Last night we watched "Radio Patrol"(1932) a pre-code cop movie that follows a group of recruits through the police academy, where they are whipped into shape by their no-nonsense trainer "Sgt. Tom Keogh" (Sidney Toler). A very young Andy Devine, tall and reasonably thin, plays the big-hearted but dumb rookie "Pete Wiley". Early on, Sgt. Keogh recognises a recruit named "Kloskey" (Harry Woods) as a henchman for an out-of-town Mafioso. Kloskey is trying to join the force as a plant so the Mob boss can use him as a corrupting influence. Keogh roots him out and tells him his gang is toast, but they move in anyway, with a plan to take over the stockyard unions and the local protection rackets in the meat business. The street cops are encouraged to take a payoff and look the other way.
"Patrolman Bill Kennedy" (Robert Arrmstrong) does this. His partner "Pat Bourke" (Russell Hopton) won't touch it. He suspects Kennedy is on the take, but drops the matter when Bill keeps denying it. Then one night during a burglary call, Pete Wiley is shot and killed. It was a setup, but nobody can figure how the Mob was tipped off. Now his fiance is alone, and Officer Bourke is furious. The couple were, to him, like family. Sgt. Keogh, at the academy, has already laid down his Thin Blue Line spiel, telling the recruits the pubic hates them. "Even the honest citizens don't trust you! All we've got is ourselves, gentlemen." So, this theory didn't begin with Chief Ed Davis or even Chief Parker. It goes back to at least the 1930s, and probably to the beginning of policing. But Sgt. Keogh does insist that, no matter how stressed an officer is feeling, he must treat all suspects and arrestees with courtesy.
Now the Mafia is getting bolder, and they're planning a late night break- in and robbery of the stockyard payroll office, which is loaded with cash. Unbeknownst to his partner Pat Bourke, Bill Kennedy has taken a two thousand dollar payoff to make a phone call to the Mob boss when the coast is clear for the caper. When it's in progress, he drives the other way, out of town, when he's supposed to be responding to the robbery call. "Smoky Johnson" (John Lester Johnson), a black officer, is knifed by a Mob hood in the stockyard. Now Kennedy feels guilty about being a paid-off cop. He confesses his sins to Bourke, and they go after the Mob boss and his henchmen. Prior to the ensuing shootout, Kennedy gets a radio call to go to the hospital. His wife is having a baby. I can't tell you any more than that, but this is a good one, super hard boiled for 1932, showing that crime was really bad in the early Mob days. There wasn't as much of the random psychotic stuff that we experience nowdays, and in that sense, crime is way worse now, but in those days, it was like a street war between the cops and organised crime. By now, organised crime has been corporatized and is committed at the legal level. There is no Mafia to speak of, or if there is, there are completely legit now, on peer level with the politicians and CEOs. The Mafia ain't John Gotti anymore. Trump is the last remaining holdout. The film is very talky, and the first 25 minutes veers between police academy training and domestic scenes with the rookies and their wives/fiances that show the stresses of being a cop's wife. But once the Mob plot develops, it's hard core, a raw look at policing in the 1930s. Brutal. Two Big Thumbs Up verging on Two Huge for "Radio Patrol". It's highly recommended and the picture is very good. ////
The previous night, we had more Bowery Boys (just Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall this time), in "The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters"(1954). Leo and Huntz are hangin' out at Louie's Sweet Shop again, shootin' da breeze, when a baseball comes crashin' through da windum, conkin' Louie on the head. A cop hauls the kid in who belted it. He's about eight, and talks a faster Brooklyn blue streak than even Leo can handle. Louie is absolutely dumbfounded by the lingo and just wants the kid out of his sight. He forgives him for the broken windum and doesn't ask for money cause he knows the kid's parents are broke. Louie's a good egg at heart; he's got a soft spot for the folks in da ney-ba-hood.
