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The Secret Six, produced by William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Pictures for MGM, has an interesting message about extralegal means to bring down systemic corruption. The title figures are six notable citizens who are all masked, representing all kinds of interests who come together when organized crime takes over a city. We never see The Secret Six, they only come in the last third of the film. But we do see how they operate.

The films is the story of the rise and fall of Wallace Beery who becomes an Al Capone like figure, the real brains of the outfit however is the mob's lawyer Lewis Stone. With Stone pulling the strings and polluting the justice system, Beery rises to power in a typical gangland battle. When the regular law enforcement channels don't work, The Secret Six start working with the federal government to bring Beery down. Working with them are a pair of reporters Johnny Mack Brown and Clark Gable. A key witness in the events is Jean Harlow in her first MGM film.

For those who are used to seeing Lewis Stone as the rock of integrity as Judge Hardy, Stone as a bottom feeding shyster lawyer will be quite the revelation. Maybe because he's cast against type he's so good, he just oozes sanctimony in front of a jury.

One character I wish that we'd seen a bit more of is Paul Hurst who is Beery's friend and whom the gang elects mayor of a small town. Once doing that the gang moves on to a big city where they take down top gangster boss John Miljan. The situation parallels Al Capone's takeover of Hawthorne, Illinois. I wish Hurst hadn't just disappeared from the story after his election.

The Secret Six was the first of six films that Clark Gable and Jean Harlow worked in. Next to Joan Crawford, Gable teamed with Harlow more than any other leading lady. Neither of them however are the stars here, they are billed way down in the cast list. Marjorie Rambeau also has a nice role as a good time girl who Beery uses as a doormat, but Rambeau has the last laugh on him.

Although Warner Brothers was the gangster studio with their emphasis on working class films, The Secret Six could give any of the Warner products a run in quality.

I saw this recently on TCM and was quite impressed. This film came before the better known gangster movies of that era-- "Little Caesar," "Public Enemy," and, the greatest of them all-- "Scarface." It was also made at a time when sound recording technology for motion pictures was very new and still in development. The first talkie gangster movie, which happened to be the first all-talkie movie, was "Lights of New York," made in 1928. In that film the equipment was so clunky that the actors had to speak loud and slow and stay close to the microphone. By 1931, several improvements had come along, but it was still a difficult technical achievement to make a film like this.

There is a scene towards the beginning where Ralph Belamy, who does a great job as a sinister hood, fires a tommy-gun in a night club and kills a guy. Then, he and his cohorts run out and jump in a car. The rival gang pursues them, firing their own tommy-gun. Finally, the rivals crash. But during the chase scene, we are taken through city streets, with the cars running fast and the machine guns blazing. Granted, this was done much better a year or so later in "Scarface," but this film set the precedent.

The film is also worth seeing for the Clark Gable role. He shows the charm that made him a star. Harlow is also great as the moll. For a film made that long ago-- at the very beginning of the sound era-- it is well worth viewing whenever it appears again on Turner or any other channel.

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)

While not on the level of the work being done in Warners crime films during the same period ("The Public Enemy," "Little Caesar"), "The Secret Six" is a fine picture with a lot to recommend it.

Primarily, this comes from the cast. Wallace Beery, then at the height of his fame, makes for a good central figure as Louis "Slaughterhouse" Scorpio, as the name implies, a former slaughterhouse worker turned bootlegger and murderer. His ordering "a hunk o'steak" after spending all day crushing animals heads with a sledgehammer suggests, right at the beginning, that killing means nothing to this huge primate of a man. Lewis Stone, on the wrong side of the law for once, is Newton, the dandyish crooked lawyer and head of the gang, giving an understated, sinister performance and making every scene count. Ralph Bellamy, one of the movies' perennial nice guys, plays a very, very bad guy here, as the gangster who brings Scorpio into the gang, to his later regret. And veteran Marjorie Rambeau, while she has little to do overall, is good as Bellamy's blowsy mistress, Peaches, a far cry from the society matrons she would specialize in later in her career.

