Philip Trent—last seen as “the MGM Crime Reporter” in The Public Pays (1936)—is back for this entry, but he doesn’t do much outside of introducing this week’s faux law enforcement official, Captain John Mallory—“chief of the larceny squad of the Metropolitan Police Force.” Mallory is portrayed by character veteran Guy Usher, who appeared in a couple of chapters of The Green Hornet (1940) as an odious criminal type named “Lynch” (nice to see Trent and Usher together in this short, by the way). Usher’s credited work includes such films as Penguin Pool Murder (1932), This Day and Age (1933), It’s a Gift (1934), and The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935—an Ellery Queen film where he plays Inspector Queen).
MALLORY: Police and the city health department often have to work close together to smash the activities of vicious racketeers…human rats worse than the carriers of bubonic plague…
Hey…hey…there’s no
need for name-calling here.
MALLORY: If you think that
criminals live in another world that can’t affect you, consider this
case…recently, the state highway patrol was fighting a wave of truck
hijackings…
There’s a whip-pan to a truck tooling down the road, with “Lathrop Canning Co.” displayed on the back. (“When…it…says…Lathrop’s, Lathrop’s, Lathrop’s/On the label, label, label/You will like it, like it, like it/On your table, table, table…”) A car follows the truck, and inside the vehicle are a gang of no-goodniks comprised of Bunco (Emmett Vogan), Torpedo (Eddie Marr), Musclebound (Dick Rich) …and our “celebrated actor” as their fearless leader, J. Carrol Naish as “Moxie.” (“Make Mine Moxie!”) Moxie instructs Bunco (who’s at the wheel) to “kill the lights,” then to pull up beside the truck as Torpedo gets out on the running board, smashes the truck’s passenger window, and orders the driver to turn off onto a side road. Fortunately for the Lathrop employee, a couple of uniformed motorcycle patrolmen are nearby to witness what will surely be some major criminal activity…and after coasting down to where Moxie and his stooges have positioned the truck, shine their headlights to scatter the mob like cockroaches reacting to turned-on lights in the kitchen. There’s a bit of gunfire exchanged, and Bunco takes some shrapnel before the crooks beat a hasty retreat.
A scene shift, and Moxie is at a pay phone talking with this
gent:
Yes, it’s character legend Clarence Hummel Wilson—the beloved hatchet-faced thespian who’s been in countless shorts and features…but around Rancho Yesteryear, we remember him for roles in several Hal Roach-produced comedies (Our Gang’s Shrimps for a Day [1933], Charley Chase’s Public Ghost #1 [1935], etc.). This is Wilson’s last CDNP outing (he was previously seen in Alibi Racket), and while we are unquestionably saddened by this he gets a great showcase here as the “brains” of the operation, Van Buren “Pop” Sheafor.
MOXIE: Bad news, Sheafor…that
job fell through tonight…
SHEAFOR: Fell through? How come?
(Pause) All right—meet me at the warehouse in one hour…
MOXIE: Right…
As he hangs up the phone and exits the phone booth, we see
that Moxie phoned “Pop” from a gymnasium…and that his fellow goons are whiling
away their copious crook time watching a pair of amateur pugilists have at it
for a few rounds. Torpedo tells his boss
that Bunco’s “slug went through his hand—but he’ll be okay.”
MOXIE: From now on we lay off the highways—those state cops
are gettin’ too smart…we gotta figure
out a new way to work…
TORPEDO: Gettin’ so a man can’t
earn his livin’ no more…
Nice little laugh line from Marr—who had a most prolific acting
career on radio (The Lux Radio Theatre, Suspense) in addition to motion
pictures. Moxie’s gang takes delight at
watching an amateur (Arthur Rankin) display his unique boxing style, which
consists of him hitting the other fighter’s glove repeatedly with his face,
then falling to the mat. Musclebound
jokingly refers to him as “Horizontal Eddie.”
MOXIE: Why…that guy don’t look like a fighter…
MUSCLEBOUND: He ain’t! He works
for a livin’…checks out trucks at the Cassidy Meat Packin’ Company…
MOXIE: Meat packin’ company?
MUSCLEBOUND: Yeah…
You can almost see the wheels a-turnin’ inside Moxie’s cranium as he begins to devise an eevillll scheme…he then visits young Edward in one of the locker rooms at the gym…
MOXIE: That’s a wicked left you
got, kid…
EDDIE: Thanks…
MOXIE: I’m Moxie…
EDDIE: Yeah—I heard about you…
“Don’t get any ideas about my sister, though—she’s
off-limits!”
