Crime Does Not Pay #1: “Buried Loot” (01/19/35)

In Selected Short Subjects: From Spanky to The Three Stooges (also known as The Great Movie Shorts), author Leonard Maltin remarks on the Crime Does Not Pay series: “Film historian Don Miller has theorized that had the series concentrated on cops-and-robbers type of material, as it did in its initial short, Buried Loot, it would never have achieved the success it did.”  Loot kicked off the long-running two-reel franchise with its premiere in theaters on January 19. 1935, and it features an early leading man role from an actor born Spangler Arlington Brugh—better known to classic movie fans as Robert Taylor.  Bob goes uncredited in this short—but he’s not alone: the MGM Crime Reporter (his handle is “Mac,” and he’s referred to sans the “crime”) is also ignored at the (always reliable) IMDb.

MAC: I’m a man with a message…

“Mail those Christmas packages early, and avoid the rush!”

MAC: It’s my privilege to examine police files and prison records…to interview prominent authorities throughout the country…and bring to you undeniably, proof of the message that “Crime Does Not Pay” …you can’t beat the law…the cards are stacked against you…

Well, that’s certainly a defeatist attitude.  The Reporter introduces us to “Mr. Edward Swain, of the International Bonding Company.”  But Swain is a fictitious person—he’s really an actor named George Irving, previously seen here on the blog in Lady in the Death House (1944).

MAC: Mr. Swain has promised me an incident that will poignantly illustrate…the fact that sometime…somewhere…the criminal always pays…am I right, Mr. Swain?

SWAIN: You certainly are, Mac…

“Now go wait for me in the steam room.”  Swain is ready to tell us a tale: the stirring saga of a young bank teller named Albert Douglas (Taylor), who’s embezzled $200,000 of the Seacoast National Bank’s assets on hand for sh*ts and giggles.  Al has been called onto the carpet by the bank president (Richard Tucker), who understandably takes a rather dim view of these sorts of financial shenanigans.

PRESIDENT: $200,000…you embezzled two-hundred-thousand…and lost it…

“Congratulations, my boy!  Why, if you were only to broaden your scope there’d be a future for you at Goldman-Sachs!”

DOUGLAS: Well, I knew the bank examiners would be here tomorrow, so…I thought I’d better tell you…I knew they’d find it out anyway…

PRESIDENT: But…there’s nothing left…?  Not a cent?

DOUGLAS: No, sir…

PRESIDENT: What did you do with it?

DOUGLAS: What does one usually do with it?  I spent it…

“Hookers and blow, mostly.  Oh, and I bought a comb.”  Al tells the president that he gambled a great deal of it, playing the ponies.  “We always trusted you, Al,” he says sadly.  (I’ll bet Al gets sent to bed without his supper.)

PRESIDENT: Why are you confessing?  Why didn’t you try to get away?

DOUGLAS: And be a fugitive the rest of my life?  No, thank you—I have more sense than that….come on, come on…let’s get it over with…call the police!  I’ve committed a crime, and I’m ready to take my medicine…I’m confessing…

Albert does have more sense than that…because he has a clever plan, as Mr. Swain informs us via voiceover.  You see, Al didn’t spend any of that dough—he’s buried it somewhere in Jersey, and he figures once he does a stretch in the pen for his crime he’ll collect it upon his release and live a life of ease and plenty.  The judge sentences him to a stay in the Grey Bar Hotel for a period between 5-10 years, and Douglas is confident enough to know that if he’s on his very best behavior (eating his vegetables, cleaning his cell regularly, etc.) checkout time will be in five años.

SWAIN (narrating): Douglas was smart…he’d watch his step…he’d become a trusty…and through good behavior the five-year minimum would be all he’d serve…

In the joint, Al befriends a fellow inmate in Louie Rattig (Al Hill).  Pay very close attention to the first syllable in Louie’s surname, because I don’t think this was unintentional in the story by Marty Brooks and screenplay from George B. Seitz (who also directed the short).  (Seitz was an MGM journeyman best known for supervising the misadventures of America’s beloved clan of WASPs in the Andy Hardy series.)

SWAIN (narrating): But time is long in stir…minutes are hours…days seem weeks…

In the memorable words of MISTER Virgil Tibbs: “There's white time in jail and there's colored time in jail.  The worst kind of time you can do is colored time.”  Al Douglas is too Caucasian for colored time, but after two-and-a-half years as a student at Rockpile University, he’s starting to experience cabin fever…and his pal Louie isn’t helping.

DOUGLAS: Hey, why don’t you light somewhere…you give me the jitters…

RATTIG: Aw, shut up…

DOUGLAS: Can’t take it, huh?

