They Drive By Night

Director Raoul Walsh

Humphrey Bogart

Ann Sheridan and George Raft

Ida Lupino

The line stretches around the block

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT                    B                                                                                USA  (95 mi)  1940 d:  Raoul Walsh

In the best films of Raoul Walsh, you can see the way he can put people into action . . .             where they don’t act but move and express, indirectly, subconsciously, their experience of life.                        What makes something happen?                                                                                                    The placement of the camera                                                                                                        The angle                                                                                                                                        The lens.                                                                                                                                        The distance of the camera from the scene.                                                                                The physical execution.

—Pierre Rissient, written lead-in inscription of Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood's Legendary Director (494 pages), by Marilyn Ann Moss, 2011

Despite being one of Warner Brothers most popular films of the early 40’s, it’s notable for Humphrey Bogart getting 4th billing, the last time that would happen, as he would go on to become the most popular Hollywood star not only of the 40’s, but by the end of the century the American Film Institute will vote him the greatest male movie star of all time (AFI's 100 YEARS…100 STARS | American Film Institute).  For that reason alone this film is a curiosity, also notable for being the first film made about the trucking business, viewed through a working class lens, a product of the hardships of the Depression, with wildcat truckers working for corrupt bosses that would cheat them out of wages and exploit their services, causing them to take enormous chances on the road, all suffering from sleep deprivation, barely ever setting foot in their own homes, constantly hauling produce up and down the coast of California, basically shifting a railroad economy to the highway, where farmers suffering foreclosures took to the road hauling the produce they once grew, one of the few viable alternatives for income.  Largely based upon the first novel of A. I. Bezzerides entitled The Long Haul in 1938, Bezzerides is perhaps best known for writing Jules Dassin’s THIEVES HIGHWAY (1949) and Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955), while also co-writing Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground (1952) and William Wellman’s TRACK OF THE CAT (1954).  This story is based upon his own experience growing up as a truck driver in California’s San Joaquin Valley, transporting fruit from grower to seller, going to the market to buy produce, where haggling over prices was routine, often victimized by packing houses blatantly undermining their prices, sowing the seeds of dissension among the ranks while painting an acute portrait of the cutthroat tactics of capitalism, becoming an uncondescending and largely unsentimental view of the working class.  The camaraderie between the truckers is firmly established, each trying to make a meager living, sharing work experiences, all in the same boat, all equally exploited (“always honest and always broke”), recognizing familiar faces, meeting at various roadside diners, scrupulously avoiding the loan sharks trying to repossess their trucks for a single missed payment, each having the same dream of one day owning their own truck and going independent.  While certainly the model for later trucker films like Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la Peur) (1953), this elusive, underlying theme of freedom on the road is part of the American landscape, most notably Jack Kerouac’s generation defining 1957 novel On the Road, perhaps most prominently expressed in counterculture youth pictures like Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969), Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces (1970), and Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), where freedom is always viewed as something undefinable that lies just over the horizon and is not easily attainable.  While those films ushered in an era of existential anti-heroes, Raoul Walsh retains the traditional format of heroic protagonist pursuing the American Dream, who in this film is George Raft as Joe, one of the two Fabrini brothers, the other being Paul (Humphrey Bogart), almost always on the road together with one driving while the other sleeps. 

