Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Baby Face Morgan (1942)

The mob is in trouble and need a new tough guy to take over and lead them back to glory, the son of the old boss (Richard Cromwell) a rather sensitive and easily taken advantage of soul somehow ends up the new boss of crime.

Doc Rogers (Robert Armstrong) uses the kid's name to build up the image of a tough mysterious figure behind the scenes. The scam depends on the mobsters not really knowing a naive kid in charge, and the kid not really knowing where the money is coming from. Things get even more complicated when the owner of a trucking company (Mary Carlisle) refuses to pay for protection...

But this is a comedy, and a rather good one too. The film sends up the B-movie gangster genre very well with the right degree of farce and corny one-liners.