. Among those movies that TCM showed was The Violent Men.

Barbara Stanwyck is the female lead, although first we meet the male lead, played by Glenn Ford. That man is John Parrish, who owns a ranch in one of those western areas that was beginning to develop the range wars between new homesteaders and the old ranchers who wanted an open range. Parrish served with distinction in the Civil War, and is really back in town to sell his ranch so that he can move back east with his fiancée Caroline (May Wynn) and take of work that's less taxing to his health, even though the doctor says he has no real health concerns.

Having arrived back in town, Parrish is shocked by why he sees. Lew Wilkinson (Edward G. Robinson) is the biggest landowner in the area, married to Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) and with an adult daughter Judith (Dianne Foster). Lew owns the Anchor Ranch, and being worried about the encroaching farmers, wants to get them out of the valley. He's willing to buy them out, but, if they don't take his lowball offers, Wilkinson's men will use violence at the behest of Martha as well as his younger brother Cole (Brian Keith).

Parrish is willing, more or less, to sell, since he had been planning on moving back east and has a fiancée who really wants him to do so. The people who work for him, as well as the other farmers and smallhoders, learn that Lew and his Anchor Ranch have put in a bid for the Parrish spread, and they're none too happy about it, so they try to convince him not to give in. Parrish is planning on ignoring them -- until Wilkinson's men create an excuse to try to kill one of Parrish's men.

Lew, meanwhile, wants to preserve what he's got, but since he's getting old and was crippled in the previous range war, would really like to do it without violence. What he doesn't know is that Martha has been scheming behind his back together with Cole to use that violence that we saw earlier. Not only that, but she seems to be romantically interested in Cole, despite the fact that he's got a Mexican girlfriend. Still, Martha eventually realizes that since Lew doesn't want violence, he's getting in the way of her plans and she may have to do something about him too.

So we get a violent, almost military-like campaign by Martha and her brother-in-law Cole to go after Parrish and his men. Parrish, however, has an ace up his sleeve in that he served in the war and served with the cavalry, which gives him some valuable military experience that he's going to be able to bring to use to try to defeat the Wilkinsons.

Sometime in the early 1950s, probably with the advent of television, Hollywood started giving us more "adult" westren movies with themes and vistas that the small screen couldn't give us. The Violent Men is squarely in that tradition. Robinson did make a couple of westerns, and does well here in a role where he's not quite to the decrepit level of a Spencer Tracy in Broken Lance, but getting there, with others in the family taking over. Glenn Ford made several westerns, and is good here as the reluctant hero. Stanwyck, once again, is excellent as a woman who's become tough as nails out of necessity.

The Violent Men is also a visually satisfying movie, with various locations in Arizona serving as the backdrop. Despite the themes not being particularly original, it's still a movie worth watching thanks to all those find acting performances.

A Bullet for Joey

I've always mentioned how seeing a movie with an interesting synopsis is something that will generally get me to watch it, especially if it has classic Hollywood stars in it. I think I may have vaguely heard of A Bullet for Joey when I saw it show up on one of the streaming services recently, so I decided to sit down and watch it considering the cast and the plot.

The movie opens up in Montreal, where an organ grinder is plying the streets. Of course, this isn't a real organ grinder, but a man hired to spy on a certain person and get that man's daily routine down. Unfortunately for him, an officer of the RCMP figures out that something isn't quite right and questions the guy, who shoots the officer in the process. That brings in RCMP detective Raoul Leduc (Edward G. Robinson).

Meanwhile, in a development that we know is related only because this is a movie and we wouldn't have such unrelated stuff otherwise, the action briefly shifts to Lisbon, Portugal. There we find Joe Victor (George Raft), an immigrant to America who was deported because of his criminal activities. He'd like to get back to America, and this combined with those criminal activities, make him an ideal tool to be used by someone else....

That someone is Eric Hartman (Peter van Eyck). Hartman is a Communist, and this being the era of the Cold War, he's got some people in the West that he has a decided interest in. One of those is Carl Macklin (George Dolenz), a Canadian researcher into nuclear physics and advanced weapons systems. It's obvious why the Communists would have an interest in Macklin, and they'd like to kidnap him so that they can learn his secrets, or at least the scientific secrets. It's not as if Macklin has an exciting personal life.

Joe is hired to come up with the plan to kidnap Macklin, and that requires figuring out his personal routine as that organ-grinder was doing. Macklin just isn't very exciting, but Joe thinks any man will be excited when presented with a honey pot. Joe has just the woman for it, too, in the form of Joyce Geary (Audrey Totter). Joyce is Joe's on-again, off-again girlfriend, and she's not all that thrilled with the job she's being asked to do. Meanwhile, another associate of Joe's pulls the short-straw duty of trying to romance Macklin's homely spinster secretary. Said secretary lives with her older sister, who rather cruelly suspects something is going on because, really, who would want to date this woman?

