The Secret Six

Clark Gable and Jean Harlow are emphasized in modern descriptions of this film, but they are not the leads. The leads are Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Ralph Bellamy, and Johnny Mack Brown. Harlow and Gable have supporting roles, along with Marjorie Rambeau.

Bellany plays Johnny Franks, a bootlegger who owns a club. He gets a thug named Scorpio (Beery) to work in his gang, which is actually run by an attorney, Newton (Stone).

Scorpio manages to kill anybody in his way, including Franks and take over the organization. It will be up to the Secret Six - a group of masked businessmen to work to bring him and his team to justice.

Jean Harlow was something like 20 here - she plays a kept woman who falls in love with a reporter (Brown) who is killed by Scorpio. Gable is a rival reporter of Brown's. Gable is sans mustache and gives his role a lot of charm.

The Secret Six, produced by William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Pictures for MGM, has an interesting message about extralegal means to bring down systemic corruption. The title figures are six notable citizens who are all masked, representing all kinds of interests who come together when organized crime takes over a city. We never see The Secret Six, they only come in the last third of the film. But we do see how they operate.

The films is the story of the rise and fall of Wallace Beery who becomes an Al Capone like figure, the real brains of the outfit however is the mob's lawyer Lewis Stone. With Stone pulling the strings and polluting the justice system, Beery rises to power in a typical gangland battle. When the regular law enforcement channels don't work, The Secret Six start working with the federal government to bring Beery down. Working with them are a pair of reporters Johnny Mack Brown and Clark Gable. A key witness in the events is Jean Harlow in her first MGM film.

For those who are used to seeing Lewis Stone as the rock of integrity as Judge Hardy, Stone as a bottom feeding shyster lawyer will be quite the revelation. Maybe because he's cast against type he's so good, he just oozes sanctimony in front of a jury.

One character I wish that we'd seen a bit more of is Paul Hurst who is Beery's friend and whom the gang elects mayor of a small town. Once doing that the gang moves on to a big city where they take down top gangster boss John Miljan. The situation parallels Al Capone's takeover of Hawthorne, Illinois. I wish Hurst hadn't just disappeared from the story after his election.

The Secret Six was the first of six films that Clark Gable and Jean Harlow worked in. Next to Joan Crawford, Gable teamed with Harlow more than any other leading lady. Neither of them however are the stars here, they are billed way down in the cast list. Marjorie Rambeau also has a nice role as a good time girl who Beery uses as a doormat, but Rambeau has the last laugh on him.

Although Warner Brothers was the gangster studio with their emphasis on working class films, The Secret Six could give any of the Warner products a run in quality.

I saw this recently on TCM and was quite impressed. This film came before the better known gangster movies of that era-- "Little Caesar," "Public Enemy," and, the greatest of them all-- "Scarface." It was also made at a time when sound recording technology for motion pictures was very new and still in development. The first talkie gangster movie, which happened to be the first all-talkie movie, was "Lights of New York," made in 1928. In that film the equipment was so clunky that the actors had to speak loud and slow and stay close to the microphone. By 1931, several improvements had come along, but it was still a difficult technical achievement to make a film like this.

There is a scene towards the beginning where Ralph Belamy, who does a great job as a sinister hood, fires a tommy-gun in a night club and kills a guy. Then, he and his cohorts run out and jump in a car. The rival gang pursues them, firing their own tommy-gun. Finally, the rivals crash. But during the chase scene, we are taken through city streets, with the cars running fast and the machine guns blazing. Granted, this was done much better a year or so later in "Scarface," but this film set the precedent.

The film is also worth seeing for the Clark Gable role. He shows the charm that made him a star. Harlow is also great as the moll. For a film made that long ago-- at the very beginning of the sound era-- it is well worth viewing whenever it appears again on Turner or any other channel.

As far as 1930s gangster movies are concerned, I was a little disappointed by The Secret Six. I'd heard a lot of hype about it, but it wasn't nearly as captivating as The Roaring Twenties, The Public Enemy, or The Beast of the City, each revolving around bootleggers and policemen out to catch them. Unless you're a big Wallace Beery fan, or you want to see Jean Harlow before her eyebrows, you can rent one of the better ones. Wallace Beery stars as a gangster who wanted to go straight but gets very quickly seduced by his old crowd and goes to work for bootlegger Ralph Bellamy, who works under mob boss Lewis Stone. I wasn't used to seeing Lewis Stone in such a villainous role, but he certainly made the most of it! Where does Jean Harlow come in? Besides showing off her lovely figure and using her sex appeal to distract a do-gooder reporter from exposing the criminal underworld, she doesn't do much. Wallace Beery hands her a wad of cash as she disappears with the naïve young man, then tells her to report to him in the morning. Yes, folks, this is a pre-Code movie.

I was very impressed by George Hill's direction. For 1931, it was very forward-thinking. The start of the movie shows Wallace walking across the block, and the camera, mounted on an extensive dolly, follows him. The streets are filthy, with puddles and trash, making it seem like it wasn't just any old set in the studio. During the scenes when gangsters are making a stereotypical getaway, the camera shows the driver's point of view, and as pedestrians leap out of the way, the camera swerves, narrowly missing them. It must have been very exciting to watch in 1931!

The plot itself, and the execution of it, isn't very fast-paced or interesting. I'm not the biggest Wallace Beery fan, so I probably wasn't the best audience for the film. Keep your eyes open for Marjorie Rambeau, a stereotypical "rotten tramp", and a pre-mustached Clark Gable who shows his energetic screen presence to the audience with a promising future ahead of him.

DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. During the driving scenes, the camera bounces around and swerves to mirror the road, and that will make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

This is a great gangster movie with a very talented cast. Wallace Beery plays a Capone-type hoodlum that allows nothing to stand in his way. Well, tax problems do put his power and glory on the skids. The veteran actor Lewis Stone is a 'high brow' crime lord. Usual good guy Ralph Bellamy is a bootlegger/night club owner. The Chicago night life and gangland activity keeps this flick rocking back and forth, but well worth watching.

Talk about a great supporting cast. Get a load of this: Johnny Mack Brown, Clark Gable and the enchanting Jean Harlow. Fun to watch on the same evening with SCAREFACE(32) and THE STAR WITNESS(31)