The Racket **** (1951, Robert Mitchum, Lizabeth Scott, Robert Ryan, Ray Collins, William Talman) – Classic Movie Review 2166

Director John Cromwell’s tough and gritty 1951 gangster thriller The Racket boasts a great cast headed by stars Robert Mitchum, Lizabeth Scott, Robert Ryan, Ray Collins and William Talman. It is all that is hoped for from a film noir crime drama – realistic, hard-hitting, unsentimental and unromantic.

The violent methods of old-fashioned gangster Nick Scanlon (Robert Ryan) seem increasingly out of step with modern, subtler means of persuasion and corruption. When honest police captain Thomas McQuigg (Mitchum) sets out to nail Nick and his crime syndicate, the gang boss’s reaction is as predictable as it is deadly.

A big national crime syndicate moves into town, partnering with Scanlon. There follows an epic battle of good (cop Mitchum) and evil (mobster Ryan) in which a low-key, subdued Mitchum generously allows fired-up a Ryan to romp away with the acting honours.

However, Mitchum still smoulders powerfully and menacingly in his hard good guy character and Lizabeth Scott shines in her all-too brief scenes, effectively typecast, as so often, as a torch singer (called Irene Hayes), who trills ‘A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening’ (dubbed), music by Jimmy McHugh, lyrics by Harold Adamson.

And Ray Collins as crooked prosecuting district attorney Welsh and William Talman as McQuigg’s loyal patrolman, officer Bob Johnson also shine. Rare honest cops in a bad world, McQuigg and Johnson have got their hands full, taking on Scanlon and try to foil the syndicate’s plans to elect Welch as a crooked judge.

There a lot to recommend The Racket, but it is mainly Ryan’s gritty, spirited performance and the nifty film noir atmosphere in George E Diskant’s photography that lift the rough and rugged picture over the triple hurdles of its clichéd dialogue, mechanical plotting and stereotyped characters in the screenplay by W R Burnett and William Wister Haines. And, to be fair, not all of the dialogue is clichéd; the writers come up with some good, cracking lines for Mitchum and Ryan.

The Racket is a remake of director Lewis Milestone’s and producer Howard Hughes’s 1928 seminal early gangster movie The Racket, taken from a then current but now long-outmoded stage play by Bartlett Cormack. The play opened on Broadway in New York City, New York, USA, on 22 November 1927 and closed in March 1928 after 119 performances. The original cast included Edward G Robinson, Romaine Callender and G Pat Collins (who is also in the 1928 movie).

Four other directors worked uncredited on the 1951 movie, Nicholas Ray, Mel Ferrer, Tay Garnett and Sherman Todd. It is the only film in which Mitchum appeared that was a remake of a silent film.

The film co-stars Joyce MacKenzie, Robert Hutton, William Conrad, Don Porter, Virginia Huston, Walter Sande, Les Tremayne, Walter Baldwin, Brett King, Richard Karlan, Don Beddoe, Tito Vuolo, Howland Chamberlain, Ralph Peters, Iris Adrian and Howard Joslyn.

Mitchum and Ryan were also paired in Crossfire (1947).

The Racket is directed by John Cromwell, Nicholas Ray (uncredited), Mel Ferrer (uncredited), Tay Garnett (uncredited) and Sherman Todd (uncredited), runs 88 minutes, is made and released by RKO Radio Pictures, is written by W R Burnett, William Wister Haines and Samuel Fuller (uncredited), based on the play by Bartlett Cormack. is shot in black and white by George E Diskant, is produced by Edmund Grainger and is scored by Paul Sawtell and Constantin Bakaleinikoff (musical director / composer stock music), with Art Direction by Albert S D’Agostino and Jack Okey.

Contract writer Samuel Fuller was assigned to work on the film’s screenplay in May 1950, and was at that time considered a possible director.

Lizabeth Scott, who was born Emma Matzo in 1922, made her last film Pulp in 1873. After that, she was engaged in real estate development and volunteer work for various charities, such as Project HOPE and the Ancient Arts Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Scott suffered heart failure at Cedars Sinai Medical Center and died on January 31 2015, aged 92.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2166

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