Turning The Other Cheek- Edward G. Robinson’s Illegal 

 

 

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell 

Illegal, Edward G. Robinson, Nina Foch, Hugh Marlowe, screenplay by W.R. Burnett, 1955

Some guys, some actors, some big time actors, big time gangster actors who made good dough and got plenty of marquee lights in the 1930s and 1940s when that genre had them standing in the aisles at the Majestic and Palaces of small and large town America didn’t know when they had it good, had it made as hard guys. Made other guys tremble at the mention of their names. Big time actors like Edward G. Robinson who when he played Johnny Ricco in Key Largo  made guys tremble, well, except maybe a wheelchair-bound old geezer played by Lionel Barrymore but that doesn’t count because what could a guy in a wheelchair do to the great Johnny Ricco. Or before he turned to butter, turned to raising orchids for Chrissakes, when Robinson played Johnny Bad in Brother Orchid. Then what do you know in the 1950s he turned himself around and tried to be a good guy, tried to put the bad guys behind bars in the film under review, Illegal.  It would any serious gangster movie aficionado sick, and it should. 

Here is the way Edward G. fell off the rim of the world on that one. Hot shot District Attorney Scott (Robinson’s role in this one that already has a rank odor about it) got his cases all set up by his protégé lawyer Ellen who was in love with father figure Scott (played by Nina Foch) and investigated by his top snoop Ray who was madly in love with Ellen (played by debonair Hugh Marlowe) and did away with the guilty and innocent like chopping wood. Except one time he sent up a guy to the big step off, the chair who was innocent. Oops. Well that conviction wrapped up in a bow turned to ashes set up a crisis of conscience in our up from hunger Scott and so instead of grooming himself for the Governor’s mansion and who knows where else he became king of the barroom riffraff. But that could only go so far for a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. So Scott sobered, sobered up too to the fact that he was still hungry for fame and fortune that drove him in the law in the first place.          

That started him on a new law career as the “fixer man” and Scott was good at it. So good that Mister Bad tried to put him in his stable in order to grease and wheels that need greasing in the big city (does Bad really need a name but just figure the guy who had his fingers in every pie and was not taking any falls for any guys so Mister Bad is just fine to identify him). For a long time they made money, and Scott helped keep Bad on the high side. A shaky arrangement but okay for a while. The tricky thing about a guy like with a conscience like Scott though is that you never know when he is going to turn around again. Hey, he did it once he could do it again. What do you know he did flip, again. Somebody in the D.As Office (remember that’s his old office of blessed memory) was leaking crucial information to Mister Bad to keep him a couple of steps ahead of the law.

The snitch turned out to be Ray who in the meantime had married Ellen (with Scott’s blessing). When Ellen found Ray was the leak she went crazy and Ray tried to kill her. But Ellen had the gun and so bye-bye love. The new DA though thought Ellen was the leak and had killed Ray to keep him quiet. So she was ready, was the prime candidate for the big step-off. Except the fixer man Scott would not let his ex-protégé fall down and so took her case. Naturally after all lot of flim-flam he got her off. Don’t you wish thought that Edward G. just wasted Mister Bad straight up like in the old days. Strictly a B- film although it was written by the great crime story writer W.R. Burnett who wrote the classic Out of the Past. Yawn on this one though.