Crime does not pay (as well as it used to) #2

Friday’s always a most anticipated day here at Rancho Yesteryear, because that’s when the movies on CharredHer’s On Demand service are swapped out and I always like to see if there’s anything new on TCM On Demand. They added 12 Angry Men (1957—gosh…I don’t believe I’ve watched this one) and the best surprise—three Crime Does Not Pay two-reelers…two of which I had not previously seen. I wrote in an earlier post that TCM On Demand hasn’t been featuring as many shorts of late and now all of a sudden I’ve been able to peep five of these bad boys within the past three weeks. (I have a sneaking suspicion that we may be seeing a box set of Crime Does Not Pays from the Warner Archive very soon—so if I’m right, remember you saw it here first.)

The one I had seen, It May Happen to You (1937)—not to be confused with It Should Happen to You (1954), a Judy Holliday-Jack Lemmon comedy…or even It Could Happen to You (1994), which stars Nicolas “I’m a baaaaad lieutenant” Cage and Bridget Fonda—stars “that celebrated actor” J. Carrol Naish as a racketeer named Moxie (yes, the famed Stephen Cooke beverage of choice) who’s been involved in a series of highway hijackings but since the last attempted heist was foiled by The Man, he’s decided to take a new tack in his dedication to crime—and he gets an idea when one of his associates points out that an amateur boxer named Eddie works for a meat packing company.

Moxie talks the would-be pugilist into swiping the key that opens up the freezer compartment on the company’s trucks and having a duplicate made…allowing him and his fellow thugs to ambush the unsuspecting drivers by flattening their tires while they’re stopped at a crossroad. One of his gang comes by and offers to give the hapless trucker a lift to a gas station…and then Moxie and Company swipe the meat and sell it to an unscrupulous warehouse owner (Rollo Lloyd)—working through an intermediary played by TDOY’s favorite no-goodnik Clarence Wilson—who in turn peddles the dead animal flesh to other grocers.

“But, Ivan,” I can hear you saying at this point. “Wouldn’t such an enterprise require proper refrigeration so that the meat doesn’t become tainted?” I would then compliment you on how astute you are, because Moxie and his posse are convinced that all they have to do is throw some ice on the stolen beef and everything will be cherry. But such is not the case—an outbreak of ptomaine poisoning results from the bad meat, which arouses the suspicions of Captain of Detectives John Mallory (Guy Usher). Mallory and his team successfully track down Moxie and the members of his enterprise (Eddie Marr, Dick Rich, Emmett Vogan) and soon dispatch them…to the Big House—with Moxie taking a side trip to the gas chamber for croaking the sap that got them the freezer key in the first place.

I’ve mentioned on the blog in the past how big a kick I get out of watching these shorts—they’re mini-melodramas done in the hard-hitting social drama style of Warner Bros. but with the added element of M-G-M Louis B. Mayer-like moralizing. I also enjoy watching how events in these twenty-minute morality plays spiral out of control in true “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” fashion—and end up taking down loads of innocent bystanders in the process.

What Price Safety! (1938)—again, not to be confused with What Price Glory (1926) or What Price Hollywood? (1932)—tells the heart-rendering saga of J.Z. Wray (John Wray), a construction company owner who is victimized by a kingpin named Zuto (I know, it sounds like a pasta dish—but he’s played by Lionel Royce) heckbent on muscling in on his business. Zuto’s henchies sabotage Wray’s construction site as What Price gets underway, and because Wray’s business is hemorrhaging money, he’s forced to take on a silent partner (John Butler)…who secretly works for Zuto. The partner starts cutting corners by buying substandard building materials and firing longtime employees—and when Cooper (George Huston), his foreman, begins to suspect something isn’t kosher, he gets the sack as well.

Zuto and his goons are getting away with the slipshod construction because they have a crooked ally (Gordon Hart) in the Building Commission office—but when one of the inspectors (Harry Holden) turns up with a severe case of dead, Mr. District Attorney (in this case, Addison Richards) swings into action and launches a full investigation. Cooper is tabbed by the D.A. to act as a special investigator and he leads the Heat to Zuto—who we know is a bad dude by virtue of the fact that he has a foreign accent and is rather effete, running a flower shop. Mr. Zuto ends up planting a few posies…in the Big Garden outside the Big House as the two-reeler calls it a wrap.