Joe is the steadier of the two, the one with vision and a business acumen, living by his own credo “We’re tougher than any truck ever come off any assembly line,” while Paul incessantly complains about never being able to spend time with his wife Pearl (Gale Page), who in turn worries about him never being at home, gone for days on end, wishing he’d find a more conventional job where he’d come home every night.  While Paul may also want the same thing, he’s not going to leave his brother to fend for himself, particularly when there’s a chance they could get out from under their debt and actually start to make real money.  Early in the film the brothers suffer a mishap when some idiot ahead has veered into their lane, causing them to skid off the road, breaking a wheel.  Calling their boss from a nearby diner, asking him to wire money for repairs, the boss has other ideas, sending another driver to pick up their load, leaving the brothers stranded.  In the diner, however, they run into Cassie Hartley (Ann Sheridan) behind the counter, who is fending off men’s hands and leers and objectionable comments with apparent ease, a continuing example of the 30’s screwball comedy where a neverending stream of one-liners establishes the brisk pace of the film, while also introducing a complement of familiar truckers, including the overly friendly Irish (Roscoe Karns) and the sleep deprived McNamara (John Litel), a bit grumpy, ill at ease, as he’s obviously overworked, filling himself with coffee to no effect.  Joe is impressed by the way Cassie handles herself, taking a liking to her right away, but to her, he’s just another man to fend off.  After fixing their wheel, disgruntled that their load has been stolen from them by their own boss, they head back to San Francisco to settle the score, basically manhandling their boss for unpaid wages before heading to Los Angeles with another load, picking up a hitchhiker in the rain, none other than Cassie, whose own boss couldn’t keep his hands off her, so they all head to Los Angeles in seek of a brighter future, stopping at another familiar roadside diner where truckers seem to congregate.  In a driving rain, the brothers notice a familiar truck in front of them veering all over the road, McNamara, concluding he’s asleep at the wheel, trying to pull around to wake him up, but the truck crashes around a turn, tumbling down a steep embankment, eventually erupting in flames, killing both drivers inside.  Devastated by what they see, Paul is dropped off with his wife while the other two find a room together in LA, the beginning signs of a budding relationship, with Joe getting into a scrap with another driver, which impresses Ed Carlsen (Alan Hale), a longtime friend, whose wife Lana (Ida Lupino) takes more than a casual interest in Joe, suggesting they have history together, but Joe deflects her interest, steered into a lucrative load by Ed, picking his brother up along the way, making a handsome profit, even enough money to pay off the loan shark, finally starting to establish themselves.  But on the return trip Paul falls asleep at the wheel, losing an arm in the crash (sequence shot by Don Siegel), but their uninsured rig is totaled.  At the hospital, Pearl strangely finds the accident fortunate, as it will finally keep her husband at home, thinking it’s a small price to pay. 

Paul grows bitter at being treated as a charity case, yet Joe provides for all his needs, given a new job opportunity by Ed, who initially wanted to hire him as a driver, but his conniving wife convinces him he needs to hire him as a garage manager, selfishly allowing her more time with him, a decision with drastic consequences.  Lana undermines their marriage at every turn, hating her husband’s drinking habits and his interest in sharing his success with the drivers, enjoying their camaraderie more than the ice-cold looks he gets from his wife, who is viewed as a social climber, marrying for money and the prestige it brings, showing no interest whatsoever in her husband, fawning over Joe every chance she gets.  As for Raft, his portrayal of Joe is a little too saintly, too nice of a guy, hardly representative of someone from Hell’s Kitchen who grew up in the school of hard knocks, friends with mobster Dutch Schultz and a driver for childhood friend Owney Madden, delivering bootleg liquor during Prohibition.  His character has few rough edges, overly cleaned up, where he’s just too squeaky clean.  When Ed gets inebriated at a party, Lana drives him home, concocting a plan to leave him in the garage all night with the engine running, deftly conveying the mood almost entirely through her eyes, showing a melodramatic sign of remorse for the police, who call it an accidental death.  Enlisting Joe as a partner, he’s initially suspicious, knowing her real motives, but it’s a great business opportunity if they can keep it strictly business.  Moving Paul into a dispatcher position, the business thrives beyond their wildest dreams, with Joe and Cassie finally having the money to get married, a decision that leaves Lana devastated, as if punched in the gut, suddenly seeing all her scheming plans flying out the window, so she returns to the police claiming Joe forced her into murdering her husband, that he forcefully overwhelmed her and intimidated her.  Ida Lupino turns her into one of the most vile and wretched characters to ever grace the screen, synonymous with the lies and betrayals of a murderous Lady Macbeth who could never wash the blood off her hands, consumed by guilt and plagued by madness (You know the saying – Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned), she delivers a ballsy, off-the-wall, tour de force performance with exploding fireworks everywhere, like a walking time bomb that could detonate anytime.  Her erratic behavior starts slowly but builds to a climactic courtroom scene where she grows hysterical, spewing utter nonsense, creating a courtroom climate of utter chaos.  Before they can regain their collective breaths, all charges are dropped, with Lana sent to the funny farm.  Borrowing heavily from Archie Mayo’s BORDERTOWN (1935), there are similar plot points that seem fused into this picture (recycling scripts is a Hollywood studio tradition), feeling overly contrived, where the spontaneous freshness in the early dialogue sequences is replaced by a grim, overwrought melodrama that leads to a conventional ending.  Surprisingly, it’s the women who exhibit a hard edge in this picture, driving the storyline into even darker territory, with the men resorting to more conventional Hollywood caricature.  It was the final picture featuring Raft as a headliner star, soon to be replaced by Bogart, literally, as Raft turned down roles made famous by Bogart in his very next picture, HIGH SIERRA (1941), working again with Raoul Walsh, then again in THE MALTESE FALCOLN (1941) and CASABLANCA (1942), astonishing opportunities that made Bogart a star.  Raft even turned down the lead role in Billy Wilder’s fabulously successful Double Indemnity (1944), ushering in an era of film noir in American film.  Bogart’s success allowed Warners to let Raft walk away from his contract, but his career as a freelancer never blossomed. 

