Quick Millions

Spencer Tracy is not readily linked with gangster pictures, yet he started off his career with a number of efforts in this vein: these included John Ford's UP THE RIVER (1930) and Michael Curtiz' 20,000 YEARS IN SING SING (1933); this film (which happens to be director Brown's debut) is another and certainly the most typical.

In fact, its narrative follows much the same path as those of 'rival' productions (notably Warners', who were to the form what Universal was to Horror) which sees the protagonist – a former truck driver – build a criminal empire but getting his come-uppance eventually, for attempting to climb one step too many along the society ladder (while pushing his devoted commoner girlfriend around)! Tracy's entry into the racket is depicted via a droll sequence where he systematically destroys a number of parked cars, so that he can then offer his protection to the affected business!

While less inclined towards showing off with his camera here than in Brown's two subsequent – and only other – movies, this still emerges as possibly his best work owing to Tracy's compelling portrayal (on the strength of which I have set out to acquire a number of his early and, by all accounts, minor vehicles) and another stalwart 'gangland' presence i.e. George Raft (in a supporting role, which goes from lackey to defector to victim while also incorporating a rare opportunity to showcase his dancing skills[!], he would refine in Howard Hawks' SCARFACE [1932] on his way to achieving personal stardom).

The film (accompanied on the TCM-sourced copy I acquired by forced French subtitles!) is a breezy 66 minutes long – though other sources give its official running-time at 72! – highlighted by smart dialogue and a handful of nicely-judged action sequences (the ending is particularly great). Pity that, reportedly due to his temper, Brown would get into hot water with Hollywood bigwigs and eventually forced to abandon his directorial career for good (a brief sojourn to Britain in order to make the 1934 version of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL would similarly fall through and end up being handed to someone else!)

PUBLIC ENEMY, SCARFACE and LITTLE CAESAR are the ones we all know but this one should definitely be on that same shelf. If you like 'the big three' you're bound to like this as well. Is it as good? Not quite but still a must see for any old gangster fans.

This was so obviously made in America in 1931 which was not a happy place. Filmmaker Rowland Brown was very much part of that seedy and dangerous world and it was his mission to show everyone the reality of how he saw life. His film is therefore quite pessimistic - it offers no answer or way out of the escalating problem of crime and corruption which to so many people back then seemed unstoppable. In one scene someone says that in twenty years time, America will no longer be a democracy but a land ruled by gangsters,hoodlums and petty warlords. This film is about that society so there's not many smiles per minute!

Although a very talented writer - his DOORWAY TO HELL really was one of the very best of the early thirties gangster pictures (better than LITTLE CAESAR) but as a director he was more an enthusiastic amateur than a filmmaker. This film is packed with so much story that it doesn't quite allow enough time to develop the characters. As is often the case with first movies, he possibly tries to squeeze too many ideas into his seventy minutes? This is the first film he directed and it unfortunately shows. He doesn't quite manage to make his actors into real people. Marguerite Churchill, for example, one of the most beautiful actresses ever to grace the screen is completely wasted in this - she only has about ten lines. Her role is just decoration. And "For the ladies" there's George Raft - again we don't get to know him.

The big, big, big difference between this and the thirties' best gangster movie, PUBLIC ENEMY is that William Wellman's film was about a person you could relate to. It had focus. Cagney's character wasn't exactly likeable but you felt you knew enough about him to want to know more. You could understand why he was the way he was. Spencer Tracy doesn't feel like someone you'd want to know - he's thoroughly unpleasant.

In summary, this is a well-made film, it's watchable, interesting and entertaining but to be critical, it does lack emotional engagement. Like Brown's (excellent) DOORWAY TO HELL (and also SCARFACE), this invests most of its effort into reflecting early thirties society than telling us about the characters and what makes them tick. As a time machine it's brilliant in transporting you, body and soul to the grimy, gritty and dangerous streets of 1931. If you want a sense of that era, this is perfect.

Roland Brown the director was a hell of a guy. He had ties with the underworld, was a boxing sparring partner for Jack Dempsey, he knocked down a producer.... So, he was not the common bland film maker. This one is his first film, the first of a short list of features. It is a light hearted crime drama, but not a comedy. Not a pure gangster film either. However I was so surprised to see Spencer Tracy co starring George Raft, one year before SCARFACE. Spencer Tracy in a role not so far from Sylvester Stallone in F. I. S. T, a bleak character. But I would have prefered a grittier movie. I expected a bit more from Rowland Brown, maybe because of his reputation, hard boiled reputation.

In his second film Spencer Tracy could have been typecast the rest of his career on the strength of his performance in Quick Millions. Fortunately for him he wasn't, but he's pretty nigh unforgettable here.

