***Some Guys Get The Tough Breaks- George Raft’s Invisible Stripes

DVD Review

From The Pen of Frank Jackman 

Back in his corner boy days in the early 1960s, that corner being located in front of Jack Slack’s bowling alleys on Thornton Street in North Adamsville Frankie Riley, the acknowledged schoolboy king of that corner, used to regal the rest of us with his sad sack stories about guys he (and we) knew from the neighborhoods who bought the ticket, took the big step-off to the state pen, to Walpole, Concord, or Norfolk depending on what they had for space, and how bad the guy have screwed up, and how many times. One guy, Spike Wallace, a big tough guy whose name was well known to the assembled gathering had already been in Concord for a nickel for an armed robbery he carried out single-handedly (two years off for good time, first serious offense, although he had an arm’s length list of juvenile and petty adult offenses, money offenses like purse snatching, larceny, auto thief, a few con games with some rubes in Gloversville). Despite that good time prison hardened Spike on the inside, made him more determined than ever in his career path figuring that if he had been smarter he would have shot the gas station attendant whom he robbed and who identified him at trial and be done with it. Not that he was afraid to use a gun, had been a shoot ‘em up guy on a couple of occasions that he never got caught on. But here is where Spike kind of ran out of luck when the deal went down because no sooner had he gotten out of stir than he was picked up for his part in the South Shore National Bank heist, the heist where an overeager bank guard was wounded and in no time they traced the bullet to a gun Spike was known to use (he was crazy for this old Colt .45 and refused to ditch it and thus the ease of the pick-up). So Spike will be doing the next ten to twenty washing floors for the state.
Another guy, Slippery Samson, a good guy just a couple of years older than us who I knew in junior high, hung around with for a while and did a couple of small goofy capers with, you know, clipping stuff from stores, stealing milk money from younger kids, and then kind of lost track of, was beginning his career for the state, or getting ready to if the judge and jury in the matter had any say about the question for a short dough stick up of the Esso gas station over on Wayland Street. The funny thing about Slippery was that he could have, should have gotten away clean, should have been sitting over on Carson Beach in Southie drinking his beer from a brown-bagged can but somebody, some guy from the corner boy crowd at Harry’s Variety (one of Red Crowley’s rough crew boys whom we kept clear of under all conditions and kept clear of Harry’s too just in case Red didn’t like our faces one day and wanted to do something about it), dimed on him after Slippery had taken the guy’s girl from him one heavy-drinking night and he was sore enough to break the code. That guy was dog meat once things settled, not from Slippery who was kind of a lone wolf and didn’t have guys to back him up, but Red who probably chain whipped his ass just for breaking the code, his corner boy or not.
Some nights Frankie would have no new guy from the neighborhoods to talk about, no new guy who didn’t get a break, or who should have beaten some rap except this, that or the other thing happened to block his path and keep him off the streets. On those nights, some of them anyway, some night when some frail hadn’t busted one of us up, we weren’t talking about lack of dough and maybe how to get some quick, or daydreaming about some grandiose caper, Frankie would fill up the time giving us his take on some movie he had seen up at the Strand Theater in Adamsville Square. Now the reason I mention the Strand is because they were then strictly a re-run operation and what they re-ran to keep expenses down was black and white movies that with everything in color nobody but solemn, serious, what did Frankie call them, call himself, oh yeah, an aficionado, wanted to watch black and white films. But see Frankie was crazy for them not so much that they were not in color as that some of the greatest gangster movies ever made were done in black and white. You know Edward G. Robinson, George Raft, Humphrey Bogart, and James Cagney and plenty of rough looking guys who had supporting roles. So one night, one Saturday night if I recall, Frankie was telling us about this film he had taken his sweetie, Joanne, to on the previous Friday night at the Strand, Invisible Stripes, starring George Raft and Humphrey Bogart. (By the way Joanne hated the Strand, hated the stink of the place from winos and junkies who stayed there all day since they didn’t mind seeing the same film about six times as long as they could come out off the street and nobody bothered them there, hated black and white films, said they depressed her, hated old time gangster movies worst with the random violence and piled up bodies, but she loved Frankie against all reason, had since sixth grade, and so there you have it.)                     
