Race Street (RKO, 1948)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (Tuesday, January 21), after Turner Classic Movies showed the 1946 film noir Nocturne, they followed it up with another George Raft starring vehicle as part of their “Star of the Month” tribute to him, Race Street (1948). Because it was set in San Francisco and because [spoiler alert!] Raft’s supposed girlfriend (Marilyn Maxwell) turns out to be a villain, in league with her supposedly “dead” husband (Frank Faylen) to run the “protection” racket aimed at driving all San Francisco’s bookies out of business unless they pay 25 percent of their income to be allowed to live and operate, it was tempting to see this film as an indication of how Raft might have done as Sam Spade in the 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon, a role he turned down because he didn’t want to work for a man – John Huston – who’d never directed a film before. Of course the comparison cuts both ways; it’s easy to imagine Race Street as a much better movie with Humphrey Bogart in Raft’s role! When I wrote the commentary below on January 11, 2006, I hadn’t seen Raft’s only performance in a story written by Dashiell Hammett, the 1935 version of The Glass Key, in which he’s O.K. but nothing special. I posted a review at https://moviemagg.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-glass-key-paramount-1935.html and I pretty much stand by it, though when I mentioned Race Street I got Raft’s profession wrong (he’s a bookie, not a private detective). Here’s what I had to say about Race Street the last time I saw it:

The film I picked was Race Street, an O.K. but somewhat intriguing RKO “B” from 1948, directed by the sometimes interesting Edwin L. Marin (his best films are his two starring vehicles for Reginald Owen, A Study in Scarlet and A Christmas Carol), written by future producer Martin Rackin from a story by Maurice Davis, and starring George Raft as San Francisco bookie Dan Gannin. The film is narrated in flashback by Gannin’s friend, Lt. Barney Runson of the San Francisco Police Department (William Bendix) and deals with Gannin’s efforts to get himself out of the bookmaking business and into legitimacy via a nightclub he’s opened called the “Turf Club” — in which he’s made his sister Elaine (Gale Robbins) and her dance partner his star entertainers — while at the same time romancing Robbie Lawrence (Marilyn Maxwell, blonde bombshell turned brunette femme fatale) and shielding himself and his other best friend, crippled fellow bookie Hal Towers (Henry Morgan, who even though 20 years younger than he was when he played his two most famous roles — Jack Webb’s partner in the 1960’s color iteration of Dragnet and Col. Potter on M*A*S*H — didn’t look that much younger, probably because even this early his hairline was already receding) from the efforts of a “protection” racket muscling its way into San Francisco and demanding a 25 percent cut from all the local bookies. It’s tempting to see this film as an indication of what The Maltese Falcon might have looked like with Raft as its star, not only because it’s set in San Francisco but because his character is an independent businessman with an arm’s-length relationship with a local police officer and [if I were writing this for imdb.com I’d have to insert a “spoiler” alert here!] Robbie Lawrence, his supposed girlfriend, turns out to be one of the masterminds of the protection racket, along with her husband, Phil Dickson (Frank Faylen, the marvelously twitchy nurse from Bellevue in the film The Lost Weekend), whom she told Gannin had been killed in World War II but is in fact very much alive and running the racket via a series of stooges.

Race Street is one of those movies I like to call film gris, because it’s attempting to be film noir but isn’t really “dark” or morally ambiguous enough to qualify — though there are some marvelously chilling scenes, notably one in which the goons from the protection racket kill Towers (who can walk, but limps due to a childhood accident) by tripping him at the top of a flight of stairs and letting him fall to the bottom. (This was one year after Kiss of Death started the trend for films in which disabled people were murdered by being thrown down stairs.) There’s also a good scene in which Gannin is taken to a meeting with the head of the protection racket and he’s blindfolded and driven in a sealed car (which makes one wonder how he recognizes the guy later even though he’s supposedly never seen him and has heard his voice only through a distorting voice box), and an ending built on a series of betrayals in which Gannin is shot and killed after not only his presumed girlfriend but also one of his best friends in the bookie business turn on him. (A comment on the imdb.com site from “Sol” from Brooklyn suggested that Raft had learned his lesson after turning down High Sierra because the Production Code people obliged his character to die at the end — more likely it was eight years later and Raft’s star had fallen low enough he could no longer afford to be as picky as he’d been when he turned down High Sierra, The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity.) With a stronger script that put Gannin through more angst over the betrayals — and, likely, a more sensitive actor than Raft who could have seized the opportunities of a deeper, richer script on this story than the one Rackin provided — Race Street could have been a memorable noir. As it is, it’s just another movie from Raft’s “down” years, hardly as interesting as Crack-Up or Nocturne but reasonably entertaining even if the yawning gulf between Raft and Humphrey Bogart in overall acting talent, emotional depth and “star” charisma is only accentuated by the San Francisco setting and the Maltese Falcon comparisons it inspires. — 1/11/06