Radio Patrol

This was one of Robert Armstrong's better film roles. He is a proud police officer who starts to accept favors and money from "the mob" in return for lignoring some of their illegal activities. The year is 1932 and mob activities are much different from todays, but the MO is basically the same. Here there is a big robbery involved. But Bill (our hero) changes his mind after one of their own is gunned down - one of their own played by Andy Devine in an early role for him.

The back story concerns Russell Hopton, a character actor who is given a chance to sharpen his acting chops as Armstrong's best friend. Armstrong steals Hopton's girl and marries her, but the bond is so strong between the two that Hopton is very supportive of them both. The girlfriend is played by Lila Lee, who is breathtakingly beautiful here. The radios in question are police radios that are one-way, from dispatcher to patrol cars. Two-way radios were still in the furure.

A good picture that is rarely on TV. Shown at Capitolfest, Rome, NY 8/22.

*******7/10 - Website no longer shows my star rating.

In some ways, "Radio Patrol" seems like a cheap B-movie from Universal. After all, it's only about an hour long and features characters that seem more like caricatures than real people at times. However, it also has a depth to it...especially towards the end...that make it a special movie.

The story begins at the police academy and follows a group of rookies from the school to the beat. While not exactly realistic, the unnamed town in the movie seems to have enough crime and gang activity for New York, Chicago and Detroit all rolled into one! A huge problem for these cops is the money the gangs pour into the town...and the graft they are more than willing to offer these underpaid cops. Where will it all end?

One of the best things about this film is the minor character played by John Lester Johnson. While his nickname 'Smokey' isn't exactly enlightened, for the 1930s he really is given a great part. His black officer is NOT some token or inferior cop...he's one of the guys. He jokes with them, showers with them at the academy and is accepted as just a brother officer...which is VERY unusual for 1932 and very progressive.

Apart from him, the story is VERY gritty and violent. In one scene late in the film, a cop has run out of bullets, so he resorts to smashing the crook with a sledge hammer!!! Yikes! Overall, a very enjoyable film that surprised me...in several positive ways.

It's another class of rookie cops graduating from school and taking up the guardin of the citizens. Some of them want to just be good cops, like Russell Hopton. One marries Lila Lee and has a boy on the way, Robert Armstrong. Under the guidance of sergeant Sidney Toler, they do thei best, even Andy Devine, and Black copy John Lester Johnson -- for a film of this era, he gets a pretty good role. But sometimes, temptations are just too great.

It's a decently made and paced drama, that doesn't really add much to the genre,although the pre-code era allows more frankness than would show up starting in a couple of years. The result is. Decent B movie.

This film is interesting because it combines two rather recent phenomenon of the time - sound film and police patrolling in cars equipped with two way radios. Do note that such patrols were less than ten years old at the time. This film follows a group of patrolmen through the police academy, into their first assignments as radio patrolmen, and the development of their professional and personal lives. In parallel there is a story of a group of gangsters that move in on the unnamed city from St. Louis. One of the gangsters even signs up for the police academy to get a look at the police department from the inside, but he's quickly discovered and booted out. The gangsters are also constantly trying to bribe the police into looking the other way at their illegal activity.

It's also odd that, even though this is the tail end of prohibition, liquor does not seem to enter into the fiscal plan of these gangsters at all. Instead the gang is into peddling dope as well as the traditional gangster trade of protection rackets and outright theft. The film focuses on patrol partners Pat (Russell Hopton) and Bill(Robert Armstrong). Complicating matters is the fact that Bill basically steals and then marries Pat's girl out from underneath him. With the local population more interested in disbanding kids in parked cars than the disruptive force of the mob, low pay, and low regard from the public, will any of the patrolmen succumb to temptation and become corrupt? Watch and find out.

This film had rather stilted acting in it by both the guys playing the police and those playing the mob, but it is interesting in that it does not play out according to any formula you usually see in crime films of the early 30's. It's like nobody told the guys at Universal that this is not how you make a crime drama, so they went with their gut and something rather unique was the result. For example, this early 30's film has an African American patrolman on the force (John Lester Johnson as Smokey), and the film shows him accepted by his fellow officers, patrolling a white area of town and even escorting a white woman by the arm across the street. Later, Smokey is also shown doing something quite heroic. It's not that I'm surprised that an African American would be a model cop, I'm just amazed to see such acts committed to celluloid in a mainstream film almost 80 years ago.

This one is definitely worth checking out for the novelty of it all, in particular if you're interested in what Universal was doing in the early 30's when they weren't making horror films.