Word: gangsterisms
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Lancaster is probably the best acrobat now employed as an actor. After a series of gangster films, he obviously relishes his promotion from a hood to a Robin Hood. But dialogue still throws him, and his modern side-mouthings ("I'll meetcha inna tavern") sound a little disenchanting in Technicolored medieval Lombardy...
...theory that English cant had its first big bloom in the Reformation, when dispossessed English priests joined up with thieves and highwaymen and taught them scraps of Latin. By 1630, "Thieves' Latin" had all but passed away, to be replaced by the cant which fathered U.S. gangster and hobo language-a rich mulligan of native ingredients peppered lightly with foreign words, e.g., booze from the Middle Dutch bus en (to tipple), stir from the gypsy stariben (a prison...
...committee was naturally anxious to ask Harry Russell to explain his panacea, and did its best to subpoena him. But Harry just couldn't be found; he sent word that he remembered what happened to Kansas City Gangster Charles Binaggio, who was killed after talking to the authorities. Neither could the other partners in the S & G be found, nor Dog Track Magnate William H. Johnston, the man who gave the governor the 150 Gs. Like all good things, crime investigation could be carried a little...
What apparently prompted the remake was a close resemblance between the leading character-a bigshot gangster trying to behave like a gentleman-and the proven specialty of new Star Paul Douglas, who has clicked with audiences as a gruff, goldhearted mug. But this time Actor Douglas is forced to push his appeal close to the point of diminishing returns...
Douglas, Keenan Wynn, Joan Davis and Arthur Treacher work to make the film's burlesque of gangster customs fitfully amusing, though it is never good enough to offset a phony love story that insists on taking itself seriously. As the truculent brat who poses as the bigshot's son (and who is intended to be lovable), Peter Price is the last, unspeakable word in precocious delinquency. Students of U.S. movie morality, noting that the t gangster's innocence of any actual killing qualifies him for a hero's fadeout, may be forced to conclude that racketeering...