Meanwhile, Leduc has been tracking down every organ-grinder in town, and all of them have good alibis. But other murders start happening, and they all seem to be linked to Macklin in some way, which eventually brings Leduc closer to the Joe Victor mob, although Leduc still doesn't get just who Joe is working for. It all leads up to a climax on a cargo ship going down the St. Lawrence River....

A Bullet for Joey is one of those movies that's serviceable, but nothing great. It feels like the sort of thing that was written with the express purpose of keeping a couple of older actors working, with the plot not always coming together. Additionally, it feels like another movie that's suffering from budget problems. It was produced independently, and that might have something to do with it. (The movie was not filmed in Canada; just establishing shots were.) Ultimately, A Bullet for Joey isn't a bad movie, but it's certainly not a great or memorable film either.

Bullets or Ballots

One of the 1930s Warner Bros. movies TCM ran in honor of the studio's 100th anniversary this month that I had surprisingly not seen before was Bullets or Ballots, so I recorded it and recently sat down to watch it in and among the more recent that seem to dominate the streaming services.

Prohibition has ended, and the gangsters that were bootlegging liquor need new rackets to go into. One of those rackets in New York is run by Al Kruger (Barton MacLane) and his second-in-command "Bugs" Fenner (Humphrey Bogart; the movie having been released in 1936, Bogart was not yet a star). Kruger is the sensible one and the only person in this part of the gang who knows the identities of the real money men. Fenner, for his part, is much more hot-headed and willing to use violence to get what he wants for the gang, or really himself. Kruger knows that this is only goin to bring the government down much harder on the gangs, so opposes violence.

Fenner gets his way, sort of. Ward Bryant is the local politician crusading against crime and presumably angling for higher office. Kruger figures they can lay low and weather the storm, perhaps by bribing some jurors. After all, he's been on trial multiple times, but always gotten off. Fenner, however, doesn't believe any of this guff, so takes it into his own hands to kill Bryant! As you can probably guess, he should have listened to Kruger.

Neither Bogart nor MacLane is the star of the proceedings, however. That honor goes to Edward G. Robinson. He plays Johnny Blake, an all-American police officer who happens to be just familiar enough with the gangs. This causes the new police commissioner to fire him suddenly, although one can guess that this is a ruse to free up Blake so that he can go undercover and go after the Kruger gang. Blake's familiarity with the gangs is in part because of an old flame in the form of Lee Morgan (Joan Blondell), who runs small-time rackets up in the Bronx. Working with Lee is Nellie LaFleur (Louise Beavers), getting a role about as respectable and equal to whites as you can expect from a 1930s movie. She's come up with the idea of setting up a numbers game in Harlem, and has been successful enogh to earn her and Lee a tidy sum of money.

As you can guess, Kruger and Fennel learn about this and would like the money, too. Krugr by this time has made the mistake of bringing on Blake, thinking that Blake can tell them how to get around the cops when in fact Blake is still working for the cops as an undercover plant. Thanks to the Production Code, none of this is too difficult to figure out. Fenner is no dummy, and keeps having Blake tailed and bugged, looking for proof that Johnny is still in cahoots with the cops. Fenner is also much more forceful in his desire to get that numbers money from Lee and Nellie.

Bullets or Ballots is all predictable, but this being Warner Bros., you know they're going to be good at making programmers and especially programmers in the crime/gangster area. Sure enough, the movie never stops entertaining, all the way to its conclusion. Robinson is good if not quite rightly cast, while Blondell and Bogart are the two standouts. MacLane's is a bit of a lesser figure, but in some ways the material really calls for that since the higher-ups -- especially those masterminds whose identities only he knows -- have a tendency to stick to the shadows. Think Louis Calhern in The Asphalt Jungle or Alexander Scourby in The Big Heat.

If you want to watch a good example of the sort of programmer Warner Bros. was churning out in the mid-30s, Bullets or Ballots is just as good as any of the others.

The House of Color

Some months ago, TCM ran The Red House, and since it had an interesting synopsis and cast, I decided to record it. Unfortunately, it aired on a day when the DirecTV box guide screwed up the schedule, so I recorded the wrong thing. And then I noticed that I have a copy of it on one of my Mill Creek box sets -- the movie having been produced by United Artists, it presumably wound up in the public domain after 28 years. So I put that DVD in and watched the movie.

The movie is set in one of those rural areas where there's a small town, and a lot of farm types on the outskirts of town that send their kids to the school in town, only the movie is current enough that everybody goes to school by bus. One of those farm families is the Morgans, who have a farm far enough out that not a lot of people come to visit, as well as a fair amount of forest that Dad wants to keep everyboy off of. That may be a bit odd, but there's more to the oddness about them than that. Father figure Pete (Edward G. Robinson) and mother figure Ellen (Judith Anderson) adopted Meg (Allene Roberts) when she was just an infant and her parents suddenly picked up and left to go work on farms in the south during the Depression, leaving the kid behind. The parents died not long after, so Pete and Ellen eventually adopted little Meg.

