Thrilling Days of Yesteryear: Almost the Truth—The Lawyer's Cut

Saturday, July 28, 2012

The Green Hornet – Chapter 10: Bullets and Ballots


OUR STORY SO FAR: Britt Reid (Gordon Jones), Axford (Wade Boteler) and Jenks (Philip Trent) go to the Mortinson place on an anonymous tip that it is “the hideout of The Green Hornet.”  Outside the house, Reid makes an excuse to leave Jenks and Axford.  Donning the Hornet garb, brought by Kato (Keye Luke), he enters the house, surprising three gunmen ambushed there.  A fight follows, and the gangsters escape as Jenks and Axford rush in.  Cornered by his own friends, The Hornet hides in a closet.  But Axford has seen him enter and rushing to the door with drawn gun…

…fires into the closet and manages to hit a bottle of inconveniently stored acid, which starts to create a toxic cloud of fumes inside the limited space.  But worry not, faithful Serial Saturdays readers—there also just so happens to be a window inside that very closet that the Hornet is able to open so he doesn’t suffocate…and what’s more, by whistling for Kato, he manages to strip himself of his Hornet outfit and once more become playboy publisher Britt Reid by tossing that regalia to the waiting houseboy below.  On the outside of the closet, Axford gains entrance with a handy bit of objet d’art that he finds on a nearby table; smashing a hole in the closet door, he opens it up to find the “unconscious” publisher lying on the floor.

AXFORD: Reid!  What are you…where’s the Hornet?  Oh, don’t tell me I killed ya…
REID (acting dazed as Axford helps him to his feet): Green Hornet?  I had him trapped…tried to overpower him…he escaped through that window…



AXFORD: Well…how in the world did he ever get through there?

He lost seventy-five pounds and three feet off his frame.  In a hurry.  Meanwhile, Kato has doubled back to the Black Beauty and he speeds off, sounding the buzzing of the motor.

AXFORD: And there he goes…sure, he must be the Devil himself…you sure none of my bullets hit ya, Reid?

“Not even close, Michael…I know what a piss-poor shot you are…”  Jenks arrives as Axford helps Reid out of the closet.

REID: No…I’m all right…
AXFORD: That’s twice The Green Hornet has slipped through me fingers…
REID: He’s as slippery as an eel, Michael…he got away from me, too…
AXFORD: And nearly with ya, from the looks of ya…

“Well, I guess there’s nothing left to do but be on our way,” Reid tells both his bodyguard and ace reporter…hoping they won’t examine that bogus out-the-window story too closely.  See, we have other fish to fry as this week’s chapter, “Bullets and Ballots,” unfolds—not be confused with the 1936 Warner Bros release Bullets or Ballots starring Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart.  For starters, the Warner’s picture makes you choose between ammunition or slips of paper (you don’t get both).  It also has first-rate turns from TDOY faves Joan Blondell and Louise Beavers, who pretty much steal the show.  The only similarity between these two films is that Anne Nagel, who plays the part of secretary Lenore “Casey” Case in The Green Hornet, has a bit role in the 1936 Bullets (not to mention Joseph Crehan, who plays Judge Stanton, and Ralph Dunn, aka “Andrew T. Thug”) as a bank secretary.  So as the scene shifts to the outside office of publisher Reid, we find her plying her trade and chatting it up with reporter Jenks.

CASEY: So you got the Green Hornet, eh?  Nice going, Jenks!
JENKS: Yeah, you seem kind of glad he got away…
CASEY: Well, maybe I am…and if you ask me, I think he’s giving the crooks a run for their money…
JENKS: Yeah?  Well, wait until after the election and watch the Canby administration give the Green Hornet a run for his money…
CASEY: You talk as if John Canby were already elected!
JENKS: It’s in the bag, Casey…because that boy has promised to really clean up the town!

