Quick Millions

"Quick Millions" is a shadow of better gangster films made the same year (Public Enemy and Little Caesar) but for all its awkwardness it grows with the viewing and is better the second time around.

Aesthetically, it is not an important film and explores only familiar territory. Still, there are unexpected delicious moments. The studio seemed to be trying to make Spencer Tracy into James Cagney with this turn as a racketeer trying to class himself up.

In film history, "Quick Millions" is important. It was Tracy's first starring role, and he needed it badly. It's not a common character for him and yet his skills at underplaying are clear and marvelous. For George Raft, who looks totally GQ in his every scene, this film was the direct reason he landed a similar henchman role in the terrific "Scarface," which proved to be his breakthrough. It also got him his contract with Paramount. Despite a rough beginning, Tracy and Raft became good friends while filming "Quick Millions." It's an interesting aspect, almost an unconscious battle of screen chemistry. Just try to keep your eyes off Raft doing absolutely nothing in the background except shifting his weight while you're supposed to be paying attention to Tracy's important dialogue with other characters.

What works: Great lighting direction during the holdup at the "testimonial dinner." Focus on Raft's legs while dancing at a party, which initially seems to be just showing off his deft moves but in fact is leading up to the next time we see his legs in a brilliantly shot murder scene. Surprising musical interludes. Tracy incorrigible and so believable in carrying the film.

What does not work: Ham-fisted camera work - even in '31 cinematography was advanced beyond this clumsiness. Long-winded anti-racketeering speeches. While dialogue is often sharp, the storytelling leaves gaps.

And watch out for a flip of the bird.

1931 was a bumper crop year featuring up and coming movie stars (Cagney, Robinson, Tracy) who would become legends doing gangster turns, followed in 32 by Paul Muni in Scarface. While Robinson and Cagney scored in in Little Caser and Public Enemy respectively, Spencer Tracy in Quick Millions proved he was more at home with virtue than vice.

Truck driver with a sense of ambition, Bugs Raymond (Tracy) organizes drivers with some muscle and is soon running a sweet protection racket across the city. Working his way up the food chain he garners respectability and a desire to marry the upper crust daughter (Sarah Churchill) of his extorted, legitimate partner. When she rejects him he hatches an absurd plan to whisk her away, giving his former mob pals an opportunity to exploit his power.

Tracy simply is not up to the iconic mobster performances delivered by the aforementioned actors getting their starts. Too measured in his rage he lacks the operatic pretense of Rico, the natural smart alecky ways of Cagney, the disturbing incestuous lunacy of Muni to be absorbing and put spark into the picture. Margurite Churchill as the love interest also does the picture no favors with a flat performance while Sally Eilers as Daisy and George Raft as a triggerman give plus performances.

Directed by the supposedly talented but temperamental Rowland Brown and lensed by underrated Joe August, Millions displays some moments of fine mise en scene, but in total this is lack luster Spence, an actor more at home on the side of decency than immorality. More adept at hearing confessions than giving them.

Joining the other major studios during the early thirties in producing hardhitting gangster melodramas, Fox rushed their newest contract star into his second film. In Quick Millions Spencer Tracy plays a truckdriver who is just a bit more clever than his comrades and desires the easy life.In short order he sets about organizing the other city truckers and eventually eases out the racketeers until he, himself, becomes the labor boss to be reckoned with. Along the way to success Tracy's character begins to undergo changes and his desires ever grander.Sally Eilers, his faithful girl is shunted aside for the favors of society beauty Marguerite Churchill; fellow racketeers and pals begin to suspect his ability to lead and of course numerous enemies are plotting his downfall.

The action of the film does not rely so much upon shocking rub-outs (the way Little Caesar and Scarface had the same year) but the gradual degeneration of Tracy's morality and relationships. The picture was successful enough to quickly establish Tracy as a strong screen presence and won plaudits for first-time director Rowland Brown. Warner Richmond is great as Tracy's nemesis as are George Raft and Bob Burns(not so lovable in this one). Watch for Ward Bond and Edgar Kennedy.

See this wonderful gem when you can but, remember like so many early Fox films before 1935, it's tough to find.

This film marked an early career milestone for Spencer Tracy. He'd scored a sensation on Broadway as a tough convict in "The Last Mile" in 1930, at the very moment when the Hollywood studios were desperate to recruit stage talent for the talkies. He appeared in a couple of Movietone shorts made in New York, then went to Hollywood for his feature debut in a hastily produced prison picture called Up the River. (Also in the cast was another up-and-coming stage performer, Humphrey Bogart.) But Quick Millions was Tracy's first starring role in a prestige project, Fox's high-profile entry in the hottest genre of the day, the gangster saga. The picture is built entirely around Tracy's character, Bugs Raymond, and the plot traces the rise-and-fall trajectory of his career in a fashion that was already becoming standard for crime kingpin stories.