As you can probably guess, there's more going on than meets the eye. And about to come into the family and find that out is Nath Storm (Lon McCallister). He meets Meg on the school bus one day, and takes a liking to her, although he's already techincally got a girlfriend in Tibby (Julie London). But Nath winds up working for the Morgans, and seeing Meg more often, he finds their relationship deepening.

I mentioned that forest earlier. Pete has hired another young man, Teller (Rory Calhoun), to watch for trespassers and keep them off, with a shotgun if necessary. And Pete pretty much means everyone, including Meg. Meg has heard rumors of a red house somewhere deep in the woods, and wants to know if there really is one. Not only that, but she wants to know why her adoptive father wants to keep everybody away from that red house. Nath is willing to help her, or at least help get her out of jams, but doing so is going to put him in danger too. But you know everybody is going to wind up at the red house for the movie's climax, where the plot will finally be resolved.

The Red House is an interesting movie in some ways, in that it combines gothic drama with a bit of a thriller. Considering Edward G. Robinson being in the lead, it's unsurprising that he gives another competent performance. But as I was watching it, I couldn't help but feel as though there was a lot less going on than meets the eye. I think it's the sort of movie that had it been made back in the 1930s, it probably would have been made strictly as a B movie. But with more independent producers and a star of Robinson's caliber, they obviously wanted to make something more serious, extending the movie to about 100 minutes, which makes it a bit too slow.

Still, The Red House is definitely worth a watch, especially if you can find a better print than on the Mill Creek DVD.

The Biggest Bundle of Them All

Raquel Welch was one of the people TCM honored this past August in Summer Under the Stars, which gave me the chance to record a couple of her movies that I hadn't seen before. Among them was The Biggest Bundle of them All, which I put on the DVR because the plot sounded fun. I recently watched it, and am sad to say that the movie didn't quite live up to my expectations.

Welch isn't really the star here, of course; as in qute a few of her movies she was added as eye candy. The two stars here are Robert Wagner and Vittorio De Sica. De Sica plays Cesare Celli, an Italian-born man who worked as a mobster in the States for a good portion of his career, only to retire back to Italy. At a funeral, he's picked up by Harry Price (Robert Wagner) and his friends. Only, they don't take him back to his house, but to another place where they inform him that they're kidnapping him for ransom, as Harry has written a bunch of bad checks he needs to cover. Cesare calls some of his old friends back in the States, only to find that nobody can (or is willing to) pay the ransom.

Now, this made me think of two movies, the great Terry-Thomas comedy Too Many Crooks as well as the more recent Anthony Quinn vehicle The Happening. And indeed, it turns out that the producers at Columbia found about about this movie being made and forced MGM into an agreement that they wouldn't release it until several months after The Happening finished its theatrical run. I'm getting ahead of myself, however, other than to point out that if you've seen The Happening, you'll have an idea of what happens next.

Cesare doesn't have any way of raising the ransom money himself; despite his life as a higher-up mafioso, he's really not very rich. But he knows the perfect crime for which he needs a gang, and now he's got a gang that could help carry it out. Further, it would solve everybody's financial problems. But Cesare is going to have to bring in the real brains behind the scheme, "Professor" Samuels (Edward G. Robinson).

The actual details of the heist are more of a macguffin, but the short version of it is that platinum mined in Colombia is sent for processing in Italy, where it's transported by train. The gang will hijack the train, relieve it of the platinum, and fence that in Morocco. The real plot of the movie, however, involves Harry and his gang who kidnapped Cesare not being terribly competent, and, in at least one case, fellow American Benny (Godfrey Cambridge), not even wanting to use a gun!

As for Raquel Welch, she's along for the ride as Harry's girlfriend Juliana, and also serves the purpose of being somebody good-looking enough that characters in the movie can be distracted by her beauty, allowing Harry and his gang to do what they need to unnoticed.

The big problem for me with The Biggest Bundle of them All is that the script felt scattershot, jumping from one point of preparation to the next in a way that didn't particularly feel coherent. The movie is supposed to be a comedy, but it doesn't reach the level that Too Many Crooks did, with substantial portions feeling forced and grating in the humor. One thing that the movie does have going for it, however, is location shooting in Italy, which is very picturesque here.

Overall, however, The Biggest Bundle of them All feels like the sort of movie that in the past a studio would have needed to make in Europe because of capital controls, with the Americans involved in the proceedings there for a vacation and a nice paycheck. It's not a particularly good movie, and a serious comedown for actors like Robinson and De Sica.

The Cincinnati Kid

Last weekend I mentioned having watched The Cincinnati Kid off a TCM airing and that there was a Joe McDoakes short afterwards that I blogged about. Well now it's time for the feature.

Steve McQueen is the titular Kid, a professional gambler named Stoner originally from Cincinnati but now in 1930s New Orleans. He's one of the best poker players out there, to the point that lesser players think he's cheating. He's got a girlfriend in the form of Christian (Tuesday Weld) who came from a farm a few hours away and wants the Kid to settle down. He's also got a good friend in Shooter (Karl Malden) who is known as a fair dealer. Shooter has a wife in Melba (Ann-Margret) who wants him to settle down, and is also friendly with Christian.

