by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2012 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
The film was Night Beat, a 1931 ultra-cheapie from Ralph M. Like’s Action
Pictures studio (a fly-by-night Depression-era indie that folded not long after
this film was made; their catalog was absorbed by Mayfair, another fly-by-night Depression indie that folded in a
year or two) and a gangster movie pretty obviously inspired by the success of Little
Caesar, released four months
before Night Beat came out December 27, 1931.
We watched it in an archive.org download that omitted the opening credits (I
did a quick search on imdb.com just to find out who directed — George B. Seitz
— wrote — W. Scott Darling — and starred in it) and ran only 55 minutes, but
Darling and Seitz (whose background stretched back to silent serials and who
would later sign with MGM and direct low-budget actioners for them) manage to
crowd a lot of plot into it.
The movie actually opens during World War I, where
Martin (Walter McGrail) and Johnny Malinas (Jack Mulhall, top-billed) are
serving together, Martin saves Johnny’s life and Johnny swears that when it’s
Martin’s turn to need a favor for him, Johnny will do anything he wants. Then
the film flashes forward to today, with Italian “French cleaner” (1930’s speak
for dry cleaner) Enricco Pommetti is celebrating the painting of a new sign on
his front window. We just know what’s going to happen: some slimeball from the “protection” racket
that has the unnamed (but quite obviously Los Angeles from the use of real
locations, including the hall of justice used 30 years later in Get Outta Town) city in its grip is going to approach Pommetti
for a payoff, and Pommetti — who gets a fascinating speech lamenting that he
left Italy in the first place to get away from “the Mafia — the Black Hand”
(Charles was startled to hear a specific reference to the Mafia in a 1931 film,
though it was specifically a reference to the Mafia in Italy and didn’t attribute it to organized crime in the
U.S.) only to find the same rackets going on in his new country. (He also is an
ardent supporter of Benito Mussolini, whom he admires as “the greatest Italian
ever” because, among other things, he got rid of the Mafia in its country of
origin — which is basically accurate; unfortunately, during World War II the
Allies brought it back, letting Lucky Luciano out of prison and allowing him to
return to his native Sicily to organize a resistance, which ironically took the
Mafia back to its original purpose: the name is an Italian abbreviation for
“Anti-French Society” and the Mafia was originally a resistance movement against
Napoleon’s occupation of Italy, and turned to crime after the Napoleonic wars
ended and they had to figure out some way to make a living.)
He’s delivering this speech to Martin, who’s now
the district attorney, and later on Martin gets the word that out-of-town
gangster Johnny Malinas is arriving in town with his gang — and, of course, the
fearsome gangster who’s there to take over the L.A. rackets and put their
current owner, Chill Scarpetti (Harry Cording), out of business is also
Martin’s old trench buddy from the Great War (which is what they called World
War I before there was a World War II). Martin enlists Jack to become a police
captain and run his force to take down Scarpetti’s rackets, and Johnny agrees
while telling his gang members that he’s only using Martin to get rid of
Scarpetti, after which he intends to double-cross Martin and take total control
of the rackets. Coupled with this plot line is the inevitable romantic triangle
in which Martin, who’s been dating his secretary Eleanor (Patsy Ruth Miller)
when he isn’t being called away on D.A. business, which seems to be most of the
time they plan to go out, asks Johnny to take her on one of the dates he’s had
to break — and, needless to say, Johnny and Eleanor start falling in love.
Though hamstrung by a strangulation-cheap budget — Charles noted the “rustic”
look of both the exterior and interior sets and figured Action Pictures simply
reused their standard Western sets — albeit disguised with some artful use of
stock footage (the opening World War I scene almost certainly came from some
bigger-budgeted major-studio film about the war), Night Beat is actually an oddly compelling film, raising
issues of loyalty and friendship that got developed further in later movies like Manhattan Melodrama, Angels with
Dirty Faces and The Roaring
Twenties.
The ending even
anticipates Douglas Sirk’s marvelous A Scandal in Paris by about 14 years; after keeping Martin, his gang
members and the audience in suspense as to exactly where his loyalties are going to end up, in the final
scene Johnny announces that he’s been on the level the whole time and he’s
wiping out the rackets rather than seeking to take them over. There’s a final
shootout in a warehouse, somewhat reminiscent of the nihilistic ending of The
Beast of the City — released two months later (which seems to have inspired the one-sentence
synopsis on imdb.com — “A young couple finds themselves mixed up with mobsters
planning to rob a warehouse” — which otherwise barely relates at all to this movie) — in which Scarpetti gets killed
but Johnny is fatally wounded, and there’s a tag scene in the hospital in which
Johnny tells Martin and Eleanor to get married and name their first-born son
after him. Well directed (especially given the budget, or lack of same) and
competently if not brilliantly acted, Night Beat is a surprisingly good movie for a 1931 indie,
especially one made by the same people who did the lame Gorilla Ship one year later. Incidentally, there’s some
confusion as to who was the cinematographer: imdb.com lists Edward Cronjager
but the American Film Institute Catalog lists his less well known uncle, Jules Cronjager — and since both
sources agree that Jules shot Gorilla Ship I’m inclined to give him, not his more famous nephew, the credit here
as well.