Because I’ve logged in more hours watching monochromatic movies than any sane individual will in his/her lifetime, I can’t help but get the giggles when “the M-G-M Crime Reporter” (in What Price, it’s Philip Terry) introduces a “law enforcement official”—because that’s my cue (in this case) to holler back at the screen: “That’s no D.A.—that’s Addison Richards!” The Crime Does Not Pay shorts gave employment to a lot of working actors who inspire cries of “Hey, that’s the guy from (fill-in-the-blank)…” without you remembering their names. Take a look at The Unholy Three who play Zuto’s “associates”:

This is the best screen-grab I could get of these actors, but the gentleman on the right with his back to the camera is character great Ben Welden, and the thug on the left is luckless Joe Downing. The man in the middle is one of the best baddies in serialdom—none other than Anthony Warde. (A fourth henchman is played by the ubiquitous Emmett Vogan—an actor who is credited at the IMDb with nearly 500 roles…and I’ll bet a quarter to half of them were as low-rent hooligans.)

I’ve saved the best Crime Does Not Pay short for last—a stirring mellerdrammer entitled Respect the Law (1941). This one has a pretty big-name cast…well, “big-name” in the context of a two-reel short. As Law begins, that ol’ Crime Reporter introduces us to Dr. Walter Terriss—“health commissioner of a large coastal city.” You can say it with me now at home: “That’s no doctor—that’s Moroni Olsen!” Anyhoo, Terriss is about to tell us a tale of what Jackie Gleason in Smokey and the Bandit (1977) once observed as “a complete lack of respect for the law”:

One of the most insidious menaces operating against civic, state and national welfare in America is the attitude of unthinking individuals toward our complex system of laws and ordinances…now those laws have been placed upon the statute books only after long and careful deliberation by men who have devoted whole lifetimes to the job of lawmaking…all too frequently, the individual permits selfish indulgence to stand in the way of public welfare…failure to respect the law very often places the burden of one man’s selfishness upon the shoulders of the entire community…let me tell you of an actual case that happened right here in our city…

There’s a dissolve to a waterfront—but don’t go looking for Lee J. Cobb beating the snot out of Marlon Brando. Instead, we are transported to the offices of Johnson Waterfront Properties…where the president, Inspector Faraday George Johnson (Richard Lane), is examining a report by the Rodent Control Bureau:

Well, that can’t be good news. Johnson, like the big bidness capitalist swine he is, blanches at the cost of “rat-proofing” his docks, as the bill will come to $26,000 as estimated by his lackey (Charles Wagenheim):

JOHNSON (yelling): Twenty-six thousand dollars for rat-proofing? It’s an outrage!

LACKEY: But, Mr. Johnson…there’s a city ordinance…

JOHNSON (sneering): City ordinance! City ordinance! When taxes don’t run you out of business city ordinances do…some swivel-chair idiot gets a theory, and it costs me thousands of dollars…rat-proofing…

LACKEY: Well, what would you like me to do about it, Mr. Johnson?

JOHNSON (after a pause): I’ll take care of it…

Does Johnson bite the financial bullet and comply with the ordinance? Well, if he does so this short will be three minutes long. No, he arranges a meeting with the man who inspected his docks, Peter Brennan (Frank Orth), offering him a fat cigar…and a “retainer” totaling $2500 if Brennan will agree to consult with Johnson on a low-cost method of controlling the rodential population—in layman’s terms, file a report that says conditions around Castle Johnson are pest-free. Since Brennan is “only a poor corrupt official,” this arrangement proves quite satisfactory.

In the previously mentioned It May Happen to You, Captain Mallory waxes philosophic about “human rats worse than the carriers of bubonic plague”—which is rather appropriate, as that’s the direction this two-reeler is headed. A dockworker spots one of these “pedigreed Siberian hamsters” amongst the sacks he’s lifting and resists the urge to crush its widdle head with the poke he’s a-toting. (This dockworker, by the way, is played by John Raitt—future Broadway baritone and papa to rock ‘n’ roller Bonnie.)

Pete the dockworker should have killed the little varmint when he had the opportunity—because while lunching with a co-worker (Frank Mills), he begins to feel a little woozy...and passes out not long after. After being examined by a pair of docs (paradox?) in his apartment, one medico informs the other that he needs to put on a mask…’cause Petey boy has got a touch of the ol’ plague. Pete expires not too long after, and his entire existence is defined by a push pin on a map on a bulletin board in Terriss’ office…

FIRST REPORTER: Is the disease that killed this man the same plague that almost wiped out London in the Middle Ages?

TERRISS: Yes…but so far there’s just one isolated case—and we’re going to try to keep it from spreading…

SECOND REPORTER: How?