RATTIG: It’s easy enough for you to talk…you’ll be gettin’ out in a coupla years…but me—I’ve only done three years of a twelve-year stretch…

DOUGLAS: Well, buck up, Louie…buck up…

“Yeah, buck you, too.”  Louie’s been thinking—he’d like to take advantage of the prison’s “early release” program, a most controversial set of procedures in that its chief component involves crashing out.

RATTIG: Listen, kid…I got a swell idea…I got friends on the outside…they’d do anything for me…

DOUGLAS: Break, huh?  Don’t make me laugh…

RATTIG: No!  On the level!

DOUGLAS: Aw, forget it…nobody breaks out of here—that’s only in storybooks…

“And bad prison movies, like…well, never mind.”

RATTIG: I tell you, Al—if you listen to me, I can…

DOUGLAS: Whaddya gonna do?  Bump a screw?  Get yourself all ready for the hot seat?  Not me…when I go out of here, I’m gonna walk out…

Just like Colonel Robert Hogan.  Seeing that Al isn’t receptive to his escape scheme, Louie changes the subject by asking Douglas what he plans to do when he does get his freedom.  “I’m goin’ straight,” Al tells his convict compadre.

“Straight to a gold mine, I suppose,” cracks Louie.  “Maybe,” is Al’s response.  “I’ll dig up something…somewhere.”

That’s when Louis pulls out what appears to be his specialty: the mind-f**k.  He muses that “five years is a long time,” and that things are not always the same after that span of time.  This observation, along with “nothing stays put,” begins to play on Al’s insecurities, according to narrator Swain.  As part of his prison job of being a trusty, Al has been assigned—along with Louie—to helping another inmate show motion pictures to the population on Friday nights.  As he hands equipment to the projectionist, Douglas looks down a hallway and spots two men—one wearing a clerical collar—with a prison guard entering one of the cells.

RATTIG: You see them two?  They’re the babies I was figurin’ on in that deal I spoke of…if you was only interested…

(Louie turns to go, but Al grabs his shoulder)

DOUGLAS: Maybe I am…spill it!

RATTIG: Listen…the lowdown on this thing is this…

But before Louie can get to the “lowdown,” the projectionist emerges from the booth and interrupts them with “Come on, you two—we’re givin’ a show here, you know.”  Meanwhile, back at the cell:

RATTIG: My friends on the outside are up in the money…and since I’ve been workin’ in the prison post office, it’s a cinch for me to get a letter out to them…now that little guy you seen tonight has got a boy in the death house…he’s goin’ to the hot seat at the end of the month…the other guy is a minister…and every other night they spend an hour with the kid…they got permission…and the screws all know ‘em….they get past, in and out, without any trouble…now my friends can get us some clothes the same as them two are wearing, and a couple of wigs and…

DOUGLAS: Ah, you’re crazy…

Is he?  Or is he so sane he’s blown your own mind?!!  I have to be honest—I have to side with Al on this one, because this is usually the kind of stunt that happens when Lucy wants to perform at the Tropicana and she’s talked Ethel into doing something nutty.  Louie presses upon his cellmate that it’s going to have to be done by the end of the month—either when that prisoner keeps his appointment with “Ol’ Sparky” …or when Louie might be transferred to another section of the prison.

And so, Operation Rejected Three’s Company Plot Idea gets underway.  As the two visitors make their regularly scheduled visit to the Death Row guy, Al and Louie don their disguises—which they hid in a little-noticed room behind the projection area.  (Riiiiiight.)  The first time I watched this short, I didn’t hear Louie mention the part about “a couple of wigs,” so when I saw them in their get-up I asked myself: “Did they get rid of the jute mill and replace it with piecework for Helene Curtis and Max Factor?”  The plan goes as smooth as a duet by Santana with Rob Thomas, as Al and Louie hobble out of the slammah as Grieving Father and the Minister, with Louie’s “friends” awaiting them in a car.

It doesn’t take long for the prison to discover that Al and Louie have flown the coop, and so they start up with the sirens and the police car montage and this thing here…

…which made me chuckle (“They escaped on the same night they elected a new Pope!”).  The driver, Lem (actor uncredited), drops Louie, Al, and another man named George (Brooks Benedict) off at a hideout where they are greeted by two lovely hostesses.  According to the (always reliable) IMDb, the girl peering out of the curtains in this still (later revealed to be Louis’ moll)…

…is Shirley Ross, Bob Hope’s duet partner on Thanks for the Memory in The Big Broadcast of 1938.  The non-Shirley hostess has apparently taken charge of Al’s travel arrangements by securing him tickets to Toronto.  (Toronto?  Seriously?  Well, in light of what happens later in Buried Loot it might not be such an insane idea.)

