I’m not sure if there’s a traceable connection between the bleakness of 1933 for most Americans in the Great Depression and the cynicism that poured from movie screens in that year, but I’m willing to bet that audiences who warmed to such deep dish pre-code fare as Baby Face, Bombshell, I’m No Angel and Employee’s Entrance probably didn’t bat an eye when presented with the rawness of Blood Money, a movie that I came across last week for the first time. Blood Money (1933) was a distinctly unwholesome, yet compelling movie that was never on my radar, so it was a bit of a surprise to stumble across this 65 minute trip through an entertainingly sordid world peopled with characters for whom the word “raffish” might be too refined.  Made at Twentieth Century Productions a little over a year before their merger with Fox Studios in 1935, the film went ahead in the first year of Darryl Zanuck‘s stewardship of the studio. It was one of the movies that seems to reflect the young mogul’s brashly iconoclastic Warner Brothers‘ roots. Featuring themes centered around an exploitive relationship between the corrupt rich and the underworld, the symbiotic ties between criminals and police, loyalty among thieves that was often more reliable than conventional morality, shifting gender roles, and the stranger fruits of human desire, it is far less known than other crime films of that same period, such as Little Caesar and Public Enemy.

Part of the reason for this may be the fact that it stars George Bancroft, an actor best remembered by most of us for his second tier character roles in later films, particularly his fine work as the warm-hearted marshal “Curly Wilcox” in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939).  Perhaps Bancroft ought to be better remembered as well for his earlier starring work under Josef Von Sternberg in three films about life on the shady side of society, the silents Underworld (1927), The Docks of New York (1928) and an early, significant talkie, Thunderbolt (1929), (the latter role even earned the actor an early Oscar nomination as Best Actor in a Leading Role).

In some of his better films, George Bancroft played a man who lived by a self-determined rough code, often sacrificing himself while keeping his inner nobility well hidden.  His early fame may also have faded so much because of the relative obscurity of these important yet transitional movies at the end of the silent era. Another factor may have been the removal of many pre-code films from circulation after the Production Code became the industry’s self-imposed censor and protector of public morals. The dimming of Bancroft‘s unlikely stardom may also have been tarnished by his reported tendency to “go Hollywood” and believe his own publicity as a tough guy. A burly man, he might easily have played a more genial sibling of Wallace Beery.  Coming late to acting, Bancroft, who was a graduate of the Annapolis Naval Academy, went into acting by way of one of the last of the 19th century Minstrel Shows. Appearing in movies as a rough type beginning in 1921, he was already in his forties, but was lucky enough to play good roles despite his lack of that usual movie actor’s essential of that time, physical beauty and youth. As his ego grew, however, he reportedly became more difficult to work with, refusing direction at times, and allegedly claiming in one scene in which his character was to die that “One bullet can’t kill Bancroft!”

In Blood Money, Bancroft plays Bill Bailey, a bailbondsman who takes money from the guilty, the innocent, the rich and the poor, with little distinction or deference on display for any of his clients. The character played by George Bancroft* has no apparently well hidden nobility to mask, though his matter of fact attitude toward his business assisting criminals to get out of jail is regarded by him as “perfectly respectable” since “crime is a business like any other.”

He even accepts as collateral the deedsof a widow’s house whose son has been arrested; expressing admiration for the sixteen year old lad, who has a rather “complicated” relationship with a woman in her ’30s. Bancroft plays a former cop, and, frankly, a cheerful scumbag without much to recommend him–except that he doesn’t take any guff from anyone, (except his longtime, considerably cagey mistress). He seems to be a man without delusions, especially since his years on the force left him knowing too much about the inner workings of the city. Commenting on the praise being heaped on a “reform” mayor, Bailey says:
“As long as you have cities, you’re bound to have vice in them. And you can’t control human nature…the only difference between a liberal and a conservative man is that the liberal man recognizes the existence of vice and tries to control it, while the conservative just turns his back  and pretends it doesn’t exist.”

We soon learn that Bailey, after a tough day filching every red cent from everyone who comes through his door, relaxes in a dive where he encounters a woman dressed as a man at the bar, (seen at the right, we later learn that “she just does that for fun”). He also hears the legendary vaudevillian and rare film presence, Blossom Seeley,  (who may remind you a bit of Gladys George & Mae West), singing a vaguely familiar tune called “The Bad in Every Man”. (The familiar melody was later used by Rodgers and Hart for one of their biggest hits, “Blue Moon”).