MOXIE: Whaddya trainin’ for?
EDDIE: Oh…I just need to make a
little extra money…
MOXIE: Well, you sure picked
yourself a tough way to get ten
bucks…
Moxie knows all about Eddie’s job at the meat packing
company, of course—but he’s coy about it until Eddie brings it up. The racketeer then goes to work on his mark’s
financial insecurity: “Those joints never pay anything—even when you work up to somethin’.” He’s got a little proposition for the money-minded
young lad, and while there’s a fade-out as Moxie goes into the details, we get
the gist of what he discussed with Edward in a conversation with “Pop” Sheafor.
MOXIE: …every morning he helps load those big refrigerator trucks and sees that they’re locked before they leave the plant…kid’s workin’ for peanuts—crazy about dough…it’s the perfect setup…
SHEAFOR: Hijack meat?
MOXIE: Why not? Hah!
There’s big dough in fresh
registered beef…
SHEAFOR: How are you gonna work
it?
MOXIE: Never mind about that…if
I get the stuff…can you sell it?
SHEAFOR: Sure! I got several sellers on the east side who’d
be glad to get some cheap…
Moxie asks Sheafor if he wants it brought to his hideout,
and “Pop” is adamant about scotching that scheme. “The health department inspectors are always
nosing around the warehouse,” he explains.
Not a problem—Moxie will just need to take it to “the old garage” and
“pile it up—throw some ice on it.” I
suppose I don’t need to tell those of you who don’t have extensive experience
in food storage why this is not going to end well (there’s a reason why sides
of beef are always stored in freezers, kids).
But I’m getting ahead of the short.
The next morning, Moxie is waiting for Eddie as the
enterprising young soul leaves his modest apartment on his way to an early
shift at the plant. Eddie has given
Moxie’s proposal a lot of thought, and he’s in—all he’ll need to do is slip
Moxie the key to the lock on the truck headed for the nearby burg of Gardenia,
and provide the proper info on what route that truck will be taking. Eddie does have some misgivings, though:
EDDIE: Suppose they miss the key
at the plant?
MOXIE: Well, they won’t for ten
minutes…and that’s all I’ll need it
for—I’ll get copies made by a guy I can trust…
(Eddie hesitates) Now—what’s the matter?
You said you were interested in easy dough…
EDDIE: Well, I don’t know…I…
MOXIE: All right…forget about it…you’re the kind of a
sucker who likes to work for a
livin’…
Don’t you just hate those guys? Moxie starts to walk off…but Eddie asks him to wait a minute, then gives him a big grin. Looks like Eddie’s going to be kicking in on the tolls dotting the road to perdition.
The Great Beef Robbery goes according to plan. As the driver (Jack Pennick) complies with a stop sign, Musclebound emerges from some bushes to puncture two of the truck’s tires, leaving the driver flat. (I make leetle joke.) Bunco then pulls up in a sedan, and when Driver explains the situation to him he offers to give him a lift to a phone so he can contact a tow truck. As Bunco’s car drives off, Moxie, Torpedo, and Musclebound pull up in a truck of their own and help themselves to that sweet, sweet Cassidy beef once Musclebound unlocks the refrigerated section with that duplicate key. There is then a scene shift to the plant, where the driver is being questioned by Cap’n Mallory as to the details of the theft.
DRIVER: …and when I got to
Gardenia and opened the truck—it was empty…
MALLORY: Were the doors locked
when you got there?
DRIVER: Yes, sir…
MALLORY (to the plant manager):
You sure that truck didn’t go out
empty?
MANAGER: These men loaded it…
He leads Mallory over to where a couple of plant employees
are standing—Eddie is in the vicinity as well, seated at a desk.
MALLORY (to Eddie): What’s your job?
EDDIE: I check the load…and see
that the doors are locked…and that the driver gets the invoice…
MALLORY: Were the doors locked?
EDDIE: Yes, sir…
Well, he was honest—he
just left out the part about “…and then I gave the key to some greaseball hood
who made himself a copy.” Mallory is
baffled by this case. All the men at the
plant have good records. There are no
discernible fingerprints on the truck (what prints do exist are all smeared)
and “no jimmie marks on the locking devices.”
“Most hijacking is done at gunpoint or by violence,” muses Mallory. He surmises that it must be an inside job,
and he tells his man Reed (William Royle) to pore through the employees’
records with a fine-tooth comb. A “Dr.
Rexford” (Frank Dae) at the Health Department should also be contacted.
