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The Secret Six & The Murder Man; One up, one down
Topic Started: Aug 20 2011, 10:33 AM (169 Views)
Chandu
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Champeen of Justice and Seeker of Knowledge, but rascal at heart!
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I recently recorded a couple of crime movies which looked pretty good to me off of TCM for later viewing. The first was The Secret Six (1931), which had the unlikely, but good looking cast of Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Johnny Mack Brown, Ralph Bellamy and Lewis Stone. Johnny Mack Brown??

Beery, a stockyard worker, joins Stone’s and Bellamy’s gang and eventually replaces Bellamy as the gang’s operational leader. Stone, an attorney, is the brains behind the gang. All goes well for Beery until a group of six masked businessmen intervene, with the help of newspapermen Brown and Gable. Harlow is caught between being Beery’s moll and her love for Brown. I hafta tell ya, when the secret six businessmen came onscreen wearing Lone Ranger masks, I almost lost it and thought I was watching some sort of serial. In fact, I later concluded, without Harlow’s role and a couple of cliffhangers, it could very well have been a failed serial plot. Despite the good cast, the plot failed to keep my attention. It's also like a lot of serials in that it begins well, but gets predictable from the mid point to the end. Don’t waste your time.

The second film was The Murder Man (1935), with another great cast of Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, Virginia Bruce, Lionel Atwill, Robert Barrat, William Demarest and Fuzzy Knight(?). This one was somewhat better than Secret Six, and would’ve been much better if Turner hadn’t given the plot away in their description of the film.

Tracy is the best durn crime reporter in the city, but has a drinking problem, going on binges and sleeping it off in such unlikely places as elevators and carousels. Never goes home, for some reason? A shady businessman is gunned down and his partner blamed for the murder. Tracy, as per usual, is a step ahead of the other reporters and it seems sometimes, even the police, in ferreting out info leading to the partner’s conviction. I won’t give away the rest of the plot here, but this one’s worth watching.
Not plane, nor bird, nor even frog. It's just little ol' me...
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