Boston Blackie Goes Hollywood

It's more like "Blackie Goes to a Hotel in Los Angeles", rather than Blackie Goes Hollywood. Didn't get much of a Hollywood impression from this film. The pace is fast, it is a well edited movie, but the script here is just not quite up to the usual high "Blackie" quality. Also, some of the physical stuff (in and out of doorways, up and down stairs, etc.) is directed rather poorly, but is performed with a lot of energy and verve by the cast.

Chester Morris is watchable with his usual good acting as Blackie. Richard Lane and Walter Sande do a great job as the bumbling police. Constance Worth is attractively untrustworthy as the girl involved.

The ensemble cast keeps this watchable and it moves along briskly, overcoming the weak script.

I'm not too sure "Blackie" (Chester Morris) had his head screwed on the right way when he agreed to take $60,000 in cash from the safe of his pal "Manleder" (Lloyd Corrigan) and travel with the "Runt" (George E. Stone) to deliver it to him in Hollywood. No sooner is the cash in his pocket than "Insp. Farraday" (Richard Lane) and the dim-witted "Matthews" (Ralph Dunn) collar him for theft. This time, though, "Farraday" has a plan. He reckons that "Blackie" might have some ideas about the recently stolen Monterey diamond and by letting him escape and following him, he hopes to track it down. Meantime, as luck would have it his wealthy pal has hooked up with "Gloria" (Constance Worth) who was wearing the diamond when it was pinched and who is now offering to retrieve it for, yep, $60,000! What now ensues is an almost slapstick series of escapades as nobody is quite sure who has the stone, the money, or who is trying to double cross whom. The bumbling Corrigan reminded me a little of Nigel Bruce here, and there's decent effort from William Wright as the aptly monikered "Slick" to keep this entertaining and worth a watch for an hour.

Boston Blackie and sidekick Runt as they're about to go to Florida on a vacation get a transcontinental call from their good friend, playboy Lloyd Corrigan. Get $60,000.00 from a safe in his apartment and bring it to California. Corrigan has a couple of hoods pointing guns at him as he makes this call and of course Chester Morris thinks something is up. So Morris and George Stone get the money and make the trip with NYC cops trailing them because they think he's involved in a nice jewel heist also having taken place in California.

Columbia was doing both the Boston Blackie and Lone Wolf series at the same time and the plots were pretty interchangeable. Both retired master criminals, both with helpful sidekicks, both living good and no visible means of support, and both with cops constantly questioning them every time some notorious crime breaks at which they're always innocent. My own theory is that they lived off the proceeds of their previous criminal lives, the money having been laundered clean and untraceable. Just what were Blackie and the Runt vacationing from?

In this Lloyd Corrigan who's a good hearted and empty headed soul with too much money to burn always finds someone to help him burn it, usually of the female variety. That was Corrigan's function in all the Blackie films he did. Columbia starlet Constance Worth fulfills the function here, she's a poor man's Rita Hayworth.

Corrigan does have himself peripherally involved in the stealing of a legendary jewel, it's up to Morris and Stone to get him out of the jackpot if they can just shake loose from NYPD's not so finest Richard Lane and Walter Sande. They do it as usual with aplomb.

This one is a nicely paced Blackie entry that also features an up and coming Forrest Tucker as one of the hoods. This is a good one for a potential Blackie fan to be introduced to.

What makes a series last?

Here's a film that is in the middle of a remarkably successful franchise. One wonders what in the formula worked so well.

I think in this case it was the focus on sidekicks. Our two main characters are a "reformed" master thief, the Blackie, and a senior police chief who always chases him and whom reluctantly ends collaboratively up solving some crime. Ho hum so far.

Each of these guys has a sidekick. Each sidekick is incompetent, in fact utterly dependent on his alpha dog. Overall, Blackie's team is suave and the police team gets the worst of pranks. But its the dynamics of the pairs that I think gave this formula its success. There's something about defining a loyal admirer and placing him on screen. Its a funny sort of narrative shift where some small element of ourselves are placed on screen. As they admire the character, we do too, a bit more intensely. To make it more admirable (pun here) we have to have a sidekick who we knowingly do not identify with, someone at the far end of competence.

In other films of this era, the comic main at the bottom of the stack would be a black man. But that wouldn't work for this recipe, because the audience is presumed to be white and the mechanism based on subliminal identification. You'll still see this in cop buddy movies and many teen movies.

Other than this minor thrill, of seeing a perfect and inexpensive formula at work, this is a waste of time.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Lloyd Corrigan gets himself in trouble in Los Angeles. He asks Chester Morris to bring him $60,000 from his wall safe. Morris cracks it easily enough, but inspector Richard Lane and his stooge, Walter Sande, sees him doing it. They arrest Morris and stooge George E. Stone, who escape, and then the two pairs of men play tag with each other to LA. There they discover Corrigan is being hoodwinked by a bunch of crooks who are ready to double-cross each other.

Michael Gordon's first feature as director is by no means a classic. However, with a script filled with funny incidents, fast pacing, performers who understand comedy, and characters smart enough to get the drop on the others on occasion, the stern chase is a long one, but a funny one. Some of the players are rather wasted in the haste to get from one gag to the next, but in the end, virtue, such as it is, is triumphant, the good guys win, and the bad guys are hauled offstage in handcuffs. Which is what we come for.