The Cincinnati Kid is one of the best poker players out there, but not yet the best. That honor has gone to Lancey Howard (Edward G. Robinson), who travels the country fleecing rich people out of their money, and every now and then getting into epic poker matches. Here in New Orleans he's fleecing Slade (Rip Torn). Unsurprisingly, word gets out that both Lancey and the Kid are in town, so the obvious thing to do is to set up a game between the two of them.

It eventually happens, but there are some complications first. One is that Christian has finally reached the breaking point, and decided to go back to her family, forcing the Kid to go looking for her. More worrying, though, is the betting that's going on around the match. Slade has decided to put a bunch of money down on the Kid, and wants to make certain he can collect on that wager. Both the Kid and Lancey agree that Shooter is a fair dealer, with Lady Fingers (Joan Blondell) to come in as a relief dealer. Slade, having that bet on the Kid, and more importantly a marker on Shooter, decides to tell shooter that he's going to help the Kid to win. And to sweeten the pot, Shooter's going to have more money on the Kid. And if that's not enough of a problem for Shooter, he's going to find out that Melba has taken a bit of a liking to the Kid when they spend some time together.

Eventually we get to the game, which doesn't start off as being just between the Kid and Lancey, but has other players. Of course, those players drop out one by one, leaving only the Kid and Lancey at the climax. As you can probably guess, the Kid finds out that Shooter has been asked to cheat, something the Kid does not want at all, while Christian returns just in time to discover that Melba had been seeing the Kid.

The Cincinnati Kid is another of those movies that's very well made, although it didn't really feel to me as though it was breaking any new ground. Everybody gives a solid, professional performance, and the story is more than adequate. In short, it's a nice little bit of entertainment, and another movie that I can definitely recommend if you want something undemanding.

The Widow from Chicago

A movie that I thought I had recorded as part of Joan Blondell's turn as Star of the Month last month, but which in fact does not have Blondell in the cast, is The Widow from Chicago.

The star is actually Alice White, although we don't meet her at first. Instead, we see gangster "Swifty" Dorgan (Neil Hamilton), who's traveling from Chicago to New York via train. However, a couple of people show up to meet him and push him off the train to his death! In New York, one of those people, Jimmy Henderson, turns out to be a policeman on an undercover mission.

That undercover mission is to replace Swifty in order to infiltrate the underworld leader Dominic's (Edward G. Robinson) sphere of influence. Polly (that's Alice White), it turns out, is Jimmy's sister. And poor Jimmy, for his part, has been found out by somebody from Dominic's gang, as he gets shot gangland style.

Polly decides that she's going to be the one to infiltrate Dominic's gang, so she goes to his club, claims to be Swifty's widow, and gets a job presumably as part of the show but I don't think we actually see her doing any singing. At any rate, she seems like she might be making some progress in getting the good on Dominic, until something unexpected happens.

Swifty was in fact not killed when he was pushed off the train, and he shows up, which presents a bit of a problem since Swifty isn't married and has no idea who this Polly who's been claiming to be his widow is. The two of them sort of have to form an uneasy alliance as they try to fool Dominic long enough to obtain that evidence....

The Widow from Chicago is one of those early talkies, dating from 1930, when talking pictures were still finding their way. So this one isn't as good objectively as some later programmer gangster movies would be. Still, it's not bad, even if Robinson doesn't get to be as bombastic as he would be in some of his other gangster roles.

The Widow from Chicago is available on DVD from the Warner Archive, but is another of those movies that probably ought to be on one of those four-movie box sets that Warner Home Video in conjunction with TCM used to put out.

Thursday Movie Picks #265: The Mrs. Robinsons

This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This week's theme is "The Mrs. Robinsons", which I'm guessing is a callback to Anne Bancroft's character in The Graduate:



I decided that that was a bit difficult of a topic for me to come up with three movies, so I decided to go in a different direction, with three suitable movies from the 1940s:

A Dispatch From Reuters (1940). Edna Best plays the wife of Edward G. Robinson, who stars as Baron Julius Reuter. Reuter founded the news organization that bears his name, first using carrier pigeons and then other means to get accurate news out before anybody else could. Sure, it's typical Hollywood biopic stuff, but with Edward G. Robinson you can't really go wrong.

Mr. Winkle Goes to War (1944). Ruth Warrick plays the wife of Edward G. Robinson, who stars as Mr. Winkle. Winkle is a 40-something bank clerk whom the whole town sees as meek and not particularly deserving of much respect. He somehow gets drafted during World War II and winds up becoming a war hero, which changes how everybody in town looks at him.

Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945). Agnes Moorehead plays the wife of Edward G. Robinson, who this time is a Norwegian immigrant father raising his daughter (Margaret O'Brien) in World War II-era rural Wisconsin. A lot of the movie is about O'Brien's adventures, while there's a subplot involving the town teacher (Frances Gifford) and newspaper editor (James Craig).

Now to see what everybody else has selected.

Robin and the 7 Hoods

For the third Wednesday of Dean Martin's turn as TCM's Star of the month, they're showing the films he made as part of the Rat Pack, or more precisely with Frank Sinatra. Among them is Robin and the 7 Hoods, which will be on at 10:15 PM tonight.

The opening scene reminded me of Some Like It Hot, when all the gangsters meet in Miami and kill one of their number after a rendition of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". This time, it's 1928 Chicago, and the gangster killed is Big Jim, played by Edward G. Robinson who notably turned down appearing in Some Like It Hot. After Big Jim's death, the gangsters need a new boss, and Guy Gisborne (Peter Falk) basically nominates himself, and then places rather exorbitant conditions on the rest of the gangsters in the city-wide "partnership".

Well, not all of the gangsters are there. Robbo (Frank Sinatra) leads the north side, together with his right-hand man Will (Sammy Davis Jr.). One day, into his speakeay comes John (Dean Martin), who challenges Robbo to a game of pool, and winning, gets his way into Robbo's partnership. The only problem is that at some point they're going to have to deal with Guy's mob, which also has the police on its payroll.

There's one saving grace for Robbo and friends, however, in the form of Jim's daughter Marian (Barbara Rush). She wants vengeance, and she's willing to go to great lengths to see that justice is done, even offering $50,000 (in 1928 dollars, remember) to get the killer of Big Jim. Robbo refuses. But when Marian sends him the cash anyway, what's a guy to do? So he donates the money to an orphanage.

Allen A. Dale (Bing Crosby) is the secretary of that orphanage, and with the big contribution from Robbo, he decides to start a public relations campaign praising Robbo for the donation, which puts most of the town's citizens on Robbo's side against not just Guy, but law enforcement. Now Guy really wants to get back at Robbo.

As a parody of the Robin Hood story, there's a really great idea behind Robin and the Seven Hoods. Not just riffing on Robin Hood, but setting the story in gangland Chicago. And damn if the cast don't look like they're having the times of their lives. And yet there was still something about the movie that bugged me. With all the star power in the movie, and many of them known for their singing, Sinatra (who also served as producer) made this a musical comedy, not just a straight-up comedy. And every time one of the musical numbers comes, it drags the movie to a screeching halt. (Although, to be fair, Sinatra introduces "My Kind of Town" regarding Chicago.)

Still, there's a lot to like about the movie. There are a lot of small roles for older stars; in addition to Robinson there's Sig Ruman and Allen Jenkins. And the way Robbo handles making his new place raid-proof (with help from architect Hans Conried) is a stroke of genius. If only there weren't so much music.

Robin and the 7 Hoods is also available on DVD.

The Sea Wolf

During the month of Michael Curtiz movies, one that I recorded because I hadn't seen it in ages is The Sea Wolf.

The action begins in San Francisco in 1900. George Leach (John Garfield) is a man on the run from the law who is looking for a way to escape the city. Being a port city, getting a job on a ship going to sea seems like an obvious way to escape. A guy alongside George at the bar offers him a job on a ship, but George sees the bartender slip him a mickey. Still, George takes the job!

Meanwhile, Ruth (Ida Lupino) is on the run from the law and gets on a different ship, along with the writer Julius (Alexander Knox). That ship runs into the ferry, leading to people getting thrown overboard. Ruth and Julius are recovered, on the same ship where George is working.

Not that either of them would want it that way. The captain "Wolf" Larsen (Edward G. Robinson) is running a sealing boat, and the plan is to go to sea, catch those seals, and only then return to San Francisco. And it's not as if they're going to be in the normal shipping lanes. Making matters worse is that Wolf is a no-nonsense taskmaster as captain.

Actually, that's a bit of an understatement. OK, more than a bit of understatement. Wolf believes the bit from Milton's Paradise Lost that it's "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven", and boy is he reigning in Hell! The thing is, pretty much everybody on board is there because they're escaping a criminal past, so the alternative to not taking orders from Wolf is obviously pretty bad. The one guy who might think about a bit of rebellion is the doctor Prescott (Gene Lockhart), but he'd be happy with a bit of respect.

Ultimately, George decides to lead a rebellion, although the ship's cook Cooky (Barry Fitzgerald) is an all-watching eye who finds being a stool pigeon for Wolf is the least bad option. How the hell is anybody going to escape this ship?

The Sea Wolf is a well-made movie with good acting performances, particularly from Knox and Robinson. Knox is an actor you'd probably best remember from Wilson in 1944, since Knox's portrayal of the president probably should have brought him an Academy Award, he was that far above every other performance that year. Knox for whatever reason never really got plum roles after Wilson, which is a shame because he already shows here how much potential he has. Robinson's performance should come as no surprise. He plays a man who, although brutal, is probably also going mad, I'd guess from a brain tumor of some sort since he's got some condition that causes temporary blindness. It's a difficult role to make anything but a caricature, and Robinson does it with aplomb.

