The Great O'Malley

Pat O'Brien plays an obnoxiously by-the-book policeman who's hated by the people on his beat and not exactly loved by his fellow officers. He's forced to rethink his outlook when a man (Humphrey Bogart) turns to crime to support his family after O'Brien's rigidity inadvertently costs him his job.

Interesting if not wholly successful drama from Warner Bros. O'Brien's character actually reads up on archaic laws just so he can write people tickets for breaking them! That would be bad enough today but imagine doing that at a time when most people didn't have two nickels to rub together. It's got a nice cast and that helps a lot. Any movie with Bogie is worth seeing.

"The Great O'Malley," directed by William Dieterle, was Bogart's second film with Pat O'Brien, a man he deeply respected as a person and as an actor… In this very predictable movie, O'Brien was a too zealously cop whose attachment to the letter of the law alienates friends as well as enemies…

Bogart was an honest family man who was forced to turn to crime in order to provide for his family after O'Brien arrested him for a minor offense and caused him to lose a job opportunity…

Bogart had an excellent chance to show some versatility by turning from his earlier carefree attitude into one of frustration and bitter hatred, and he carried it off rather effectively

Great O'Malley, The (1937)

** (out of 4)

Boring melodrama from Warner about cop James O'Malley (Pat O'Brien), an overbearing cop who follows the law down to the wire and this includes passing out tickets for the smallest of issues. Soon he costs a poor man (Humphrey Bogart) a job and the man turns to crime and soon finds himself away from his cripple daughter and doing a ten year sentence. O'Malley gains more and more enemies and soon finds himself close to the man's daughter where he might finally learn his lesson. I'm really not sure what the point of this film was for several reasons. O'Malley is an ugly character, a complete jerk and one people are really going to hate so showing this type of cop to people probably wasn't the best of ideas. I'm not even sure why a story like this would interest anyone and the film comes off like the stars and director didn't have much faith in it either. Dietrich is certainly directing by the numbers as nothing here really jumps out at you as having much effort put into it. There's really not any powerful scenes, drama, laughs or anything else. Granted, nothing here is overly bad but just flat. O'Brien gives a decent performance but it's certainly far from his best because there's not much soul or fire to the character. Bogart does get to shine in a role that you normally wouldn't see him play. I thought he did a pretty good job playing the poor guy trying to look out for his family and it's the type of role you'd expect someone like Spencer Tracy to play but Bogie does fine with it. Sybil Jason and Ann Sheridan add nice support as does Donald Crisp. Warner was the studio for blue collar tales but this one here never really works and I'm really not sure what the point of any of it was.

A first-rate movie in every sense. I recently watched it for the first time in decades and was I was every bit as impressed with it as I was the first time I saw it. Pat O'Brien was great, and you very seldom see a young child turn in a performance that's nearly as good as the one by Sybil Jason in this film. It's a shame that more people aren't aware of this movie, but, of course, a lot of great films, such as this 1937 gem, become forgotten about over time. Let's just hope that more people get to see it. It's on You Tube. And I don't mind saying that I got pretty emotional at times. I highly recommend it!

Pat O'Brien plays John O'Malley, a New York City beat cop who thinks that enforcing the law is all mechanics and no heart. He tickets businessmen for having awnings that are inches too long, threatens to cite his own mother for spreading debris when she feeds bread to the pigeons from her kitchen window, and cites John Phillips (Humphrey Bogart) for a loud muffler when he is on his way to the first job he has had in years - remember this is the Great Depression. This sets off a string of tragic events starting with Phillips being late to his job and thus losing it, then being too proud to tell his wife and crippled daughter (Sybil Jason) that he lost the job, and finally an altercation at a pawn shop where Phillips was trying to pawn his gun and WWI medals that turns into a robbery. Philips goes to prison, and O'Malley becomes the laughing stock of the force and a target of the press as an example of law enforcement abuse.

All the while, O'Malley holds tight to his belief that he is just doing his job by enforcing all the law the all the time by the book. His captain wants his resignation, and when O'Malley won't give it, he has him assigned to public school crossing guard duty. The captain believes this will break or make the man. Did I mention that Phillips' little daughter goes to the same elementary school where O'Malley is assigned, and they strike up a friendship, neither one knowing who the other is? A romantic and humanizing interest comes in the person of Ann Sheridan as a schoolteacher at the elementary school.

This is a pleasant little early production code era entry, with O'Brien playing the same kind of hard boiled egg he played before the code, but this time donning a policeman's uniform. The only negative in the film, in my opinion, was a common device in films of the mid 30's - a child that is sickly-sticky sweet (Sybil Jason's character) over-sentimentalizing matters and sucking the adult cast into more than a few silly situations. However, at least here the child star is central to the plot. All in all, recommended especially for fans of Pat O'Brien and Ann Sheridan and anybody that is interested in a film in which Sybil Jason is actually billed above Humphrey Bogart - an odd sight indeed some 75 years later.