Head-On Precode Showdown With Crime

Beast Of The City (1932) Calls For Drastic Measures

Under head of movies giving us what real life won't, here is 30's receipt of swift law and order for a public then drowned in rampant crime. Due process be damned was Beast Of The City's clarion call, Walter Huston and enforcer team straight-lining into teeth of Jean Hersholt's lice mob that Beast-set Chicago had enough of but had not nerve to deal with so decisively. Noted in 1932 and since that this was more frontier justice than we'd permit in a 20th century, Beast Of The City asked why not to calls for vice being stamped out, and never mind how. Here was a movie that met the mood of its time, as did others of like mind: This Day and Age, Gabriel Over The White House, more that are minor enough to escape notice because no one shows them. It was time we celebrate those who enforce rules, said Metro in opening text crawl, which must have got Beast Of The City by local censors that might otherwise have banned it. Chicago surprisingly let Beast pass despite mentions of local landmarks that clearly put action there. Receipts, in fact, were soft for the burgh. Maybe Chicago, like other places, had snoot-ful of "gang-rule" topics (Variety's term) by early 1932 when Beast Of The City tried riding the cycle to whatever dollars more could be had.

Hersholt and gang are a patch-quilt of ethnicity, protected by "shyster" Tully Marshall, his profession understood to frustrate the law rather than uphold it. How many during the early 30's entered legal practice specifically to become mouthpieces for the Mob? Honest lawyers during precode were scarce as feathers on a frog. PCA enforcement would clean that up along with a lot of other things, part of its job to reduce slams on any profession Americans might pursue, including, be it ever so precode crooked, that of attorney. Beast Of The City makes it a given that all of that occupation are rotten to cores, and a best reason why killers and bootleggers go free. Bad cops are, on the contrary, and in every way, an exception to departmental norm. It takes panting siren of a Jean Harlow to corrupt one of them. Bad acts beyond ones of a single rotted apple are unthinkable. Officers cheerily give lives to back chief Walter Huston's play, even where plain suicide seems to be his goal. Beast Of The City pumps rawest energy into what would otherwise come off silly. W.R. Burnett wrote the story, him behind Little Caesar and Scarface. Dialogue is of keepsake quality. Wallace Ford tells a would-be bedmate, "I left my youth in the Capitals of Europe," a line I'd use if anyone could begin to make current sense of it.

Walter Huston was a marvel at outraged decency. He could also turn on a dime and do villainy. Some would say he achieves both for Beast Of The City, depending on approval or not for strong-arm policing. Huston was past romance age, or looked it, maybe acted it, enough to disqualify himself except as character lead. To that extent then, Beast Of The City is owned by plain-folk in earnest combat with an underworld briefly down, but never out. Whatever sacrifice is made, and there are plenty here, will not stem the tide for long. Did Chicagoans meekly accept living in one of the most dangerous spots in the country? I would guess so, considering they still do today. I had to remind myself that Prohibition was still the law in 1932. You'd not figure it from watching Beast Of The City, booze being wide open served at every club table. Hollywood had always made the Volstead Act seem like a joke. Would that have remained so had Code enforcement come prior to repeal? Here was a law so unpopular that everyone made sport of it, but wait, MGM did The Wet Parade in 1932 as well, that a searing indictment of alcohol as free-flowing contraband, and co-starring Walter Huston in the bargain.

MGM didn't like splatter effect of making gang pics, but had to because mass appeal was their market and these were marketable. Same was case with as distasteful horror films, which Metro floated via Freaks and Mask Of Fu Manchu in 1932, but sort of made messes of thanks to post-shoot jitters and censor concern. Give it to Leo though --- when they did outrage, they poured it on, Beast Of The City speaking loud to someone's notion of societal mop-up, as in the only good criminals are dead ones. Maybe it's well that Jean Harlow was along to soften ad appeal, hers a sole blossom in the slaughterhouse. Violence was tricky in so-called free wheeling Precode days. All the local censor had to do was chop it down, and fair number of them did, result a denuded product often incoherent and never satisfactory. Who knows if now-circulating Beast Of The City is complete? I sensed at least one dialogue snip in the WB Archives DVD. There may have been hot or cold versions cut to permissiveness of whatever house booked Beast Of The City. Prints were as flexible as bookers who supplied them, MGM the "Friendly Company" after all. Warner's disc, by the way, however intact it is, looks OK, but this title could use a High-Def scrubbing, which I assume it will eventually get, provided half-decent elements survive.