User reviews

This is like a lot of crime movies from Warner Brothers and RKO. In some ways, it seems a vehicle for John Garfield. And Garfield is extremely appealing as an honorable reporter.

The fascinating part is Stanley Fields, though. He plays the vicious mob boss who is an overgrown kid. He plays practical jokes. He is barely literate but love the funny papers. His two dogs are as nasty as he is and they accompany him to jail. In jail, he sets himself and his cronies up in the infirmary, throwing out all the legitimately sick people. There he plays with a model train set.

The plot is plausible. Garfield is Good. The Lane sister who gets high billing has only a few lines so who can judge. But Fields's character is the shocker here.

It will not be on anyone's Top Ten list, nor should it be. It's not a great movie.

But it's certainly a good one, and downright exciting at the end.

It also falls into one of the categories of movies that Hollywood really doesn't make anymore, at least in the same way.

Are some of our prisons as corrupt as this one? It wouldn't surprise me, though the corruption is probably not as visible as in this movie.

What makes this movie work for me is John Garfield's energy and determination. Once he gets himself arrested and sent to prison, things really start to take off.

No, the end is not surprising. You know that his character is unlikely to be killed. He is likely to break the story he went after and break the criminal's hold over the prison. But the way he did it held me.

You could do worse than to watch this movie.

As incredible as it may seem, much of the details of the main criminal is this film is stolen "straight from the headlines" about Joseph/Joeyrel Rao, a racketeer who was convicted on conspiracy charges related to a seltzer racket in the Bronx.

Once jailed, he literally took it over, with the help of crooked Tammany Hall politicians, and ran more rackets then they could list or even discuss in the film (e.g. drug dealing, prostitution, etc.).

This Rao was related to the same Rao family as the famous restaurant and yummy tomato sauces you can get in your grocery store.

You can research him by going to the NYTimes.com. It is hard to find general data about him on the web.

Blackwell Island, which was actually also known as Minnehanonck, Varkens, Roosevelt Island, and Welfare Island is where the prison is located in this John Garfield film. Haydon, a newspaper reporter, ends up in the prison to find out what conditions are like, and it turns out another prisoner Bull Bransom ( Stanley Fields, boxer, actor, and cousin to vice president Spiro Agnew!) is really running things. Haydon gets chummy with Bransom (quite easily!) but when Bransom lays out an escape plan, Haydon thinks he's being set up. they make a run for it, and all hell breaks out. It's fast paced, and moves right along! Garfield made a ton of great films with beautiful leading ladies, but the cream of the crop was Postman Always Rings Twice in 1946. it's the best of his roles. Directed by Bill McGann, who had worked his way up in various studio occupations. Very quick but dramatic ending in this one! was the stepping stone for Garfield, who was moving up fast.

About four years before Warner Brothers made the film Blackwell's Island, the reform LaGuardia administration made a well publicized raid on Blackwell's Island prison and exposed systemic corruption within the correctional facility. It was a high point of Fiorello LaGuardia's first term as mayor of New York. LaGuardia's Corrections Commissioner Austin McCormack is fictionalized here in the character that Victor Jory plays.

What could have been a good film based on modern headlines of the times got turned into a B movie that should have been rated lower. It was certainly a low point in the career of John Garfield who plays your typical crusading newspaperman that Thirties era films loved.

The villain if you could call him that is Stanley Fields and it's from him that Leo Gorcey and the rest of the Bowery Boys learned their impeccable diction and grammar. He's a blithering idiot who loves practical jokes like exploding cigars and squirting carnations. He's such a china shop bull that the politicians upstairs would like him to just cool it for a while. When he doesn't he gets six months in the Blackwell's Island prison until after the election.

Not that prison cramps Fields's style in the least. He turns Blackwell's Island into Club Med for he and a few select cronies, throwing out the patients from the prison hospital and setting up his own posh suite.

Garfield gets involved professionally when he writes some expose articles and it gets personal when Fields and henchmen on their own private work release program kill honest patrolman Dick Purcell who also happens to be the brother of Rosemary Lane who is Garfield's girlfriend. Garfield gets himself thrown into Blackwell's Island where he can get the lowdown.

When Dutch Schultz got out of control, Lucky Luciano had him hit with the connivance of Tammany Hall politicians, simple as that. I watched this film in utter amazement that the powers that be actually kowtowed to Fields.

As for the prison scenes, even the wise guys from Goodfellas didn't live it up half as well as Fields and his pals. Those guys based on some real characters knew the limits they could push things in the joint.