But the big surprise, and one of the main reasons for watching this picture, are the solid early performances of Jean Harlow and a young, sans-mustache Clark Gable. Both were free-lancers who were hired for this film on a one-time basis. MGM was so impressed with their work as, respectively, Anne, the cigarette girl who loves and loses reporter Johnny Mack Brown, and Carl, the crusading reporter who aids the Secret Six of the title in bringing down Stone and Beery's criminal organization, that they were hired to long-term contracts right after the picture was completed. Both turn in solid performances. Those who think Harlow couldn't act should see her in the last third of the film, particularly the trial scene. And the sheer mile-a-minute energy Gable brings to his role makes his every scene watchable. Within the next few years, these two would establish themselves as the stuff of Hollywood legend.

Directed by the excellent, underrated George Hill ("Tell It To the Marines," "Min and Bill," "Hell Divers"), scripted by the great Frances Marion, and with the aforementioned solid cast and the usual MGM gloss, "The Secret Six" makes for a very enjoyable film, for historians, crime film buffs, fans of the stars, and just those of us who appreciate a good, involving story.

This is an odd movie on two accounts. First, the plot for this movie appears to have been stolen by Warner Brothers just four years later in SPECIAL AGENT. Both films feature a newspaper reporter who is actually a government agent. And both have these reporters gaining close access to mob leaders in order to convict them of tax fraud. I just can't believe the story parallels are just coincidental. Second, while he receives very low billing, Clark Gable is given one of his first starring roles. Despite the low billing, he is second only to Wallace Beery in the film in regard to time on screen and importance to the story.

As mentioned above, this film concerns Gable getting close to mobster Beery in order to help a secret grand jury gain enough information for an indictment. However, unlike SPECIAL AGENT, there is more emphasis on the exploits of the mob leader and the newspaper reporter's role is slightly less prominent. While the film was certainly more original that SPECIAL AGENT, the film wasn't quite as polished and seemed a bit shrill. As a result, if you only want to see one film, SPECIAL AGENT is probably a slightly better film.

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.

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.

THE SECRET SIX (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1931), directed by George Hill, with story and dialogue by Frances Marion, became MGM's contribution to the gangster genre. Following numerous prior crime melodramas produced by other motion picture studios at the time, along with the current success of LITTLE CAESAR (First National, 1930), that launched Edward G. Robinson to overnight stardom, THE SECRET SIX is quite extraordinary as well as underrated. Feature billing goes to Wallace Beery, whose secondary presence under Chester Morris' leading performance from the Frances Marion scripted prison drama, THE BIG HOUSE (MGM, 1930), that has earned Beery an Academy Award nomination. For THE SECRET SIX, it's Beery's turn to take leadership in the cast, holding his own along with scene stealing support by future stars on the rise by Jean Harlow, Ralph Bellamy and the pre-mustache Clark Gable.

Plot summary: Louis Scorpio (Wallace Beery), better known as "Slaughterhouse," employed at the Centro Stockyards and Packing Company at $35 a week, is introduced to a new profession, a life of crime in bootlegging by ringleader, Johnny Franks (Ralph Bellamy, in movie debut) and his assistant, Nick Mizoski (Paul Hurst), earning $150 a week a piece, while dining in a café where they are serviced by Johnny's moll, Peaches (Marjorie Rambeau). While invading the territory of rival mob boss, "Smiling Joe" Colimo (John Miljan), a gangland shooting ensues, killing Colimo's kid brother, Ivan (Oscar Rudolph) in the process. Later, as Colmino confronts Johnny to find out who was responsible for Ivan's death, Johnny places the blame on the absent Scorpio, waiting for further orders on Pier 14. Colimo and his mob drive by, gun down Scorpio, and leave him for dead. Slightly wounded, Scorpio, suspecting a double-cross, surprises Johnny upon his return, and puts him out of circulation. Now the new underworld leader rising to power, Scorpio acquires the services of Johnny's former aids, Richard Newton (Lewis Stone), a drunken criminal lawyer and personal mouthpiece; Metz (Murray Kinnell), a deaf mute wearing thick glasses posing as his lookout; and Anne Courtland (Jean Harlow), a café cashier working on high salary by Scorpio under orders to keep a couple of Herald reporters, Hank Rogers (John Mack Brown) and Carl Luckner (Clark Gable), from writing stories on Scorpio's gangland activities while investigating Johnny's unsolved murder. As Hank and Carl receive bribes from Scorpio, it turns out that one of the reporters is working undercover for a masked secret organization known as "The Secret Six," that's to put an end to Scorpio's criminal activities, maybe.

