Joe Gargen (George Raft) has just completed a three-year stint working for the State. (He only had to serve two years and nine months, however—I’m guessing time off for good behavior.) The reason no one has seen him around for this length of time is because he had an altercation with another individual…and because Joe was once a professional boxer, The Man put him away on the old “hands-as-deadly-weapons” statute. But that’s all in the past; a free man, Joe wants nothing more than to get a job and a place of his own. His sister Martha Haines (Helen Wescott)—whom he affectionately refers to as “Marty”—and her husband Ed (William Phipps) are helping Joe transition by allowing him to stay with them until he’s back on his feet.
Ed works for the Delta Tire Company, and chances are pretty
good that Joe will soon be cashing a paycheck with that firm as well; a friend
of the Haines’, Anne Nelson (Dorothy Hart), is secretary to Delta president
F.L. Rennick (Charles Meredith)—and she’s put in a good word on behalf of
Joe. Gargen is just the man Rennick is
looking for; there’s a problem at the plant in which a large number of
employees have fallen prey to a loan sharking operation run by Vince Phillips
(John Hoyt) and his second-in-command, Lou Donelli (Paul Stewart). Joe doesn’t want any part of Rennick’s offer
of employment (F.L. wants him to investigate the loan sharks and turn over what
he discovers to the cops) …even when a neighbor of Marty and Ed’s, Steve Casmer
(Robert Bice), gets a working-over by Phillips’ goons.
Gargen changes his tune when his brother-in-law is killed by
Charlie Thompson (Russell Johnson)—a plant employee who lures unsuspecting
dupes into availing themselves of the loan sharks’ services. With his decision to infiltrate Phillips’
operation, Joe will jeopardize his family ties with Marty, a romantic
relationship with Anne…and possibly his life.
George Raft is back!
And this is most fitting, because Loan
Shark (1952) is revealed in the opening credits to be “An Encore Production”
(it was produced in tandem with Lippert, who distributed the finished
project). It was the first of a
three-picture deal Raft inked with the independent Lippert Pictures (the other
two being I’ll
Get You [1952] and The Man from
Cairo [1953]), at a time when the actor was having difficulty even getting arrested
in Hollywood. I was pleasantly surprised
with both this picture and Raft’s performance in it; he’s fairly solid as Gargen,
and I believe that’s because he has to play to his acting strengths in
maintaining the illusion he’s one of the bad guys. (Raft preferred playing the hero than the
heavy, and I just don’t think he was a good enough actor to do the first part of
that on a regular basis.)
Even when he's a "bad guy," George is the hero. |
Loan Shark is never going to be considered in the league of classic noirs like Murder, My Sweet (1944) or Out of the Past (1947)—but it was better than I was expecting it to be (a few friends told me it was well worth the time to watch it, and kudos to those who did) considering its B-picture pedigree (it’s unquestionably the best of the “Forgotten Noirs” I’ve seen so far in the VCI series). Budgeted at $250,000 ($1.8 million in today’s dollars—which might take care of the catering on a modern-day set for a day or two)—a little more than your typical programmer—Loan Shark benefits from the loan of the R-K-O Pathè studio backlot (the Goodyear Tire Company in L.A. fronted for the film’s fictional Delta Tire) for most of its location shooting, giving Shark a professional sheen. Of that $250,000 budget, star Raft pocketed $25,000 ($180,000 adjusted for inflation) …and additionally, he was supposed to collect 25% of Shark’s profits. (This never materialized, by the way—probably due to the time-honored tradition of “Hollywood accounting.”)
Another strength in Shark
is its first-rate casting. Dorothy Hart
is George’s love interest in this one, and their spooning is a lot more
believable (Hart was a last minute replacement for the originally cast Gail
Russell; sadly, Russell’s struggles with the bottle put the kibosh on her
participation) than the awkward roundelay with Sally Gray in I’ll Get You. Helen Wescott is another plus as Raft’s
distraught sister (I always remember Helen from her role as Gregory Peck’s
estranged spouse in the classic Western The
Gunfighter [1950].) Margia Dean, who
was in the cast of last week’s Forgotten Noir Fridays, Fingerprints
Don’t Lie (1951), has a small part in Shark as a sassy barmaid named Ivy.
If you’re going to go balls-out with your villainy in a
motion picture, you can’t do any worse than Paul Stewart or John Hoyt as your
bad guys. Stewart is a longtime TDOY favorite, and I love how he’s able
to take what otherwise would have been a routine assignment for any other actor
and mark it with his personal stamp.
What’s most enjoyable about Stewart’s Donelli is his undisguised
irritation at the fact that Raft’s Gargen has moved up so quickly in the ranks
of the organization (he’s getting a ten percent cut—Donelli is still on salary);
he whines to Hoyt’s Phillips about how unfair it is and when he’s told it’s
because Gargen has brought in new ideas Donelli bitches that he thinks of new
ideas all the time.
“You come up with nothing but stupid ideas!” snaps Phillips, and in the next breath lets slip
some information that will prove to be most useful to the undercover
Gargen. Hoyt plays Vince in the manner
of an effete floorwalker, but his seasoned experience of playing bad dudes (in
Westerns, sci-fi films, etc.) helps immeasurably throughout Shark’s 79-minute running time. Russell “Professor” Johnson is also on hand
as the weasel who preys on the financially-strapped employees of the tire
company, and TDOY idol Lawrence
Dobkin has a cherce role as a seemingly mild-mannered accountant with the
operation.
Seymour Friedman held the directorial reins on Loan Shark; dedicated film scholars
searching for signs of auteurism in Friedman’s oeuvre will be disappointed but
Friedman acquits himself nicely in the chair—the pre-credits sequence, in which
a Delta employee is pursued by two loan shark henchmen…resulting in a proper
pummeling, is suspenseful and well-shot, and there are some additional nice
touches throughout the movie (I liked the scene in which steam from the factory
is superimposed over the steam from an iron Wescott’s Marty is using). Ace cinematographer Joseph Biroc (Cry
Danger, The Killer That Stalked New York) adds
appropriate noir atmosphere, and the script by Martin Rackin and Eugene Ling
(from a story by Rackin) is a notch above your usual B-picture material (Rackin
had a long career writing both comedies and noirs; he was head of production at
Paramount from 1960-64 before leaving the studio to form his own production
company).
The VCI presentation of Loan
Shark features audio commentary from film historian/friend of the blog
Richard M. Roberts, and I always enjoy listening to Rich do these because he
approaches commentary the way I do whenever I’m kibitzing during a film at home
(pointing out character actors, joking about the action onscreen, etc.). The laugh-out-loud moment for me is when he
singles out actress Spring Mitchell, who has a small role as Hoyt’s hi-fi
obsessed moll, as “somebody’s girlfriend” because of Mitchell’s otherwise
spotty cinematic resume (though the [always reliable] IMDb does credit her with
some early TV work on shows like Kollege of Musical Knowledge and Stump
the Stars). Let’s be honest:
Spring has more screen time than TDOY fave Claire Carleton, seen briefly
as a wife nagging her husband as the two walk downstairs in the background when
Raft makes his first appearance in the film.
2 comments:
Thanks for a great review of a film I like a lot. Raft is well supported by a good cast, especially Hoyt and Stewart. And I was impressed by Dorothy Hart.
Vienna approached the microphone:
Thanks for a great review of a film I like a lot.
Vienna, you were one of several people who recommended this to me! Take a victory lap!
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