The Secret 6

Another of the movies that's been sitting on my DVR that I didn't get around to watching is The Secret 6. Then I noticed that there was an upcoming recording of it scheduled, thanks to Youtube TV's recording every instance of a movie you add to your library until you remove it from the library. That second airing comes on tomorrow (September 5) at 4:30 PM, so with that in mind I made it a point to watch the copy that's already in the library in order to be able to do a review here.

The first thing I noticed that was interesting was the convention that studios had in those days of having one full screen listing a goodly portion of the cast. Johnny Mack Brown was near the top of that screen, several spots ahead of both Clark Gable and Ralph Bellamy. In fact this was Bellamy's first film. Gable's A Free Soul had not yet been released, which was really the movie that made Gable a star, hence his low billing.

In any case, the two men who get the real top billings are Wallace Beery and Lewis Stone. Stone plays Richard Newton, lawyer to a small-city group of bootleggers led by Johnny Franks (that's Bellamy, who looked familiar, although I was wondering whether I was missing something as why would the gang leader be billed so low). The gang brings in a new member, Louis Scorpio (Wallace Beery), who's amoral enough that you can see he's going to rise through the ranks.

However, Scorpio is also stupidly impulsive, which is a cause for alarm for Newton. Newton understands that you should remain relatively understated so that you can fly under the radar and not attract police attention. Scorpio expects to rise to the top in the small town, and then take on the big city, where the mob is led by Colimo (John Miljan, one of those early 30s actors who probably should have had a better career than he did). Eventually Johnny Franks gets killed in a shootout which enables Scorpio to take over the gang.

But the violence brings the attention not just of the police, but of some reports, including Hank Rogers (Johnny Mack Brown) and Carl Luckner (Clark Gable). Not only them, but a shadowy group of businessmen calling themselves the titular "Secret Six" who work with the police to try to bring Scorpio down.

Scorpio, being as blunt and uncouth as he is, something Wallace Beery could play well, tries to bribe people, either with a cigarette case filled with money or by using love in the form of having his cashier Anne (a young Jean Harlow) trying to seduce Hank. Anne eventually has second thoughts about it when she really falls in love with Hank and realizes how much danger he's in.

One of the many slightly odd things about The Secret 6 is that it's not really about the titular six businessmen. Having a movie be about a shadowy cabal that's on the side of "justice", or at least what the normies' perception of justice is, would have been a really interesting idea. And for some reason I distinctly recall seeing another early talkie with just such a theme, although I can't remember the title. Instead, we get another early crime picture, MGM obviously following in the footsteps of Warner Bros.' Little Caesar. Warner Bros. was better at making crime pictures than MGM, but thanks to the performances of Beery and Stone, the latter being cast against type, The Secret 6 isn't a bad little picture. Sure, it may be a bit creaky, but for anyone who likes early talkies, they'll like The Secret 6 too.