Wild Company

This is a very preachy, stodgy melodrama about fast-living Frank Albertson who falls in with the titled "wild company" to the shame of his politician father, H.B. Warner. The cast is good but the movie is very talky in that early 30's style of people coming into a room, standing there and having long conversations. At the end a judge makes a long, long, long speech about responsibility that will make everyone yawn. But the acting is all fine and Bela Lugosi is a stand-out in his small role as a doomed nightclub owner.

H. B. Warner is a well-connected and successful merchant. He indulges his son, Frank Albertson, with plenty of money and a loose grip; as he tells wife Claire McDowell, he knows what it's like to be young. As a result, he has no idea of the situation Albertson is in: smitten with night-club singer Sharon Lynn, who is the mistress of Kenneth Thomson. Thomson plans to use Albertson as a cover for the robbery and murder of night-club owner Bela Lugosi, confident that by framing matters right, Albertson will go down with them, and Waner will never permit that.

There's a lot lurking in the subtext of this story, with its intermingling of flaming youth and organized crime. Leo McCarey, in his first movie for Fox, makes a stab at it, with a peroration by George Fawcett to define and condemn the lapses of modern society. The subject however is not McCarey's meat, and despite some fine performances, particularly by Warner, the movie lacks density to give it much gravity. The movie feels as if it could have been cut by five or ten minutes without losing anything. As a result, it's a heartfelt if undistinguished drama.

1930's "Wild Company" was an early talkie attempt at the generation gap, a rare starring role for Frank Albertson, remembered as the rich oil magnate flirting with Janet Leigh 30 years later in "Psycho." Larry Grayson (Albertson) and his younger sister (Joyce Compton) spend their evenings out partying, much to the consternation of their wealthy politician father (H. B. Warner) and doting mother (Claire McDowell), but when Larry falls for a singer (Sharon Lynn) known for her association with notorious gangster Joe Hardy (Kenneth Thomson), his father decides the time has come to limit Larry's resources. However, it's already too late, as Hardy plots to rob the Skyrocket nightclub, firmly believing that if Larry is involved, his father will try to hush it up. Rifling the safe, Hardy is interrupted by the club's owner, Felix Brown (Bela Lugosi), who, despite pleading for his life, is gunned down for his troubles, with Larry just outside the door, and his father present to see his beloved son sneaking out the window. Yes, the latter portions do become preachy, but it was a different time then. Sharon Lynn is best remembered as James Finlayson's chanteuse wife in Laurel and Hardy's "Way Out West," and there is a brief unbilled appearance from Grady Sutton, flirting with Larry's sister (he too worked with Laurel and Hardy, as well as W. C. Fields). Lugosi, again employed at Fox in those early days prior to "Dracula," has only a few minutes of screen time, and gets bumped off 22 minutes before the end of this 73 minute feature. H. B. Warner, who had played Christ in 1927's "King of Kings," would later work with Boris Karloff in 1931's "Five Star Final."

For most of the first half of Leo McCarey's "Wild Company", I felt like it wasn't going anywhere, with a spoiled rich youth (Frank Albertson, better known as the banker who loans Marion the money in "Psycho") getting involved with a nightclub singer at a place frequented by gangsters.

The second half proves intense, after a big pivot. It keeps you on the edge of your seat...until the end. The judge's speech might have seemed serious in 1930, but nowadays it looks silly at best (and possibly bigoted). People always say those sorts of things about the youth. As to the issue of coddling them too much, that could be a case of affluenza, as seen in the case of the boy in Texas whose lawyer argued that his privileged upbringing deprived him of a sense of right and wrong, and he got off with a slap on the wrist.

Anyway, an okay movie, nothing great. Watch for a pre-fame Bela Lugosi as the club owner.