Having just lived through a stolen presidential election I thought this was the perfect time to review Preston Sturges\u2019 comical look at crooked politics.<\/p>\n
The movie opens up in a bar in a Latin American country.\u00a0 A young American is getting drunk and becoming more and more depressed.\u00a0 He had to escape from the United States and leave his family behind because he was a bank teller who got caught stealing money.\u00a0 The bartender played by Brian Donlevy follows him into the bathroom just in time to stop him from shooting himself.\u00a0 The bartender tells him not to despair.\u00a0 He tells the young man that his case is minor compared to his own.\u00a0 Then he tells his story and the scene changes to the bartender\u2019s story.\u00a0 We find out his name Dan McGinty.<\/p>\n
When we first see him, he is a hobo in tattered clothes wandering the streets of some big eastern city, probably New York.\u00a0 It\u2019s election day and a political hack (played by William Demerast) collars him and tells him that if he votes for the crooked mayor under an assumed name, he\u2019ll get paid two bucks.\u00a0 When McGinty asks the fixer, what happens if he can vote twice the guy tells him he\u2019ll get four bucks.\u00a0 So McGinty goes to every polling station and votes thirty-seven times.\u00a0 But the fixer doesn\u2019t have enough money to pay McGinty off so he brings him down to headquarters to ask the \u201cBoss\u201d for the cash.\u00a0 The Boss, played hilariously with an absurd Russian accent by Akim Tamiroff, is so impressed by McGinty\u2019s nerve that he takes him under his wing to make him a successful crook.\u00a0 First, he makes McGinty a collector for the protection racket that the Boss runs.\u00a0 When his verbal and pugilistic skills allow him to clean up even the most delinquent customers the Boss realizes that McGinty will rise very high in the Boss\u2019s political machine.\u00a0 He graduates to squeezing all the city contractors for the kickbacks that the Boss gets for letting them skip the bidding process.\u00a0 The relationship between McGinty and the Boss is one of fratricidal familiarity.\u00a0 They are both berserk fighters who enjoy nothing better than brawling with each other at the drop of a hat.\u00a0 There are several brawls in the course of the movie.<\/p>\n
Eventually the Boss decides that the old mayor is too weak and he decides that McGinty will be the new mayor.\u00a0 But before he can run, he has to get married.\u00a0 Apparently the newly enfranchised woman vote didn\u2019t cotton to bachelor mayors.\u00a0 He and his secretary Catherine form a marriage of convenience.\u00a0 She is a divorcee with two kids and they both agree that a marriage in name only would suit them both.\u00a0 But as you can guess eventually, they both fall in love and ruin the whole thing.\u00a0 Catherine is at heart an idealist and she hopes that some day Dan can go straight and get out from under the Boss\u2019s thumb.<\/p>\n
Finally, the Boss decides to run McGinty for governor and he wins.\u00a0 Now McGinty decides he wants Catherine and the kids to respect him so he has it out with the Boss.\u00a0 And right in the governor\u2019s office he and the Boss get into a colossal fist fight and then the Boss pulls a gun and tries to shoot McGinty for which he is hauled off to jail for attempted murder.<\/p>\n
But the Boss gets his revenge and has McGinty arrested for being involved in a crooked contract back when he was mayor.\u00a0 Now the Boss and McGinty are in adjoining cells and they strike a deal and the Boss arranges for both of them to break out of jail and escape the country.\u00a0 McGinty just has enough time to call Catherine and tell her where there is a safety deposit box with enough money to take care of her and the kids for life.<\/p>\n
In the next scene they\u2019re back in the Latin American bar where McGinty is the bartender and the Boss is the owner.\u00a0 Just as he finishes the story and calms the young man down, he decides to make the cash register ring.\u00a0 This is supposed to tip off the Boss that McGinty is stealing from him and they get into one of their habitual fistfights.\u00a0 Obviously, the fight is the highlight of the day for both of these exiles.<\/p>\n
Preston Sturges wrote and directed this comedy and like many of his films it has an originality sadly lacking in most movies.\u00a0 The characters of McGinty and the Boss are extremely vivid and despite their obvious criminality quite likeable.\u00a0 The rest of the cast are more than adequate and the dialog is quite good.\u00a0 Highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having just lived through a stolen presidential election I thought this was the perfect time to review Preston Sturges\u2019 comical look at crooked politics. The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,238,237],"tags":[2864,2862,191,2861,2863],"class_list":["post-13289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-akim-tamiroff","tag-brian-donlevy","tag-ocf-classic-movie-review","tag-preston-sturges","tag-william-demerast"],"yoast_head":"\n