The title of this 1936 movie keeps cropping up in various essays, lists, and books on the history of American films, but I'm not sure why. It has a decent cast but all of the performers have done better elsewhere, except maybe for Joan Blondell, who is more serious and less wise-cracking here. Robinson is all right but doesn't seem to put much into the role. Bogart is unable to shake the ominous monotone he developed for "The Petrified Forest." Frank McHugh does his usual reliable support. Barton MacLane has a rather complex part. He is Kruger, the tough but fair racket boss who trusts and admires his adversary, Robinson, and ends up hiring him as a kind of executive officer. Robinson of course is an undercover cop and is committed to betraying Kruger. The situation causes Robinson some discomfort because, after all, Kruger has been treating him as a friend. The sting of his conscience is eased when Kruger is rubbed out by Bogart, so no betrayal is necessary. William Keighley moves the bodies around efficiently. The pace if fast. But that's about it. It's really not much more than a routine 1930s Warners gangster movie, notable as much for the fact that it was the first time Robinson and Bogart appeared together on film as for anything else. Query, though. Most of the money taken in by the gangsters is from the numbers racket. It is explained that the chances of winning are one in one thousand, whereas the payoff is six hundred to one, leaving the administrators with a tidy profit of 400 percent. Okay. Why is this bad? I mean -- how is it any worse than a state lottery in which your chances of winning are even less? It's all very well to say that the state runs lotteries in order to provide additional funds for education, but the fact is that most of the income pays for the administration of the lottery and the salaries of bureaucrats. And it gets worse. Who plays the numbers or buys lottery tickets? Does anyone imagine that Warren Buffett or Bill Gates or the governor of New Jersey has ever bought a lottery ticket? (They all have inflation-protected Treasury bonds.) My experience is that lottery counters are virtually empty in middle-class neighborhoods, whereas on payday the lines of African-Americans and white working-class stiffs are so long that they tried even my patience! Payday, boys and girls, and here is some dude standing at the lottery machine and the guy behind the counter keeps entering numbers and the machine is going Ka-CHING, Ka-CHING, over and over, while the guy's take-home pay dwindles. The state lotteries are bad for the same reason the numbers rackets are bad. They transfer money from the very poorest communities directly to an outside organization without allowing that money to circulate within the neighborhoods that need it the most. Every dollar spent on numbers (whether legitimate or not) is a dollar that could have gone to the corner grocery store. Then to the guy who supplies the grocery store. And so on. Numbers are a "regressive" tax, which places the heaviest tax burden on the people and neighborhoods least able to carry it. I suppose you can pay for hopes and dreams but the payoff is very likely to be in disappointments. Want more money for good works? Raise taxes and let everyone pay his share.
Review of Bullets or Ballots
