The Fall Guy

My score of 6 is a balance between what the film deserved for a 1930 film as well as how it hold up today. For 1930, it was pretty good--with decent sound and plot. However, when seen today, the whole thing seems very stagy as well as hard to swallow. For folks like me who love old films, it's worth a look--though it bears none of the salaciousness you might hope to find in a "Pre-Code" gangster film.

I knew when the film began I was in for a bit of torture. Ned Sparks, a popular but occasionally annoying supporting player, was there in the first scene. Considering it was a gangster film, I was hoping he was the first victim, but no such luck. As a result, I has to watch and listen to his rather tired routine throughout the film. His deadpan sarcasm just seemed out of place and distracting here. Plus, giving him a saxophone to play (and play very badly) made his one of the more annoying supporting roles of the era.

Aside from Sparks, the rest of the film is just okay--nothing particularly special. It's all about an out of work and incredibly stupid man who decides the smart way out of debt is to be a "bag man" for the mob. Surprise, surprise, all does NOT go well and this leads to a decent showdown scene at the end. However, the stilted nature and talkiness of the film, something relatively common for 1930, was obvious. Not a great film, but a decent time-passer.

For those of you with some age under your fingernails - ( Whaa?? ) - you may remember when TV was a constant source of discovery. This was before cable. Hell, it was even before UHF. Yes, long before 500 channels of computer regulated crap, there was a time when you could flip on the set and have no idea just what you might encounter. Tonight was one of those times.

Just finished watching "The Fall Guy". A man ( Johnny Quinlan ) falls in with a drug smuggling crook ( Thomas E. Jackson ) while his girlfriend's brother ( Ned Sparks ) cracks wise. That's really all you need to know, other than that the story is compelling enough to hold one's interest through even the most banal of late night commercials.

Oh, and a couple of other things: Ned Sparks must have been a big enough star in his day to have inspired a Warner Bros. cartoon parody. As for Thomas E. Jackson; close your eyes and you will swear you are listening to Lewis "Studs" Turkel. Think the studly one might have seen this movie? Hey, take it easy...but take it! Anyway, what inspired me to take keyboard in hand here is the fact that I saw this movie for the first time moments ago. On TV. Not on some esoteric cable station, but on good old WLS Ch.7 in Chicago. That's right, someone found this one in the vaults, dusted it off and stuck it on Insomiac Theater. LORD A' MIGHTY! This is what TV used to be about; discovery, the unexpected and all, those other good things that made us kids born in the late 40s and early 50s fall in love with the unblinking eye. Excuse me while I go weep for what once was...and still could be.

... which was something RKO did well in their early years, whether they stumbled into that formula or not. Plus this is a slice of working class life in the months just before the Depression began to hit hard.

Bertha"Bert" Quinlan (Mae Clarke) is a housewife who lives with her unemployed brother Danny (Ned Sparks) who considers his jobless state as almost a religion. And that's too bad, because Bert's husband, Johnny (Jack Mulhall) is completely unreliable. He loses a job at a drug store out of just plain carelessness - he is late to work a few times. It is never clear as to whether or not he is a pharmacist, but he doesn't seem to be bright enough to be one.

Days of joblessness turn into weeks, and still no job. In the meantime Johnny borrows money from a bootlegger he considers to be his friend - Nifty Herman - in spite of sage warnings from his wife Bert. Then one day Nifty asks a favor from Johnny - he wants him to hold a mysterious suitcase in his flat for him until Nifty comes calling for it, and Johnny feels he cannot refuse a guy who has been good to him.

Meanwhile Johnny's sister, Lottie (Wynne Gibson) is dating a fellow with a mysterious job. Everything comes to a head when Lottie's fellow comes to dinner at the Quinlan home one evening, and the contents of the suitcase are revealed. Complications ensue.

There are lots of things to notice in this film - for one how much people stood up for family members when their behavior was indefensible. Ned Sparks is playing such an unlikable person here it is surprising the first cost cutting measure the Quinlans do not take is dumping this able bodied guy on the pavement to fend for himself. Second, in spite of Johnny being unable to find a job and Danny unwilling to do so, it seems to be out of the question for a married woman, Bert, to consider going to work. Third, nobody takes Prohibition seriously. Noone is concerned that Nifty is a bootlegger, Bert's concerns are all of the other things Nifty may be involved with in the process of being a bootlegger.

Some other things of note. Ned Sparks is not being used well here. He is much better as the serious sour guy who just never had a fun day in his life and is not afraid to tell you about it. Also, it's a wonder of make up and fashion design that 20 year old Mae Clarke looks like a dowdy housewife run down by years of worrying over pennies, downright lifeless looking compared to 32 year old Wynne Gibson who is playing her flapper-like sister in law.

The weirdest thing I noticed? At one point a cop and Danny are in the kitchen, and for some reason the cop is trying the bad cop routine without the good cop around and it just doesn't work. I think they were going for some kind of vaudeville back-and-forth comic routine, but it just falls flat.

I'd say this is worth it for film historians and for people who want a look at how average people lived in 1930. From that viewpoint it is essential.

I generally love old movies, pre-code even more, but this one just grated on my nerves. I think it was Ned Sparks "playing" that sax and pretending he had great dialog. I know it was the thirties, but did he have to pull such strange faces when he spoke his lines? And what lines...again, i usually love older dialog, as written by folks who had lived a little, but this one just seemed so dated to me, and even corny...Ned looked like he just sucked lemons after every line...WTF?

He also appeared to have some sort of nerve disorder, the way he screwed up his face every time he was on camera. Reminded me of my grandfather, and not in a good way...

Anyway, just thought adding another comment couldn't hurt-sorry if i've offended anybody, but give me an old Cagney movie, or something where the actors don't inspire such reactions to their characters.

I know, it was probably great when it came out, but that guy with the sax just needed a beat-down in the worst way...

The Fall Guy (1930)

** (out of 4)

Extremely bland but mildly entertaining film about a man (Jack Mulhall) who gets fired from his job at the worst time because his wife (Mae Clarke) has her lazy brother (Ned Sparks) living with them and none of them have a dime to their name. The man finally gets desperate enough to try and make some quick cash with some illegal doings but soon he finds himself as the fall guy.

THE FALL GUY is a very forgettable movie that most people won't bother coming to unless they're a fan of Clarke and want to see one of her early performances. This was made a year before WATERLOO BRIDGE and FRANKENSTEIN and there's no question that she's the best thing in the picture even though she's not given too much to do. She does get a few good scenes where she breaks down on the husband who goes against her wishes and runs with this bad crowd.

Outside of Clarke there's really not too much here. Mulhall is okay in the lead but he certainly isn't strong enough to carry the picture. Sparks is incredibly dull and lifeless as the lazy brother. Wynne Gibson is decent as the sister-in-law and Pat O'Malley is decent as well. The biggest problem with THE FALL GUY is its direction by Leslie Pearce, which is downright bad. I say that because there's not an ounce of energy to be found anywhere in the picture and for the life of me the film was so flat that I really couldn't tell whether it was a drama or a comedy.

I will say that, technically speaking, it's quite good for 1930. The soundtrack is recorded extremely well and there aren't any technical glitches that we often found in these early talkies.