As the scene changes, a grocer (Rollo Lloyd) who answers to
“Joe Mollock” is on the horn with Sheafor—salivating at the prospect of buying some
cheap beef:
MOLLOCK: Three cents better than market?
SHEAFOR: Cash deal…and quick
dough for both of us…
MOLLOCK: Quick dough, huh? Okay—send me fifteen sides!
Getting off the phone with Mollock, Sheafor is one happy
black marketer—crowing “Oh, what a racket!”
and making me choke on my beverage.
MOXIE: It’s a pipe, isn’t it?
SHEAFOR: And easy to sell! I’ve got orders for half that load already!
MOXIE: Where’d ya peddle it?
SHEAFOR: Outside of Joe Mollock,
I’ve got three jobbers on the east
side I can trust—Ward, Wesley,
and Britton…only they don’t want delivery before Thursday…so we’ll have to hold
it for them before then…hope that stuff keeps in the garage for a couple of
days…
“Torpedo! Head out to
the 7-11 for another bag of ice!”
Sheafor tells Moxie that he could use another load next week, and he
asks his chief henchie if he can trust Eddie.
“I don’t trust him…I just keep an eye on him—he’ll do what I say” is his
reply. Sheafor suggests that Eddie
pilfer some invoices from the Cassidy company—that way they can give them out
to the “jobbers” and everything will be legit.
A scene dissolve, and Moxie and Torpedo are paying Eddie off
at the gym…where Moxie asks the young criminal-in-training to score some
“billheads.”
MOXIE (handing him $100): Bet
that’s the easiest century that ever came your way, huh?
EDDIE: You said it! It’s going right down on a yellow sport
roadster…
You’re not even in the crime business a day, Eddie…and
you’ve forgotten about sending some money home to your poor, gray-haired old
mother. Bad Eddie. No hotrod.
MOXIE: Take it easy, kid—you
don’t wanna start lookin’ too flush…we’re
pullin’ another haul next week…
EDDIE: Sure…anytime… (He laughs)
Simple…the cops don’t know where to start…
Rut roh, Raggy. You see, Edward neglected to tell his hoodlum friends that the gendarmes paid the Cassidy people a visit after the meat robbery and started asking a lot of questions…this does not sit well with Moxie, though it’s Torpedo who grabs the little mook by the lapels, slamming him up against the lockers.
MOXIE: What did they say to you,
Eddie…?
EDDIE: Oh, they just asked me a
couple of routine questions…was the truck locked when it left? I told them yes…and they asked me what I
did…they questioned several other guys at the plant, too…don’t worry about it!
MOXIE: We’re not worried about
it, kid…only watch your step…go on, beat it…
Well, we’re at the halfway point here and as you can tell by the newspaper headline—a couple of bags of ice is insufficient to keep meat from going bad. Dr. Rexford informs Cap’n Mallory in one of the hospital wards that there’s been close to 200 cases of ptomaine—with four deaths—from “bad beef.” “Forty-seven butcher shops and seven restaurants…had some of that spoiled beef,” he intones, adding that that’s why he’s called Mallory in on the case. The three “jobbers” that handle Cassidy beef—Ward, Wesley, and Britton—have been vouched for (ha!) by Cassidy, and the plant has received a clean bill of health after being thoroughly inspected.
A distraught woman bursts out in tears as she is led out of the ward by an intern—sounds like she received some bad news. “We’ve got to find the rest of that poisoned beef before it gets to any more people,” declares Rexford firmly. “There’s no time to lose.” What started out as a simple case of hijacking has turned into “a death threat.” Mallory is still convinced that it’s an inside job…but since he’s had no luck with the leads, he turns to the Fourth Estate to flush the miscreants out. Meanwhile—back at the hideout:
BUNCO: It’s no use…I can’t get
rid of any more of that beef…the Health Department’s got the jobbers buffaloed…
MOXIE: How can the beef be
bad—we got ice on it, haven’t we?
“Damn it, Jim—I’m a hoodlum, not a nutritionist!”
MUSCLEBOUND: Yeah…them headlines is just a copper’s gag…
BUNCO: We better drop it…maybe
it is spoiled…
MOXIE: Now, listen—we got dough tied up in this! Plenty!
SHEAFOR: That’s right…and we’re
gonna sell it! (To Moxie) We’ll make that
beef look fresh with some chemicals…then we’ll re-stamp it with the Maxim
Company stamp!
BUNCO (sarcastic): Oh—will that
make it good?
MOXIE: Well, what’s the
difference…as long as we get our
dough!