You and Me (1938)

Fritz Lang










YOU AND ME           B+                  

USA  (90 mi)  1938  d:  Fritz Lang

The big shots aren't little crooks like you. They're politicians.       
—Helen Dennis (Sylvia Sidney)

Fritz Lang is something of a film revelation, where he would be renowned if he was responsible for nothing more than the first science-fiction epic, the German Expressionist silent film masterpiece METROPOLIS (1927), using a cast of thousands, building enormous futuristic sets, utilizing what were at the time state-of-the-art special effects, an arduously difficult film to shoot, lasting over a year, which nearly bankrupted the studio (financed by UFA), culminating in a blistering critique of capitalism and its effects on the future, becoming one of the most influential of all silent films.  Shortly afterwards, Lang’s first sound film M (1931) is a chilling portrait of madness, murder, and vengeance, where the underworld and the police vie for a child murderer, a film way ahead of its time in its methodical, perfectly synchronized, psychological storytelling, where Peter Lorre as the compulsive murderer gives one of the great screen performances.  Lang himself considered this his finest work.  Shortly afterwards, the half-Jewish Lang (who was raised a Roman Catholic) was forced to leave the country once the Nazi’s rose to power, leaving immediately after rejecting propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’ offer to become the new head of UFA, now a Nazi German film industry, becoming instead one of Hollywood’s most outspoken anti-Nazi filmmakers.  Ironically, Lang was eventually blacklisted during the McCarthy era of the late 40’s and 50’s due to his known working relationship with German playwright Bertolt Brecht and other known communists.  Throughout his career, however, Lang thrived on dark themes, including the psychological effects of lies, abuse of power, revenge, a criminal underground, and trapped characters living in a cynical world.  Coming on the heels of Fury (1936), his first American film, a devastating indictment of mob violence, and YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (1937), a boldly fatalistic outlaw couple on the run film (which had a tremendous influence on the later development of postwar film noir, always shooting at night, featuring characters as doomed as the constant pouring of rain, where the intense scrutiny of their dark interior world couldn’t be more bleak), his third film YOU AND ME is instead something of a Brechtian romantic love story, featuring songs and musical numbers written by Brecht collaborator Kurt Weill, considered a critical flop in its day and reportedly Lang’s least favorite of his own films.             

Yet somehow, YOU AND ME remains one of Lang’s most personal works, especially the way it combines disparate elements of ill-fated romance with the deviant criminal underworld and the outward extravagance of Brecht’s musical theater into a kind of melodramatic B-movie setting that actually endorses capitalism as a way out of the Depression, becoming one of the more ambitiously experimental Hollywood films of the 30’s, even if the whole never equals the sum of its parts.  If it’s not one of Lang’s greatest works, it is among his most unusual efforts, where it’s a jumbled mix of something you just don’t see everyday.  Set during the Depression, the opening sequence itself is a scathing indictment of capitalism set to song, Kurt Weill’s “Song of the Cash Register,” where the uncredited tenor sounds thunderously dramatic like Jan Peerce, leading to an impressive montage of cash registers, retail items and consumer goods, driving home the point that nothing in life is free, everything has a price tag, set to an abstract set of images that are deeply comical, accentuating flamboyant hairstyles of the 30’s, where customers must pay for everything from the most ridiculous and sublime to the most common ordinary needs.  If one gets their hopes up that the suggested anti-capitalist theme will pervade throughout, you’d be sadly disappointed, as instead the unsung hero behind the scenes is the capitalist owner of a successful chain of department stores, Mr. Morris (Harry Carey), whose philanthropist leanings, much to his wife’s displeasure, includes the unusual habit of hiring ex-cons who have successfully served their time, where a job offering allows them a new start and a sense of moral renewal.  The convicts are sales clerks scattered throughout the store, amusingly shown still exhibiting signs of their criminal expertise in making their sales pitch, where tough talking gangster George Raft as Joe tells a perspective customer “There isn’t a racket I haven’t tried.”  But as the camera pulls back, he’s selling tennis rackets in the sporting good section.  Instead of taking an interest in the attractive blond (Joyce Compton), the film alters course with a superbly constructed, fleeting moment, hand holding scene on escalators moving in opposite directions INSTANTES: You and Me (1938, Fritz Lang) - YouTube (28 seconds), a sexy lead-in to his sweetheart Helen (Sylvia Sidney).

