Dark Manhattan

Ralph Cooper stars as a small-time punk muscling his way to the top of a numbers racket in Harlem, in a story similar to the classics "The Public Enemy (1931)" and "Little Caesar(1931)." Although Cooper was a talented top black actor in "race" films (intended for black audiences), he lacked the dynamic qualities that James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson brought to those two classics. Still, I enjoyed the movie knowing it was the first all-black movie made in Hollywood, and because it had good actors except for the female love interest, Cleo Herndon, who seemed a bit poor except for her singing. Perhaps that is why she never made another film.

On a humorous note, Ossie Davis, who introduced the film on the Turner Classic Movies Channel, mentioned the movie broke all attendance records at the Apollo theater in Harlem because overflow crowds were shunted to a theater two blocks away. Since there was only one print, each reel had to be rewound and rushed to the other theater.

Ralph Cooper was The Black Humphrey Bogart of Black Cagney of The Black Cast Films. You can tell he study a lot of those Cagney and Bogart films. In most of his films he played a hard-nose or tough gangster, his movies had stories to tell and it appealed to the Black Audiences, it gave them something to be proud of, since Hollywood gave poor stereotypes of Blacks in movies. Ralph Cooper was among the Black producers to make Black Cast Films and make them good and worth viewing, it gave the Blacks pride. They felt Black people should have movie stars and role modes to look up to. Sadly, a lot of these Blacks actors, actresses, singers, and dancers are forgotten. A lot of them were good though. These were the only films they got to really show their talent, a lot of them didn't get recognition, maybe now they will. These Black Production Films showed Blacks good act, sing, and dance, and do really good acting if given the proper chance. If you can catch this movie, you'll enjoy it. You can see what life was like in Black American in the 1930s. These types of movies were never seen by Black Audiences- mind you, Black Cast Films made outside of Hollywood. These films were made by Black Producers who didn't have much to work on, but did good with what they had. Of course, some learned some film secrets from whites. Funny- whites didn't care much for these films, but now since they films are being released, whites are loving them, and wondering why they never seen or heard of "Black Cast Films". But since these films have been hidden away for many, many years, A lot of them are being found and released, and becoming popular again. Too bad, The Blacks didn't take care and save these films, because a lot of them aren't in the best conditions. But, if you catch this film on Turner Classic Movies, you'll see a good viewing of it. Maybe they'll released it on DVD.

This movie has an interesting kernel of a story: the rise and fall of a Harlem Numbers banker, between legitimate government crackdowns and the mobs from further south in Manhattan moving in. Indeed, the story is good enough to have been used a couple of times more recently: 1997's HOODLUM and 2007's AMERICAN GANGSTER, both are well made, entertaining movies. This one is not. Let's figure out why.

First, there's the matter of casting. Ralph Cooper, as the man who gets taken in by numbers banker Clarence Brooks, and then pushes him out of the racket and his girl, Cleo Herndon, brings no energy, no intensity to the character in his rise and fall, as Cagney and Robinson had shown in their breakout roles, and as Laurence Fishburne and Denzell Washington would six and seven decades later. He seems amiable and leisurely when he's in a gun battle with the police. Miss Herndon is even more bizarre. She reads each line as if she has not heard what was said before. Brooks seems good, but he vanishes from the picture halfway through.

Of course, these issues are overwhelming, but they argue for a breakdown behind the camera. Arthur Reed's camerawork seem all right, but Harry Fraser was not a director known for putting any snap in his movies, and editor Arthur A. Brooks makes some peculiar choices. Energy levels don't rise and fall in a scene, they begin and end abruptly with changes in the camera set-up; and instead of using camerawork and editing to increase tension as the movie goes on, the opposite effect shows up. The fastest rate of cutting is at the beginning of the movie, and the camera actually begins to move halfway through it. Perhaps Fraser felt this was the only way to get the performances within a scene to match, but it means that as the movie goes on, the energy goes down.

Why these terrible choices? In truth, Fraser was a terrible director, who worked for the real Poverty Row firms. Ralph Cooper as co-director, co-writer, co-producer and star, deserves a lot of the discredit, but clearly he was taking a gamble that didn't pay off.

No, the real problem with this film is lack of money. There was no money for a decent director, no money for a decent script, no money for more time to rehearse and shoot and test and reshoot. This was never going to play in any of the movie palaces. Like other race films of the era, its audiences were the Black houses, where a certain box office could be guaranteed. If it stayed within budget, maybe it would make a few dollars, maybe it would lose a few dollars but establish Cooper as a movie performer, and maybe make some money with the next movie.

There was no next movie. Given the movie I just looked at, it probably lost a lot of money. I won't mourn that, because bad movies don't deserve to make money, although all too often it seems they do and the good ones fail. But it meant an end to cooper's hopes, and it's always sad to see someone fail.