Public Hero Number 1
G-Man Jeff Crane poses as a crook to infiltrate the notorious Purple Gang, a band of hoodlums which preys upon other hoodlums. Orchestrating the jailbreak of the gang's leader, Crane joins him in a Dillinger-like flight across the country.
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- Cast:
- Lionel Barrymore , Jean Arthur , Chester Morris , Joseph Calleia , Paul Kelly , Lewis Stone , Paul Hurst
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Reviews
Wonderful character development!
I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.
It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.
Interesting mash-up of genres from MGM: part prison/crime drama and part romantic comedy. Two convicts (Chester Morris and Joseph Calleia) escape from prison and one is wounded. The other goes for help and comes back with a drunkard doctor (Lionel Barrymore) and a girl (Jean Arthur), who turns out to be Calleia's sister! Starts out as a fairly typical but enjoyable prison flick. Then there's a twist. I admit I didn't see the twist coming but in retrospect I should have. Others might peg it right away or see it in some plot descriptions. Anyway it changes gears once Jean Arthur enters the picture and becomes a sort of romcom for a little while, before returning to being a crime picture.Terrific cast really makes it worth seeing. In addition to Morris, Arthur, Barrymore, and Calleia, there's Lewis Stone, Paul Kelly, Paul Hurst, and George E. Stone. Ladies will appreciate a shirtless Barrymore washing his moobs in a bath. Spectacularly violent shoot-out between cops and criminal gang. Calleia's fate was obviously inspired by how John Dillinger met his end. Eliminate the final scene between Morris and Arthur and I might have bumped this up to a 7. Hated that part. Remade in 1941 as The Getaway with Robert Sterling and Donna Reed.
I debated watching this one on Turner Classics this morning, but after fifteen minutes into the picture I was hooked. A pre-Boston Blackie Chester Morris makes his mark in a dual role as an undercover detective working a mob connection from inside prison. He's trying to learn the whereabouts of Sonny Black's (Joseph Calleia) headquarters and the rest of the Purple Gang. The reason for that name was never explained, so I was left wondering about it the rest of the story.You generally don't think of a gangster picture as having comedy relief elements, but Lionel Barrymore worked effectively here as the inebriated doctor of choice for the mobsters. Leaving his medical kit at a local gin mill as collateral, Doc Glass had about the finest nose for liquor in film history. On top of that, he always seemed to have a back up stash of the hard stuff in convenient locations just in case the glass he was working on got pinched.Jean Arthur is effective as the good girl who falls for Jeff Crane (Morris), and of course the twist with her character is that she's convict Black's sister. She makes a continuous running play for Crane in the early going, even after she learns he broke out of prison with her brother. That sets up the film's emotional conflict for the finale, as Terry (Arthur) must resolve her feelings for the man who wants to bring her brother to justice.The other performance of note in the picture is Paul Kelly's portrayal of Special Agent Duff, laying it out right on the line for Crane before he gets in too deep with Sonny Black's sister. Fortunately, that tug of war ends on a harmonious note at the closing bell, as Crane and Terry end the picture in a clinch, presumably on the way to the altar. On the way there though, you have a climactic shoot 'em up that leaves all the mobsters on the short end of staccato machine gun fire, courtesy of the era's penchant for closing out such stories with a healthy dose of law and order.
Public Hero #1 starts out as a conventional prison yarn, then switches to sophisticated screwball comedy, then back to shoot 'em up melodrama. Perhaps it is the way the cast handles the crackling dialogue by J Walter Reuben and Wells Root that makes this mixed-genre film so entertaining. It never sinks into torpidity, thanks in part to the introduction of Jean Arthur and Lionel Barrymore well into the proceedings. Until then it is up to Chester Morris to hold our interest, which he does robustly, as an undercover federal agent posing as a convict to trap bad guy Joseph Calleia and his gang. Barrymore, however, steals the show as a pickled-to-the-gills alcoholic mob doctor - the great ham at his hammiest. Calleia contributes a nicely textured portrait of a hardened but still human criminal. All in all, an energetic if contrived gangster story spiked with laughs, fun plot twists and colorful characters. The final moment is interesting. It's as if Chester Morris was itching to wrap and go home that day, didn't like the way the fade out was written, so he recklessly improvised the last line and the last blocking bit and then the director gave in and allowed it. See for yourself!
stars in this quirky yet unsuccessful comedy-drama about an undercover cop (Chester Morris) and the plot to capture a gang leader (Joseph Calleia) who happens to be Jean Arthur's brother. Lionel Barrymore is along for the ride as a drunken doctor (a nice comic turn). But it doesn't all come together; even Miss Arthur's beauty and fine comic timing can't save this one.