The Big Shakedown (1934)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

John Francis Dillon

Writers:

Niven Busch (screenplay)
Niven Busch (story)

Release Date:

6 January 1934 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Plot:

Racketeers flood the market with counterfeit cosmetics and drugs, causing some tragedies.

Plot Keywords:

Drugs | Digitalis | Toothpaste | Reference To Mae West | Con Artist

Cast

Charles Farrell	...	Jimmy Morrell
Bette Davis	...	Norma Nelson
Ricardo Cortez	...	Dutch Barnes
Glenda Farrell	...	Lily 'Lil' Duran
Allen Jenkins	...	Lefty
Henry O'Neill	...	Mr. Sheffner
Dewey Robinson	...	Slim
John Wray	...	Higgins
Philip Faversham	...	John, the New Salesman
Robert Emmett O'Connor	...	Regan, the Bartender
Renee Whitney	...	Mae LaRue
G. Pat Collins	...	Gyp (as George Pat Collins)
Adrian Morris	...	Trigger
Ben Hendricks Jr.	...	Spike (as Ben Hendricks)
George Cooper	...	Shorty

Runtime:

64 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

First National Pictures

Quotes:

Dutch Barnes: Lefty, what's our racket?
Lefty: Beer!
Dutch Barnes: Beer, huh, you're five minutes late. We're going into the drug business.
Lefty: Not me. I got a brother doing twenty years for going into the drug business and all they found on him was two decks of coke.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood (2008) (TV)

luminous Davis

Although this is typical of the low-budget quickies that Warners churned out like hotcakes in the Thirties it offers Bette Davis in her most youthfully appealing "down-to-earth platinum blonde girl" phase. You can find the same character in THREE ON A MATCH, THE GIRL FROM 10TH AVENUE, THE PETRIFIED FOREST and others. She exudes an innocent but intelligent, unaffected femininity that seems to have evaporated by the time she hit her stride with JEZEBEL, so it's good that this phase of her career is preserved - if only to track her evolution as an actress. Note the energy and vitality she injects (perhaps effortlessly) into a supporting role as the girlfriend-wife, stealing every scene she's in - without relying on conventional beauty. It's kind of fun also to see how the scenarists managed to leap from one implausible, contrived plot development to the next - but that's a secondary matter because most of these films were beyond belief. The point was to make a moral point, not to be narratively convincing. The point here being: evil gangsters, beware of the authorities because they'll get you!