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"BRASS" BANCROFT, Action Hero |
 Ronald Reagan comforts Rosella Towne in 'Secret Service of the Air' in 1939 |
By JOHN STANLEY
of TheColumnists.com
| THEY SAY 1939 was a great year for movies: Judy Garland in "The Wizard of Oz," Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in "Gone With the Wind," Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," John Wayne in "Stagecoach," Laurence Olivier in "Wuthering Heights," Ronald Reagan in "Secret Service of the Air," Ronald Reagan in "Code of the Secret Service" . . . whoa, hold up that Treasury Department ID badge for just a moment longer. What was that again? Okay, okay. You read the titles right, two Ronnie Baby unforgettables of that grand year when so many great movies were opening in theaters across America. |
Okay, so maybe "Secret Service of the Air" and "Code of the Secret Service" aren't exactly films destined to become classics in the all-time-great-cinema annals. But let's not forget that Reagan was still a Warner Bros. contract player struggling to work his way up into the A-picture category.
His best movies of that period were yet to happen: "Knute Rockne, All American" (as Notre Dame football star George Gipp, aka "The Gipper," a nickname that has stuck with him throughout his life); "Santa Fe Trail," a rousing Errol Flynn Western in which he played George Armstrong Custer (without having to go to the Little Big Horn); and "King's Row," in which his character Drake McHugh awakens in a hospital bed to discover his legs have been amputated and cries out, "Where's the rest of me?"
So lets look at this B-movie business honestly and in context. Reagan was a struggling, workaday actor who had to accept the minor roles Jack L. Warner handed him, and he had to be glad to be working. It was a good studio to be at in 1939, and Warners had a solid reputation for putting out solid programmers, or films that were double-billed with the bigger films. Call them "lower berth" features, or "quickies."
And that's where Reagan's "Brass" Bancroft series comes into the picture. There were actually four in all in which Reagan played Bancroft--if you also count "Smashing the Money Ring" (1939) and "Murder in the Air," the latter produced in 1940. Actually it's a sign that a film was well received if it was honored with sequels, and Reagan enjoyed three before the series finally sputtered out like a dying airplane engine and spiraled into a fatal dive into movie oblivion.
Bancroft, in "Secret Service of the Air," is "a first-class aviator" for Oriental Express, or a quaint variation on the China Clipper of the 1930s. Why the Secret Service would select a professional pilot ("lieutenant" in rank) and former Navy flyer for undercover jobs that have little to do with aviation is one of the more puzzling aspects of the series, but then B movies never worried too much about logic. Just leap in, provide ample action and comedy relief, and get it over with in an hour or so.
"From what I know of Bancroft, he's the man for the job," says John Litel, in the role of Saxby, the assignment chief, a recurring character in the Bancroft movies. "Don't worry, Dad," Bancroft's girl, Ila Rhodes, tells her father, the CEO of the airline, when Bancroft's aircraft is caught in bad weather. "He's flown through storms before." One hopes so, given all the maelstroms ahead, and Dad shouldn't have to be told.
It's never explained where he got his name "Brass," unless it is directly related to a portion of his anatomy located toward the lower extremities. It certainly can't refer to a musical group. His name is "Brass" and that's it. No puzzle, though, why his comedic sidekick is named Gabby Watters. Gabby, played by vaudeville trouper Eddie Foy Jr., talks a helluva lot and makes a fool of himself wherever he goes, even when he's trying to save Bancroft from certain death. But I won't be too harsh on how poorly the comedy has held up--lowbrow antics were commonplace in B-movies during the 1930s, and Gabby's lines are banal at best. Foy obviously struggles with the inferior role, and does what he can with it.
One of the enjoyments of the Bancroft movies is the pulp-magazine dialogue. "Tough is he?" remarks one bad guy. "We'll get rid of that. I'll round up the boys."
And some of Brass' lines have a brassy ring: "He's a number-one stool pigeon. Framing me so I'll get sent to Alcatraz. He called me a squealer. I'm not taking that from anybody." Followed by a fist to the jaw and a lot of choreographed rolling around on the floor.
Brass' first assignment is to penetrate a gang smugging aliens into the United States, and at least there's an airplane in a few of the scenes, and one sequence in which Brass actually flies the smugglers' plane. Oddly, he poses as a counterfeit money supplier in order to infiltrate the gang.
Most memorable about "Secret Service of the Air" is how the smuggled aliens are disposed of, once their presence becomes an inconvenience to the crooks. The pilot pushes a stick on the control panel and the floor of the aircraft opens downward, like bomb bay doors, sending the illegals to their squashy deaths.