Interesting that THE SECRET SIX is the movie's title, considering the organization in question, first mentioned 47 minutes into the start of the story, is hardly mentioned again after its initial introduction. Anyone unfamiliar with the movie itself would assume by its title that The Secret Six is the name of Scorpio's mob. However, Beery, the milk drinking thug sporting a mustache to give him a mean looking appearance, is the prominent figure throughout its 83 minutes, but, as mentioned before, its the fine support by platinum blonde Jean Harlow and seventh billed Clark Gable, together or separately, that gathers enough attention. Harlow performs is quite good here, compared to her weak performance in another gangster melodrama classic of THE PUBLIC ENEMY (Warner Brothers, 1931) starring James Cagney. Interestingly, Gable, who got his start playing thugs and/or villains on screen, is happily cast here as a wisecracking reporter whose gig on "Aunt Emma" becomes his running gag throughout. It was a role as a reporter that would win Gable an Academy Award as Best Actor for IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (Columbia, 1934). Being Gable's first of six films opposite Harlow, their scenes together are quite limited, with Harlow working more opposite Brown, the same Johnny Mack Brown who, in his final film for MGM, who would achieve newfound popularity shortly after-wards in matinée westerns through the 1950s.

True to the tradition of these gangster stories of this period, THE SECRET SIX fails to disappoint with its gun-play, car chasing and police sirens racing down the city streets, as well as tough talk to go around. Other highlights include Hank's close calls of getting caught while strolling through Scorpio's luxurious apartment searching for evidence against the crime boss during the background orchestration playing to the song, "Sing" originally introduced from the Buster Keaton military comedy of DOUGHBOYS (1930); the execution style shooting inside a subway car of one of the characters; the courtroom scene with Anne (Harlow) testifying against Scorpio at the risk of her own life; and how way Peaches gets her vengeance on Johnny's killer; and the Beery-Stone on-screen chemistry at their best.

Not shown on commercial television since the 1970s or earlier, the rediscovery of THE SECRET SIX surfaced again in the wake of cable television, notably on Turner Network Television (TNT) anywhere between (1988 and 1993), before becoming a prominent fixture on Turner Classic Movies after 1994. Though never distributed to video cassette, THE SECRET SIX has earned its place on the handful of classic movie titles on DVD display through Turner Home Entertainment. And that's no secret. (***)

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!"

This crime drama features both an excellent cast and an excellent script by Frances Marion. The story could easily be filmed today and become a huge box office hit. Louie Scorpio (Wallace Beery) is an uneducated meathead from the streets with a thirst for money. He learns that bootlegging is a great way to get what he wants, so he joins up with Johnny (Ralph Bellamy) and "Newt" (Lewis Stone) who run a powerful gang in town. After bumping Johnny off, Louie becomes the leader and fixes half the town in his favor. Among the most desirable allies are the town reporters Hank (Johnny Mack Brown) and Carl (Clark Gable). He uses a beautiful dame (Jean Harlow) to keep them in line, but can't seem to shake the cops.

For an early talkie, the camera-work here is surprisingly innovative. There are scenes that feel very static and others that move fluidly through various sets. The lighting is fantastic and creates a beauty for a bleak storyline. Unfortunately, the sound quality isn't so impressive. Sometimes the dialogue is difficult to understand, so the story can become confusing in some areas. Thankfully, audiences will be able to figure things out fairly easily.

