Blackwell's Island

This is like a lot of crime movies from Warner Brothers and RKO. In some ways, it seems a vehicle for John Garfield. And Garfield is extremely appealing as an honorable reporter.

The fascinating part is Stanley Fields, though. He plays the vicious mob boss who is an overgrown kid. He plays practical jokes. He is barely literate but love the funny papers. His two dogs are as nasty as he is and they accompany him to jail. In jail, he sets himself and his cronies up in the infirmary, throwing out all the legitimately sick people. There he plays with a model train set.

The plot is plausible. Garfield is Good. The Lane sister who gets high billing has only a few lines so who can judge. But Fields's character is the shocker here.

Jovial, practical-joking gangster Stanley Fields gets sentenced to 5-14 at Blackwell's Island and starts running the joint because warden Granville Bates doesn't care. Reporter John Garfield slugs an Assistant District Attorney and gets sent there himself.

It's a bizarre, dead-end in the "let's reform the reformatories" subgenre. While Robinson was moving his gangster persona into comedy efforts like LARCENY INC, and director Raoul Walsh was beginning to revive the shoot-em-up with Cagney as a good guy, Bryan Foy's B division at Warner Brothers was offering stuff like this. Elsewhere, crime dramas were made palatable by using the Damon Runyon formula of making the leads seem like gangs who couldn't speak straight. Here, Fields is childish. He plays with electric trains, he has a squirting boutonniere, he offers exploding cigars, all of which hint at violence while remaining harmless. He may knock down Garfield with his fists, but in the end, it's Garfield who has the Tommy Gun. With Rosemary Lane, Dick Purcell, Victory Jory, Peggy Shannon, Charley Foy, and Leon Ames.

This is one of those movies which are jammed packed with actors who's names we don't recall but who's faces are very familiar because they appear in so many of these great B movies. About the only well known actors are John Garfield and Victor Jory. This film is about a New York protection racket boss, played by Stanley Fields as somewhat menacing yet also a comic figure. He and two of his henchmen get sent to a local prison on a Hudson River island, where they end-up taking control and have the warden and his staff do their bidding. Garfield plays a crusading crime reporter who arranges to become a prisoner on the island so as to get the goods on the mob. It's great fun with lots of action, laughs, and good solid performances by all parties. You won't take this picture very serious but you will have a lot of fun while watching it.

It's 1932 and the government is trying to restart the economy. 'Bull' Bransom is a mob boss running protection racket on the Manhattan waterfront. His men blow up a boat after the captain refused to pay. Reporter Tim Haydon (John Garfield) has been writing articles calling him out. Haydon goes to the hospital to interview the captain and becomes taken with nurse Mary 'Sunny' Walsh.

I really like the start or even the first half. I like the prankster gangster. He's a different kind of gangster and a very effective one. His pranks really keeps me off-balance in a good way. As for John Garfield, he's a great actor with real charisma and presents a great possible foil against Bull. As the story keeps going, there is a miscalibration somewhere along the way. Being off-balance early on with Bull, one eventually finds one's balance and he's not as threatening as one expects. He should track down Haydon down a back alley and beat him to a pulp. With Haydon in the same prison, he should have the guy beaten to an inch of his life. That brings me to Haydon. Garfield is too cool. He's too gangster. He plays it too casual. His character should be in fear for most of the movie. I still really love the first part. When Haydon is brought into Bull's office, the movie started to drift in a wrong direction.

After being convicted, an egotistical crime boss corrupts the prison he's sent to, until a crusading commissioner and crime reporter get on his trail.

If you like the blustery Wallace Beery you might like this movie. After all, the film's real star is a Beery impersonator, Stanley Fields (Bull Bransom), who has the most scenes and screen time. Looks to me like Garfield's only got a featured part though he gets top billing. I guess (IMDB) the top billing is because his smash hit Four Daughters (1938) was made after this film but released before Blackwell. So Warner's shot more scenes for him in this film before releasing it, knowing they had a budding star. Anyway, as a Garfield fan, I've never seen him look so young. Still, he's got his usual fast-talk delivery but without the patented tough guy demeanor. All in all, this may be his first screen appearance.

At the same time, why top bill Rosemary Lane when she's only got about a minute of screen time. No doubt she was also added after initial shooting because she played so well with Garfield in Four Daughters. I've spent some time on these oddities because the movie itself is ordinary, at best. Fields makes a comical crime boss in a routine screenplay that relies mainly on his Beery-like qualities. Warner's does get to use a lot of its stock footage of prison turmoil, a topic it specialized in. Still and all, except for the evolution of Garfield's career, the movie itself is nothing more than a routine bottom-of-the-bill programmer.