Stanley Fields was a poor man's Wallace Beery and Beery and Fields could be both sinister and oafish, but never in the same movie. What could have been a nice drama based on a true incident was turned into a mess that couldn't make it's mind up whether it was comedy or drama.

The film was a low point in the career of John Garfield during his Warner Brothers contract years. I'm not sure if Garfield did anything worse than Blackwell's Island, but I haven't seen all his films.

It's 1932 and the government is trying to restart the economy. 'Bull' Bransom is a mob boss running protection racket on the Manhattan waterfront. His men blow up a boat after the captain refused to pay. Reporter Tim Haydon (John Garfield) has been writing articles calling him out. Haydon goes to the hospital to interview the captain and becomes taken with nurse Mary 'Sunny' Walsh.

I really like the start or even the first half. I like the prankster gangster. He's a different kind of gangster and a very effective one. His pranks really keeps me off-balance in a good way. As for John Garfield, he's a great actor with real charisma and presents a great possible foil against Bull. As the story keeps going, there is a miscalibration somewhere along the way. Being off-balance early on with Bull, one eventually finds one's balance and he's not as threatening as one expects. He should track down Haydon down a back alley and beat him to a pulp. With Haydon in the same prison, he should have the guy beaten to an inch of his life. That brings me to Haydon. Garfield is too cool. He's too gangster. He plays it too casual. His character should be in fear for most of the movie. I still really love the first part. When Haydon is brought into Bull's office, the movie started to drift in a wrong direction.

Jovial, practical-joking gangster Stanley Fields gets sentenced to 5-14 at Blackwell's Island and starts running the joint because warden Granville Bates doesn't care. Reporter John Garfield slugs an Assistant District Attorney and gets sent there himself.

It's a bizarre, dead-end in the "let's reform the reformatories" subgenre. While Robinson was moving his gangster persona into comedy efforts like LARCENY INC, and director Raoul Walsh was beginning to revive the shoot-em-up with Cagney as a good guy, Bryan Foy's B division at Warner Brothers was offering stuff like this. Elsewhere, crime dramas were made palatable by using the Damon Runyon formula of making the leads seem like gangs who couldn't speak straight. Here, Fields is childish. He plays with electric trains, he has a squirting boutonniere, he offers exploding cigars, all of which hint at violence while remaining harmless. He may knock down Garfield with his fists, but in the end, it's Garfield who has the Tommy Gun. With Rosemary Lane, Dick Purcell, Victory Jory, Peggy Shannon, Charley Foy, and Leon Ames.

This is one of those movies which are jammed packed with actors who's names we don't recall but who's faces are very familiar because they appear in so many of these great B movies. About the only well known actors are John Garfield and Victor Jory. This film is about a New York protection racket boss, played by Stanley Fields as somewhat menacing yet also a comic figure. He and two of his henchmen get sent to a local prison on a Hudson River island, where they end-up taking control and have the warden and his staff do their bidding. Garfield plays a crusading crime reporter who arranges to become a prisoner on the island so as to get the goods on the mob. It's great fun with lots of action, laughs, and good solid performances by all parties. You won't take this picture very serious but you will have a lot of fun while watching it.

On the waterfront in New York City, practical joking extortionist Stanley Fields (as Bull Bransom) is not amused when reporter John Garfield (as Tim Haydon) starts writing a series of articles exposing his racket. After beating up policeman Dick Purcell (as Terry Walsh), Mr. Fields is sentenced to "Blackwell's Island". But Fields soon has the prison operating like his private country club, with criminal activity continuing. Mr. Garfield goes undercover as an inmate to investigate. Playing Mr. Purcell's pretty sister, nurse Rosemary Lane (as Sunny), provides Garfield with a romantic interest.

**** Blackwell's Island (3/2/39) William McGann ~ John Garfield, Stanley Fields, Dick Purcell, Rosemary Lane

This was my first John Garfield film, and it has him in the first of many tough-guy roles, this time as journalist Tim Haydon, who's out to bring down city mob 'Bull' Bransom. I found it a rather enjoyable movie, and it's not too exhaustingly long, lasting only 75 minutes. John Garfield also puts in a stellar performance - his dialogue delivery and everything is spot-on, but the screenplay lets the actors down. Watched today, it seems more like a run-of-the-mill prison/gangster film, and a little dated, but if you haven't seen a lot of Warner Brothers or John Garfield films, this is an okay time-pass film. Now I'm off to watch some more of his other (supposedly better) films!

