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: