O Grande O'Malley

Thinking about The Great O'Malley put me in mind of an episode of NYPD Blue in its final season. Andy Sipowicz has been just appointed sergeant and the point of the whole series was watching Dennis Franz as Sipowicz grow as a human being. There's a scene in this particular episode where Sipowicz as sergeant mediates out a dispute when a young rookie cop collars a truck driver who was trying to make a delivery on a crowded street and was double parked. The driver protested the ticket and the cop arrested him and we see the driver in handcuffs.

Sipowicz basically tells the young patrolman to enforce the law, but with a little discretion, after all this is some poor working stiff, not serial criminal. And in the end the driver is cut loose and presumably the patrolman will use a little more tact in the future.

In the title role in The Great O'Malley is Pat O'Brien who's a walking rule book, so much so no one can stand being around him. But one day just like in NYPD Blue, he stops some guy for speeding on his first day to report to a new job. He detains him so long that the man loses that job.

Which leads to Humphrey Bogart just plain losing it and committing a robbery just to gain enough money to feed his wife and daughter. Of course that results on wife Frieda Inescourt and daughter Sybil Jason staying on relief which is what welfare was called back in the day.

None of this makes any impression on the officious Great O'Malley, but O'Brien happens to make the acquaintance of Inescourt and Jason and between the two of them, manage to soften him up a bit. Even O'Brien's girlfriend Ann Sheridan likes the change in him.

Later on he gets a chance to really make it up to Bogart, going quite a bit above and beyond in his job as a policeman.

The Great O'Malley is a typical Warner Brothers Depression era product from the working man's studio. Both Pat O'Brien and Humphrey Bogart do fine jobs, especially Bogart who at that time was playing mostly gangsters. Here he's a decent, but desperate man and really registers in the role that was a change of pace for him.

This film is not run too often, hopefully TCM will broadcast it and soon.

THE GREAT O'MALLEY (Warner Brothers, 1937), directed by William Dieterle, stars Irish actor, Pat O'Brien, properly cast as an Irish policeman by the name of O'Malley. Having previously played an officer of the law by the name of O'Hara in THE IRISH IN US (1935) where James Cagney starred and gathered most of the attention, his role of O'Malley solely belongs to O'Brien, with some notable attention to some of his supporting players, such as Humphrey Bogart and Ann Sheridan, who would become major star performers by the 1940s, and the little child actress by the name of Sybil Jason, the studio's answer to 20th Century-Fox's Shirley Temple. Though cute and agreeable in her role, Jason never became a major child actress of her time. After co-starring in two movies starring Temple at her home studio, Jason would become lifelong friends with the legendary child actress.

Set in New York City, the story introduces James Aloysius O'Malley (Pat O'Brien), whose late father was also a policeman, as a "by the book" officer who passes out citations for petty crimes and ordinances. He takes his job very seriously, even to a point of criticizing his own mother (Mary Gordon) for breaking the law for littering. One day he stops John Phillips (Humphrey Bogart), a family man with a wife (Frieda Inescort) and a child, Barbara (Sybil Jason), while on his way to his first job he's has in years, for a violation driving his Model T car with a bad muffler. Only a few minutes late, John loses his job to another man. In desperate need of extra money to buy food for his family, he tries to pawn off some personal items. Unable to get the $10 needed, John steals $400 from the pawnbroker. Later he is stopped by O'Malley for a traffic violation, unaware that he is now a wanted man. Later arrested, John is put to trial and sentenced to serve two to ten years in the state penitentiary. His wife informs Barbara that her father has gone away on his new job in Canada. Because of the incident that could have been prevented, but has only ruined a man's life instead, Captain Cromwell (Donald Crisp) asks O'Malley for his resignation, but is refused. Cromwell decides to make or break O'Malley by reducing him to school crossing guard at Public School 141. Although O'Malley finds his new job humiliating, he soon takes an interest in a girl with a lame leg, who happens to be the daughter John Phillips, and the child's teacher, Judy Nolan (Ann Sheridan). Other members of the cast include: Henry O'Neill (Defense Attorney); Hobart Cavanaugh ("Pinky" Holden); Frank Sheridan (Father Patrick); Lillian Harmer (Miss Taylor); Frank Reicher (Doctor Edwin Larson), with Granville Bates, Henry Armetta and Stanley Fields in smaller roles.

Based on the story with material that was previously done in the silent era as THE MAKING OF O'MALLEY (1925) with Milton Sills and Dorothy MacKaill, this latest update gathers enough attention through its Warner Brothers stock company in their properly placed roles. As mentioned earlier, O'Brien handles his role perfectly as a no nonsense policeman. While Humphrey Bogart has become relatively known for playing gangsters, villains and later detectives, this along with his earlier BLACK LEGION (1936) does he get the rare opportunity playing a father of a small child. Of all the cast members, O'Brien is the sole focus who nearly takes second place to Sybil Jason. No matter, since he won't ever give her a citation for scene stealing. Regardless of some syrupy scenes, and how the Great O'Malley gets through his humiliation with job demotion, the movie is satisfactory 70 minute production.

Viewed mostly on Turner Classic Movies cable channel, THE GREAT O'MALLEY, which was at one point in history was rarely shown on television since the 1960s, has become available on DVD. It would be nice to have the silent 1925 movie available one of these days for O'Malley comparison. (***)

Pat O'Brien plays an obnoxiously by-the-book policeman who's hated by the people on his beat and not exactly loved by his fellow officers. He's forced to rethink his outlook when a man (Humphrey Bogart) turns to crime to support his family after O'Brien's rigidity inadvertently costs him his job.

Interesting if not wholly successful drama from Warner Bros. O'Brien's character actually reads up on archaic laws just so he can write people tickets for breaking them! That would be bad enough today but imagine doing that at a time when most people didn't have two nickels to rub together. It's got a nice cast and that helps a lot. Any movie with Bogie is worth seeing.

A first-rate movie in every sense. I recently watched it for the first time in decades and was I was every bit as impressed with it as I was the first time I saw it. Pat O'Brien was great, and you very seldom see a young child turn in a performance that's nearly as good as the one by Sybil Jason in this film. It's a shame that more people aren't aware of this movie, but, of course, a lot of great films, such as this 1937 gem, become forgotten about over time. Let's just hope that more people get to see it. It's on You Tube. And I don't mind saying that I got pretty emotional at times. I highly recommend it!

Pat O'Brien plays John O'Malley, a New York City beat cop who thinks that enforcing the law is all mechanics and no heart. He tickets businessmen for having awnings that are inches too long, threatens to cite his own mother for spreading debris when she feeds bread to the pigeons from her kitchen window, and cites John Phillips (Humphrey Bogart) for a loud muffler when he is on his way to the first job he has had in years - remember this is the Great Depression. This sets off a string of tragic events starting with Phillips being late to his job and thus losing it, then being too proud to tell his wife and crippled daughter (Sybil Jason) that he lost the job, and finally an altercation at a pawn shop where Phillips was trying to pawn his gun and WWI medals that turns into a robbery. Philips goes to prison, and O'Malley becomes the laughing stock of the force and a target of the press as an example of law enforcement abuse.

All the while, O'Malley holds tight to his belief that he is just doing his job by enforcing all the law the all the time by the book. His captain wants his resignation, and when O'Malley won't give it, he has him assigned to public school crossing guard duty. The captain believes this will break or make the man. Did I mention that Phillips' little daughter goes to the same elementary school where O'Malley is assigned, and they strike up a friendship, neither one knowing who the other is? A romantic and humanizing interest comes in the person of Ann Sheridan as a schoolteacher at the elementary school.

This is a pleasant little early production code era entry, with O'Brien playing the same kind of hard boiled egg he played before the code, but this time donning a policeman's uniform. The only negative in the film, in my opinion, was a common device in films of the mid 30's - a child that is sickly-sticky sweet (Sybil Jason's character) over-sentimentalizing matters and sucking the adult cast into more than a few silly situations. However, at least here the child star is central to the plot. All in all, recommended especially for fans of Pat O'Brien and Ann Sheridan and anybody that is interested in a film in which Sybil Jason is actually billed above Humphrey Bogart - an odd sight indeed some 75 years later.