The print of The Sea Wolf that TCM ran was about 87 minutes. I was wondering what would happen since I saw that the Blu-ray is 100 minutes. It turns out that when The Sea Wolf was re-released in the late 1940s, about 13 minutes of footage were cut. That footage was only rediscovered in the last few years, and a restored print was made. That restoration got its Blu-ray release earlier this year, but I'd assume that the terms of the release prevent TCM from running that print for some period of time. I don't know what footage was cut, but even the cut version is quite good.

Thursday Movie Picks #134: Artists/Painters

This being Thursday, it's time for another Thursday Movie Picks, run by the Wandering Through the Shelves blog. This week's theme is movies about artists or painters, and as a fan of old movies, I've naturally picked three older ones.

First up is The Moon and Sixpence (1942). George Sanders plays an artist who is based more or less on Paul Gauguin. He starts the film as a middle-class businessman with a wife and family, but that passion for art consumes him, to the point where he leaves his family and London first for Paris, and then for the South Seas. Herbert Marshall plays the friend of the family (played by Herbert Marshall and apparently based on Somerset Maugham, who wrote the story) who tries to find Sanders.

Next up is Scarlet Street (1945). Edward G. Robinson plays a cashier/bookkeeper for a small business whose passion on the side is art. This even though he's not very good at it and has a wife who treats him like dirt for it. So when he runs into a beautiful woman (Joan Bennett) who tells him he's good, he falls for the woman. He doesn't realize that this is supposed to be a noir and he's the victim of the femme fatale. Dan Duryea plays Bennett's partner in crime. Robinson is as good as ever here.

Portrait of Jennie (1948). Joseph Cotten plays the artist here, a Depression-era man who is struggling because, while he has passion, he can't get anybody to buy any of his work. One day in Central Park, he runs into a young girl (Jennifer Jones) who seems like she's from out of the past. And then the next time he runs into her a few days later, she seems to have aged months if not years. Cotten has to learn what happened to this girl, as he paints her portrait. Ethel Barrymore is excellent as an art dealer who supports Cotten's passion; Cecil Kellaway is her business partner.

Summer Under the Stars starts tomorrow!

This year's Summer Under the Stars on TCM starts tomorrow, what with that being August 1. As always, each day has 24 hours of movies in which one actor appears in all of them. Well, more or less 24 hours; obviously there are shorts and sometimes a documentary.

Tomorrow, August 1, brings a full day of Edward G. Robinson. Among the movies is Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, coming up tomorrow at midnight (ie. the midnight between Monday and Tuesday; that will be late Monday evening in the more westerly time zones). TCM has been running the MGM trailer for the movie, which you can see below:



Of course, I'd like to think that the real reason Spencer Tracy didn't want to make a movie with Margaret O'Brien is that he probably didn't want to work with such obnoxious child characters. After all, Tracy had made Boys Town, and O'Brien can be sickeningly sweet in so many of her roles, to the point that, goodness you want her to shut up and get off the screen.

Seven Thieves

Among the many movies sitting on my DVR, I finally got around to watching Seven Thieves. It's going to be on FXM Retro again tomorrow at 11:00 PM and sometime Tuesday, so you've got a chance to catch it if you want.

The movie starts off with "Professor" Theo Wilkins (Edward G. Robinson) at the seaside at one of those French Riviera resorts, looking like he's enjoying the life there. But he's really down on his luck, and in France for a different reason, as you can probably guess from the title of the movie. As for why he's specifically at the seashore, well, that's where he's waiting for his young friend Paul Mason (Rod Steiger) to show up. Paul is actaully a protégé of Theo's and somebody Theo believes he can trust, which is going to be extremely necessary for the job he's got lined up.

That job, as you should have realized by now, is a heist; in this specific case a casino heist. They're going to go into one of the ritzy casinos in Monte Carlo, rob it of about $4 million in French francs, that being a very tidy sum back in 1960 even split seven ways. As to how they're going to pull it off, well, that will be made clearer a little later in the movie.

Theo has already assembled a cast of candidates suitable for the job: nightclub singer Melanie (Joan Collins); safecracker Louis (Michael Dante); driver Hugo (Berry Kroeger); Mealnie's protector Poncho (Eli Wallach); and inside man Raymond (Alexander Scourby). But, not all of them are quite thrilled about the plan, in part because they're not being given all the details. How, exactly, are they going to get the cash out of the building? The less they need to know, the better. Further, they don't like that Paul is more or less going to be making all the decisions, leaving the rest of them to take orders. And then Poncho in particular finds that his role in the caper requires him to do something very unpleasant.