MGM hits the streets with this Pre-Code gangster flick starring Wallace Beery as Slaughterhouse Scorpio, a thuggish stockyard worker turned racketeer. After rising from the bottom to the top, he eventually meets his match when the ever-dreaded "concerned citizens" form a vigilante group called The Secret Six. Despite the title, the Six figure into the plot very little and look positively ridiculous with their little silly masks on. Aside from being a nifty (and non-Warner Bros) gangster picture, it's interesting today for its supporting cast which includes Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, and Johnny Mack Brown, as well as the screen debut of Ralph Bellamy. Gable shines in his role. Lewis Stone is great as a gentlemanly attorney/crime boss (what would Judge Hardy say?!?). Wallace Beery is good fun as Scorpio, bringing a bit of humor to an otherwise serious film. It doesn't hurt that he was a bit of a bruiser in real life, so it's easy to buy him as a gangster. He has most of the movie's quotable lines. It's a good watch, especially if you love the old gangster pictures of the 1930s. This one isn't as gritty as many of the WB classics of the era (the vigilantes here only want to bring the criminals to trial, not kill them), but it is entertaining thanks to George Hill's nice direction and a terrific cast.

Wallace Beery ((Slaughterhouse) rises up the ranks of the criminal world but he makes trouble for himself by being trigger-happy. He shoots people that he needs and there are women involved so you know to wait for some tell-tale shenanigans. Especially when gangster moll Jean Harlow (Anne) falls in love with reporter Johnny Mack Brown (Hank) who is trying to expose the gang. Marjorie Rambeau (Peaches) plays another moll who also holds a grudge. Alongside Johnny Mack is Clark Gable (Carl) who is a rival reporter and is enlisted by an influential group called the Secret Six to help stop the reign of gangster terror.

Well, the film crams too much in so it becomes involved and confusing. I'm afraid that despite watching the film a week ago, and the cast being pretty good, it doesn't really stick in the memory. Gable and Johnny Mack get to deliver annoying scenes where they talk over each other phoning their stories in. Just like all reporters do. Yawn. Cut! The film doesn't need this. There isn't any bad acting so the film should score more highly. It doesn't, though.

It's ok to watch - nothing more to say other than it should have been better given the cast that includes an impressive Ralph Bellamy (Johnny) playing against type as a gang leader.

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.

Secret Six, The (1931)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

MGM gangster film should have been better under George Hill's direction with an amazing cast including Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Johnny Mack Brown and Ralph Belamy. Mastermind Stone sets up a gang led by Belamy but after a frame up goes wrong Beery takes over with a vengeance taking out anyone who gets in his way. Gable and Brown play reporters wanting to bring the gang down and Harlow is her usual mole sell. The film starts off with a terrific bang and gets off to a great start but things go way off track during the middle act when the gang tries to get elected into office. This here slows the action down and the other problem is that there are just way too many characters doing way too much for a short running time. However, even with all that said, it's impossible not to enjoy the movie due to the terrific cast with Stone stealing the way in a role, which is a lot like we saw from Brando years later in The Godfather.

While undeniably entertaining "The Secret Six" does suffer from a rather messy screenplay courtesy of Frances Marion that makes the audience feel as though they are random passersby who picked up a few bits and pieces from some strangers' conversation.

The plot which treads on familiar ground as it regards the rise and fall of a gangster (Wallace Beery) whose rise commends as his criminal friend (Ralph Bellamy) brings him in front of a crooked drunken attorney (Lewis Stone) who is also the brains behind a large underworld bootlegging operation. Later on as our main crook nicknamed "Slaughterhouse" begins to climb up the ranks within this gang of low lives by backstabbing pretty much anyone that stands in his way for the top. Two investigative reporters (Clark Gable and Johnny Mack Brown) decide to stop him from getting there with the help of an employee (Jean Harlow) who works at a restaurant operated by the bootleggers as their front.

This is all quite easy to follow despite plenty of lousy dialogue (which the phrase "oh yeah?" makes about 30% of) but it's the final execution itself that's confusing. The movie starts off with us following "Slaughterhouse" for better or worse but then when those two male Nancy Drews show up the picture shifts gear and they become our main protagonists afterwards there's hardly any glimpse of him unless one of these guys is hanging about.

Despite all of that "The Secret Six" does manage to provide lots of entertainment mainly thanks to it's colorful players - Beery is one mean bum, Bellamy fits surprisingly well is this dreary setting, Gable while he doesn't really have all that much to do except spit out his iffy good guy dialogue still manages to give a good show the same goes for Brown, Harlow's character seems like the biggest casualty here since there are little glimpses into her personalty but not much else.

