Tough Guys Can’t Dance- George Raft and Joan Bennett’s The House Across The Bay

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

The House Across The Bay, starring Joan Bennett, George Raft, Lloyd Nolan, Walter Pidgeon, 1940

Go along with me on this review a little since no way that in modern sensibilities, meaning now, would a woman be accused of making a sap out of a guy, a tough guy, a guy who knows the score. At least for public consumption and with a nod to various correctnesses [sic] but we are dealing with an archival piece and to use today’s more advanced understandings, well, takes a little of the fun out playing around with this theme. See when the deal went down the gal, Brenda, intentionally or not ally, made a sap out of her man,her Steve. Dames will do that to guys, tough guys or just ordinary Joes, including those who can’t dance.

Especially dames who qualify as foxy femmes who also know the score, most of it anyway Brenda Bentley to give her full moniker  (played by fetching Joan Bennett), the torch singer, you might have seen her at the Kit Kat Club one night after it was all over, after she had done her sap work in the film under review, The House Across The Bay (the bay being San Francisco and the view from the house being Alcatraz so you know how bad the deal went down the wrong way right now.)       

Here is the way it played out, the way guys fell by the wayside when all was said and done. Steve (played by 1930s classic gangster biggie George Raft so don’t tell him I called him a sap okay), let’s call him Steve but he could have been any guy who went daffy over a dame, was a tough guy who was into the rackets, gambling, racetracks, liquor, the un-bonded kind in the beginning like a lot of guys, maybe a few legit business too and made his pile of dough by being smart and staying away from the bang-bang play at a time when the mobs were settling scores the old-fashioned bang-bang way. So Steve was doing okay, okay with the women too since he had his pick of the chorus girls in one of the joints he ran.

And then she, you know who, Brenda, came in and complicated his life, came in all fresh mouth give and take, been around the block no nonsense gal but a looker, and one in for the long haul the way Steve figured it, and got him all soft and mushy. He fell hard, fell real hard like Popeye the Skipper and she warmed to him as well especially when he gave her everything she wanted after he married her. Yeah, that was the deal back then when a guy, a wise guy or a choir boy, got the itch bad.  

But you know if you run around the rackets somebody is always getting sore, always trying to move up the food chain and so he ran afoul of some guys, tough guys too. Then Brenda gets this bright idea that in order for him to be safe he should “cool out” in jail for a while. No face down in the back alley bang-bang for her guy. So she collaborated with Steve’s lawyer, Slant, to figure out a way to get him out of the cross-hairs of the mob. Naturally she ratted, only thought to rat Steve out to the Feds on some income tax evasion rap thinking on Slant’s advice he would draw a year and things would calm down by then. Except when the deal went down he drew ten big ones, ten big ones at the federal penitentiary at Alcatraz, the “Rock.”   Bright girl Brenda she might as well as have set him up for murder and the big step off.    

Here is where things go screwy and if tough Steve had known soon enough to do him any good he would have gotten himself another lawyer, a real appeals lawyer and sued Slant’s ass six ways to Sunday. See Slant had that same moony look every time he saw Brenda (and for a 1930s-1940s dame she did have a certain charm, and good looks but I am off screwy dames just now so I will take a pass on her, thank you, especially now that I know she is poison with a capital “P”). And he acted on it, gave Brenda the wrong dope on what would happen to Steve in court because he bagged the case, a clear basis for an appeal for “ineffective assistance of counsel” if I ever saw one.

Did worse than that by sandbagging Steve on the appeal and throwing his money away so Brenda, faithful Brenda, had to go back to work for coffee and cakes.  The guy was nuts and his every move was calculated to destroy Brenda’s love for Steve and put him in his stead.   

Brenda was true to Steve in her fashion, remember if I didn’t tell you before she took that lonely-hearts apartment across the bay to see her boy out on the island but you know dames (remember you are bearing with me on this one), they can only be true so far, no farther especially for a guy doing a “dime on the rock.” A gal could go screwy herself in that time. So she met Tim (played by Walter Pidgeon), Tim the charming up and coming executive type, airlines his line and sweeps her off her feet.   

Naturally Slant was keeping tabs on the situation through his snitches and found out that Brenda was two-timing  Steve, and in his eyes three-timing since he had been clearly left out in the cold. So Slant did two things to get even, first he told Tim that Brenda was married and to whom which in the end Tim blew off (this Brenda has her charms that you can say for her). More importantly although perhaps he should have thought things through better Slant snitched to Steve that Brenda was running around on him. Steve saw nothing but red on that one so naturally he had to get some justice so he escaped the “escape-proof” Rock to go kill Brenda.

But get this the sap couldn’t do it, couldn’t cut the two-timing dame. Not only had happened but then Tim come along to give him the real story on Slant. Needless to say good-by Mister Slant. But good-bye to Steve too who tried to swim back to the Rock except the hard boys in blue blasted him away before he got there. Didn’t like some smart-ass con trying to break out of their place. RIP, Steve, RIP.  

And you wonder why I say dames you can’t live with them, you can’t live without them. Just ask a tough guy named Steve who now sleeps with the fishes in Frisco bay, ask Slant too who is six feet under in hell somewhere and you had better ask Tim, who wound up the winner in the Brenda contest, if he doesn’t feel the urge to look over his shoulder every once in a while.