Strategy session in a major corporation or powwow amongst
the criminal element? You make the
call! Moxie orders Musclebound to get
his ass over to the garage and start preparing the beef… but he’s interrupted
by the arrival of Torpedo, who produces this cherce headline:
“When that kid sees how bad it is…he’s gonna spill all over what he knows all over headquarters!” wails Sheafor. “That’s what I’m thinkin’,” confirms Moxie. Besides, Eddie has violated the “code” by buying that car after explicitly being told not to. Ordinarily, an infraction like this would result in loss of supper and detention in one’s room the rest of the evening. But the Moxie Gang plays for bigger marbles, and Moxie orders Bunco to grab a taxi and collect Eddie, who’s due off from work in twenty minutes. “Tell ‘em we’re gonna let him in on a big job,” Moxie explains…then he adds “The heat’s on.”
Because Cap’n Mallory has also learned that Eddie’s become
quite the plunger of late, he’s had the kid shadowed by Reed—he’s on the job
observing that Bunco is waiting for Eddie in Eddie’s car when the whistle
blows.
BUNCO: Moxie wants to see you…
EDDIE: Hey—what for?
BUNCO: He wants you to meet the
Big Boss…they’re gonna bring you in on a real
job…
“Gloriosky! That
sounds neat-o keen!” Bunco has Eddie
drive to Sheafor’s, where the kid can hardly contain his excitement that his
friends will be taking him for a ride.
Moxie holds back to tell Bunco: “Take the kid’s car to the Dutchman…get
what you can for it, and tell him to break it up…today.” Reed can’t help but notice that Bunco drives
off in Eddie’s car and so he follows the henchman…sadly, in taking his eye off
Eddie he can do nothing when Torpedo later sends the kid to The Happy Hunting
Ground while the hoods drive along a country road.
Eddie did not die in vain.
(It was more like in B.F.E.)
Since Reed told Mallory about the kid and Bunco arriving at Sheafor’s,
it’s given the police a vital lead in that they leap into action to question
those individuals who do business with “Pop” …and that leads them to the
weaselly Joe Mollock, who “handled fifteen more sides of beef than his
refrigeration allowed last week.”
REXFORD: You handled more meat
than your refrigerators can take care of…
MOLLOCK: All right…I’ll pay the
fine…
MALLORY (enraged): Say—you can’t
settle this with a fine…
“Who do you think you are—Goldman-Sachs?”
MALLORY: …two hundred people have been sick, four have died, and one was murdered because of the hijacking of some poisoned beef—and you handled fifteen sides of Cassidy’s beef that you can’t account for!
MOLLOCK: None of my meat
poisoned anybody! I never got a
kickback!
MALLORY: No, but the health
department did…you’re in a spot, Mollock…
MOLLOCK: I tell you that beef
was okay!
MALLORY: Yeah? Say, maybe we’ll slap a manslaughter charge
on ya…we’re gonna close all your stores and hold you for investigation…
 |
| B-b-b-bad to the bone. |
“Only if I don’t sing like a canary…and I’m going to do some warming up exercises right now!” Mollock comes clean and confesses to the cops that he got the beef from Sheafor—still insisting the meat, however, was perfectly okay. It’s all over but the shouting, cartooners—Moxie and the boys make separate deliveries to all three of Mollock’s stores (he won’t take the beef otherwise) and at each establishment, the cops are waiting to collar them (even Sheafor). It’s all terribly anti-climactic, though I did chortle when they rounded up Bunco because he remarks “I had a hunch this was coming!” as he’s being slapped into handcuffs. (Mama said there’d be days like this.) When they arrest Musclebound at the same store, Rexford removes the tarpaulin from his truck and remarks of the beef: “Enough to kill a city…okay, pour the kerosene over it.” (Yes, I was kind of surprised by this—I half-expected them to dole out the food out to the poor.)
Take us home, Mallory my man!
MALLORY: Moxie was right…the criminal can’t win…Bunco turned states’ evidence…Moxie and Musclebound went to the chair for Eddie’s murder…
I should point out that it was Torpedo who popped a cap in Eddie…but he was gunned down as the
cops swarmed in on him at one of the stores.
(“He asked for it.”)
MALLORY: …Sheafor drew fifty
years to life…and Eddie the working boy—who wanted to run with the so-called
big shot gangsters—did not live long enough to find out that crime does not pay…thank you…
No…thank you, Captain Mallory. Next time: a short with a title that’s just plain irresistible to a left-wing scalawag like me—Soak the Poor (1937)! G’bye now!
