Numbered Men

If only prison was like this. The "numbered men" seem mostly to sit around in the lounge of privilege, play games, smoke and josh each other like they are just fellas at the fire house waiting for an alarm. The object is to get on the road gang where they will be on "the honor system". Those words are always spoken with quotes, by the way, by any of the actors. A special treat after work is to pile into the old truck like it's a hayride and visit a farm for home-made doughnuts. Very early talkie and shows the seams of that transition. Bernice Claire has a corn-fed niceness with a touch of vinegar that is appealing.The rest of the cast does not fare well. From a play and not much removed from a stage. Mervyn LeRoy directed. This is where so many prison picture clichés come from, it fun to ring the bell on them, although I don't remember another big house drama with doughnuts.

The opening credits, listing the jail characters only by their numbers, and an opening title card, grandly proclaiming how convicts give up the right to a name, promise a grim drama of men imprisoned, and railing against their fate. The director -- Mervyn LeRoy, who would later helm I am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang -- also promises something serious, and perhaps grim. Instead, however, what is delivered is entertaining for all the wrong reasons, as, when the script does not dwell on all the long-standing prison clichés, it fixes on some of the most absurd plotting ever seen in a prison movie.

The story features Conrad Nagel as a good-hearted ex-counterfeiter who takes a callow new inmate under his wing, and who, later, helps out the warden when a really nasty convict escapes by generating a prison riot. Nagel's performance is fine, but gets lost in the plot silliness, typified by a prison "honor system" where the warden shows a lack of concern about security that rivals Col. Klink. Other moments of plot outrageousness (mostly involving the lengths Conrad Nagel will go to sacrifice himself for the somewhat dimwitted juvenile hero) destroy any sort of believability, but add a sort of Ed Wood zaniness to the proceedings, particularly in the movie's final reel. LeRoy is a good enough director that the action in this film does not drag, so, if you like "so bad its good cinema", you will probably like this.

It's a bunch of tough men in prison. That's why Raymond Hackett doesn't belong there. He's in for counterfeiting, but it was a frame-up. That's why girlfriend Bernice Claire has quit her stage career and gone to work on the farm where Blanche Friderici enjoys the company of the prisoners who are trusted to work on the road gang, where she feeds them on her home-made doughnuts. But Ralph Ince isn't just tough. He's mean. He's going to break out, ruin the welcome time outside for the trustees, and threaten Miss Claire.

It's derived from a stage play, and it's early enough days for sound that director Mervyn Leroy is hesitant about pacing the lines. Also, apparently there were some musical numbers for Miss Claire that were cut due to the collapse of musicals in 1929. Certainly the pacing of the movie suffers.

Numbered Men (1930)

** (out of 4)

Flat prison drama about an ex-counterfeiter (Conrad Nagel) who takes a newbie (Raymond Hackett) under his wing. The two eventually get on the road crew, which allows them to work outside the prison and the newbies girlfriend (Bernice Claire) just happens to be working at a local diner. While those two love birds talk about their future there's a prison riot, which might cost them everything. NUMBERED MEN is a pretty bland and rather forgettable picture that just grows more and more confusing as it moves along. Even though it clocks in at just 65-minutes, the movie is so poorly paced that you can't help but grow tired within the first twenty-minutes and it never picks up any speed. I think the biggest problem is the actual story, which is all over the place and it really never comes together. We learn that the newbie is of course innocent but he's going to need someone to come forward to prove it. We learn that the newbie is terrified that his girl won't wait for him. Then, of course, a big break will eventually come. I'm not exactly sure why various subplots enter the picture as many of them go unanswered or at least none of them really add up to anything. Bagel is pretty good in his role but the screenplay really doesn't give him much to do other than stand around and give out advice. Hackett is pretty forgettable in his part as his acting really doesn't do anything to help the character. Claire, who was mainly in musicals, comes off pretty poorly as her vocal tone is always out of place and she just doesn't give a very good performance. The surprising thing is that this was directed by Mervyn LeRoy who would go onto direct the classic I WAS A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG.

... but fortunately, their output quality trended dramatically up starting the following year.

Overall it's just a jaw dropping novelty. A group of convicts, by virtue of their good conduct, get to work out in the open air on the road-building crew. There don't seem to be any guards - These guys are all on the honor system! And when they get hungry or thirsty they show up at Mother Miller's farm for some cookies and milk! They steal and molest nothing, not even the good-looking girl Mother Miller has hired to assist her, in spite of many of them being without female companionship for, possibly, years. Honestly! These guys are not in prison for dropping out of Sunday school!

And when one of the "bad" convicts escapes from the prison itself and threatens the existence of the honor system, erudite convict Bertie Gray (Conrad Nagel) suggests that the convicts on the road crew help in recapturing him as a means of preserving said honor system. Not only does the warden heartily agree, he passes out rifles to them! Where is a crusading journalist when you need one?

I can only assume director Mervyn LeRoy had directed so many Alice White films that, by this time, nothing seemed preposterous to him.

I'll cut this some slack since Warner Brothers had planned to make this a musical (???) - thus the presence of Bernice Claire in the cast. They had to change their plans when the moviegoing public began to mutiny against the glut of poor to mediocre movie musicals being produced.

I will say that the acting is pretty good, and it isn't overly talkie as so many early talkies were. But that plot - Yikes!