Sworn Enemy

"Sworn Enemy" could have been a very good film, but the script is a bit rough. With a small re-write it could have been very good.

When the story begins, Hank Sherman (Robert Young) is doing what many men were doing during the Depression...looking for work. He finds a job working for a produce company loading trucks but his excitement is shortlived when a group of thugs from 'the Protective Association' demand he pay them $10 a month...or else. When he refuses, they beat the snot out of him. The owner sees this and chases away the thugs...and offers Hank a job as his chauffeur. The pay is good and he'll be able to go back to night school to get his law degree...and so he's a happy guy.

What follows is long, complicated and confusing. First, Hank's out of work, second he's a chauffeur, third he's working on becoming a lawyer, fourth he's an undercover agent for the District Attorney, fifth he's a boxing promoter. Do you get my drift? Good writing could have streamlined this and made Hank more realistic.

On the positive side, the film has plenty of action and some exciting moments. But they aren't enough to make this exactly a must-see picture.

A dark movie that, had it been made a few years later, would have been a film noir. It begins with Robert Young's looking for a job. He can't get one because gangsters insist that he pay protection money that exceeds his potential salary.

He hooks up with the appealing Florence Rice and her boss, who runs the company where he'd been looking for a job. Her father is released from prison and all become involved in a crime-busting plan.

Nat Pendleton as a loyal boxer is at his very best here. He is portrayed as likable, strong, and attractive. The goofiness he was asked to assume in almost every other movie I've seen him in is absent here.

There is a gay undertone to the story as it involves the crime boss. He is a disabled man with an obsession for fighters. We see a frieze of Greco-Roman athletes in his apartment. And when Rice tries to turn his head a little, he tells her sourly that he has no real interest in legs. Maybe this is because of his own disability. Maybe it means women's legs.

The movie packs a wallop and is undeservedly obscure.

For the most part, this is a competently made (great sets, and the editing is particularly crisp) but uninspired melodrama about a steadfast Average Joe standing up to the racketeers who have wronged him. But I have some advice -- don't give up on it too soon (as I nearly did).

The opening 50 minutes are pretty much seen-it-all-before, middle-of-the road MGM stuff, but suddenly in the last reel things perk up immensely. First, we have a beautifully designed and psychologically poignant scene explaining the chief villain's desire to back an up-and-coming fighter. This is followed by the movie's real knock-out punch -- Florence Rice, up to this point the stereotypical pretty-and-loyal girlfriend, agrees to help infiltrate the mob by auditioning as a chorus girl at their club. She adopts the guise of a sexy champagne-swilling dame keen on seducing the crime boss. Although she expresses slight reluctance at first, one surmises that she secretly revels in being such hot stuff in her sexy new togs. Soon, a couple of sips of bubbly have her diving into her role so enthusiastically that the sequence is absolutely jaw-dropping (she flashes a lot more cleavage and leg than you would expect in a post-code movie.) These two scenes turn the movie on its ear, revealing a fascinating subtext of perversity and hidden desire.

Afterwards, the action climax is hurried and sloppy, but it uses a plot device that would later turn up to much more nerve-wracking effect in an Anthony Mann noir.

So last night I grabbed this one out of my stash of TCM recordings to relax to before going to sleep. It looked like it would be a solid but perhaps predictable B crime drama of revenge just based on its title.

And then I look at that cast. Robert Young, early in his career, first billed to 4th billed MGM stalwart Lewis Stone? This got me interested and kept me that way. This was one of the positives of the old studio system. The studios could build up a cast of players known for inhabiting a certain type of role and almost any writer and director could get the audience to "get" that character without too much sweat.

Robert Young plays broke law student Hank Sherman who gets a job loading produce. Unfortunately, he almost immediately runs afoul of the "Produce Delivery Protective Association" when he refuses to give them a percentage of his pay and they begin beating him. Along comes Eli Decker, owner of all of the warehouses on five blocks, in his limousine when he sees the sight. He gives chase to the gangsters with his cane and asks Hank if he would like a job as his chauffeur. Decker's driver ran away when he was asked to help stop the gangsters. I wonder how far he got in that neighborhood at night on foot in a chauffeur's outfit? At any rate I thought I could see where this film was going completely. I was wrong. Wealthy Eli Decker is on a crusade against the very profitable rackets, and he has the ear of all the right people. Florence Rice plays Peg Gattle, Decker's beautiful young employee that Hank has instant eyes for. Lewis Stone plays Dr. Gattle -as in M.D. - who spends twelve years wrongfully imprisoned thanks to the head of the rackets, until Decker gets him out. He's also Peg's dad. In prison Dr. Gattle has figured out who the head of the rackets is and is helping the D.A. and Decker. Meanwhile Hank's brother is training a new fighter played by Nat Pendleton who plays his usual thick headed muscle bound and completely likable good natured character.

So who is the sworn enemy of the title? I won't tell you, but I will tell you that the head of the rackets and all of the men living off of them are not going down without a fight even if it means murder. Also, the original plan that the D.A. has for bringing down the rackets has to be changed mid-film- actually a couple of times. There is a robbery gone wrong, Joseph Calleia as the crippled head gangster whose penthouse has a swell view of dancing girls using their legs like he never could who you could ALMOST feel sorry for if he wasn't such a cold blooded killer, John Wray as the head man's number two guy who seems to delight in violence, a hidden vault full of racketeer money that must be found, and finally, maybe Nat Pendleton's fighter isn't that thick after all.

A rousing good crime film with lots of tension, melodrama, and even some comedy, and a great early role for Robert Young, who, when he isn't chasing the girl with what seem like tired pick-up lines is very good here.

It starts out with Robert Young looking for a job and becoming chauffeur to Samuel S. Hinds. But crippled crime boss Joseph Calleia finds Hinds in his way, and Hinds winds up dead. This leads to a long, rambling plot involving Young going undercover for the District Attorney to take down Calleia by managing boxer Nat Pendleton for Calleia, a rained-out match, and a steam room with badly arranged controls.

And yet everyone plays their parts with a will; the peculiar veerings of the plot keep the audience guessing; Pendleton gets gets a speech that is touching; and Calleia, who only shows up after three quarters of an hour, is absolutely dominating. This with a cast that includes Florence Rice, Lewis Stone, John Wray, and Cy Kendall. Keep an eye out and you can see Dennis O'Keefe, still uncredited but instantly recognizable.

Calleia was a fine singer on Broadway, but only rarely sang in the movies. He was too busy playing bad guys and compelling oddities, like his turn as an ambiguous cop in GILDA. He retired to his native Malta in 1963 due to ill health; Coppola wanted him for Don Corleone in THE GODFATHER, but Calleia turned him down. He died in 1975 at the age of 78.