The Big Shakedown

Pharmacist Charles Farrell goes into business with gangster Ricardo Cortez making counterfeit toothpaste and cosmetics. Soon Cortez wants to branch out into making medication, which Farrell isn't happy about. But Farrell wants to marry fiancée Bette Davis and give her financial security. Early Bette flick before she had really developed her style. She's fine but there's not a lot for her to do through most of the picture but worry about her guy. Charles Farrell is OK. Ricardo Cortez is a great bad guy as usual. Nice supporting cast includes Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins, and Henry O'Neill. Fun cat fight between Glenda Farrell and Renee Whitney. Exciting climax you will not be able to predict!

THE BIG SHAKEDOWN (First National Pictures, 1934), directed by John Francis Dillon, is not a story about the San Francisco earthquake. It's a minor crime drama taken from a story "Cut Rate" by Sam Engels dealing with a couple of business partners from opposite sides. Not as famous as other films of this nature, but notable for an early screen appearance of Bette Davis, going on three years as a contract player with another three years to go for super stardom status and out of movie quickies such as this. Second billed under Charles Farrell, best known for his twelve movies opposite Janet Gaynor for Fox Films (1927-1934), with career declining as quickly as it had risen, having much more to do here than Davis.

Opening with character introduction, the story begins with the daily routine inside a neighborhood drug store: Norma Nelson (Bette Davis), a druggist copes with customers along with its owner, Jimmy Morrell (Charles Farrell), a chemist whom she loves and hopes to marry. Though Jimmy is satisfied with his drug store business, it's Norma who feels he could do a whole lot better. Things start to improve for Jimmy with the arrival of "Dutch" Barnes (Ricardo Cortez), a racketeer who had made a fortune bootlegging beer, finding himself out of business after the repeal of Prohibition. Coming to the drug store for a headache power which he does not have, Barnes is given a substitute Jimmy has made himself that is just as good. After Barnes tests toothpaste products against those made by Jimmy with his mob, "Lefty" (Allen Jenkins); "Slim" (Dewey Robinson); "Trigger" (Adrian Morris) and "Shorty" (George Cooper), not being able to tell the difference, both Barnes and Jimmy go into business for a better career. Once Jimmy discovers he's actually selling counterfeit patent medicines and putting manufacturers out of business, he finds that Barnes refuses to release Jimmy from his obligation to him.

The supporting cast includes Glenda Farrell (Lil Durand); Henry O'Neill (Sheffner); Renee Whitney (May LaRue); Robert Emmett O'Connor (Regan, the Bartender) and Samuel S. Hinds (Mr. Kophlsadt). Though a straight dramatic story, Sidney Miller adds some humor as a Jewish boy taking notes of all his drug store expenses.

Although THE BIG SHAKEDOWN crams many situations into its brief 61 minutes, results are somewhat satisfying. With Farrell and Cortez carrying on much of the plot, it offers Davis nothing in regards of challenging range. Ricardo Cortez is good yet typical as the bad guy, a role in which he excels, though never ranged in the high degree of a Humphrey Bogart. Like Bogey, Cortez could excel in playing a good-natured hero just as well (check out his underrated performance in 1932s SYMPHONY OF SIX MILLION). Glenda Farrell (no relation to Charles) breaks away from her wisecracking character as Cortez's girl, only to face some consequences for her actions.

Never distributed on video cassette, THE BIG SHAKEDOWN began to gain some cable television recognition starting on Turner Network Television (TNT) in 1989 before becoming a permanent fixture on Turner Classic Movies starting in 1994 and availability on DVD. Although the drama offers no great shakes, THE BIG SHAKEDOWN is worthy viewing more for its Warner Brothers stock players, especially a young Bette Davis. (**1/2)

Charles Farrell, a great silent screen star, appears with Bette Davis and Ricardo Cortez in "The Big Shakedown," a 1934 film featuring Allen Jenkins and Glenda Farrell.

Farrell and Davis are Jimmy and Norma, a boyfriend-girlfriend who marry later in the film. They run a corner drugstore. Cortez is a post- Prohibition gangster, Dutch Baines, looking for a new racket. Patronizing the store one day, he realizes that Jimmy can make his own products, which are identical to ones on the market. However, he isn't selling them claiming that they are the commercial brands; he makes them so he can sell a house brand for less.

Of course, Dutch sees that if these products are sold under the commercial names, he can use their publicity and brand reputation to make a fortune. He talks Jimmy into making toothpaste and beauty products because Jimmy needs money. He's reluctant to do it and planning to quit when Dutch decides to go into medicine and have Jimmy make drugs. Jimmy flatly refuses; Dutch makes noise about Norma's safety, and Jimmy caves.

This is a typical crime film interesting because of the cast. Davis' role is an ordinary ingénue one that could have been played by anyone. She was still getting a build-up and hadn't yet become a star with a special image. She's blond and pretty. Glenda Farrell has the role of Dutch's girlfriend, whom he throws over. Farrell, with her distinctive speaking voice and likable personality always stands out. Cortez does well playing the tough, uncompromising Baines.

Charles Farrell, whom I used to see as an elderly man (your fifties were considered like the seventies back then) when My Little Margie was in syndication, was good-looking and popular in his day. He had a gentleness about him and also an earnestness which he displays here. He retired in 1941 to become a land developer, but returned for Margie, which was followed by his own show. Then he retired again.

Cortez's career as a leading man was just about over. Though he continued working until he retired, he also became a successful broker on Wall Street.

Of interest, the actor who played the young Jewish boy who buys ice cream (a cone was six cents), Sidney Miller, went on to become a director and composer, and actually revamped the Mickey Mouse Club for Walt Disney beginning in its second season.

Amazing that Bette Davis was the only one to stay full-time in acting.

Although this is typical of the low-budget quickies that Warners churned out like hotcakes in the Thirties it offers Bette Davis in her most youthfully appealing "down-to-earth platinum blonde girl" phase. You can find the same character in THREE ON A MATCH, THE GIRL FROM 10TH AVENUE, THE PETRIFIED FOREST and others. She exudes an innocent but intelligent, unaffected femininity that seems to have evaporated by the time she hit her stride with JEZEBEL, so it's good that this phase of her career is preserved - if only to track her evolution as an actress. Note the energy and vitality she injects (perhaps effortlessly) into a supporting role as the girlfriend-wife, stealing every scene she's in - without relying on conventional beauty. It's kind of fun also to see how the scenarists managed to leap from one implausible, contrived plot development to the next - but that's a secondary matter because most of these films were beyond belief. The point was to make a moral point, not to be narratively convincing. The point here being: evil gangsters, beware of the authorities because they'll get you!

Back in the days when stardom meant signing a seven-year contract, Bette Davis didn't have much choice but to play the wife of a struggling pharmacist, who gets mixed up with the mob, in this mellerdrama. Hubby Charles Farrell is conscripted by gangster Ricardo Cortez to make counterfeit products like tooth paste and face powder. But when Cortez demands cheap knock-offs of high-priced medication, lives are in danger...Bette's included. She plays the ingénue role surprisingly well without the tics and mannerisms which would mark (and sometimes mar) her later career. Tall, handsome Charles Farrell, on the other hand, couldn't act. To say that he had two expressions is putting it generously. Fortunately, Cortez as the suave hood behind the counterfeiting scheme takes up the slack and Glenda Farrell drops seductively by as a gun moll who knows too much. A pretty entertaining B movie made moreso by the youthful Bette Davis.