TERRISS: Well, the Department of Health institutes normal epidemic precautions—but most of the work’s done by the Rodent Control Bureau…

FIRST REPORTER: Why, by exterminating all the rats in town?

TERRISS: That’s physically impossible…there are twice as many rats as there are humans in the average American city…

Um…I don’t want to say anything before all the facts are in—but it sounds as if you people are seriously screwed. I hope there’s not a panic when word of this gets printed in the papers. Oh, I forgot—there’s no chance of that happening…Terriss tells the assembled members of the fourth estate to ixnay on the eportingray…that he wants them to tell their city editors to “play down the story.” That’s gonna go over like a fart at a funeral—“Hey, Tony—there’s a very good chance we may all die of bubonic plague…but let’s concentrate on the Gunderson-Barrett wedding reception, shall we?” (By the way—you might recognize that muckraker standing next to Terriss as a man who later moved to a town called Mayfield with his wife June, son Wally and some little mook nicknamed “Beaver.”) The reporters all file out of the doc’s office…and as if on cue, one of his lackeys (William Tannen) rushes in with a report that there are three more reported cases of you-know-what.

Punching a time clock at the ol’ Rodent Bureau, Brennan is asked by a supervisor how long has it been since he inspected his section of the waterfront. Brennan tells him it was a couple of weeks ago, and the supervisor suggests that he double-check…in fact, he’ll have a co-worker go over his section while Brennan eyeballs the territory of his fellow rat inspector. This doesn’t sit well with Brennan, who arranges to have a meeting with Johnson over hors d’oeurves and cocktails…

BRENNAN: I tell you, they’ll put me in jail…as soon as they get the report, they’ll know what I did…

JOHNSON: Stop acting like an old woman…you’re not in jail yet, and you won’t be…

BRENNAN: You got me into this—you’ve got to get me out…

JOHNSON: I’ll get you out…listen…I’ve got a cabin in the mountains…you’ll be safe there…just lay low and don’t make a move until you hear from me…I’ll send you out of the state when this plague scare blows over…

Looks like somebody had to send out for more push pins. As the plague epidemic escalates, people are dropping like flies…and Brennan’s supervisor informs Terriss that despite the lack of rat-proofing at Johnson Co. Brennan gave the jernt a clean bill of health. Terriss demands that Brennan be brought in for questioning—but the supervisor explains that his man has “disappeared” (we know, of course, that he’s safely tucked away in that cabin in the pines). So it’s time for Terriss to bring in the big guns…

Dum de dum dum. In a powwow with Johnson, Police Lieutenant Edward Macroy (William Forrest) gives Johnson everything but the rubber hose—but Johnson’s a cagey bastard and keeps cool during the interrogation. Stymied by Johnson’s refusal to come clean, Macroy remarks to his subordinate (Eddie Hart): “That man is responsible for this whole epidemic…and we can’t put a finger on him.” (Wah wah wah wah…)

People may be dying, but at least Staples is doing good business. The local authorities have had to cordon off sections of the city in quarantine, and Terriss and his assistant Mark emerge from a room inside a field hospital, we learn that a total of eighteen people have snuffed it thanks to that penny-pinching weasel Johnson and his cost-effective methods to control the rat population. Terriss gets a note from a passing nurse that the cops have located Brennan’s abandoned truck…and in the back were fourteen trapped rodents in rat traps—three of which have been diagnosed with plague. Such a sample means that there are “ten or twenty times that many” still roaming loose in Johnson City, and Terriss starts to pressure Macroy to step up the investigation into Brennan’s whereabouts. Without Johnson, the epidemic could become even more serious—Terriss remarks that what could result will make current conditions “look like a tea party.” Macroy knows that Johnson is responsible, but they’ve no evidence against him—so now they decide to use the power of the press to put the squeeze on Johnson…and flush Brennan out of his hidey-hole…

What is so threatening about this? If I were a kid and the schools were closed, I’d be doing handsprings…

That’s much better…

Hey, fellas—let’s not overdo this thing…

The radio industry gets in on the spread of plague news, too…a reporter (played by announcer John Wald) interviews a pathetic soul (George Guhl) who’s having to look after his grandchildren once his daughter and husband have come down with bube…the husband stands a chance of pulling through, but his wife…not so lucky. Johnson is listening to the broadcast at home with Mrs. J (Mary Currier) and begins to suffer a slight twinge of the guilts. A bereaved mother (Rosina Galli) who stands to lose her baby is up next, and her tale of woe further exacerbates Johnson’s remorseful conscience:

JOHNSON: At least we got Billy and Jane out of town…

MRS. JOHNSON: I know, but think of all the parents who couldn’t send their children away…

Too late! In fact, Johnson’s bags are not yet fully packed for his guilt trip…Macroy then steps up to the mike with an appeal to either Brennan or anyone who’ll be willing to rat him out (sorry…poor choice of words) that they desperately need his rat-proofing report so that they can put a stop to the plague and make the world safe for hypocrisy once again. “I should think that man’s conscience would be driving him crazy,” remarks Mrs. Johnson as her husband switches off the radio…

JOHNSON: Mary, maybe he didn’t realize what he was doing…

MRS. JOHNSON: Then why doesn’t he give himself up now?