Wasting no time, they quickly get married, seen mostly through the transformative eyes of Joe, perhaps motivated by a strangely curious date with Helen where the downbeat, melancholic torch singer Carol Paige pays weary tribute to falling for the wrong kind of guys (another Weill effort conjuring up Pabst’s down and out THE THREE PENNY OPERA [1931] images of Berlin in the 20’s), never dreaming his days as a convict in jail would somehow lead to newfound respectability, though what he doesn’t know is Helen is herself an ex-con.  In an unusual gesture rarely seen in American films of the era that often reflect a prevailing anti-Semitic sentiment, Lang includes sympathetic Jewish characters, Helen’s nosy yet overly affectionate landlady and her husband (Vera Gordon and Egon Brecher).  But when Joe discovers the truth about Helen’s hidden secret, he dovetails back into the criminal underworld, where in a priceless sequence, all the ex-cons from the store have been waiting for him in a mob bar, where they reminisce through jail chatter in song, inventing a kind of percussive, rhythmic chant, a numerical code that inmates use to communicate with one another while incarcerated, imitating knocking on the walls, a stupefyingly euphoric number called “Stick to the Mob,” where once you’re in, you’re never out, where the boys decide to do what they do best, rob Morris’s department store.  Morris captures them red-handed, however, alerted by inside information forwarded to Helen, where he agrees not to send them back to jail if they can sit through Helen’s reformative, on-the-spot, midnight chalkboard lecture (in the Toy section, no less!) on why Crime Does Not Pay.  Using a Brechtian underworld socioeconomic critique, it becomes a cost analysis on the detrimental effects of living a life of crime, where the hidden costs to pay off all the crooks involved outweigh the benefits, where capitalism is subversively expressed as a Ponzi pyramid scheme, where only the ones at the top survive, where Number One (a bribed politician acting on someone’s behalf) always gets their cut, staying out of jail by paying for the best lawyers in town, while the disposable foot soldiers taking all the risks end up fighting among themselves over the remaining crumbs.  In this oddly charming vision of the ever elusive American Dream, Morris’s investment in corporate ownership succeeds while the low paying foot soldiers falter, criminal or otherwise, where even moral redemption, paying your debt to society, comes at a high cost, as the only choice the working stiffs of the world have is to become slaves working for the Man.  “No I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm no more.”  Bob Dylan - Maggie's Farm YouTube (3:58).

One, Two, Three

ONE, TWO, THREE               B+                  

USA  (115 mi)  1961  ‘Scope  d:  Billy Wilder

On Sunday, August 13th, 1961, the eyes of America were on the nation’s capital, where Roger Maris was hitting home runs #44 and 45 against the Senators. On that same day, without any warning, the East German Communists sealed off the border between East and West Berlin. I only mention this to show the kind of people we’re dealing with—REAL SHIFTY!     — C.R. MacNamara (James Cagney)

Working relentlessly at breakneck speed, Wilder delivers a comic romp not seen since the Marx Brothers, a free for all of unparalleled mayhem, something reminiscent of Howard Hawks’ madcap screwball comedy BRINGING UP BABY (1938) or the Coen Brother’s irreverent antics in O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (2000), where the film reels off one-liners as if the screenwriters were getting paid by the joke.  The frantic pace is hilarious, as is the use of James Cagney as the corporate emblem of America, synonymous with the product Coca Cola.  What’s weaker here is the overall level of acting, much of it downright pathetic, which may actually add some level of sick cultish appeal to the film.  While many of Wilder’s films have a timeless feel about them and feel as fresh today as when they were written, this is not one of them.  Filmed almost entirely in Berlin, the city Wilder left three decades ago with the anti-Semitic rise of Nazism, this movie relentlessly exploits the politics of the Cold War, making it unfashionably out of date, more of a period piece that may suffer from a time warp.  For those who can set aside today for a glimpse into yesteryear, the experience is not much different than Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE OR:  HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964), which is the penultimate Cold War exposé.  While Wilder’s breakneck pace is more frantic and his jokes neverending, like a cheap burlesque routine, Kubrick’s vision is more icily chilling, smart and superbly rendered, well acted and brilliantly conceived, with an unforgettable finale, an ending to end all endings.  This film is simply not in that league, pitting capitalism against communism, targeting American imperialism as capitalist pigs with “Yankee Go Home” slogans referenced throughout, made at the height of the Cold War when the Berlin Wall was actually constructed during the middle of the shooting, sealing off the East Germans from the West, requiring extensive on-the-spot screenplay and set adjustments, rebuilding the Brandenburg Gate in Munich.    

