Blackmail

Edward G. Robinson here is a victim of "Blackmail," a 1939 film starring Robinson, Ruth Hussey, and Gene Lockhart.

Ingram (Robinson, his wife (Hussey) and his son (Bobs Watson, known as the "Crybaby of Hollywood") live in Oklahoma, where Ingram fights oil fires He's considered one of the best. But he has a secret - nine years earlier, under another name, he was on a chain gang for something he didn't do, and he escaped.

All is well until William Ramey (Lockhart), someone from his past, shows up and blackmails him, using the promise of getting Ingram cleared, since it was he who committed the crime. However, he double crosses Ingram, who ends up back on a chain gang.

Ingram decides that this time, he will do his full sentence. Things happen to change his mind.

Gritty drama with Robinson suffering as only he can. Like Bogart, he could be mean as dirt or a sympathetic character. Here he's tough, caring, and sympathetic. Ruth Hussey gives a lovely performance as his wife, and I admit that Bobs Watson was so pathetic when he cried that I cried. He became a Methodist minister but kept acting as well.

Though the acting is effective, this is a routine drama. The actors keep you involved.

Back in the mid-1930s, Warner Brothers came out with a shockingly brutal and absorbing drama about the evils of chain gangs. Paul Muni's performance and the script for "I Was a Fugitive From a Chain Gang" were superb and the film has held up great over the years. Because of this, films like "Blackmail" seem incredibly bland and pale in comparison.

When this MGM film begins, John Ingram (Edward G. Robinson) is a successful and well respected man whose job it is to put out oil fires. Unfortunately, he's also a fugitive from some Southern chain gang-- an innocent man who couldn't prove this but managed to escape. Since then, assuming a new identity, he's gone on to make a productive life and a nice family. However, when a scumbag (Gene Lockhart) comes to town, Ingram is in trouble. While he's just asking for a job, this guy is a crook and is the guy who is actually responsible for the crime Ingram was arrested for years ago.

So far, while the plot is hard to believe, it is worth seeing. What happens next, however, sure strains credibility way past the breaking point. The scum-bag EASILY convinces Ingram that he is willing to own up to his crime but only if he gets a huge payoff. In other words, he'll admit to the crime but escape--leaving evidence that will clear Ingram's name. Not at all surprisingly (since he IS a crook), he tricks Ingram and it's Ingram who is sent to prison. Duh.

For the rest of the film, Robinson spends his time in prison. However, the chain gang is run by a bunch of brutes (though they are FAR less brutal than the guys in the earlier film) and eventually he realizes he must escape in order to ever see his family again.

So why does this film earn a 5? Well, it is entertaining but it breaks absolutely no new ground and pretty much neuters the old plot. The chain gang, while unpleasant, doesn't seem all that bad and instead of this form of imprisonment being indicted, the film actually is all about capturing the real baddie and sending him to prison where he rightfully belongs. Amazingly poor considering the material.

Tough guy Edward G. Robinson, who normally dominates every movie he's in, is upstaged in this one, a good, unambitious actioner, first by raging oil well fires, then by the sly performance of Gene Lockhart, as a particularly loathsome, scheming villain, complete with a baby talking Down East accent. The movie is otherwise unexceptional though very skillfully made at MGM, and features an innocent Robinson on the run from the law for a crime he did not commit. As his sidekick, Guinn Williams is presented as so moronic one wonders how he can hold down any job, much less function as E.G.'s second in command in such a dangerous profession as putting out oil well fires, but the ways of Hollywood are sometimes mysterious. The capable Ruth Hussey is wasted in the boring and irritating role of the wife, from whom we want the movie to get away as quickly as possible. Robinson at first seems out of place in the Oklahoma oil fields but is so robust as the hard-driving entrepeneur hero that this is easily forgiven, and besides, he always excelled at playing fearless men.

**SPOILERS** Having made a success of himself in the fire-fighting business in Oklahoma putting out oil well fires John Ingram,Edward G. Robinson,had it all. A booming business at the hight of the great depression a beautiful wife and darling nine-year-old son Helen & Hank, Ruth Hussey & Bobs Watson,who thought the world of him and the respect and admiration of the entire community. John he also had something that could destroy everything he achieved and worked for the last nine years, a dark and mysterious past.

Being convicted of breaking into the safe of his employer and having the stolen money found under his mattress John Ingram, who's real name is John Harrington,was sent to work on a prison chain-gang for five years. Escaping from prison John made his way to Oklahoma and started a new life and now with his old friend Bill Ramey, Gene Lochart, showing up on the scene that new life,as well as his freedom,is about to end. John giving Bill a job on his oil well to keep him quite about his past doesn't at all seem to work when Bill starts to put the squeeze on him for money and demands $25,000.00 to keep his mouth shut. John not having that much cash agrees to give Bill $5,000.00, his entire life savings, when Bill reveals the truth about the robbery that put John away and caused him to become a fugitive from the law. He was the man who broke into the safe and hid the stolen cash under John's mattress.

Having the $5,000.00 bank check sent to Bill's hotel and Bill having his confession sent by mail to the local police department would free John from being hunted by the police. It will also give Bill, a homeless vagabond, the security of living out his last years after he serves out the five year sentence that John was straddled with. As you would expect Bill doubled-crossed his friend and had him put back behind bars and his oil well taken over by Bill who used the blackmail money, that John gave him, to buy him out while he was doing his time with the chain-gang.

Determined at first to do his five years and then get back to his wife and child, as well as his fire-fighting business, John realizes that he has nothing to come back to with Bill buying him out and throwing his wife and son out of their home and on the street. Getting letters from Helen about how fine everything is John knows that things are a lot worse then the news he's been getting from her when he has a talk with his lawyer and co-owner of his business Moose McCarthy,Guinn "Big Bill" Williams. "Big Bill" broke the bad news about the raw deal John got both here in the chain-gang and at home due to the sleazy actions of his "friend" Bill Ramey.

Breaking out of jail with fellow prisoner Diggs(John Wray), who ends up getting shot and killed, John makes his way back home to Oklahoma. John's determined to settle the score with that lowlife Bill Ramey and get him to confess his sins, or better yet, and crimes that sent him away not once but twice to serve hard time in a southern chain-gang for crimes that he didn't commit.

Edward G. Robinson, in a good-guy role for once, is very good as the maligned and wrongly convicted John Ingram. The ending of the movie, even though very contrived and predictable, is very effective and rewarding to both John and his family, as well as the movie audience. John beats a confession out of Bill Ramey by forcing him to face the hell that he faces and faced every time he went to work putting out dangerous oil well fires.

Poor title for what is a movie patterned on "I Was A Fugitive From A Chain Gang." It would appear that some of the shots were either taken from that masterpiece or re-done virtually identically with new cast. Edward G. Robinson is presented in the Paul Muni role but this time the hero has been willfully framed -- not wrongfully convicted. This framing is necessary for the rest of the story line and the plot unfolds as believable. Gene Lockhart steals the show in his portrayal of the villain. Robinson never looks as gaunt as Muni and is less convincing as someone who has suffered on the chain gang. Watching Robinson's rotund body run through the swamps just doesn't hack it. If given a choice, see the Muni movie but this one will serve for those who prefer a different ending. A better title might have been "Vengeance."