The speakeasy is run by Bancroft‘s very formidable mistress, a “nightclub hostess” and tough gal Judith Anderson (in her film debut), who presides over what looks like a combination speakeasy and bordello. Anderson‘s presence, for those who tend to think of her as Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca almost a decade later is that of a glamorously assertive, sensual woman who realizes Bailey’s many weaknesses may be part of his appeal for her. Having helped Bancroft when he was thrown off the police, she shares a fondness for her boyfriend’s tendency to play both sides of the street, and appears to wield an unusual amount of power for a female character in what is superficially a gangster film.  While Judith Anderson would play another powerful criminal in Lady Scarface (1941), this is actually a better role than that simpler later film. Exercising more influence over other denizens of the underworld as the story develops, Anderson brings some of the authority that she must have had playing in her classical stage roles to this part. As the powerful character “Ruby Darling” she is softened by her love for the big lug, (even acknowledging his two timing tendencies with a somewhat sinister laugh), and her loyalty to  her younger brother, (Chick Chandler) an erratic, tow headed thief, (who is dating the cross-dressing dame at the bar).  Anderson creates a vivid portrait of a highly intelligent natural leader whose executive skills in her shadowy world hide a passionate attachment to her man and her sibling. Her conflicted love eventually turns against Bancroft, bringing the story to a rousing, (if unlikely) conclusion. Beneath her facade there is an ominous undercurrent in her character. Ruby Darling turns out to be the brains of the criminal lowlifes in this movie, though her mercurial nature leads her astray as well. Though each of the characters seems fairly stable on the surface, almost everyone in this movie is a slave to their own rage, leading them to seek revenge  and an eventual walk on the wild side.

The seemingly no-nonsense air about Bailey makes the shine that a shoplifting society beauty (played by Frances Dee ) takes to him more puzzling. Arrested for lifting a few items at a swanky department store, (despite the fact that she has a charge account there), Dee‘s kleptomaniac character exhibits a plethora of strange complexes. Addicted to excitement, aroused by rough men, and an inveterate liar; she manipulates a flattered, slightly puzzled, but not easily fooled Bancroft into helping her to cover up her arrest from her wealthy father. In a very strange scene, he is invited to a Hawaiian party at her posh home, where, showing a rather uninhibited side, Dee joins the hula dancers on display, teasing Bancroft to a fare-thee-well. Taken aback by the dissolute debutante’s aggressive pursuit of him; Dee tells Bancroft that she needs a tough guy to tame her, “so she can follow him around like a dog on a leash.”  Soon the two are carrying on a not so secret affair, even though Bancroft is made increasingly nervous by his new girlfriend’s avid need for excitement. While attending the dog track together and rubbing elbows with the hoi polloi, they encounter Chick Chandler, a hot-headed bank robber who happens to know Bancroft well. With a new glint of excitement in her large, glittering eyes, Dee drops the laid back Bancroft for Chandler‘s brand of brutish fun, complete with a harsh kiss that Dee reports with satisfaction “hurt her lip.”

If, like me, you may be used to seeing Frances Dee as an actress who personifies vibrantly fresh wholesomeness and purity on screen, the epitome of which was  her role as Meg in Little Women, (also filmed in 1933), this role is 180 degrees away from her usual screen persona. Though she once said that she took a role in  Val Lewton‘s I Walked With a Zombie (1943) in order to buy her mother a car with the salary,  her haunting appearance in So Ends Our Night (1941), her ambivalent role  in The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947) and her lovely serenity opposite her husband Joel McCrea in Four Faces West (1948) indicated someone who selected her roles with considerable thought, this forgotten film should have showed Hollywood that she had real range as an actress.  The writer and one of the  preeminent film critics of the 1930s and 1940s in America, James Agee, once wrote that Dee was “one of the very few women in movies who really had a face …. and always used this translucent face with delicate and exciting talent.” Using her beautiful face, doe-like eyes, and graceful form, Ms. Dee show a talent that longed to grow, but, in this film, the actress clearly relished the challenging part.

Perhaps, unlike your dim correspondent, Dee‘s final scene, when her eyes light up once  when she encounters a disheveled, unknown female job seeker in the lobby of an office building who has just escaped from a wolfish man after answering a want ad, you will catch on to the meaning behind Dee‘s rapid vault toward the elevator more quickly than I did. According to her biographer, Andrew Wentnik, “When a friend…admonished her for playing a prostitute in Blood Money (1933), she denied it saying, ‘I played a masochistic nymphomaniacal kleptomaniac, not a prostitute.’”

