When his fellow agent gets killed during a bust, G-Man Donald Cook is filled with self-doubt for two or three minutes, then it's on to tackle the syndicate running the numbers racket by befriending dumb crook Warren Hymer, Racket bookkeeper Evalyn Knapp likes him a lot, but doesn't wish to go out with anyone in the racket. The sting depends on figuring out who the mysterious Big Boss is.
Edward L. Cahn directs this Mascot second feature at such a clip that the entire undercover operation seems to take about four days, and about a third of that seems taken up with Hymer's wisecracks; overall it seems that the mystery of who the Big Boss is is a result of underwriting; there are no red herrings.
As a side note, it seems that everyone in the rackets is Old Stock American. A character taken down in the first minute is named Van Cleeve, and the least WASPish name is Hymer's "Lefty Regan." I know this was a couple of years after my father changed his name to Lipton, but at this distance it looks like J. Edgar Hoover's decades-long insistence that there was no such thing as the Mafia was a national delusion.
Edward L. Cahn directs this Mascot second feature at such a clip that the entire undercover operation seems to take about four days, and about a third of that seems taken up with Hymer's wisecracks; overall it seems that the mystery of who the Big Boss is is a result of underwriting; there are no red herrings.
As a side note, it seems that everyone in the rackets is Old Stock American. A character taken down in the first minute is named Van Cleeve, and the least WASPish name is Hymer's "Lefty Regan." I know this was a couple of years after my father changed his name to Lipton, but at this distance it looks like J. Edgar Hoover's decades-long insistence that there was no such thing as the Mafia was a national delusion.