Marjorie Rambeau, Paul Hurst, John Miljan, DeWitt Jennings, and Murray Kinnell deliver highly stellar performances in their supporting roles but there's no doubt that my absolute favorite of the bunch was Lewis Stone he was simply tops. Of course one can't forget the masterful direction by George Hill. All in all very enjoyable could have been a classic if it wasn't for it's so-below-so writing.

"The Secret Six" joins "Public Enemy," "City Streets," "Quick Millions," "Little Caesar," "Smart Money," and other gangster movies from 1931. On the heels of the roaring 20's the biggest things in the country were the uber-rich and gangsters who made money bootlegging, so naturally plenty of movies were made about those two topics.

"The Secret Six" was about a gangster named Louis 'Slaughterhouse' Scorpio (Wallace Beery). Like all gangsters he worked his way up the food chain. Slaughterhouse wasn't unlike Tom Powers (James Cagney) of "Public Enemy" or Bugs Raymond (Spencer Tracy) of "Quick Millions"--he was a crude tough guy with just enough smarts and nerve to make something of himself.

He got in with Richard Newton's gang. Richard Newton (Lewis Stone) was a savvy old attorney who preferred brains over brawn. Scorpio wasn't looking to be a big shot, the opportunity presented itself on account of his moxy.

The law was having a heckuva time taking down Scorpio and gangsters everywhere. They began a commission called "The Secret Six" to deal with such menaces. The Secret Six was something akin to "The Star Chamber" (1983), a secret group of judges who met to mete out extrajudicial justice. The Secret Six were a tribunal of men who represented "the greatest force of law & order in the United States." They all wore masks to keep their identity secret from each other and they all had the power to effectively move in on gangsters like Scorpio.

Others of note in the movie were Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. Their roles were ancillary but important roles. Clark Gable played Carl Luckner, a guy who was more-or-less the man on the street for The Secret Six. Jean Harlow played Anne, a woman who accepted lavish gifts from Scorpio, then turned on him when it was expedient to do so.

"The Secret Six" failed to really distinguish itself. The story arc was the same as other gangster movies and we all know that the gangsters always lost in the end in the 30's.

1.99 on Amazon.

Chicago in the late 1920's was a newspaper headline factory blaring out all the city's gangland shootings. The February 14, 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre was one of the most graphic stories that epitomized how the criminal element was running amok in the Windy City. Business leaders were especially nervous about the bad reputation Chicago was getting from the almost daily violence. The city harbored the biggest gangster celebrity of them all, Al Capone, who seemed untouchable to law enforcement. A consortium of six of the city's richest and most influential business and civic leaders formed what was later called 'The Secret Six' in an attempt to clean up the city's bad image.

MGM's head of production Irving Thalberg, previewing early edits of Warner Brothers' 1931 "Little Caesar," assigned the studio's premier screenwriter, Francis Marion, to compose a script for MGM's first talkie gangster film. Her research produced an intriguing plot based on the information emerging about the group of businessmen, worried that the city's proposed 1933 World's Fair would be canceled in the face of all the murders taking place, had in its bullseye the arrest and conviction of Capone. Cloaking the real story with loose fictitious characters, Marion's screenplay resulted in April 1931's "The Secret Six."

MGM's primary actor, Wallace Beery, drew the assignment to play Slaughterhouse Scorpio, a Capone-like figure who begins at the bottom of a Chicago mob before killing his way to the top. In an uncharacteristic criminal role, actor Lewis Stone is 'Newt' Newton, the fixer lawyer who's the shadow leader of Scorpio's mob. Ralph Bellamy, in his first movie role, is Johnny Franks, Newt's right-hand man responsible for bringing Scorpio into the gang.

Bellamy would have a long and active career in film, working in front of the camera until his last film, 1990's "Pretty Woman." Bellamy ran away from his Chicago home at 15 to join a stage road show, following his passion for acting. He was one of many stage actors Hollywood studios grabbed for their sound movies, and Bellamy was immediately cast in "The Secret Six." He was surrounded on the MGM set by rising young stars Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, on loan from Howard Hughes' studio. Thalberg loved what he saw in Gable while he was viewing the dailies during the movie's production. He asked Marion to expand the actor's part to increase his screen time. She proceeded to script three times the amount of screen presence Gable had from her original screenplay as news reporter Carl Luckner.

