Night Court (1932)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Just perfect...

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Made 73 years ago, "Night Court" is a very good, gritty precode about corruption in high places. In this case, it's a judge, played by Walter Huston.When a young woman, Mary (Anita Page) finds a bankbook left behind by a neighbor, she returns it, and finds herself sentenced to the work house for six months. The money belongs to Judge Moffett (Huston), who, to keep his activities quiet, hangs out in his girlfriend's apartment. The Judge believes that Mary looked at the bankbook and knows where he keeps his money. He sets her up and has her arrested as a prostitute. Her baby is put into care, leaving her poor cab-driver husband (Phillips Holmes) with nothing, and thanks to Moffett's girlfriend, he's even doubting his wife's innocence.However, he knows in his heart that Mary isn't capable of such a thing and sets out to clear her.The original was written by Mark Hellinger, a reporter, and producer of "Naked City" in 1948. The story is loosely based on a real-life character.Though some of the acting is melodramatic, as this was the style of the day, it's still compelling. Walter Huston is terrific, mean as dirt, and Holmes and Page are very sympathetic. Anita Page, about 22 here, worked until she died in 2008! Philips Holmes died in 1942 in a plane crash. For some reason, he reminds me of Tony Goldwyn.Three other cast members of note: Mary Carlisle (who as of this writing is still alive) as an honest judge's daughter, Lewis Stone as the honest judge, and Jean Hersholt as the building janitor.Very good and absorbing, though it's stylistically of the time.

***SPOILERS*** Telling his live in and single girlfriend Lil Baker, Noel Francis, to lay low in the seedy part of town until the heat, in him being investigated for legal and political corruption, blows off mobbed up Judge Moffet,Walter Huston,is shocked to find out that his secret bank account,that he deposits his pay off money into, was lost and recovered by Lil's next door neighbor Mary Thomas, Anita Page. Mary being the good and decent person that she is returns the bankbook to Lil but her boyfriend, "Da judge", feels she'll turn the information of his illegal payoff scheme over to the district attorney's office.Judge Moffet getting one of his stooges Ed, Warner Richmond, to pose as a John or man out on the town looking for action, if you know what I mean, to break into Mary's apartment and be caught with his pants down or completely off and have her arrested for both prostitution and shaking Ed down for more money, $20.00, then what she at first asked for. With her shyster lawyer Crawford, John Miljan, who's secretly working with Moffet telling a confused Mary to plead guilty and get off with just a $5.00 fine she instead has the book thrown at her by Judge Moffet and given a 90 day sentence in the city workhouse. What's even worse Mary has her baby taken away from her and her taxi driver husband Mike, Phillips Holmes, for safe keeping by the state!Not for a moment believing the charges against his wife Mary her husband Mike soon uncovers Judge Moffet's criminal activities and kidnaps him to get him t spill the beans on what he did to his wife and many others who's lives like Mary's that he destroyed. That's after Moffets' goons lead by his top bone and head cracker Gorgan, Tully Marhall, kidnapped Mike and brutally worked him over to keep him quite and in line!***SPOILERS*** It was in fact the murder of top crime investigator Judge Osgood, Lewis Stone, by one of Mofft's goons that saved the day for both Mike & Mary Thomas. That in having Judge Osgood secretly recording, with a hidden dicta-phone, Moffet threaten to murder him if he doesn't end his investigation of him as well as other corrupt state and NYC judges. Facing the very possibility of being sent to the Sing Sing electric chain for Osgood's murder, which in fact he was innocent of, or spending ten years behind bars for taking payoff money to fix sentences like the one he imposed against Mary Thomas, which Judge Moffet was guilty of, the now exposed Judge Moffet choose the later!

This film had a very poor script--filled with clichés, ridiculous story elements and was way too predictable to be enjoyed. While I am a huge fan of Hollywood films of the 1930s, I really hated this film because of the script and because the film had some excellent actors who were totally wasted. Walter Huston played a crooked judge--in a rather one-dimensional way. It was really hard to see the brilliance of this actor in this turgid film--even though in DODSWORTH and TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE he gave truly amazing performances. Lewis Stone, an excellent character actor, was also given a pretty thankless role. And the part of the film where the innocent woman is "railroaded" and sent to prison is just ridiculous and nonsensical. The bottom line is that it really looks like MGM put little, if any, effort in making this very standard and very silly film full of plot problems. Not everything old is good.

When MGM released "Night Court" in 1932, its story of crooked judges and a corrupt system of justice in New York City was pulled from the newspaper headlines of the previous year. When, in the movie, cabbie Mike Thomas's wife is set up, arrested and jailed for prostitution, that part of the story didn't surprise New Yorkers, who had read for months of the activities of Chico Accatuna (the spelling of his last name varies), nicknamed the "human spitoona." Just as in the movie, this unsavory character would set women up for an arrest by the vice squad. Once the woman lost her job and reputation as the result of the arrest, criminals such as Lucky Luciano would then force these women into prostitution.In this movie, Mary Thomas is sent to jail to discredit her, since she accidentally saw the bank book of the crooked Judge Moffett, played by Walter Huston. He had given it to his girlfriend when he told her to hide out while Lewis Stone's judicial commission was investigating Moffett and others for corruption. She moved in next door to the Thomases,in a rundown walk-up rowhouse, and managed to drop the bank book (which showed tens of thousands of dollars in the judge's secret account) into the crib of Mary's son when she dropped by.At one point, this picture is as grim as any you will see. Mary is in jail. Her little boy is in a city foster care facility, crying his heart out. Mike, trying to spring her, goes to a lawyer who is a crony of Judge Moffet and informs the judge of Mike's plans. Moffet, lying on a sofa, tells an associate to "get me bad boys, very bad" to take care of the troublemaker cabbie. These "bad boys" beat the cabbie to a pulp, then put him on a slow boat to South America.In a great scene, Mike later tells Moffett, now a prisoner in Mike's apartment, about all the questions Moffett's henchmen had asked him. Mike closes by saying they didn't him the most important question: "Could I swim?" Audiences in 1932 must have cheered when they heard that line, delivered just right by actor Phillips Holmes.Now, "Night Court" is like a time capsule, a reflection of a world long gone. Mark Hellinger, the co-writer of the play the movie is based on, was a reporter who had first hand knowledge of the real life events he borrowed for the story. The hero in this movie is a cabbie, not a cop, a district attorney or any other government official. In this movie, except for Lewis Stone's character, who is murdered, all the public officials you see are on the take. The movie makers didn't identify the cop who arrested Mary Thomas as a member of the police Vice Squad. If they had, that would have dated the movie. As a result of the tremendous scandal involving Chico Accatuna and the compulsory prostition racket, the NYPD Vice Squad had a new name, the Public Morals Squad. This scandal helped get La Guardia elected Mayor and is the basis for this pre-code crime classic from MGM.