Word: crookes
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Congenital Crooks. With H. L. Mencken he deplored the passing of the sturdy old American virtues. He was impressed when an acquaintance remarked, "The real trouble is that the average American is a congenital crook...
...CROOK IN SKIRTS...
This primitive moral pattern is also apparent in two other of the quasi-credible series--Jack. Armstrong and Sky King. The bad men aren't so slick and brainy as the Sword, but the two heroes are correspondingly less able than Midnight. Armstrong's prowess as a crook-catcher rests on the bale of Wheatics he consumes each morning. Sky King is the executive director of troops of eager youngsters who fly all over the hemisphere making mischief, apparently on leave of absence from high school...
...story contrasts the characters and careers of a detective and a crook, both born in poor New York Italian families. The detective (Victor Mature) is reasonably intelligent, persistent, brave and ill-paid. The criminal (Richard Conte) is shrewd, unregenerate, reckless, vain, easy with the money and the girls. Conceding that the crook is much the more obviously interesting character, the movie grants him the bulk of its attention. But that is all it grants him. Without ever quite getting mealymouthed, it builds up an honest and impressive case against...
...reminding the thug that they both started with exactly the same disadvantages. Before the picture is over, the criminal has proved that law-breaking is the least of the things which put him outside the pale. Without ever showing a flicker of remorse, he double-crosses a fellow crook, murders a lawyer (elegantly played by Berry Kroeger), charms a hard spinster nurse (Betty Garde) into criminal complicity, endangers the life of a trusting floozy (Shelley Winters), lands a pathetic doctor (Konstantin Shayne) in trouble with the law, assiduously corrupts his younger brother (Tommy Cook), and does his best to exploit...