This leads to a discussion about where the local kids can play ball widout breakin' any windums. Leo suggests a vacant lot on the edge of town. "It's owned by that family what owns the key-mih-cull factry. What's dere name? Da Gravesites, yeah, dat's it."
Louie corrects him. "Their name is Gravesend, but it's still too creepy for me. I've heard they're a bunch of kooks, but if you wanna go talk to them, be my guest." Leo and Huntz drive over to the Gravesend mansion in Leo's old jalopy. The door is answered by a tall, dour butler named "Grissom" (Paul Wexler) who Leo mispronounces as Gruesome. Grissom shows them in and they wait in the anteroom for "Dr. Derek Gravesend" (John Dehner) and his brother "Anton" (Lloyd Corrigan) to finish a meeting in their secret laboratory. The brothers Gravesend are Mad Scientists, working on an assortment of creations. Anton has an Iron Man, a remote control robot in which he hopes to install a human brain. Derek, the leader, has an ape in a cage named Cosmos. If they can procure a brain, Derek wants it for Cosmos, not only so he can perform the first human/ape brain transplant, but so that Cosmos will be able to think, and thus kill, faster.
When they are called out of their meeting by Grissom, who announces Leo and Huntz, the brothers take one look at the pair of knuckleheads before them and realize: "voila! The gods have spoken! Two brains at our disposal!" Now, they aren't good brains, mind you. When tested in a converted electric chair, Huntz registers a zero on the sub-normal intelligence meter. But Dr. Derek takes him anyway, to put his brain in Cosmos. "Maybe it'll make him stupider, with abilities we haven't thought of."
The Gravesend family has two other members, "Auntie Amelia" (Ellen Corby), who has a man-eating tree in the house that she keeps as a pet, and cousin "Francine Gravesend" (Laura Mason),) a sexy vampire who can't wait to sink her teeth into Hall's neck. Now remember, the boys have only gone over to talk about the use of the Gravesend's vacant lot, so when they don't return, Louie and two of the neighborhood hooligans drive to the mansion to look for them. But Anton Gravesend has developed a potion that turns Grissom into a wild, Rasputin-like maniac, and now it looks like no one is gettin' outta the place alive. The movie is thicker on Monster activity than it is on plot, but the Monsters themselves, and the sibling Mad Scientists are so well realized that it makes for another classic Bowery Boys spook show. It's fun to see John Dehner playing an erudite (but nutty) anthropologist and showing comedic range, as he mostly played Western bad guys. Ellen Corby is fiendish (and handy with a knife), as the carnivorous plant-keeping Auntie. She feeds it dog food when she runs out of people. The whole Gravesend gang is crazy, making the Addams Family look like the Bradys. A ten minute cut, removing snippets here and there, would'v made the movie perfect, but it still gets Two Huge Thumbs Up, because it's in widescreen, the picture is razor sharp and you can't beat Gorcey and Hall. Don't miss "The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters". It's highly recommended. ////
And dat's all......(excuse me).....that's all I know for tonight. My blogging music is "The Songs of Distant Earth" by Mike Oldfield, one of the best albums of the '90s and one of Mike's best also. I finished "Shoulda Been There", Book One in the ten-volume John Lennon series by Jude Southerland Kessler. I checked it out from the Libe not knowing what to expect; a novelized version of Lennon's childhood and the early Beatles? But not only did it work as a novel, Jude Kessler knocked it as far out of the park as a Dave Kingman home run. Boy, can she write! You feel like you're right there in Liverpool, hanging out at The Grapes watching John drink Black-and-Tans. Now I wanna read every book in the series, but many of 'em are sold out and are expensive collectors' items, or are only available in Kindle, which isn't my thing. I've gotta have a real book in my hands, and I need these John Lennon books! The Libe only has the first one. Maybe Ms. Kessler will print up another run.
My late night music is "Die Feen" by Richard Wagner, conducted by von Karajan. I hope your week is going well, and I send you Tons of Love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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