There is one other reason that occurs to me that may have contributed to Blood Money being less well known until recently. The director and screenwriter of this movie,  Rowland Brown, (seen below on the left), was one of those quirkily talented individuals who seems to have been lost in the shuffle of Hollywood history during the studio era. From what little I’ve been able to gather about him, he was born in Ohio and began his professional life as a commercial illustrator, specializing in bringing the fashion and sports pages of newspapers to vivid graphic life.  and migrated to Fox Studios in the late ’20s, where he worked his way up from a common laborer to a position as a gagman, a screenwriter and a director.

Never heard of him? Well, you may have enjoyed some of his stories on screen. As a writer he contributed to the screenplays for Doorway to Hell (1930), What Price Hollywood (1932),  Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), Johnny Apollo (1940), and Kansas City Confidential (1952), almost all of which, to some degree, have some sympathy for the criminal class, acknowledge the existence of institutional corruption making it harder for the little guy, and a feel for the life of the streets, (which one critic described derisively as “pavement poetry”). He was nominated for an Oscar for his screenwriting for Doorway to Hell and Angels With Dirty Faces. Yet, as a director, he seems to have been his own worst enemy. After making a splash with Quick Millions (1931) featuring a very young, dynamic Spencer Tracy as a truck driver who organizes a criminal organization, he might have expected a promising career with steady work in the studio system. While some supposed ties to vaguely socialist causes may have affected his studio employment along the way, it was an alleged fist fight with an unnamed studio executive around the time of Blood Money‘s production that cut short his Fox career. Moving to England to jumpstart his career, Brown found a job directing Leslie Howard in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), but after a month, another violent run-in with someone on the production side of the film led to his immediate dismissal. Occasional uncredited work as a director on such films as The Devil Is a Sissy (1936) and writing, notably the George Raft movie, Nocturne (1946) and his last credit, for the excellent Phil Karlson-directed Kansas City Confidential are part of his threadbare cinematic legacy. As a director, Blood Money displays some possible skill on Brown and his crew’s part for the rapidly paced scenes in Bailey’s Bail Bond office, establishing the seedy air of Anderson’s “nightclub” and a very tense concluding scene edited between a potentially deadly (if ludicrous) billiard game and a pell mell taxi ride across LA’s actual streets, (I love to see real street scenes filmed surreptiously–and no doubt cheaply–in sometimes still recognizable places in old movies).  Though the movie probably didn’t have a very large budget, and, based on the print I saw, it seems to have been photographed in the dark in several scenes as well. Btw, we do have one other possible reason to be thankful to the largely unheralded Rowland Brown. In 1942, he wrote and produced a melodrama called Johnny 2×4 at the Longacre Theater in New York City. The story was set in an imaginary speakeasy of his youth called the “2 x 4 Club” in Greenwich Village, between 1926 and 1933. A tall, sloe-eyed kid came to his office after all the speaking parts had been cast, shyly asking if she could be considered for a part and submitting her resume and photo. Apparently taking pity on her–or was he prescient?–he called her a few days later, giving her a non-speaking walk-on part that enabled the new graduate from acting school to get her Equity card, and appear in a short-lived but colorful show with such pros as Barry Sullivan and Harry Bellaver–on Broadway. The name of the young actress whose first professional acting job was awarded by Rowland Brown? At the time it was Betty, later Lauren Bacall.

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*Whenever I’ve seen George Bancroft in these various roles in the late ’20s and early ’30s, I’ve been reminded that he might have been the ideal choice to bring to life Dashiell Hammett‘s “Continental Op” character on screen. The Op, a lowly detective for a Pinkerton-like agency was described by the classic crime novelist as “thick-bodied, mulishly stubborn, and indifferent to pain”–all qualities that Bancroft could easily have displayed. Btw, I’ve wondered if the title of the film Blood Money might have been derived from two of the author’s stories, first published in The Black Mask pulp magazine in 1927; “$106,000 Blood Money” and “The Big Knockover”, which were eventually published as one novel with the title Blood Money in 1943.

Sources:

Bacall, Lauren, By Myself and Then Some, HarperCollins, 2005.
Clarens, Carlos, Hirsch, Foster, Crime Movies, Da Capo Press, 1997.
LaSalle, Mick, Dangerous Men: Pre-code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man,
Macmillan, 2002.