Word: nicking
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...imagine "Faust" and "The Devil and Daniel Webster" sloppily clad in a 20th Century plot, with Ray Milland as Beelzebub, and you get some idea of what "Alias Nick Beal" is about. And if you've heard the voice on that certain local radio station warning you "never make a dealllll with Nick Bealllll," you have the complete picture...
...Nick Beal is a guy who'll double-deal you for a nickel or fifty grand, just so long as it's good and dirty. This time his target is Joseph Foster (Thomas Mitchell), a pious D.A. who is running for Governor. Beal engineers all sorts of deals to get Foster elected, but ruins his reputation as well. And of course Foster has signed away his soul (in writing, very legal), and only saves himself at the last moment by brandishing a Bible in front of Beal's flendish face...
...also walked into some serious trouble. As a successful lawyer who has never forgotten his own slum-scarred boyhood, Bogart agrees to defend Nick "Pretty Boy" Romano (John Derek), a young hoodlum charged with killing a cop. Bogart has known "Pretty Boy" for years, mistakenly believes him innocent, and blames society for the boy's criminal ways. To prove his point to the jury, he tells, in flashbacks, the sordid story of Romano's life. In the telling, Veteran Bogart inevitably displaces young Newcomer Derek as the real center of interest...
...Alias Nick Beal (Paramount) is a modern morality play subtly fashioned around the text: "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Into the life of a gang-busting prosecutor (Thomas Mitchell) floats a mysterious character known as Nick Beal (Ray Milland). At first Beal supplies the prosecutor with evidence against a big-time gambler; then he stands at the lawyer's elbow, goading his political ambitions. By the time Mitchell has been persuaded to play ball with a corrupt, vote-powerful political machine, it is clear that...
...Mhyrum as Roderigo, "the peon's amigo," Nick Benton as Roxanne Rye, and Palmer Dixon's leering portrayal of Fingers Spumoni carry the scenes where the script itself might not sustain a non-musical interlude; but it remained for Fred Gwynne, cast as Pablo the Peon, to stop the show...