Art-22 Review of The Big Shakedown

The Big Shakedown (1934)

A so-so melodrama about racketeers putting bogus cut-rate toothpaste and medications on the market and the tragedies they cause.

[5/10 · 22 October 1998]

An early Bette Davis melodrama when she was still making those B pictures for Warner Bros. She plays an employee in a drug store , engaged to the owner, pharmacist Charles Farrell, during the heart of the depression, and it's not doing too well. Neither is the beer rackets, since Prohibition has been repealed and hundreds of beer factories have sprung up, hurting racketeer Ricardo Cortez and his henchmen. He gets an antacid in Farrell's store, but it is a home-made one by Farrell, since he was out of the brand Cortez wanted. It tastes identical to that brand and did the trick, giving Cortez an idea for a new racket. He get Farrell to make lots of items -- toothpaste, minor medicines, cosmetics, etc. to sell at cut-rate prices. Cortez, however, puts brand names on them, causing one toothpaste company to declare backruptcy eventually. When Farrell has enough money to quit, he marries Davis, but Cortez won't let him quit. Instead, Cortez wants to expand to drugs. First is an antiseptic without the antiseptic properties. Then it is digitalis without the stimulant property. Cortez keeps Farrell in line by threats against Davis, which Farrell takes seriously after a witness who informed the district attorney of the racket was murdered. Farrell finally realizes the horrible consequences of the phony medicine when the pregnant Davis loses her baby because the digitalis given to her in the hospital did not work. He grabs a gun and goes after Cortez.