Last night's movie was "The Gang's All Here"(1941), another Frankie Darro/Mantan Moreland vehicle featuring Jackie Moran and Marcia Mae Jones, and speaking of vehicles, the plot's about a trucking company involved in an insurance scam. Nice segue, eh? You: "Not too shabby, Ad." In the first five minutes, the company trucks are being run off the highway by what appears to be a rival outfit, whose rigs drive up alongside 'em and force them over a cliff. Two drivers for the company are killed this way, and the owner, "Pop Wallace" (Robert Homans) fears he'll be put out of bidness if it keeps up. Enter Frankie Darro and Mantan Moreland, who are sitting under a tree reading the want ads. They're broke as usual, and as usual Frankie's ready to work but a job is the last thing Mantan wants. Frankie tells him to let his stomach do the thinking and that decides it. They read an ad for Overland Trucking and head to town to apply as drivers.
When they get there, Pop Wallace is out of the office, but "Chick" (Jackie Moran), his mechanic, interviews them, and Chick's girl "Patsy Wallace" (Marcia Mae), who happens to be Pop's daughter, convinces Chick to hire them. She wants him to be more ambitious and make decisions in Pop's stead, whereas he's happy to be a grease monkey mechanic. When Pop shows up, he appraises the new hires then sends Frankie and Mantan out on an immediate delivery, of a cargo that "was supposed to be on the road an hour ago."
Frankie, wanting to make a good impression, drives way over the schpeed limit to get to the destination quickly, and en route, the rival truckers try running him and Mantan off the road. But motorcycle cops intervene, and the boys are saved. Still, they get a hefty schpeeding ticket, which doesn't endear them to Pop.
In between the plot points, we are treated to vignettes of the ambition rift between Patsy and Chick, played as light comedy (she wipes grease off his face, he breaks dishes at her house), and the ongoing schtick of Mantan and Frankie. But in the last half hour, things get dicey as they're kidnapped by the rival truckers (who turn out to not be who we think they are), and held hostage in a warehouse, watched over by a large man named "Ham Shanks" (Laurence Criner). Keye Luke is back too, and we love Keye Luke because he's got that American/Chinese thing happening, as opposed to Chinese/American, where he's born in the USA (San Francisco), and therefore is as American as John Smith. His characters, in the Charlie Chan movies and other Noirish comedies, are all written to take advantage of this fact (and also that Keye Luke thousand watt smile), and we always see him dressed in a sharp suit with his hair slicked back like a Hollywood Movie Star, speaking with a SoCal non-accent. But, in all his roles, he's always raised in a Chinese home, of course, and has that heritage to fall back on, hence his endless supply of Chinese Proverb jokes. His whole deal is to make it obvious that he's ultra-Americanized, and the irony is that he really is, so it's a double-reverse comic persona and very funny.
As for Marcia Mae Jones, we wish she had more to do than be a sidekick (she's the main reason we've searched out these movies), but at least she gets more screen time in this one than she did in "Let's Go Collegiate". The plot is convoluted as far as the insurance scam is concerned, and a little hard to follow. The rival drivers who run the good guys off the road, don't wanna do it any more now that the Overland truckers are dying. Keye Luke plays a key role in breaking up the scam. Jackie Moran, who starred in "Barefoot Boy" with Marcia Mae, is just window dressing here as her boyfriend Chick the mechanic. But the two of them were a box office draw for Monogram Pictures, which is why they got equal billing, even when Frankie Darro and Mantan Moreland were the stars. Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Gang's All Here". Mantan does his thing, and we like this particular combination of actors. The picture is good but dark in places. ////
The previous night, we watched "The Hat Box Mystery"(1947), a 45 minute super shorty from Lippert Pictures, one of our favorite independent studios. You can always count on Lippert; we had a good one from them the other day with "Sky Liner", and they delivered again this time. Tom Neal stars as "Russ Ashton", the head of a private detective agency. It's not the most successful operation in the world. When we first see Ashton and his investigators "Susan Hart" (Pamela Blake) and "Harvard" (Al Jenkins), they're siting around with nothing to do. They haven't got any clients and are so broke their phone's been shut off. They're living off cheap hamburgers from Veronica Hoopler's cafe, and Harvard has to borrow money from "Veronica" (Virginia Sale), his girlfriend, so they can even pay the rent on their office.
But then, just when things look hopeless, a client walks in and saves the day. Ashton is out of the office, so Susan Hart takes his information. He's a tall distinguished-looking man with a Van Dyke beard and a cane, who says he wants his wife followed because he thinks she's having an affair. He's brought with him a hatbox that's he's rigged to carry a hidden camera, and he shows Susan how to use it. "I want you to take her picture tomorrow morning as she's leaving our apartment." Susan goes there early, with the hatbox camera in hand, and when the man's wife emerges, she lines up her shot and pulls the string, which is supposed to deploy the shutter.
But instead, KABLAMMO!
It isn't a hatbox camera after all, but a hatbox gun. The client's wife falls to the sidewalk and a nearby cop grabs Susan, who's taken to jail on a charge of attempted murdalization. When her boss Russ Ashton comes to visit her, she tells him she was set up and describes the distinguished client. "I believe you," Ashton says. He has an "in" with the DA, and asks him to let Susan out on bail so she can help prove her innocence, but the only way the DA will agree to this is if Ashton will use her as bait to trap the real killer (we know who he is but they don't). Ashton does some forensic work while waiting for Susan to be let out: measuring trajectories and looking for spent shells at the shooting scene. Meanwhile, Harvard is making time with Veronica Hoopler at her hamburger shop, asking for onions on his burger even though they're gonna go on a date that night.
But then Ashton calls him in for a steak out, I mean stake out (man, all this talk of hamburgers is makin' me hungry!) after using a newspaper contact to put out a false headline, that the "murdered" woman has recovered and is going to name the real killer. Ashton figures that the Hatbox Man will try and find her at the hospital so he can finish the job. Talk about a layered shcript! You can sure pack a lot into a 45 minute flick, and Lippert proves it, but you've gotta limit your ingredients to the basics, which is what they do so well. We should mention that we really like Tom Neal onscreen, he has Gable's looks but also an underdog quality, and that of a modest intellectual. He was a boxer before he became an actor, but he also went to Northwestern and majored in mathematics. He was therefore no slouch in the smarts department, and was great as Ann Savage's whipping boy in "Detour". He was always very good in his mostly supporting roles in other B-Movies, too. It's just too bad he got onboard the trainwreck that was Barbara Payton's life, and got between her and Franchot Tone. His life went to hell after that, and much if not all of it was his own fault. He ended up dying at 57 after a six year stint for manslaughter, and it all seems quite tragic when you watch him on the screen. He and the whole (small) cast are very good here, and we really like Pamela Blake also. We love movies like "The Hat Box Mystery", which gets Two Big Thumbs Up and a very high recommendation. You can't go wrong at 45 minutes and the picture is razor sharp. ////
That's all for tonight. My blogging music is "Bete Noir" by Bryan Ferry, late night is Mahler's 2nd by von Karajan (what, no Wagner?), I'm almost done with the second Elvis book by biographer Peter Guralnick, and man, is it brutal. Elvis, poor Elvis. They didn't put any of this stuff in the movie, and I'm glad. I hope your week is going well and I send you Tons of Love as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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