Swain tells the MGM Reporter that the two men got away “clean as a hound’s tooth” …which isn’t nearly as clever as my earlier simile.  Swain explains that a week later, at a summer resort across the Canadian border, Douglas is making plans to retrieve those buried Jersey funds and that “he had determined that when he left Canada to pick up his stolen funds, no one would know him.”

Hoo boy…I don’t think I like the direction in which this is headed…

Always go with your instincts.  Though I will say, in all fairness, that blowed up real good.  Al’s traveling companions—to them, he’s known as “Doc”—rush to his room and find that he’s had a teensy accident that has resulted in his melting off of his face.  Okay, maybe it’s not that severe…but if you look at the face of one of the women in this screen capture…

…it’s all she can do to keep from screaming: “He’s positively grotesque!”  Al has to undergo plastic surgery, and now you can see why he insisted on Toronto (single-payer health care, baby!).  Sadly, he is no longer the drop-dead gorgeous Robert Taylor later to be seen in Magnificent Obsession (1935) and Camille (1936).  “He was not a pretty sight,” admits Swain in an impressive display of understatement, “but he was safe.  Safe now to go back to the city…to cross the river to Jersey.”  (I’m going to take a wild guess and presume Swain has never been to Jersey.)

Having retrieved his ill-gotten gains, Al Douglas strolls down city streets with his enormous package of $200,000 at his side.  “He had arranged passage to Europe,” Swain informs us…but as Douglas hails a cab to take him to the docks, he’s greeted by two men who greet him as “Doc.”  They’re the same comrades who were with Al during his Toronto accident, and are played by two actors who would later achieve success in B-westerns—James Ellison (in the Hopalong Cassidy series) and Robert Livingston (The Three Mesquiteers).

JIMMY: Doc!  Well, of all things…

BOB: Wow—imagine running into you!

DOUGLAS: Uh…hello, fellas…this…this is a surprise…

JIMMY: Off on another vacation?

DOUGLAS: No…no, I was…just getting back…I’ve been visiting some friends over…over in Jersey…

As the cab pulls up, Al is in a hurry to get in and off to his destination…but his friends decide to ride along with him “for a couple of blocks.”  “It was certainly ironic,” observes Swain. “that with everything set for his final getaway Douglas should run into two of the few people in the world who knew him!”  The two men make small talk with Al as the cab rolls along, and they then ask the driver to pull up to their destination…right next to the Seacoast National Bank.

JIMMY: Say, Doc—stop off here for a minute…I want you to meet these friends of ours…

DOUGLAS: Oh, no…no, I couldn’t do that…you see, I gotta go over…

JIMMY: Bring him along, Bob…

And with that, Bob slaps a pair of handcuffs on Al’s wrists.  He’s understandably perplexed by this treatment, and not too swift on the uptake—he’s obviously been set up, a painful fact that becomes all too clear when he’s hustled into the bank president’s office and sees not only his former boss, but narrator Swain, George, and his old prison chum Louie.

DOUGLAS: Hey, what is this?

RATTIG: A frame, Al…it took a lot of doin’, but you fell…

DOUGLAS: Frame?

RATTIG: Yeah…you don’t suppose it’s really so easy to get out of a state prison as all that, do ya?

Remember, Al?  “Nobody breaks out of here—that’s only in storybooks.”  Oh, if only you had listened to your own sage advice.  To add insult to injury, everybody and his brother was in on what was little more than an arranged bust-out: the old man and the minister, the projectionist, the girls at the hideout—everybody!

PRESIDENT: You see, Douglas…Mr. Swain of the bonding company didn’t believe you squandered the money you stole…

You should have kept the receipts, Al.

PRESIDENT: …your story in court didn’t ring true…he believed that you hid it…and he knew that if you had, you’d go straight to it once you were free…so he arranged with the state to let you escape…you were always in the hands of the police, though—even when you went to Canada…

The cops let him disfigure himself.  Kind of a dick move when you think about it.

PRESIDENT: You’re going back, Douglas…for the full term…and I’m afraid there’ll be no time off for good behavior…not now…

“Look at the bright side—it doesn’t matter how hideous you look…there’ll surely be someone who’ll want to make you his bitch.”  Swain then takes a gloat lap:

SWAIN: …and there you are, Mac…there was a crime that was perfectly planned…does that prove your point?

MAC: I’ll say it does…the poor sap…

Fortunately for that “poor sap,” he’d continue his extraordinary motion picture career with films like Three Comrades (1938), Waterloo Bridge (1940), and Johnny Eager (1941) to his credit…and later on the small screen, hosted Death Valley Days in the 1960s after a successful three-year stint as the star of the TV crime drama The Detectives Starring Robert Taylor (you should look into putting this one on, MeTV!).  Taylor had the Death Valley Days gig until 1969—the year of his death).  Next week: Alibi Racket—g’bye now!