Quick Millions is an interesting, well-written movie that offers some colorful supporting characters and several memorable scenes, but it's not hard to see why it was overshadowed by the other gangster movies of its day, the ones with flamboyant central characters and lots of shoot-outs. Spencer Tracy's Bugs Raymond is a smart racketeer who plans his moves carefully and gets his strong-arm guys to do the dirty work- - dirty work that generally takes place elsewhere, so he doesn't have to see it. As the man himself says: "I'm just a guy with a one-ton brain who's too nervous to steal and too lazy to work. I do other people's thinking for them and make them like it." He's no angry kid from the slums, no mad-dog killer with an antisocial streak; he's a cool customer who uses basic business practices, backed by the threat of violence, to get what he wants.

When the story begins Bugs is still a truck driver getting into foolish scrapes with the law. His girl nearly walks out on him, but when he tells her that he's been working out the "angles" to achieve material success we believe him, and before long he's taken over the trucking business and is forcing the city's respectable businessmen to kowtow to him. Some of his associates are irredeemable low-life hoodlums with no ethical standards at all, but Bugs makes it clear that there are limits to what he will and will not countenance. Raymond's new status brings him into contact with prominent civic leaders and their families, and he begins to clean up his act. He actually dons evening clothes and attends the opera. Unfortunately for him, however, the old gang doesn't take it well when "Mr. Raymond" puts on airs and aspires to class. Like many another gangland chieftain, Bugs' fatal mistake comes when he forgets where he came from and how he got to the top, and treats his partners in crime like they're poor relations he has come to find embarrassing. In the end he pays for this mistake in traditional gangland style.

For a gangster flick this movie is remarkably non-violent. There is an undercurrent of potential violence that charges several scenes, but when violent events are shown they are usually handled in an oblique, stylized way. (We know that Bugs Raymond strikes his girlfriend, but unlike Tom Powers in The Public Enemy he does so off-camera.) The focal point here is Bugs Raymond's perversely creative use of American business techniques, and the subsequent hubris that brings him down. It should be added, however, that the screenplay does not let Raymond off the hook: he's still a thug, and no better than any other racketeer, just a little smarter -- for awhile, anyway -- and less willing to get his hands dirty.

This is a film that deserves to be better known, and for fans of the genre it's a must, but first-time viewers should be aware that Quick Millions is more talky and cerebral than most gangster movies, and a little slow going at times. The dialog is generally sharp, but there are also scenes that could have been trimmed, and a couple of plot points that are never adequately explained. Bugs Raymond does not leave the indelible impression made by Edward G. Robinson's Rico Bandello in Little Caesar, Jimmy Cagney's Tom Powers, or Paul Muni's Tony Camonte in the 1932 version of Scarface. Still, this rarely shown movie is well worth seeing for a number of good scenes, a memorable finale, and a great party sequence where hit man George Raft performs a sinuous soft shoe dance to "St. Louis Blues" shortly before gunning a man down. That's worth the price of admission right there!

Spencer Tracy is not readily linked with gangster pictures, yet he started off his career with a number of efforts in this vein: these included John Ford's UP THE RIVER (1930) and Michael Curtiz' 20,000 YEARS IN SING SING (1933); this film (which happens to be director Brown's debut) is another and certainly the most typical.

In fact, its narrative follows much the same path as those of 'rival' productions (notably Warners', who were to the form what Universal was to Horror) which sees the protagonist – a former truck driver – build a criminal empire but getting his come-uppance eventually, for attempting to climb one step too many along the society ladder (while pushing his devoted commoner girlfriend around)! Tracy's entry into the racket is depicted via a droll sequence where he systematically destroys a number of parked cars, so that he can then offer his protection to the affected business!

While less inclined towards showing off with his camera here than in Brown's two subsequent – and only other – movies, this still emerges as possibly his best work owing to Tracy's compelling portrayal (on the strength of which I have set out to acquire a number of his early and, by all accounts, minor vehicles) and another stalwart 'gangland' presence i.e. George Raft (in a supporting role, which goes from lackey to defector to victim while also incorporating a rare opportunity to showcase his dancing skills[!], he would refine in Howard Hawks' SCARFACE [1932] on his way to achieving personal stardom).

The film (accompanied on the TCM-sourced copy I acquired by forced French subtitles!) is a breezy 66 minutes long – though other sources give its official running-time at 72! – highlighted by smart dialogue and a handful of nicely-judged action sequences (the ending is particularly great). Pity that, reportedly due to his temper, Brown would get into hot water with Hollywood bigwigs and eventually forced to abandon his directorial career for good (a brief sojourn to Britain in order to make the 1934 version of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL would similarly fall through and end up being handed to someone else!)