Frankie said it was funny how he didn’t like the guy George Raft played from the start, Clift, since the opening scenes had him and the guy Humphrey Bogart played, Chuck, getting ready to leave the big house at Sing Sing after doing their time. In the inevitable last meeting with the warden Clift spent his time fawning all over him saying that he would follow the straight and narrow now, that he had seen the error of his ways, that he had learned his lesson about staying on the right side of the law and all that blather that would sicken even the most naïve corner boy. Jack Slack corner boys were by no means the toughest, far from it, since Red Crowley’s corner boys were real menaces to society but we still imbibed all the old corner boy attitudes, especially the ban against sucking up to authority figures, unless you were conning them for the greater good.
Chuck, in contrast, knew the score, knew that it was every man for himself in this wicked old world, and knew that he was on borrowed time anyway, knew he was a dead man walking so he told the warden to save all the pretty speeches, to spare him all the goodie bullshit, and save the good words for the Sunday school boys. So Frankie’s money was flat-out on Chuck to go out blazing, especially in the 1930s when the streets were mean at best, meaner than usual what with everybody scraping for dough, and the prison system was set up as just a warehouse for “dead men walking.” So the tale was set early on, the good con-bad con duel that would drive most of the movie.  
Here is another funny thing though Frankie said as the plot moved along that he got to liking Clift better (although Clift did have his sappy moments around his mother, but a lot of guys are like that, keeping the lid on as Frankie told everybody he had to do with his own steely-eyed Irish “don’t air your dirty linen in public” mother). Frankie still though Clift was foolish to think he could become a regular citizen but he really did take a beating from society once he got on the outside. First off he lost his fickle girlfriend who didn’t want to hang around with an ex-con, saw no future in staying knee-deep in the tenements which appeared to be Clift’s fate. Truth, Frankie said, she probably had some other Johnny on the hook, probably was going between the sheets with some other guy the first day Clift hit the big house, although she swore she hadn’t, had been true blue but Clift could not have been that trusting no matter how bad he wanted to have those white picket fence dreams. The dame thing as Frankie said he knew from the Frankie-Joanne battles could really throw a guy off since half of what guys did things for, illegal things, was to keep some frail in clover so he felt Clift really did catch a tough break there. Then he lost a succession of lower and lower skilled jobs due to his status as an ex-con even though a condition of parole was to be employed, or else. Then when he did look like he was going to survive in the employed world even if on cheap street he got picked up and falsely accused of being the finger man for a robbery at the place where he worked. On top of that his younger brother, played by William Holden, was getting ready to chuck the nine to five life, started to see some value in Clift’s old lifestyle, started to see he had to take what he needed from wherever he could get it, and from whoever he could get it from so he and his girl could get off the dime on cheap street. Clift freaked out when that issue came to a head, when younger brother made more sense that Clift’s taking the guff from society. So Clift went looking for his old pal, Chuck.
Of course Chuck, having no illusions about society’s attitudes toward ex-cons and itchy for dough had gone back to robbing banks and other such places where dough is, or stealing stuff you can get dough for. Chuck had legendary bank robber Willie Sutton’s attitude. Sutton a personal hero of Frankie’s as he made clear almost every time he talked gangster movies since he famously said when he asked by the coppers why he robbed banks he said that was because that was where the dough was. Smart boy, and Chuck was smart to follow that advice. And so Clift bought into the operations with him, and wound up doing pretty good at it for a guy who wanted to go on the straight and narrow. But he started to buckle under when he had enough dough to put younger brother right.
Frankie said even though it bothered him naturally no film, black and white or color, could let guys do robberies, shoot up a few places, nick a few coppers, public or private, and not pay any price, no, just can’t be done. So naturally, after the younger brother had been falsely implicated in a robbery after Clift had called the robbery business quits, there has to be a final confrontation between the cops and the bad guys, bad guys losing, losing fatally including Clift. Frankie said when the deal went down, when the die was cast, Clift went out kind of righteous, went out better than that sniveling stuff with the warden at the beginning of the film. And maybe thinking about Slippery, and maybe about us too, Frankie said guys like Clift never drew a blessed break in this wicked old world. Amen, brother.