Last night's movie was "Behind the High Wall"(1956), a prison-break drama starring Tom Tully as a morally compromised warden. He doesn't start out that way. In fact, as the movie opens, he's closer to being the Saintly Warden of prison film prototype, arguing before a state board for better treatment of his convicts. His reasoning is sound: that better treatment not only leads to less recidivism but saves the state money in the bargain. The board disagrees, and Tully, weary of fighting losing battles, is ready to resign from his job. He goes home that afternoon to commiserate with his wheelchair-bound wife (Sylvia Sydney), and as they're having lunch, he gets a call that there's trouble at the prison. He leaves immediately and when he gets there, a massive brawl is taking place in the mess hall. But it's all a distraction for what's really afoot; a plot by four lifers to kidnap Warden Tully and use him as a hostage for their breakout.
With the warden in a prearranged getaway car, the convicts then change vehicles at an auto shop off the highway. The switch is preplanned also, with a mechanic from the shop doing the driving in a company truck. As the hours pass, the owner of the garage calls the cops to alert them to his missing vehicle and driver, and the state police put out an all points bulletin. A motorcycle officer sees the truck pass, he gives chase, and the convicts shoot him dead. But as this happens, their driver - the auto shop mechanic (John Gavin, later the US Ambassador to Mexico) - loses control of the truck and it rolls down a hillside, killing three of the four escaped convicts and ejecting the warden and the fourth con, in addition to himself. Gavin is knocked unconcho. The warden is groggy but alive. He sees the fourth convict trying to run away up a mountainside and shoots him. The guy falls, and as he tumbles, the suitcase he was carrying opens and a boatload of cash falls out.
In his dazed state, the warden makes a decision that will alter his life. Because all the escaped convicts are now dead, and the only other survivor of the crash - the mechanic/getaway driver - is knocked out, Warden Tully decides to gather up the cash and bury it, with the idea of returning later to take it home. When he and the Gavin are rescued, Gavin ends up on trial as the driver of the getaway truck. Warden Tully is called as a witness, but provides no help, pro or con. "I don't remember much of anything due to the accident" he tells the court. Gavin has no evidence to prove he was forced into helping the convicts, and because the motorcycle cop was killed in the act of the getaway, he goes down for the death penalty as the only surviving member of the escape crew.
Gavin will soon be sitting in the gas chamber. The only man who can prove his innocence, if he is innocent, is Warden Tully, who is now compromised because of his misguided decision to hide and steal the stolen cash the prisoners escaped with. Tully explains to his wife that its a no-brainer to take the money. "It's untraceable; we need it cause I'm losing my job, and from now on I won't have to work in the prison system anymore, with all those short-sighted board members always threatening my job." His wife, paraplegic from an auto accident, begs him to turn the money in. "It's wrong to keep it. And what will happen to me if you're caught and sent to prison?"
As to the social aspects of the script, this is an Abner Biberman film, so you've gotta have moral dilemmas, it was in his contract. If a script has anything to do with unions or prisoners, Biberman's your director. He was very good, though (a good actor too), and here he has the warden so tangled up in burying and recovering the stolen money that his wife is completely traumatised, because Tully is willing to let John Gavin die in the gas chamber even though he knows Gavin's innocent. Trying to prove Gavin's innocence is his girlfriend Betty Lynn, the daughter of the auto shop owner, who gives her five thousand dollars to hire a high-powered appeal lawyer. They need new evidence to get Gavin a new trial, and in their search, they'll discover Warden Tully's secret. I wasn't happy with the ending, but the movie still gets Two Huge Thumbs Up. In addition to the stolen money theme, there's a major subplot involving another lifer who makes a separate escape. With nothing to lose, he wants the money, too, and that's all I can tell you. It's 85 minutes long but very involving and the picture is widescreen and razor sharp. ////
Now then: do you remember Frankie Darro? We saw him in "Irish Luck", sometime last Summer, right around the time we were discovering The East Side Kids. We said Darro reminded us of Leo Gorcey (or maybe it was the reverse). Both are feisty and short in stature. Darro worked a lot with Mantan Moreland, and I think we mentioned they were the first interracial "buddy team". The previous night, Frankie was back, in "Tough to Handle"(1937) as "Mike Sanford", a sidewalk newsboy whose grandfather buys a winning lottery ticket worth sixteen thousand clamatos. The problem is that it may not be legitimate. In the newspaper, a woman is listed as being the winner, with the same ticket number as Mike's grandpa.