“My first act as Mayor will be to allocate funds to hire an additional 5,000 custodial engineers!”  This riveting political argument is interrupted by the arrival of professional marksman Michael Axford…

AXFORD: Casey…Reid’s in his office, isn’t he?
CASEY: He’s with Judge Stanton… (She enunciates these nest words) Head of the...non…partisan…voters…league…

“Sufferin’ mackerels…” exclaims Axford, and the scene shifts to the chinwag between Stanton (Joseph Crehan) and Reid:

STANTON: …even at this late hour…if The Sentinel will come out in favor of Hargrave, he’d be elected mayor tomorrow…
REID: Why should The Sentinel take a stand against Canby, his opponent?  He has a clean record…
STANTON: I have reason to believe that every crook in town is backing Canby…

Hey…crooks are entitled to representation, too.

REID: Have you any definite proof of that?
STANTON: No…

“I was hoping to change your mind on the basis of innuendo and hearsay…”

REID: I’m sorry, Judge…unless you can bring forward definite proof, The Sentinel will have to maintain its neutral stance…
STANTON: You’re making a mistake, Reid…

Well, of course he is.  That’s the way these serial chapters work—Reid won’t see the light until the midway point.  So Stanton is escorted out of the publisher’s office, and we are transported to the Bradley Building, the crooked edifice that houses the office of Curtis Monroe (Cy Kendall), crime kingpin.  He is conferring with one of his esteemed crooked associates, Joe Ogden (Arthur Loft), who is nervously pacing the office.

MONROE (studying a ledger): Ogden, these figures gathered from Canby’s precinct captains indicate his election…
OGDEN: Then it’s in the bag?
MONROE: We’ve got to make sure…sit down… (Spreading out a newspaper) In these wards here, we’ve got to muster more sure votes for Canby…
OGDEN: Aw, that’ll be a cinch…the boys have made enough false registrations to elect an alley cat mayor…

“Meow meow…meow meow meow…meow meow!” (Translation: “My first act as Mayor will be to allocate funds for an additional 5,000 mousetraps!”)

MONROE: Well, if we can make Canby mayor our syndicate will clean up millions
OGDEN: Yeah…and it’ll be easier to get rid of Britt Reid and The Green Hornet!


I guess that “clean up millions” reference is what Jenks meant when he told Casey Canby was the only guy able to “clean up” that town.  The scene then shifts to a busy street front, and you’ll notice in the above screen cap that the Lynch Real Estate Company is, as I mentioned last week, right next to the Lynch Cleaning and Dyeing establishment.  But that’s not the interesting news…


…the Lynch laundry company has been transformed into a voting precinct despite having been ravaged by fire in the last chapter!  If this Hargrave guy is the incumbent mayor, I say he deserves another term simply for being able to make necessary civic improvements in the span of one week!

Inside the precinct, Reid and Axford have shown up to exercise their privilege to vote.  Reid’s greeted warmly by the precinct captain (Ed Cassidy), who tells our hero that the vote is “coming in heavy.”  “That’s fine,” replies Reid.  “I’m always glad to see people take an interest in civic affairs.”

ELECTION JUDGE (to a co-worker as Reid goes over to a booth to make his selections): That’s Britt Reid of The Sentinel…he’s done more for this town than any man I know of…
AXFORD: That’s a true word for ya—he’s done just that!

“And that’s Michael Axford of The Sentinel—he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.”  Axford takes his ballot over to one of the booths, and as the two paper employees vote two sinister-looking gentlemen enter the precinct.  When the captain asks them their names, one of them replies: “Scanlon…George Scanlon…”


“Scanlon” is played by character great Bob Kortman, who provided villainy for B-westerns and serials dating all the way back to the silents.  His serials include (but are not limited to) The Vanishing Legion, The Whispering Shadow, The Vigilantes are Coming, Secret Agent X-9 (the 1937 version), Wild West Days and Zorro Rides Again.  It’s a little hard to tell from the above screen cap but he is stuffing the ballot box at the precinct, and the gentleman accompanying him does the same over the protests of the election judge…who ends up on the floor after receiving a sock from Mr. Scanlon.  The two henchmen then hurriedly depart the scene and into a nearby car…Axford chases after them and fires a shot in their direction, but because of his lackluster shooting prowess he’s forced to take down the license number of the car.

