Heroes for Sale

There's something strange about watching most pre-code WB movies: they don't end so much as they just STOP. It's as if Jack Warner doled out a budget and the director just shut the production down when the film stock quit being delivered. Wild Bill Wellman's a top-notch director knee deep into his socialist fervor period (see WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD as a double bill), Barthemless is a hapless WWI vet who traded heroism for a morphine addiction--- his cowardly platoon commander got the glory and he faces the next 14 years dealing with everything life throws at him. His fortunes ironically change when his cartoon-Red neighbor (played to the usual hilt by Robert Barratt) invents a machine that allows them both to get rich, but Barthemless has gains a deeper social conscious as Barratt loses his. This is really a big budget (for Warners!) soap opera. An uplifting ending is tacked on after Barthemless disappears into the Land of the Hobos. Watchable as an example of early 30's "realism."