The Secret Six

Clark Gable and Jean Harlow are emphasized in modern descriptions of this film, but they are not the leads. The leads are Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Ralph Bellamy, and Johnny Mack Brown. Harlow and Gable have supporting roles, along with Marjorie Rambeau.

Bellany plays Johnny Franks, a bootlegger who owns a club. He gets a thug named Scorpio (Beery) to work in his gang, which is actually run by an attorney, Newton (Stone).

Scorpio manages to kill anybody in his way, including Franks and take over the organization. It will be up to the Secret Six - a group of masked businessmen to work to bring him and his team to justice.

Jean Harlow was something like 20 here - she plays a kept woman who falls in love with a reporter (Brown) who is killed by Scorpio. Gable is a rival reporter of Brown's. Gable is sans mustache and gives his role a lot of charm.

In the '30s, Warner Bros. specialized in gritty, violent urban crime dramas, and no studio did them better. This tough-as-nails gangster film is, surprisingly enough, from MGM, and compares favorably with the Warners product--in fact, it comes out ahead in several respects. The cast is terrific--with Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Ralph Bellamy and Clark Gable, to name a few--and George Hill's direction is as energetic and forceful as any of the directors at Warners. Another bonus is the well-known MGM gloss; it may have been just a B picture, but a "B" at MGM was as good as, and often better than, an "A" at other studios. Although this is one of Gable's earlier performances, his star quality is unmistakable--he explodes onto the screen, his good looks and charm in full force. Ralph Bellamy, whose career was spent mostly playing good-natured second leads, does a top-notch job as a two-timing, scheming gang leader who gets his just desserts after a double-cross. Even Wallace Beery manages to rein in his tendency to ham it up and contributes a solid job as the murderous "Slaughterhouse" Scorpio, who takes over Bellamy's gang. Lewis Stone as a corrupt lawyer who actually runs the gang shows what a good job he could do when given a part he could sink his teeth into, and Jean Harlow proved that she wasn't just another pretty face (and great body); she really shines in the last part of the film, especially during the courtroom scenes. This is a first-rate picture, with sharp writing, tough, no-nonsense direction and superior performances from all concerned. Don't miss it.

This is a great gangster movie with a very talented cast. Wallace Beery plays a Capone-type hoodlum that allows nothing to stand in his way. Well, tax problems do put his power and glory on the skids. The veteran actor Lewis Stone is a 'high brow' crime lord. Usual good guy Ralph Bellamy is a bootlegger/night club owner. The Chicago night life and gangland activity keeps this flick rocking back and forth, but well worth watching.

Talk about a great supporting cast. Get a load of this: Johnny Mack Brown, Clark Gable and the enchanting Jean Harlow. Fun to watch on the same evening with SCAREFACE(32) and THE STAR WITNESS(31)

This movie is a thinly veiled attempt to portray the life of Al Capone. The violent rise and fall of the gangster, portrayed by Wallace Beery, the taking over of the government of an adjacent small town, the eventual tax problem that Beery's character has...these and other subplots are mirror images of Capone's Chicago. While not as well known today as "The Public Enemy" or "Little Caesar", this movie is definitely worth watching. It also features a very young Clark Gable is a supporting good-guy role and, of all people, Ralph Bellamy as a gangster.

As far as 1930s gangster movies are concerned, I was a little disappointed by The Secret Six. I'd heard a lot of hype about it, but it wasn't nearly as captivating as The Roaring Twenties, The Public Enemy, or The Beast of the City, each revolving around bootleggers and policemen out to catch them. Unless you're a big Wallace Beery fan, or you want to see Jean Harlow before her eyebrows, you can rent one of the better ones. Wallace Beery stars as a gangster who wanted to go straight but gets very quickly seduced by his old crowd and goes to work for bootlegger Ralph Bellamy, who works under mob boss Lewis Stone. I wasn't used to seeing Lewis Stone in such a villainous role, but he certainly made the most of it! Where does Jean Harlow come in? Besides showing off her lovely figure and using her sex appeal to distract a do-gooder reporter from exposing the criminal underworld, she doesn't do much. Wallace Beery hands her a wad of cash as she disappears with the naïve young man, then tells her to report to him in the morning. Yes, folks, this is a pre-Code movie.

I was very impressed by George Hill's direction. For 1931, it was very forward-thinking. The start of the movie shows Wallace walking across the block, and the camera, mounted on an extensive dolly, follows him. The streets are filthy, with puddles and trash, making it seem like it wasn't just any old set in the studio. During the scenes when gangsters are making a stereotypical getaway, the camera shows the driver's point of view, and as pedestrians leap out of the way, the camera swerves, narrowly missing them. It must have been very exciting to watch in 1931!

The plot itself, and the execution of it, isn't very fast-paced or interesting. I'm not the biggest Wallace Beery fan, so I probably wasn't the best audience for the film. Keep your eyes open for Marjorie Rambeau, a stereotypical "rotten tramp", and a pre-mustached Clark Gable who shows his energetic screen presence to the audience with a promising future ahead of him.

DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. During the driving scenes, the camera bounces around and swerves to mirror the road, and that will make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"