Opening with the Saber Dance Sabre Dance - Aram Khachaturian - YouTube (2:25), conducted to full effect by musical director André Previn, a kickass, frenetic theme that plays throughout the movie, few films ever made match this kind of delirious non-stop energy, and most, including this one, have momentary let downs where the pace simply can’t keep up.  Cagney, C.R. MacNamara, affectionately known as Mein Führer by his wife, Arlene Francis, is the tyrannical head of Coca Cola in Berlin who dreams of being the first entrepreneur to break into the untapped markets behind the Iron Curtain.  His every move is satirized, as is the German staff efficiency, where Schlemmer (Hans Lothar), his right hand man, clicks his heels with each new command, while Fräulein Ingeborg (Liselotte Pulver), the curvaceous blond secretary sets the tone for a sex farce, exactly as Lee Meredith did as Ulla with Zero Mostel in THE PRODUCERS (1968).  Hilariously, Cagney’s office features a “Yankee Doodle Dandy” cuckoo clock where Uncle Sam pops out.  The entire premise of the film is Cagney barking out orders at a furious pace where underlings jump into action trying to obey his every command.  It plays like a three ring circus, as people are literally stepping over one another in choreographed pandemonium, where the dialogue driven film is a nonstop torrent of one-liners, zingers that leave one breathless after awhile.  Wilder devises an exaggerated soap opera for the theme, as the Atlanta executive in charge of Coca Cola (Howard St. John) phones MacNamara to inform him of the arrival of his 17-year old daughter in Berlin, Pamela Tiffin as Scarlett, asking him to look after her for a few days.  Without anyone’s knowledge, she stays for months, secretly meeting a communist boyfriend across the border, Horst Buchholz as Otto Piffl, lured by his outlandish views, calling her a “typical bourgeois parasite, and the rotten fruit of a corrupt civilization.  So naturally, I fell in love with him.”  At one point, down in the dumps, thinking his career is over, Cagney quips “Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?” an Edward G. Robinson line from LITTLE CAESAR (1931).  Later in the film Red Buttons has a cameo where he does a Cagney “You dirty rat” imitation in front of Cagney, as someone similarly did a George Raft imitation in front of Raft in SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959).   

What follows is Cagney trying to put the lid on this budding international scandal, at first getting Otto out of the way, setting up the poor guy’s arrest by the East German police, where he is tortured by being forced to listen endlessly to the bubble gum sounds of Brian Hyland - Itsy bitsy teenie weenie Yellow polka dot bikini ... YouTube (2:27).  But when Cagney quickly learns that Scarlett’s pregnant and married, he has to embark on a secret mission into the bowels of communist East Berlin to get him back, making excellent use of real locations, especially the burnt out ruins on the East German side of the Potsdamer Platz, all set to the music of Wagner’s Die Walküre shown here (under noiseinthemirror) one, two, three | Tumblr on YouTube (6:43), embellished even further when they meet Russian trade ambassadors at the Grand Hotel Potemkin, where in the smoky ruin of a burned out café, a weary dance band plays a German version of “Yes, We have No Bananas” with a few deadbeats dancing in slow motion while aged comrades sit completely undisturbed playing chess.  Smuggling Otto out of an East Berlin jail is just the beginning, as the pace slackens a bit in a battle of wits with the infuriorated Otto, who defiantly proclaims “Capitalism is like a dead herring in the moonlight, it shines, but it stinks.”  In a furious attempt to take the Bolshevik out of the boy and make him more presentable to his family, as his future in-laws are arriving the next day, Cagney has his work cut out for him.  Engaging the full force of the Western front to accomplish the task, Cagney sneers “That’s just what the world needs, another bouncing, baby Bolshevik.”  This is a completely cynical piece on East-West relations, so when Cagney puts his stamp of family approval and places Otto in charge of a Coca Cola plant, who then immediately vows to lead the workers in revolt, yet stands there ridiculously bare-legged, Cagney snaps at him “Put your pants on, Spartacus.” While the film is zany and clever throughout, it never rises to more than a theatrical set piece, as most of the action takes place with people standing around in a room, or running breathlessly in or out, creating an exaggerated sense of melodramatic hysteria, but interesting in the way Wilder takes a real international crisis and works it into his movie, spouting silly philosophic gems like “Look at it this way, any world that can produce the Taj Mahal, William Shakespeare, and striped toothpaste can’t be all bad.”