But of course everybody agrees to participate, since otherwise we wouldn't have a movie. They get to the casino, and we're treated to a standard-issue caper movie. There's good suspense on a bunch of fronts, with a bunch of twists and turns leading the viewer to ask, "Is this the place where the caper will break down?" Since the Production Code was still in place, the plan must eventually fall apart, but the ways in which it does certainly surprised me, which is a good thing.

Overall, however, Seven Thieves comes across as a bit perfunctory. There's nothing particularly wrong, but there's also nothing particularly fresh and memorable the way there is in other heist movies. Robinson is good as always; Steiger might be a bit too intense; Wallach looks dissipated which is what the role calls for; Kroger looks like he's trying to impersonate Erich von Stroheim's chauffeur scenes from Sunset Blvd.. Joan Collins is nice to look at, and gets to display some ingenuity too. The result is something that does entertain, but also something you may not think to put in for multiple viewings. The movie did get a DVD release, but I'm not certain if it's still in print.

The Last Gangster

No; this isn't the last blog post about a gangster movie; it's about the movie The Last Gangster, whith TCM is running today at 6:00 PM as part of a birthdy salute to Edward G. Robinson.

Robinson stars as Joe Krozac, a mob leader of Yugoslav descent who lives the good life, apparently saving the violence for the little people. Joe wants a family, so he goes back to the old country to find himself a wife, which he does in the form of Talya (Rose Stradner, whom MGM were apparently grooming to be their next European star but who never quite made it). They get married and have a seemingly happy life, Talya knowing nothing of what Joe really does because he's keeping her in the dark; being a foreigner with a limited command of the English language helps. Of course, you know that the authorities are eventually going to get Krozac, because the Production Code demands it. That arrest and conviction comes on a tax evasion charge, much as happened to Al Capone. So there's a trial and Joe is found guilty and sent to Alcatraz.

Ah, but there's a catch. In the meantime, Joe has successfully knocked up Talya, who is with child as the whole legal falderal against him goes on. Joe gets a ten-year sentence and vows to fight it every step of the way, as well as coming out of prison better than ever and having a great family and all that stuff. Needless to say, it's not going to happen this way. Talya doesn't want her son to know that Dad is a prisoner. And when the newspaperman Paul North (James Stewart) writes a story that puts Talya in a bad light, he takes pity on her. The two of them fall in love, leaving Talya to file for divorce from Joe, marry Paul, change her name, and move to one of those peaceful small cities that you can find anywhere on MGM's back lot.

Of course, Joe only got a ten-year sentence, not a life sentence. Those ten years are going to run out and Joe is going to get out of prison, wanting to see his wife and son. Only they're not his wife and son any longer, which of course is going to be one of the dramatic tensions of the second half of the movie. There's another, however. When Joe gets out of prison, his old gang is still there. They've been waiting for their payoff for ten years, and they're convinced that Joe has been holding out on them and has a secret stash of money somewhere. They're going to get that no matter what. And if torturing Joe won't get him to reveal the location, then perhaps they'll have to kidnap the son he loves but has never met....

There's some hoary material here, but unsurprisingly based on who we've got in the cast, it's all handled fairly well. Robinson did better work, to be sure, but he's more than capable as the man whose world crumbles around him over the course of the movie. Stewart was still fairly early in his career, and is a good second lead, neither having the "aw shucks" persona from films like Harvey or the hard-boiled post-war persona from something like Rope. Rose Stradner isn't much, and you can see why she never became the star MGM had hoped for. It's also worth watching the 30s character actors who show up in Joe Krozac's gang. Overall, the story is done well, if nothing groundbreaking. It's not as good as the Warner gangster movies, but I liked it more than MGM's Johnny Eager. The Last Gangster is more of a programmer than a prestige film, and that's to the movie's benefit.

Two Seconds

So the movie Two Seconds showed up on TCM yesterday as part of the Friday pre-Code marathons that are running all this month. I have to admit to not having heard of the title before, which is a bit of a shame because then I would have been able to recommend it to you without having to direct you to the Warner Archive DVD that's available.

The movie starts off in the execution chamber at a state penitentiary, with the assembled witnesses from the press there to see the execution of murderer John Allen. Also there is a sociology student (William Janney), who was sent there by his college class to get info on an execution for his college class. It's all a framing device though, as he's just there to ask questions for the benefit of the movie audience and have the executioner and warden tell us that the prisoner will actually live for two seconds after the switch is pulled, and that in those two seconds his whole life will flash before his eyes....

So John Allen (Edward G. Robinson) shows up to be strapped to the electric chair for his execution, and sure enough, we get a flashback as to how he wound up being convicted of a capital offense. Some time back, he was working as a riveter on those skyscrapers that were going up in the big city at the time, along with his best friend and roommate Bud (Preston Foster). Bud is somewhat reminiscent of Albert Finney's character in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, that being the sort of man who likes to spend his money playing the horses and going out with the ladies; he's engaged, but always with an eye on other women and trying to find a good blind date for John. One night, Bud picks up a particularly ugly blind date, but also flirts with a pair of women who aren't his fiancée and John's date, telling John to come up with some excuse to ditch the original dates. John is understandably ticked off and runs off, winding up in one of those dance halls filled with taxi dancers, where he meets Shirley (Vivienne Osborne) and buys a ticket to dance with her. The other guys treat Shirley like property while John intends to be a perfect gentleman, so when Shirley gets in trouble John takes her out of the joint to a nearby drugstore to get milkshakes for the two of them.

