Cinema Revisited: You Can't Get Away With Murder

Directed by Lewis Seiler. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gale Page, Billy Halop, Harvey Stephens, John Litel, Henry Travers, Harold Huber, Joe Sawyer, Joe Downing, George E. Stone, Herbert Rawlinson. Running time: 79 minutes. Released May 20, 1939.

The bread and butter for Warner Brothers during the 1930s was its gangster dramas, and "You Can't Get Away With Murder" is a quintessential example. Humphrey Bogart was a popular tough guy actor in 1939, but hadn't quite hit real stardom. That would happen a few years later as he owned the 1940s with films like "High Sierra," "The Maltese Falcon," "Casablanca," "and Treasure of the Sierra Madre." However in 1939, Bogart was snarling his way through tough guy roles in standard fare, but the sort of movie that holds up over time and. generations most effectively.

Bogie is Frank Wilson, a criminal whose rebellious was are considered exciting by a young neighborhood punk named Johnnie Stone (Billy Halop). Despite the efforts of his long-suffering sister (Gale Page), teenaged Johnnie is talked into nabbing her law abiding boyfriend's legally owned firearm and giving it to Frank to pull a job. When Frank uses the gun to kill a man, the murder is traced to the boyfriend, Fred Burke (Harvey Stephens). Frank and Johnnie go to prison for a short term for robbery, but the murder is pinned on Fred, who is set to go to the electric chair. Johnnie is upset and wants to clear Fred. Frank isn't about to let that happen.

Of course it can be argued that "You Can't Get Away With Murder" is a formulaic film and the characters are standards within that formula. But it is so well acted, so utterly compelling, that its entertainment value overrides the fact that this aggressive crime drama does not fall under the category of pretentious "great cinema."

Humphrey Bogart snarls his way through his role as the baddest bad guy, his cold stare a stunning visual that is sufficiently intimidating. Billy Halop, one of the Dead End Kids, nicely balances between the streetwise punk and the guilt-ridden adolescent. At once he can either growl or grumble to the authorities, and then be trembling and stammering over his circumstances. Henry Travers, best recalled as the angel Clarence in the yuletide perennial "It's a Wonderful Life," anchors his scenes as a philosophical prison lifer who quietly works in the library, having seen it all. Warner dots the cast with its stable of bad guy types, including Harold Huber and George E. Stone. Joe Sawyer in particular is positively heartbreaking as a prisoner excited about his impending parole, only to find it thwarted at the last minute. Gale Page effectively weeps through her thankless role as Johnnie's sister.

By 1939, Warner Brothers was able to produce a movie like this with little effort. The fact that it so burns through the screen with passion and power. The source material is the play "Chalked Out" by former Sing Sing warden Lewis Lawes whose books were made into other Warner movies like "20,000 Years in Sing Sing" and "Invisible Stripes." The original play tanked on Broadway after only 12 performances, but it continues to resonate nicely via its screen adaption.

Of course Humphrey Bogart was later to go on to movie stardom, and eventually achieve legendary status after his 1957 passing, a true icon of vintage cinema. And although "You Can't Get Away With Murder" was made while he was toiling as a studio contract actor in B movies, it is films like this that live on most effectively as solid, compact entertainment vehicles of their time. Peeking out over the epics produced during one of American film's most celebrated years, "You Can't Get Away With Murder" is strong recommended.