Reid catches up with Axford, who is standing outside near a vendor’s wagon when another car zooms by and opens fire on the two men (three, counting the vendor).  A patrol car is not too far behind, and pulling over to the wagon the patrolman (Brick Sullivan) asks Michael what’s going on.  “Ballot stuffin’ and attempted murder,” replies Axford in his brogue.  “That car, pullin’ away there!”  Reid tells Axford to call an ambulance and stay by the vendor’s wagon while he takes after the car. 

We don’t see what happens after that, for in the next scene finds Reid dictating a story to Casey as Axford looks on.

REID: …evidence of intimidation…and corruption…in all precincts…four men have been killed…and a dozen others sent to hospitals…that’s all, Miss Case—transcribe it and get a rewrite man on it…
CASEY: Yes, sir…

As Casey gets up to leave, the circulation-obsessed editor Gunnigan (Joe Whitehead) arrives and sits down in the chair she occupied.

REID (to Gunnigan): I want an extra out on the street as quickly as possible…Judge Stanton was right—the criminal element of this city is lined up solidly behind Canby!
(Jenks has entered the office)
GUNNIGAN: No casualties among the Canby people, eh?
REID: Not one…
JENKS: That’s not all—the Canby crowd are voting ghosts!
REID: You sure of that?
JENKS: Dead sure!  The registration lists have names of people who’ve been dead for years!
REID (hitting his desk for emphasis): I want an extra on the streets quickly!
GUNNIGAN: On my way!  (He gets up from his chair and heads out of the office)

Reid then tells Axford to go fetch his car, and instructs Jenks to grab a camera and meet him downstairs in five minutes—there’s news to be reported!  The next scene finds the three men outside one of the city precincts, watching as a car pulls up.  “Say…that car looks familiar,” remarks Jenks, holding the camera in his hands as they watch a group of men exit the vehicle and walk into the building.  “Thought so,” remarks Jenks to his boss, “those birds are repeaters—that’s the third polling place I’ve seen them go into today!”  They wait for the men to conduct their voting business, and as they leave the polling place Jenks surreptitiously snaps a photo of them with the camera.  Reid then motions for Axford and Jenks to follow him, and in a scene change the three of them wind up at another precinct outside a drugstore.  The car they spotted previously comes zipping around the corner, tires a-squealing.

AXFORD (pointing at the vehicle): Here comes that same car!
JENKS (grabbing Axford’s arm): Look, Man of Action…don’t point!  It isn’t good manners, and you’re liable to get our blocks knocked off…
REID: You think that car contains the same men we saw voting at the last polling place?
JENKS: Absolutely!
(The men emerge from the automobile)
REID: Well, you’re wrong, Jenks…that’s the same car but they’re not the same men…they’re not repeaters…
JENKS: Keep your shirt on, boss…get to the car and be ready for a quick getaway…


Reid looks at Axford and shrugs, then makes tracks for the car.  Before Axford can follow him, Jenks pulls him to one side and whispers something in his ear…prompting Axford to give Jenks an “I gotcha” look.  Axford walks over to the entrance of the polling place, and when the men emerge from the building he asks one of them “Hey, buddy—got a match?”  Axford then reaches up and pulls a mask off one of the men…revealing him to be Lon Chaney!  No, wait…I have my movies mixed up—it’s one of the same guys from the earlier polling place, and after Jenks snaps his picture again with his trusty camera he and Axford start running for Reid’s automobile, which peels out and heads down the street.  The “repeaters” take off after them, and as Reid’s car speeds along with Jenks at the wheel, Reid himself is positioned along the running board.

REID: You were right, Jenks—they are repeaters!  Voting twice in the same place but disguising themselves with masks!
AXFORD: Well, what are we runnin’ away for?
REID: Gotta save these pictures…they’re valuable evidence… (Looking behind to see the other car is gaining on them) Pull over to that car!