This boring film hasn't got anything going for it, except for John Garfield. The story is supposedly taken from real events but I find that to be rather incredulous. "Warner Bros" hardly went out of their way in providing a great actor like John Garfield, an opening film which should have been more tailor- made for him. "Blackwell's Island" is a transparent film with no entertainment value at all. Even the action scenes are poor. The film stays relegated as a programmer but I've seen better ones than this!

Bull Bransom (Stanley Fields) is an uncultured and obnoxious hood who heads the Waterfront Protection Association....a respectable name for an organization of crooks who shake down the businesses along the docks. Folks there either pay up...or Bransom's men make sure bad things happen to them! While many suspect Bransom is behind all this, local politicians protect him from prosecution. Despite this, a local reporter, Tim Haydon (John Garfield), is convinced that his exposees will lead to Bull's arrest. And, eventually, Bransom's actions do lead to him being sent to prison at Blackwell's Island, New York. But Bull isn't content to do his time and return to his old ways. Instead, he plans on running his old business from behind bars AND live like a king while in jail. Soon, with the help of local crooked officials, Bull does exactly that....arranging murders and living as if he was the warden of Blackwell's Island. The dogged reporter is determined to get the goods on Bransom and soon he punches a special prosecutor just so he can get himself locked up at Blackwell's as well!

The main reason to watch this film is because it's so entertaining...much of it thanks to Fields' bigger than life and exciting role as Bull Bransom. John Garfield is fine in the lead...but he's easily overshadowed by Fields...and rarely is there a more enjoyable mobster in a 1930s film. Realistic? Probably not...but always entertaining.

Blackwell's Island (1939)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Interesting if not totally successful Warner film that mixes their gangster pictures with their prison films of the time. A gangster gets sent to prison but he's having an easier time calling the shots there so a reporter (John Garfield) enters to try and see what's going on. There's a strange mixture of laughs and thrills in this picture that comes off pretty strange. The gangster in the picture is played for nothing but laughs and this includes him constantly playing pranks on people. The film's screemplay is pretty weak and doesn't offer too much that we haven't seen in countless other Warner dramas. The one big bonus is the terrific performance by Garfield.

If you like the Screen's First Rebel you will love this fun B programmer which was Garfield's initial film for Warner Bros. He had that rapid fire line delivery and script memorization of hard lines down to a T here. Great supporting cast of Warner stock players and Stanley Field's most screen time ever. Loved the prison set decoration and lensing of the movie. The Tough Guy looked like he had fun making this assembly line B picture and you will as well viewing it. Highly Recommend!

After being convicted, an egotistical crime boss corrupts the prison he's sent to, until a crusading commissioner and crime reporter get on his trail.

If you like the blustery Wallace Beery you might like this movie. After all, the film's real star is a Beery impersonator, Stanley Fields (Bull Bransom), who has the most scenes and screen time. Looks to me like Garfield's only got a featured part though he gets top billing. I guess (IMDB) the top billing is because his smash hit Four Daughters (1938) was made after this film but released before Blackwell. So Warner's shot more scenes for him in this film before releasing it, knowing they had a budding star. Anyway, as a Garfield fan, I've never seen him look so young. Still, he's got his usual fast-talk delivery but without the patented tough guy demeanor. All in all, this may be his first screen appearance.

At the same time, why top bill Rosemary Lane when she's only got about a minute of screen time. No doubt she was also added after initial shooting because she played so well with Garfield in Four Daughters. I've spent some time on these oddities because the movie itself is ordinary, at best. Fields makes a comical crime boss in a routine screenplay that relies mainly on his Beery-like qualities. Warner's does get to use a lot of its stock footage of prison turmoil, a topic it specialized in. Still and all, except for the evolution of Garfield's career, the movie itself is nothing more than a routine bottom-of-the-bill programmer.

It is a Warner Bros feature, fast paced, action packed, starring John Garfield, but that's all. Not my favourite with him. It is too light hearted for my taste. Warner Brothers gave us many of this kind. It is typical of this period, no one can deny, but I got rapidly tired of it. Not a comedy crime, but not so far. William McGann the director was a prolific onee but he obviously lacked ambition, just an effective chain film maker, the perfect yes man. I won't watch it again, and forget it rapidly. John Garfield deserved a bit more than this film, he deserved to have a more powerful character, more poignant, gripping. That's my own opinion.