DARK MANHATTAN (1937)

L.B. Lee's office has a plaque that refers to him as a real estate expert, but he's actually a numbers banker running a kind of clearinghouse for the daily numbers game in Harlem. As such, he has various bookies that report to him. One day, while investigating a fall-off of money from Jack Johnson's account, a pool hall down in a rough area known as The Jungles, he sees young Curly Thorpe breaking up a fight. Curly is talked up by Johnson, so Lee hires him as an assistant, letting him know that, though the numbers game is illegal, he operates in an aboveboard manner. On his first day, Curly shows up dressed to the nines, to the amusement of some of the number runners, but he proves such an asset that Lee's lawyer suggests that Lee follow his doctor's advice and relax, perhaps by traveling. Lee is reluctant to leave his main squeeze Flo who sings at the Club Congo, but after he suffers a heart attack, he stays in bed and lets Curly take over daily operations. Unfortunately, Curly takes a gangster attitude to the business; instead of talking to a bookie who is underperforming, he goes into the storefront with a couple of goons and busts it up good. This leads to gang battles and a police crackdown. He also begins seeing Flo on the side. Lee, called into a meeting of other numbers bankers, vows to end this "reign of terror," though it’s not clear if he knows that it's largely Curly's fault. When Curly announces that he is now Lee's full-fledged partner, Lee leaves for a rest in South America. The cops find numbers slips in Curly's possession and, though he's not arrested, a cop takes down his personal information in what he calls a DOA (dead on arrival) document, implying that Curly will wind up dead if he doesn't watch it. By the end, that document will come in handy.

This Poverty Row race movie is considered the first Black gangster film, though any viewer expecting much in the way of action will be disappointed. Until some gunplay in the last five minutes, the atmosphere is placid, stagy, and fairly artificial, and the sets are bare bones, especially disappointing in the Club Congo scenes. I make a couple of assumptions in my summary because some plot points were a bit unclear. But I found this worth sitting through for the solid acting, especially from Ralph Cooper as Curly. Known as the Dark Clark Gable, he only appeared in a handful of movies (including THE DUKE IS TOPS) but was handsome and projected a confident persona. He's in almost every scene but his character remains fuzzy. His movement from being almost sweet-natured to being violently aggressive isn't motivated, it just seems to happen. The character of Flo (played flatly by Cleo Herndon) adds almost nothing to the narrative. Clarence Brooks is fine as L.B., though he more or less vanishes from the last part of the story. Sam McDaniel, Hattie McDaniel's brother, is Jack Johnson, and Rubeline Glover is the numbers office secretary. I fault the director, Harry Fraser, for the slow and overly emphatic dialogue delivery of much of the cast. This is a bit slow going but different enough in content to make it worth seeing for race movie fans. Cooper is pictured in the center of the photo above. [YouTube]