You know it's going to be trouble for John, especially because he's been so over-the-top about how he's not going to let women take him for anything the way Bud does. (Never mind the fact that you know something has to come up to cause John to commit murder.) Still, what happens is shocking. After a couple of dates, Shirley gets John good and liquored up, and takes him to a justice of the peace to have the two of them get married. This even though he's drunk beyond the ability to consent. Bud is understandably furious, and the ultimate result is an argument between the two friends at work, with Bud falling off a girder 20-plus stories to his death.

Still, that's not what gets John sent to the electric chair. John is unable to work after the accident, falling deep in debt to the point that Shirley decides to go back to work at the dance hall and et the money she and John need. That turns out to be what really sets off John, and when Bud's old bookie (Guy Kibbee) shows up with a bunch of money John won playing the ponies, John figures it's enough to pay off all his debts and settle a score or two....

Two Seconds is rather shocking, with some plot points you're going to see coming since the film is told in flashback, and some that you might not. It's Edward G. Robinson's movie all the way, and like Scarlet Street a dozen years later, it's interesting to see his transofmation from the good guy to an utter failure, which he pulls off well. Robinson is always interesting to watch, and he's riveting -- no pun intended -- here. The only real problem is some overacting in the scene when John is sentenced to be executed. William Janney, even though he only shows up in the opening and closing scenes, is also worth mentioning.

I'm sorry that I wasn't able to mention the TCM airing, not having seen the movie, but at least it's available on DVD.

The Man With Two Faces

Back in April 2012, I briefly mentioned the showing of The Man With Two Faces and how I'd have to write a fuller-length post about it at some time. It's airing again tomorrow morning at 6:45 AM in honor of TCM Star of the Month Mary Astor, and is worth watching.

Astor plays Jessica, a stage actress who has been retired from the stage for a couple of years. She retired because of the difficult relatoinship she had with her controlling husband Stanley. Stanley disappeared a couple of years ago, which resulted in a nervous breakdown for Jessica. But with no word from Stanley in a couple of years, he's believed dead, allowing Jessica after a period of recovery to try to take uyp a career on the stage again. All of that takes place before the movie begins; we pick up the action at about the time Jessica is ready to go back on stage, in a play starring her brother Damon (Edward G. Robinson). Producing the play is Weston (Ricardo Cortez), who has also fallen in love Jessica along the way.

And so they produce the play, it's a big hit, and they live happily ever after. Yeah right; there's no possible way it could work out like that, at least, not without a whole bunch of complications along the way. Now, you could have comedic complications like those between Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in The Guardsman, but our movie isn't a comedy, so we get a different complication, one which you probably should be able to see coming from a mile away: Stanley (played by Louis Calhern) isn't dead. He was only presumed dead, and now he's shown up again.

It's at this point that we get to see he control Stanley had over Jessica, and that control is ludicrous. Jessica sees Stanley, and immediately starts acting like she's some sort of mind-controlled zombie, or one of the women destroying their faces in The Hypnotic Eye. I'd say it strains credulity and, if Stanley could exert this sot of control over Jessica even after all these years, why not cultivate that sort of controlling relationship over the rest of Jessica's family? I suppose, however, that Weston would still be a problem though, since Stanley had never met him before.

Whatever the case, all of the people who love Jessica are extremely distressed by Stanley's return, and wonder what to do about it. And then, like in one of those bad TV sitcoms, somebody gets an idea, we don't hear about the idea, and we cut to a scene of the idea being put in motion. A wealthy Frenchman named Chautard shows up with a business proposition for Stanley. Stanley wants control over Jessica, but also wants money, and so takes up Chautard on his offer to meet. It turns out not to be a proposition for money, but a proposition to be a murder victim: Chautard drugs and stabs Stanley in a hotel room, fleeing the scene. Will Chautard get away with it? Will we discovre Chautard's relationship to Stanley and Jessica?

To be honest, The Man With Two Faces is a movie with a plot that probably ought to have people screaming at the screen for making no sense and having no grounding in any sort of reality. Those are qualities that are less of a problem for comedies, scifi, or musicals, but in a dramatic mystery, there's something about it that should bring the movie crashing down around a fatal flaw. And yet, that doesn't happen with The Man With Two Faces. I think it's down to the acting of the main characters, especially Edward G. Robinson, who gets a juicy role here, and runs with it for all it's worth. Robinson singlehandedly takes dumb material and makes a film worth watching. I wouldn't call this as good as a lot of Robinson's other movies, but it's entertaining and certainly deserves a viewing.

The Man With Two Faces has been released to DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive collection.