Street of Missing Men (1939) User Reviews

Another misnamed Universal flick post Laemmle...

[AlsExGal · 7/10 · 20 August 2016]

... because this film is not about a thoroughfare or men who are supposed to be living there, and yet I liked it! It has some familiar themes, and some that are not so familiar.

The film opens with Cash Darwin (Charles Bickford) getting out of prison and swearing vengeance against Charles Putnam (Harry Carey) of the Clarion newspaper whose articles put him behind bars. He walks right into Putnam's office with a gun and says he is taking him on a ride, the kind you don't come back from. Putnam has a last request - a last meal at a fancy restaurant? And Darwin agrees? It is a bit of a hoot to see these two sipping wine and Darwin talking about how much he is going to enjoy killing Putnam. Meanwhile, Putnam's wife has figured out what is going on and bursts in on the two with the police in tow. The gun that the police find when they frisk Darwin means it's back to the slammer for him. However, Putnam claims that Cash is working for him and he just hadn't had time to get the gun permit yet.

Why did Putnam do this? He wants to hire Cash to stop the gangland warfare against his paper and the people who sell and distribute it. You see, Putnam has been gathering evidence and publishing articles about gangster Mike Reardon, hoping to stir up support for his arrest and the smashing of his syndicate. Reardon is not taking this lying down. Strangely Cash agrees to Putnam's job offer, or does he?

Cash is a "nobody is on the level, why should I be" type, and it is awhile whether you know if he is really planning to help Putnam, who indeed saved him from the slammer a second time, or if he is double crossing him and working for Reardon to avenge his original prison sentence. Bickford, always great, never gives anything away with his great poker face. However, he does have one soft spot. That spot would be a homeless newsboy selling the Clarion on street corners. He buys the kid a dog and has him move into his apartment. Maybe Cash sees himself as a boy in the kid, and wants to be there for him so he doesn't go down the wrong path.

How does this end up? I'll let you watch and find out, though good luck finding a copy. Just one hint. At one point Cash does something so despicable that you just know that the production code is going to demand he be punished in some way. This one is short but good.

Revenge won't be murder. It will be destruction.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 27 June 2022]

When convicted felon Charles Bickford gets out of prison, he immediately heads to the newspaper office to confront its owner whose editorials helped convict him. Harry Carey plays the editor, an honest man who really thought Bickford was guilty, and when he sees him, he accepts the fact that Bickford is about to kill him. But secretly, his plans are far more nefarious, destroying the business that he's built up step by step and brick by brick, and he's used the time of his prison sentence as a yardstick to measure how long it will take. Bickford, having bullied young newsie Tommy Ryan, takes the kid under his wing, creating a bit of sentiment, and it's not easy for him to continue with his plan of revenge because Ryan is a pal of Carey's. But vindictiveness has settled on his brain, and ultimately, it seems like the only one who's going to be destroying is himself.

This sounds better in description than it really is, although there are some very gritty moments in this Republic programmer that should have been a whole lot better. One scene in a bowling alley reminded me of the famous sequence in "Scarface", although they avoided repeating what occurred with Boris Karloff. Carey is a better actor than Bickford who in the thirties always seemed to play these hard-nosed men who always thought they were right in mistreating people.

The available print of this film, missing part of the credits, is in bad shape, which could also have an impact on the enjoyment of it. But from what I saw, it's just more of the same, in addition to your standard crime drama, a typical revenge saga of a criminal who hasn't learned their lesson, and proceeds to make everybody's life miserable.