***Out In The 1930s Gangster Night-Once A Con, Always a Con-George Raft’s Invisible Stripes

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

Invisible Stripes, George Raft, Humphrey Bogart, Warner Brothers, 1939

Yah, it’s a sad tale but true that like the man says “once a con, always a con.” That’s just the way things worked out, worked out especially for guys in the 1930s gangster movies that were all the rage at the time. And guys like George Raft, Humphrey Bogart who star in this one as well as the likes of James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson won their spurs as actors playing the hard guys, and playing them hard. Who can forget psychopath James Cagney on top of that gas tank in White Heat, or better Humphrey Bogart as the stone-cold killer Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest. Such performance captured a certain something about guys growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, of guys growing up with their wanting habits on.

It is hard to figure at this remove the wide-spread attraction for these gangster movies. Maybe in the heat of the Great Depression the gangster was the stand-in for the guy fighting back against a system where the Mayfair swells ruled and the deck was stacked. I am sure some sociologist or cinema major has written a long screed along those lines. Maybe it was the action, the car chases, the bullets flying and the bad guys fighting the odds, the crime doesn’t pay odds. Maybe these films struck a chord in an audience who while personally unable to face a life of crime could relate to the guys who came up the hard way, the no breaks way, the from hunger way just like those sitting in those Saturday matinee seats. Or maybe, all philosophy, sociologist and cinematography aside maybe people simply drew and liked the conclusion that it was like the old time bank robber, Willie Sutton, said when asked why he committed those bank robberies- “that’s where the money is.”

In any case the life of a con, or as here investigating the fates of two ex-cons, is tough after you have been inside. Humphrey Bogart as a career thug just kind of brushed off “doing time”as part of the overhead of his profession. And acted accordingly, rushing back to the action almost as soon as he got out of stir (Sing-Sing, a tough school anyway you cut it). So you can sense his fate without too much thinking. But George Raft is a different proposition. See he did his time but learned a hard lesson up in stir-life is better, much better on the outside-and so he figured, once he got the dust of prison out of his throat to go straight.

But here is the dilemma, the social question addressed by this Warner Brothers production from a period when that company was making social commentary films, what does a guy do when all the cards are stacked again him as he tries to integrate into normal society. See they let old George out on parole, a tough price to pay for getting outside the prison walls as he found out. Now no question in those days, now too, parole is no bed of roses. What George didn’t know was that going straight was harder than going back to the life. He couldn’t drive a car, had to be in the house early, couldn’t hang around the old barroom pool hall haunts, had a hard time keeping a job when word got around that he was a parolee. Additionally he was subject to the whim of every beat copper looking to make an easy pinch. Hell, even his old time girlfriend gave him the airs when he got out because, no way, as she made perfectly clear was she marrying an ex-con. So, yah, you could see where George would start thinking about taking his chances back in the life. Worse he had to look out for his younger brother who was starting to go off the tracks once he knew the score about kids from the wrong side of the tracks getting nothing but the short end of things.

Like some kind of bad karma George drifts back into the life, starts running around with Humphrey and his crowd who are then specializing in bank robberies to make their kale. Naturally they, or at least Humphrey and his boys, take on one caper too many and amid the car chases and shoot- outs they draw the short end of the stick. But so does George who, although not involved in that last desperate fatal botched robbery, had to protect his brother who was in cop trouble for trying to protect him. But in the end no way is George or Humphrey going back to the can and so it is RIP for those two. And you wonder why I say once a con, always a con. Enough said.