Mike decides to investigate, with the help of one of his customers, a reporter named "Joe MacIntyre" (Kane Richmond). We in the audience know that Mike's suspicions are correct, because we've already seen nightclub owner "Tony Franco" (Harry Worth) talking to his henchmen about his counterfeit lottery ticket scam. Franco has a printing press replicating tickets. The upside is that 99.9999% of lotto tickets never win, so they generally have no crossovers with the real tickets and make a buck off each one. In the big city, it's a million dollar racket. But this time, Grandpa Radford's ticket happens to line up with an actual winner. Franco panics, because he stands to get caught; Grandpa bought the ticket from one of his hoodlums. So, he tells the hood to get the ticket back. "But no rough stuff. Just trick him into handing it over." They try this, but Grandpa won't give the ticket up. "Its my only proof that I won the lottery". The hoods end up killing him, exactly what Franco didn't want. Grandpa's death looks like a heart attack, but the cops suspect foul play. Mike tells them about his lotto ticket, and the resulting confusion about the winner.
Mike's reporter friend Joe MacIntyre asks around at Franco's nightclub about ticket sales, but no one will talk. For his part, Mike can't believe Joe would even suspect Tony Franco. "Why? He's a real nice man, Joe. He even gave my sister Gloria a job as his singer." Tony always treats Mike and Gloria like family, with the utmost courtesy, so Mike can't believe Franco would ever have anything to do with crime, let alone murder. But Joe MacIntyre is a hard-boiled reporter. He knows people have false fronts, especially guys like Tony Franco.
The story is padded with nightclub singing scenes, and because we know from the start that Franco is behind the fake lotto scheme, there's no mystery involved. The twist is that there's a Mr. Big above Franco, someone who is running the scheme statewide. We only see this man in shadow. He advises Tony to pay off the occasional winners. "You should've given the old man his 16,000 bucks. We don't need the scrutiny, and it's a small price of doing business when compared to the million dollars a year we're making." In addition to the mysterious Mr. Big, there's another curious character, a drunk who is always at the nightclub. He wears a suit and pays for his drinks, so we know he isn't a bum, but who is he? Joe MacIntyre finds out, when Franco puts his henchmen on Joe's tail. Is the drunk an undercover agent? It appears so.
Take out the musical padding and the needless, wide shot punchouts, and you'd have an excellent, Frankie Darro-driven crime movie. It runs 58 minutes, should've been 52 or 53, but it's good enough to still warrant Two Big Thumbs Up. You just have to like Frankie's cartwheeling energy, with his long, backcombed hair always falling in his face. We'll go on a Darro binge sooner or later. The picture is razor sharp. /////
And that's all I've got for tonight. My blogging music is Cream's "Wheels of Fire". I've been on a major Cream binge, and I don't think it can be overstated how incredible they were. Notwithstanding later virtuosos like Chris Squire and Geddy Lee (whose styles were different anyway), it's gotta be said that Jack Bruce was the greatest bassist ever. While I loved Cream's hit singles as a kid, I'm just now listening to Bruce's playing in depth for the first time, and there's just no one in his league from that era (except Paul McCartney, whose style was also different), and so many players from the 70s onward emulated him. Bruce is off the charts, especially on live recordings, ditto Ginger Baker, but the guy whose playing really needs to be re-examined in depth is Eric Clapton, who has kind of been given a back seat as a Guitar God after all these years, when he probably should be driving the car. Over the past ten days or so, I've been listening to all the Cream albums repeatedly (and the live 1968 Farewell Concert), and EC just lets loose. He goes off on some blistering jams, and again, as I noted in another blog, nobody was playing like that in 1967. Well, Jimi was, but Jimi was a different kind of player, and it must be also noted that, as incredible as Jimi was, and a great songwriter in many styles and a great singer, he was more prone to experimentation with his guitar playing and thus could be sloppy live, when he got too far out on a limb. Also. though he had excellent sidemen in Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, Clapton had Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. I'm not knocking my Uncle Jimi by any stretch. There was no Other, at the time, for experimentation, innovation, and taking the guitar to the next level. But for sheer lead playing, and the monster tone to end all monster tones, Clapton in Cream was the man. Keep in mind that I'm specifying "when he was in Cream." I don't think he ever approached that level again, although he was great playing a mellower kind of music in Blind Faith and somewhat scorching with Derek and the Dominoes. But with Cream? Fuggeddabboudditt. Clapton was God, as was claimed. Then came Sir Richard of Blackmore in 1972, four years after EC, to take lead guitar playing into the stratosphere with his solo on "Highway Star". Following the Man in Black was young Edward Van Halen six years later, who took things to mind-boggling heights. He came along "ten years after" Clapton (see what I did there?), and EC was his hero, so that brings us full circle. But yeah, go on a Cream binge and see.
My late night music is Bach, various cantatas and chorales. I need a new book to read. I hope you're enjoying the last few days of 2022, and I send you Tons of Love as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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