Cosmo Jones in "Crime Smasher" (1943)

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Cosmo Jones in "Crime Smasher" (1943)
Topic Started: Mar 13 2009, 12:37 PM (164 Views)
Laughing Gravy	Mar 13 2009, 12:37 PM Post #1
Revered in the UK Posts: 11,070 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: August 31, 2005	*Cosmo Jones in "Crime Smasher"* (1943) Directed by James Tinling Ya have to love movies like this (if you're this far into our website you do, anyway). Monogram didn't even know what to CALL this film; during production it was alternately called Cosmo Jones and Crime Smasher, and finally - not being able to make up their minds - they went with Cosmo Jones in "Crime Smasher", although the posters refer to the film as The Crime Smasher. I think they should've called it Gone with the Wind II, but David O. Selznik might've minded a tad. Based on a CBS radio series that apparently wasn't any more popular than this film turned out to be, Cosmo Jones in Whatchamacallit offers up a big-city battle of warring gangsters (one of whom is Tris Coffin and one of whom isn't) who are each s'posed to stay on their own side of 41st Street but occasionally step foot in each other's territory to buy cigars, make a nickel phone call, or dump a body on the sidewalk. Amidst all the mayhem, the city's civic leader is yelling at the Mayor, the Mayor is yelling at the Police Commissioner, the Police Commissioner is yelling at the Chief of Police, and because the Chief of Police is Edgar Kennedy, he's yelling at EVERYBODY (if Jackie Cooper, Chubby, Mary Ann, and Wheezer were here, he'd be yelling at THEM, too). Meanwhile, the civic leader's daughter is kidnapped by one of the gangsters with the help of her boyfriend, who's secretly working for the mob, and a naive young police sergeant who has spent a little too much time romancing Gale Storm gets bounced down to patrolman and they can't afford to get married unless he cracks the case and rescues the kidnapped daughter and we'd just at this point like to point out two things: (a) we haven't even got around to mentioning Cosmo Jones yet (and there's a reason for that) and (b) the film shovels all this into only 61 minutes, part of the reason why we love old B-movies. Okay, so let's rectify (a) and mention Cosmo Jones. He's awful. Frank Graham also played him on the radio, but probably not as badly as he plays him here. He's supposed to be a "Psychological Criminologist" but he's just smart enough to spend a lot of the film offscreen. And why is he dressed like Groucho Marx in The Big Store? Luckily, Jones has picked up a reluctant assistant, our favorite Monogram Pictures star, Mantan Moreland. As clueless as Jones is (when a body is thrown out of a speeding black sedan and lands right at Cosmo's feet, he yells, "Wait a minute! You dropped something!"), Moreland is as delightful as always (the gangsters threaten him with a knife because they think he's got the ransom, but he assures them that he's penniless: "All my money is in War Bonds!"). Kennedy, one of our Balcony favorites, is excellent, too, at one point sounding a lot like a recent contemporary U.S. President when he bellows, "The elimination of crime has got to be done away with!" Cosmo Jones in "Crime Smasher" is available on DVD from our friends at oldies.com, and it's a pretty good print. You can bet we'll see more of Mr. Moreland in the week ahead as our Monogram Week 2009 festivities continue!



shelbyvinje	Mar 17 2009, 10:00 AM Post #2
Balcony Gang, Foist Class Posts: 420 Group: Members Member #470 Joined: June 3, 2008	Not a bad film. This movie is one of the 10 mysteries of old-time radio. There never was a program called Cosmo Jones, Crime Smasher. One historian believes the title and character were changed after the movie rights were purchased from the obscure radio program so no one has been able to figure out what radio program it was adapted from. Course, there may have been a radio program of the same name and it was heard on some local radio station in California for two weeks and got canceled, but it remains a mystery.


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