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"Code of the Secret Service," the first of the three sequels, has a faster pace and is far more satisfying, featuring a colorful peg-legged villain who disguises himself as a padre. This time Brass and Gabby are assigned to recover some counterfeit plates southwest of El Paso. Their adventurous travels take them to Mexico to Santa Margaret de Las Rosas, a mission where the counterfeiters are bleaching real dollar bills and printing larger denominations on the paper. Some of Brass' better lines: "Oh, you wanna get tough, huh?" . . . "A snake has some good qualities compared to you" . . . "You don't think you can get away with this, do you?"
Some marvelous movie moments occur during the action. Brass hides in a swamp to escape a Mexican posse by breathing through a reed sticking up out of the water. In another scene he takes a pistol shot directly in the heart, only to wake up and find that the bullet has been stopped by a thin Spanish-English dictionary in his breast pocket. (Musta been a small-caliber slug.)
He also shows off a little of his riding prowess by jumping onto a mount and galloping toward the sunset.
Then he gets handcuffed to the film's only love interest, Roselle Towne, a direct steal from Hitchcock's "39 Steps." Gabby makes an utter fool of himself playing strip poker with some Mexican federales, and yet still manages to bust Brass out of jail. After it's all over, a Secret Service operative, in honor of Brass' gallant service to the cause, remarks, "Each man reporting for duty alone, out of sight and reach of his fellow agents." It's an unforgettable moment of movie patriotism.
The third in the series, "Smashing the Money Ring," has the most imaginative plot and puts to use some of the standard prison-movie stereotypes of the 1930s, backed up by location footage of San Quentin. Saxby, played by Joe King and not John Litel, assigns Brass, described now as "an ace treasury operative," to bust up a gang of counterfeiters.
What's unique here is that the gang is made up of San Quentin convicts who print the money on the prison press and then sneak it to the outside world, where it's put into circulation. Brass is assigned to pose as a con so he can get the goods on what's happening inside the prison. He tries to talk tough to the warden
The main villain is "Dice" Mathews, who says such things as "Don't forget what happens if you sing to the coppers." He has it in for the owner of the gambling ship SS Kismet because the seafaring entrepreneur "pulled a double cross" on him. When the owner gets thrown into Q, "Dice" goes after him with a shiv but he's saved by Brass, who still manages to stay on the good side of the cons. "Dice" and Brass bust out in an exciting escape sequence only to discover that one of the prison guards was running the counterfeit ring. Without a doubt, "Smashing the Money Ring" has every prison-movie cliche in the book.
Gabby's dialogue really gets surreal when he comments, "I'll never forget the night I played Little Red Riding Hood aboard the USS Arizona. Did they salute me with 26 guns?" No further explanation is given as to why anyone would be disguised as a fairy-tale character on a battleship.
Gabby, aboard the SS Kismet as it floats somewhere in San Francisco harbor, poses as an old vaudevillian actor who jumps around with a set of oversized false teeth in his mouth--an ugly sight that nevertheless evokes guffaws from the film's only female character, Margot Stevenson, who plays the daughter of the gambling ship owner, and who sparks minimal love interest when she and Brass finally meet.
Finally, there is "Murder in the Air," which brings back John Litel as Saxby--a good move as he brings a greater sense of authority to the assignment scenes. After an infamous saboteur is found dead in a train explosion, Brass is assigned to take his place in order to break up a nationwide ring of spies and saboteurs ("federal enemy number one") actively blowing up U.S installations. He's now known as "operator 685," and carries a tattoo that identifies him as a gang member.
The series seems to be moving toward the tongue-in-cheek when Brass checks into the "Hotel Builtwell" and Gabby drives a cab labeled "Acme" (the same company that supplies Wile E. Coyote?). Then there's a device called the "Inertia Projector," a ray-gun thing that "paralyzes alternating electric current." (It looks like something from a Republic sci-fi serial, and is used to shoot down an aircraft full of dastardly anti-American spies.)
A
lot of stock footage of a dirigible is used for the climax in
which the spy gang tries to blow up the airship--but Brass is
there to prevent it. By-the-numbers action.
Ultimately, the Brass Bancroft series poses the question:
Would any self-respecting crook, counterfeiter or saboteur accept Ronald Reagan as one of the guys? Since Reagan looks too clean-cut and sincere, that's a question better left unasked. Just set your brain-analysis at zero and lean back should you ever find one (or all) of the Bancroft films on TV. They are hard to come by (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your personal attitude toward B movies), having only turned up in recent years on Ted Turner's TNT network.
They remain a product of another time and place, and a reminder that even Ronnie Baby, in that grand year of 1939, made his contribution.
Sort of.
©2000 by John Stanley. The photo from "Secret Service of the Air" is ©1939 by Warner Bros. The poolside photo is from Turner Classic Movies and Photofest. The "Bedtime for Bonzo" photo is ©1951 by Universal-International.
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