Main Cast: Thomas Meighan, Marie Prevost, Louis Wolheim, George E. Stone, John Darrow
Release Year: 1928
Country: US
Run Time: 60 minutes
Plot
This solid gangster flick from director Lewis Milestone was based on a stage play and earned a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards. Louis Wolheim stars as Nick Scarsi, a tough-guy bootlegger with political connections that enrage a local police captain, McQuigg (Thomas Meighan). In order to get rid of his enemy, Nick use his influence to get McQuigg transferred to an out-of-the-way duty post, which only further inflames the determined cop's animosity. In the meantime, Nick's brother Joe (George Stone) is about to get himself in trouble with a beautiful singer, Helen (Marie Prevost), and Nick tries to prevent a match-up by humiliating her at a party. After Joe kills an innocent pedestrian in a car accident, he's arrested under a phony name. To get even with the brothers, Helen alerts the police that Joe is a big-time gangster's brother, putting Nick, who has also killed a police officer, at the mercy of McQuigg and a district attorney (Sam De Grasse). Tragically, stars Wolheim and Prevost would both be dead by the early 1930's, he of cancer and she of starvation and alcoholism. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
Racket, The (1927), a play by Bartlett Cormack. [ Ambassador Theatre, 119 perf.] When the reporters who cover an outlying Chicago police station taunt Captain McQuigg (John Cromwell) about whether an honest, dedicated police officer would be exiled to a relatively unimportant post if he attempts to buck both political corruption and gangland boss Nick Scarsi, McQuigg evades their barbs. McQuigg knows full well that has been his own history and that Scarsi has now opened a brewery in his district. After he arrests Scarsi's younger brother, he also knows he has joined battle. Under an assumed name, Scarsi (Edward G. Robinson) appears, demanding to see his brother's girl, Irene (Marion Coakley), who he fears can cause trouble for his brother. A policeman refuses, so Scarsi shoots him and escapes, but he is caught and brought back to the station where McQuigg declines to release him despite a judge's order. In an argument in front of State Attorney Welsh (Romaine Callender), Irene gets Scarsi inadvertently to admit the killing, but Scarsi threatens to destroy Welsh and the whole Chicago political machine if he is prosecuted. Pulling a gun, Scarsi attempts to shoot McQuigg, only to be shot instead. Burns Mantle hailed the play as one that “bears unmistakably the stamp of authenticity in character, scene and speech and reflects vividly a phase of civic life in America.” This was the first time Robinson played a gangster, and the only time on Broadway. Attempts were made by Chicago authorities to ban the play there, in the light of the success of Chicago and other similar plays and the bad image of Chicago that resulted.
Due to the controversial portrayal of a corrupt police force and city government both the film and the play were banned at the time in Chicago.[1]
Reception
The Racket is one of the first films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture (then called "Best Picture, Production") in 1929.
Preservation status
Only one copy of the film is known to exist.[2] It was long thought lost before being located in Howard Hughes' film collection after his death. A print was shepherded by Dr. Hart Wegner of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas film department for restoration by Jeffrey Masino, along with another "lost" Hughes-produced film, Two Arabian Knights (1927). In 2004 and 2006, Turner Classic Movies broadcast The Racket, Two Arabian Knights, and The Mating Call (1928), the first showing of any of the three films in decades.