The Glass Key (1935)

THE GLASS KEY             C+            

USA  (80 mi)  1935  d:  Frank Tuttle

Not to be confused with the later version of this film, which was remade in 1942 with Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd (as the wrong film was shipped to the theater), this is basically the same story, adapted from a Dashiell Hammett novel, considered one of his best, but this rarer, earlier version omits the love interest, which was expanded to make room for a more noirish version, complete with Lake as a femme fatale.  George Raft grew up in Hell’s Kitchen in New York and hung out with professional gangsters, such as Owney Madden and Arnold Rothstein, learning to imitate their mannerisms before breaking into films, initially as a dancer during the Vaudeville era before landing a part in the gangster classic SCARFACE (1932), playing a coin-flipping gunman.  No one wore hats better, or wore better hats, than George Raft.  He was given the lead in this picture, though he plays Ed Beaumont, a man of dubious character who likes to spend his evenings drinking rye whiskey and winning money at rigged roulette wheels, whose relationship to political boss Paul Madvig (Edward Arnold) is never made clear, though he appears to be his protection, the muscle, the right hand man who is always at the boss’s side, showing little distinction between politics and the portrayal of mob bosses.  Raft was actually the first consideration as Sam Spade in THE MALTESE FALCON (1941), but he turned it down, opening the doors to a man named Bogart.  Set during or just after the Prohibition Era, when saloons appear to be nothing more than all-male speakeasy’s, Madvig tries to clean up the city and shuts down some illicit gambling joints, where the owner, Shad O’Rory (Robert Gleckler), along with his muscle, Jeff (Guinn “Big Boy” Williams), don’t take kindly to the action and swear to get even.  This sets the wheels in motion for a blood feud.

Adding to the mystery is Madvig’s support of Senator John T. Henry (Charles Richman), whose daughter Janet (Claire Dodd) he’d like to marry (the role expanded for Veronica Lake), and whose son, Taylor Henry (Ray Milland), is something of a family embarrassment, as he owes plenty of money to loan sharks like O’Rory, putting his father in a precarious predicament.  When Madvig’s daughter Opal (Rosalind Keith) expresses a romantic interest in Taylor, who happens to be standing in the way of Madvig’s desires for Janet, Madvig in a rage decides to set matters straight.  When Taylor Henry ends up dead, Madvig is immediately implicated, as he was the last one seen with Taylor in an angry public dispute on the street.  With the election coming up, the newspapers have a field day at Madvig’s expense, where much of the story is advanced through developing headlines, with O’Rory continuing to feed the paper anonymous tips.  Only when it appears the tide has turned against Madvig, who has been publicly convicted by the press, does Beaumont spring into action masterminding a crafty, behind-the-scenes operation to uncover what evidence O’Rory actually has, which isn’t much except a witness to the arguing.  But that’s plenty with just a few days before the election.  O’Rory, however, is not satisfied, and when he can’t pay off Beaumont to rat on his friend, he sicks his dog and his muscle on him, repeatedly beating him to a pulp, trying to manufacture a witness to the murder.  When he somehow manages to slip away and is treated in the hospital, Ann Sheridan shows some sass with some terrific lines as his nurse.  After rounding up all the available suspects and witnesses having any knowledge in the murder, it all comes together in an Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot style interrogation with Beaumont inventively taking the lead. 

This particular version has little inventiveness or star power, but Raft is convincing as a guy who would feel right at home in Scorsese’s GOODFELLAS (1990), while major elements of this film can be detected in the Coen Brothers highly stylized gangster flick MILLERS CROSSING (1990), also set in the Prohibition era, where one guy lays it all on the line, switching loyalties to the other side, attempting to bring peace to a long standing blood feud between warring gangs, also sounding like the blueprint to Kurosawa's YOJIMBO (1961).