Jenks maneuvers Reid’s car alongside another car traveling down the street, and Reid jumps off the running board into the back of that car…which for some odd reason does not surprise the hell out of the guy driving it.  As Jenks and Axford continue on, the car containing the dishonest voting henchmen eventually catches up to them and the henchies pile out of the vehicle, throwing punches and knocking Jenks to the ground.  Two of them have grabbed Axford as a third begins to give him a proper pummeling when he interrupts his beating with “If it’s the camera you’re wantin’, it’s at the Sentinel office by now!”  The sounds of sirens in the distance signal to the “repeaters” that they don’t want to stick around and meet the nice policemen, and so they beat a hasty retreat.  Helping Jenks to his feet, Axford assures him everything is hunky-dunky: “It’s okay, Jenks…I run them hoodlums away.”

The “repeaters” incident makes for good Sentinel copy, as these headlines indicate:


But that last one should give the reader pause in that even when you do expose corruption it matters very little in the long run.  There is a brief shot of Monroe congratulating Canby on his success, and informing him: “Come over in the morning and I’ll give you a list of appointments I want you to make.”  (Indeed.)

Certainly there’s something that can be done about this travesty…isn’t there?  Well, the words coming from the District Attorney (Selmer Jackson) aren’t encouraging…

REID: You’re the District Attorney…and there’s plenty of evidence to wholesale fraud in this election…

Remember this, good people—never pay retail for fraud.

DISTRICT ATTORNEY: What do you want me to do?
REID: Subpoena the ballots and put them in a safe place!
DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Why?
REID: So we can fingerprint them and prove illegal handling!
DISTRICT ATTORNEY: That’s a great idea…

Yeah, darn nice of Reid to do your job for you.  (If this guy was up for re-election, maybe we’d be better off allowing the election to stand.)

DISTRICT ATTORNEY: …but it will take two days to obtain possession of those ballots through a court order…

Buh-what now?  Dude, you’re the D.A.—surely you can grease the wheels of justice a little faster than that…

REID: Well, that won’t do…the minute the gang in back of Canby find out they’re going to be subpoenaed they’ll destroy them…
DISTRICT ATTORNEY: I’m afraid that’s the best I can do…

“…particularly since I’m depositing checks from Diebold…”  This next headline…


…would seem to indicate that somebody in the D.A.’s office is a leaker, and since Monroe Enterprises is pretty good about paying their newspaper subscription bill in a timely fashion, this news doesn’t escape Curtis’ attention.

MONROE: Ogden, those ballots have got to be destroyed tonight!
OGDEN: Where are they now?
MONROE: Stored in the Tri-State Warehouse…

“Tri-State…storing your criminal documents for nearly a quarter of a century…”

OGDEN: The warehouse might burn down…

Okay, the way actor Loft delivered this line—complete with lazy grin—made me laugh out loud because it sounded slightly Pythonesque (“Be a shame if someone were to set fire to it…”); I think I’m going to start using that “might burn down” line in real life from now on.

MONROE: No…the fire might be put out before the ballots were destroyed…you better have the boys hijack them out of the warehouse and burn them on the road somewhere…
OGDEN (starting to dial the telephone): Okay…Dean will know how to handle it…

“But we are still going to burn the documents, right!”  The “Dean” to whom Ogden is referring is a henchman played by Walter McGrail, your typical serial goon who, while proving to be inept at carrying out any sort of deviltry dictated by the head man, manages to escape being caught by the hero in order to prolong this serial for the full thirteen chapters.  We’ll meet Dean and his associates in a sec, but the tableau has now shifted to the apartment of Britt Reid…who is not told by his valet Kato to go jump in the lake when he instructs his manservant to “get the Hornet’s disguise.”


REID (on the telephone): Hello…Banks Incorporated?  This is The Daily Sentinel speaking…we’ve had some heavy collections come in since the banks have closed… (One can faintly hear the voice on the other end ask: “You want an armored car?”) Yes…that’s right…an armored car at the loading platform as soon as possible…yes…thanks…good-bye…
KATO (entering the room with Reid’s garb): What you do now, Mr. Britt?
REID: I’m afraid, Kato, The Green Hornet is going to have to do what the law has been unable to do…prevent those ballots from falling into the hands of crooks!


