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.