Long before Jimmy Hoffa came around, Spencer Tracy got the idea in this film that if truck drivers could be organized there was a lot of money to be made for the one who did it. With the support of girl Sally Eilers who wants a taste of the good life too in those Depression years, Tracy gets a whole lot of people under his thumb. As he shows what can one do without material being delivered. One can't sell produce or build buildings without the material at hand. Jimmy Hoffa would have liked the way Tracy's character Bugs Raymond thinks.

But Hoffa sure would not have liked the way Tracy obsesses over society girl Marguerite Churchill. She's the sister of John Wray from whom he extorted a partnership in the building trades via his truck union. That obsession is what leads to his downfall.

Quick Millions was also the second film for George Raft who plays Tracy's bodyguard and trigger man. Raft also does an occasional freelance job and that is what does him in as well. Raft would have to wait another year for his breakout role in support of Paul Muni in Scarface in a similar role as in Quick Millions.

One of the few gangster films of the era that specifically does not deal with Prohibition, Quick Millions is an early example of labor racketeering shown on film. And it's a great early work for Spencer Tracy.

This film marked an early career milestone for Spencer Tracy. He'd scored a sensation on Broadway as a tough convict in "The Last Mile" in 1930, at the very moment when the Hollywood studios were desperate to recruit stage talent for the talkies. He appeared in a couple of Movietone shorts made in New York, then went to Hollywood for his feature debut in a hastily produced prison picture called Up the River. (Also in the cast was another up-and-coming stage performer, Humphrey Bogart.) But Quick Millions was Tracy's first starring role in a prestige project, Fox's high-profile entry in the hottest genre of the day, the gangster saga. The picture is built entirely around Tracy's character, Bugs Raymond, and the plot traces the rise-and-fall trajectory of his career in a fashion that was already becoming standard for crime kingpin stories.

Quick Millions is an interesting, well-written movie that offers some colorful supporting characters and several memorable scenes, but it's not hard to see why it was overshadowed by the other gangster movies of its day, the ones with flamboyant central characters and lots of shoot-outs. Spencer Tracy's Bugs Raymond is a smart racketeer who plans his moves carefully and gets his strong-arm guys to do the dirty work- - dirty work that generally takes place elsewhere, so he doesn't have to see it. As the man himself says: "I'm just a guy with a one-ton brain who's too nervous to steal and too lazy to work. I do other people's thinking for them and make them like it." He's no angry kid from the slums, no mad-dog killer with an antisocial streak; he's a cool customer who uses basic business practices, backed by the threat of violence, to get what he wants.

When the story begins Bugs is still a truck driver getting into foolish scrapes with the law. His girl nearly walks out on him, but when he tells her that he's been working out the "angles" to achieve material success we believe him, and before long he's taken over the trucking business and is forcing the city's respectable businessmen to kowtow to him. Some of his associates are irredeemable low-life hoodlums with no ethical standards at all, but Bugs makes it clear that there are limits to what he will and will not countenance. Raymond's new status brings him into contact with prominent civic leaders and their families, and he begins to clean up his act. He actually dons evening clothes and attends the opera. Unfortunately for him, however, the old gang doesn't take it well when "Mr. Raymond" puts on airs and aspires to class. Like many another gangland chieftain, Bugs' fatal mistake comes when he forgets where he came from and how he got to the top, and treats his partners in crime like they're poor relations he has come to find embarrassing. In the end he pays for this mistake in traditional gangland style.

For a gangster flick this movie is remarkably non-violent. There is an undercurrent of potential violence that charges several scenes, but when violent events are shown they are usually handled in an oblique, stylized way. (We know that Bugs Raymond strikes his girlfriend, but unlike Tom Powers in The Public Enemy he does so off-camera.) The focal point here is Bugs Raymond's perversely creative use of American business techniques, and the subsequent hubris that brings him down. It should be added, however, that the screenplay does not let Raymond off the hook: he's still a thug, and no better than any other racketeer, just a little smarter -- for awhile, anyway -- and less willing to get his hands dirty.

This is a film that deserves to be better known, and for fans of the genre it's a must, but first-time viewers should be aware that Quick Millions is more talky and cerebral than most gangster movies, and a little slow going at times. The dialog is generally sharp, but there are also scenes that could have been trimmed, and a couple of plot points that are never adequately explained. Bugs Raymond does not leave the indelible impression made by Edward G. Robinson's Rico Bandello in Little Caesar, Jimmy Cagney's Tom Powers, or Paul Muni's Tony Camonte in the 1932 version of Scarface. Still, this rarely shown movie is well worth seeing for a number of good scenes, a memorable finale, and a great party sequence where hit man George Raft performs a sinuous soft shoe dance to "St. Louis Blues" shortly before gunning a man down. That's worth the price of admission right there!