Monday, Jan. 24, 1955

Little Caesar's Busy Days

Edward G. Robinson was sitting idly around Hollywood with that wonderfully rubbery sneer of a face, so a couple of moviemakers had the gall to divide Little Caesar into two crumby parts.

Black Tuesday (United Artists) stars Robinson as a Big Caesar. He's in the death house, see? But on execution night, his moll (Jean Parker) has planned a daring jail break. Everything will go well, if only that Negro down the hall stops his constant wailing of the blues. There is also another condemned prisoner, and Eddie will take him along, because this guy knows where to find 200 Gs. Then, too, there are a steady-eyed priest, a good guard, a bad guard, and a good, dumb crime reporter. After the well-engineered escape, Eddie, the boys and his moll foolishly hole up on the top floor of a warehouse. At this point, the shooting becomes so excessive that the audience can hardly hear the dialogue. When the bullets finally burn Eddie to the floor, everybody feels that shooting is too good for him; moviegoers may feel the same way about the picture.

The Violent Men (Columbia) has more than its share of brutality: fires, murders, fist fights, stampedes. This time Eddie is a crippled, scheming cattle baron, the husband of beautiful, scheming Barbara Stanwyck. They have a sweet, innocent daughter (Dianne Foster) who would like to play bridle & groom with an upstanding horseman (Glenn Ford). But what will daddy say? Nothing much, since empire-mad Robinson is so dumb he doesn't even know that his wife has been inspecting the hay at close quarters with his brother (Brian Keith). Relatively unscratched at the end are Good Guy Ford and Starlet Foster, who plays her role in a variety of well-tailored riding habits.

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