JOHNSON I don’t know…but put yourself in his place…facing a jail sentence…that would mean disgrace to his whole family…

MRS. JOHNSON: But if he has a family they’re already disgraced…

All Johnson wants is “his life back,” but his better half argues that all that individual can do is “give himself up and save all those poor people.” The couple is interrupted with the arrival of Terriss’ stooge Mark and another unnamed Board of Health bureaucrat, who inform the man with the soul of a BP CEO that he needs to report to the field hospital for examination…since he’s been down at his office at the docks of recent, it’s possible he may have been exposed to the plague. (Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.)

But the whole examination is really just a setup; Terriss and Macroy have taken a page out of The Third Man playbook by allowing Johnson to see just what he hath wrought by trying to save a few pennies instead of going full high-on-the-hog for extermination. Arriving at the hospital, Macroy tells Johnson “we’ll just have to look inside all these rooms” until they locate the good doc…

Terriss finally emerges from the room of a sick child, and as Johnson reaches forward to shake his hand in introduction Terriss admonishes him: “Don’t touch me.” (Macroy explains that the doctor’s clothes are contaminated…but I’m not entirely convinced that’s the only reason the doc doesn’t want to be manhandled.) Terriss lays it on thicker by telling Johnson that there are five children that are down with the plague, and if he could save just one of them…well, now here’s the kicker…

…the little girl whom Johnson looked in on before is wheeled out by a pair of interns…and from then on, Johnson not only tells Terriss and Macroy where Brennan is hiding, but he admits to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, taking Judge Crater out of circulation and shooting down Amelia Earhart’s plane. Macroy, Terriss and the goon squad arrive at the cabin and knock on the door, giving out with the old “we’ve-got-the-place-surrounded-you-haven’t-a-chance-man” routine…and from inside the cabin, a shot rings out. They break down the door to find Brennan’s unconscious form lying on the floor…

Terriss examines the prone figure of Brennan, and announces that his heart is still beating—“We might be able to pull him through.” But he’s “liable to be unconscious for days,” according to the doctor (that is, assuming Brennan didn’t put that gun to his temple…then he’ll be unconscious for a hell of a lot more than just days)…and when Terriss asks Macroy to turn on the light, he stumbles across this missive on the desk near where Brennan’s sloppy carcass fell to the floor…

“Everything’s all right, Mac,” observes Terriss upon examining the contents of the envelope, “here’s his report. I guess he was just going to mail it in.” Sure…and he used the suicide weapon because there was a long line for stamps at the post office. The camera then does a whip pan to Terriss seated at his desk:

Brennan lived to receive a long prison sentence…and Johnson was also given the maximum penalty of the court…but he took with him to his cell an even greater punishment…the knowledge that his own selfish disregard for the law had brought ruin to his family…and suffering and death to the community in which he lived…to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people…is the fundamental aim of every law…and your responsibility to society…is respect for that law…

Thanks for the lecture…is this going to be on the test? I have a sneaking suspicion Johnson got himself a damn good mouthpiece who was able to convince the judge to send him to some country club prison where the only difficulty inside is getting a tennis court that’s not in use. (That’s just the cynic in me talking.)

Even though Respect the Law moralizes heavily in black-and-white (both literally and cinematically), I really enjoyed this little divertissement—particularly seeing Lane in a serious role, since I usually associate him with the comic relief in Columbia Pictures’ Boston Blackie film series or palling around with his partner Gus Schilling in the same studio’s two-reel comedy shorts. Brennan is played by character actor Frank Orth—who may be familiar to Dr, Kildare (the M-G-M film series, not the television show) fans as Mike Ryan, the proprietor of the saloon where the staff of Blair General Hospital used to unwind by throwing back a few after working a double shift. But in one of those eerie coincidences so prevalent in show bidness—it was Orth who played the role of Inspector Faraday in the television version of Boston Blackie. Cue the Twilight Zone theme!