The armored car pulls up at the platform, and the driver (Michael O’Hara) is asked by the Sentinel’s watchman what’s the dealio.  The watchman is a little hard to make out in this screen cap (what my bud Stacia has taken to calling “Mostly Dark Theater”) but he’s played by comic actor Heinie Conklin, a veteran of the Keystone studio (he claimed to have been one of the original Keystone Kops) and not, despite what I thought for years, related to another Keystone contemporary, Chester Conklin.  If there was a bit part in a Hollywood picture, Heinie was usually around to fill it—you can spot him in any number of the Columbia two-reel comedies with The Three Stooges, Andy Clyde, Harry Langdon, etc.  Heinie was also billed from time to time as Charles Conklin as insurance against some of the anti-German sentiment prevalent during the period he was making films.

Heinie the watchman tells the driver that the two of them will go inside to straighten this situation out, and when the driver’s partner steps out of the armored car for a smoke he is instantly gassed by the Hornet, who has been observing from a short distance away.  “Sorry, old man…but you’ll be all right in a few minutes,” are his parting words to the unconscious driver.  (Yeah…like thirty.)  He then liberates the car by driving off and in a screen wipe arrives at the Tri-State Warehouse.

Inside the warehouse, Dean and his fellow henchies—Corey (Gene Rizzi) and Pete (John Kelly)—are loading boxes of the tainted ballots onto a truck.  Well, perhaps I should clarify this and say that Corey and Pete are doing the heavy lifting…Dean seems to be acting in a purely supervisory foreman capacity.

PETE: That’s the last of the ballots…
DEAN: You sure you got them all?
COREY: Yeah…I checked them off this copy of the warehouse receipt I snitched from the Election Commissioner’s office…

Such lawlessness.  Dean tells Pete to “phone the Chief we’re loaded”…and I’m not sure if he’s calling Monroe to tell them they’re ready to move out or if it’s actually The Chief himself, the mysterious boss of bosses who communicates only by intercom (and apparently by phone in this case…and if this is the case, why doesn’t somebody just trace that phone number and find out who the hell “The Chief” is?).  Actually, this just gives the writers an excuse to allow Pete to utilize his self-preservation skills, for while Pete is off somewhere in the warehouse, the Hornet surprises Dean and Corey…

HORNET: Hold it!
DEAN: The Green Hornet!

It ain’t the Green Lantern, kiddies.

COREY: What do you want?
HORNET: For you to do exactly as you’re told…there’s an armored car coming here…I want you to unload the cases from that truck and put them in the armored car…
COREY: Huh!  We are not!
HORNET: All right…you asked for it!  (He draws his gas gun)
DEAN: No, no!  Don’t shoot…we’ll do what you say…

And although they’re not happy about it, Dean and Corey do the necessary heavy lifting and transfer the cargo from their truck to the Hornet’s armored vehicle.  The Hornet tells Kato to keep an eye on the two stooges while he checks to make sure all the cases have been loaded…and that’s when Corey and Dean foolishly make a run for it.  They do not get far, however, as Kato fells the two of them with the gas gun.


“Nice work,” compliments the Hornet on his valet’s sharpshooting prowess.  “We’ll be back for them later.”  The Hornet instructs Kato to follow him in the Black Beauty while he commandeers the armored car…and once the two of them have sped off, we see ol’ cover-my-assets Pete watching from the shadows.  He quickly gets on the horn to Ogden:

PETE: The Hornet downed Dean and Corey with that devil gun…he’s on his way with the ballots…
OGDEN: You poor saps…three against one, and you let that racketeer outsmart you…
PETE: I’m tellin’ you, we can still stop him…
OGDEN: What?
PETE: He’s going by the way of the Westwood Pike and Valley Spring Road…Andy’s up at the Mortinson place…phone him and have him get busy!


All roads lead to the Mortinson place, I’m guessing.  Well, it doesn’t take long for Andrew T. Thug to “get busy”—he and an unidentified henchie (with a polka dot tie) plant a few explosives at a certain point in the road on which the Hornet is driving along in the armored car.  The Hornet approaches…the thugs detonate the explosives…and most of the road falls away like a mud slide, plunging the car into a ravine below…


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