In the real world, publisher Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune gave the businessmen his newspaper's resources, including access to the paper's reporters to provide insider knowledge of the Capone organization. That made it easier for Marion to justify increasing Gable's role since the Tribune's real reporters' input was instrumental in taking down Capone. The Secret Six members turned to the federal government to become active in its prosecution of the city's criminal bosses since local officials did nothing to enforce the law for fear of their lives. Once the feds became involved, setting up sting operations financed by the Secret Six, Eliot Ness and his elite team of United States Treasury's Prohibition Unit were able to bust up Capone's cartel. After his conviction, Capone pinpointed the persons who were truly responsible for sending him to prison. "The Secret Six licked the rackets," said Capone behind bars. "They've licked me. They've made it so there's no money in the game anymore."

This early sound film from MGM is all over the place, cramming an awful lot of plot and a large group of characters into its lean running time. The result feels like the cinematic equivalent of an appetizer plate -- it gives us just enough of each character to want more but not enough to ever really satisfy us.

And what a shame, because those characters are played by a powerhouse cast who between them have enough screen presence to start a fire. Wallace Beery is the closest thing the film has to a main character, playing a lunkhead turned crime boss who's brought down by the Secret Six, a collective of government agents who are rooting out organized crime. Beery's performance is all over the map -- he can't decide whether he wants to play his character as a menacing hood or comic buffoon, so he takes turns playing it as both. Ralph Bellamy, in his first film role, is truly scary as the gang leader whose death grants Beery his promotion. Jean Harlow is that old gangster movie cliché, the moll with a heart of gold. Clark Gable is a sharp reporter who feeds intelligence to the government. And Marjorie Rambeau, in the smallest but in many ways most memorable role, is the wronged floozy who ultimately brings Beery to justice. Rambeau's boozy hysterics, especially in the scene where she turns Beery over to the police, are a sight to behold.

This film isn't anything special, and it's not the kind of film that would ever even have come across my radar had it not been for TCM. It's one of those movies that's more interesting as an artifact than it is for any entertainment value, but that doesn't mean it's a waste of time.

Grade: C+

THE SECRET SIX looks like an antiquated crime film, despite some of the comments here talking about "MGM gloss". It doesn't have any gloss and it doesn't compare favorably to the tougher Warner Bros. crime dramas of the same period.

The only surprises here are in the odd casting choices. RALPH BELLAMY (Mr. Nice Guy or "other man" in most films) playing a rotten gangster type with lines like "Easy on the rods" to his fellow gangsters and a tough guy sneer on his face. He's a double-crossing leader of a gang who tries to get rid of WALLACE BEERY, but fails and is shot in the back by Beery for his efforts. Since this comes pretty early in the film, it's a bit of a surprise. So is seeing Bellamy as a gangster.

The other surprise is seeing LEWIS STONE (Andy Hardy's dad) as a crooked lawyer who rules the mobsters with a firm hand, but makes the fatal mistake of turning his back on Beery toward the end. Stone seems out of his element here as the dapper lawyer with the cane.

And finally, into the film comes a very young CLARK GABLE (sans moustache) looking fit and chipper as a rather callow newspaper man who jokes around with another newspaper guy JOHNNY MACK BROWN, who happens to be Harlow's love interest (instead of Gable).

Despite these surprises, the film itself is as ordinary as they come, a simple gangster story with a Prohibition background about bootleggers who get mixed up with gun molls, crooked lawyers and crime stoppers like "The Secret Six" who are able to capture bad guy Beery and put an end to his monopoly on crime in the city. The plot sounds vaguely like it may have been based on Al Capone's true-life story.

Summing up: Only gets lively toward the end with all the shoot-outs, but pretty stale stuff most of the time.

Trivia note: Interesting for the glimpse it gives of CLARK GABLE and JEAN HARLOW before they hit the big time stardom waiting for them.