You Can’t Get Away with Murder ** (1939, Humphrey Bogart, Billy Halop, Gale Page, John Litel, Henry Travers, Harvey Stephens) – Classic Movie Review 6903

Director Lewis Seiler’s 1939 B-movie crime drama for Warner Bros stars Humphrey Bogart as petty hoodlum Frank Wilson, who is a bad influence on troubled teenager Johnnie Stone (Billy Halop, of the Dead End Kids).

But then Wilson involves Johnnie in a robbery, using a stolen gun belonging to Johnnie’s sister Madge (Gale Page)’s fiancé Fred Burke (Harvey Stephens). Wilson kills a pawnbroker during the robbery, and blames the murder on Fred, who ends up in Sing Sing’s death row.

This tired conveyor-belt drama was in tune with the mood of the times back then but now it just seems old-fashioned and sentimental, not at all the ideal stuff for Bogart, who is not seen at his best nor at quite his peak.

You Can’t Get Away with Murder is a dull, plodding, unconvincing and moralistic little movie – and it is very statically filmed, too. Expectedly, though, the acting helps a lot to make it a palatable, even occasionally a tasty morsel.

The rather laborious screenplay by Robert Buckner, Don Ryan and Kenneth Gamet is based on warden Lewis E Lawes and Jonathan Finn’s 1937 play Chalked Out.

Also in the cast are John Litel, Henry Travers, Joseph [Joe] Sawyer, Harold Huber, Joe Downing, George E Stone, Joe King, Joseph Crehan, John Ridgley, Herbert Rawlinson, Eddie Anderson, Sidney Bracey, Eddy Chandler, Hal Craig, Tom Dugan, Frank Faylen, John Harron, Robert Homans, Frank Mayo, Robert Emmett O’Connor, George Offerman, Jack Mower, Gary Owen, Emory Parnell, Cliff Saum, Gertrude Short, Robert Strange, George Taylor, Tom Wilson, Ed Brian, Frankie Burke, Edgar Edwards and Jack A Goodrich.

You Can’t Get Away with Murder is directed by Lewis Seiler, runs 79 minutes, is made by First National, is distributed by Warner Bros, is written by Robert Buckner, Don Ryan and Kenneth Gamet, based on warden Lewis E Lawes and Jonathan Finn’s play Chalked Out, is shot in black and white by Sol Polito, is produced by Hal B Wallis, Jack Warner and Sam Bischoff, is scored by Heinz Roemheld, and is designed by Hugh Reticker.

Billy Halop (February 11, 1920 – November 9, 1976).

After starring as Tommy Gordon in the 1935 Broadway play and 1937 film of Sidney Kingsley’s Dead End, Billy Halop had the recurring role of gang leader in a series of films featuring the Dead End Kids. He acted with James Cagney in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and played the bully Flashman in the 1940 Tom Brown’s School Days. With diminishing film work, marital difficulties and a drinking problem, he got steady work as a registered nurse at St John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6903

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