blanche-2 Charles Farrell, a great silent screen star, appears with Bette Davis and Ricardo Cortez in "The Big Shakedown," a 1934 film featuring Allen Jenkins and Glenda Farrell.Farrell and Davis are Jimmy and Norma, a boyfriend-girlfriend who marry later in the film. They run a corner drugstore. Cortez is a post- Prohibition gangster, Dutch Baines, looking for a new racket. Patronizing the store one day, he realizes that Jimmy can make his own products, which are identical to ones on the market. However, he isn't selling them claiming that they are the commercial brands; he makes them so he can sell a house brand for less.Of course, Dutch sees that if these products are sold under the commercial names, he can use their publicity and brand reputation to make a fortune. He talks Jimmy into making toothpaste and beauty products because Jimmy needs money. He's reluctant to do it and planning to quit when Dutch decides to go into medicine and have Jimmy make drugs. Jimmy flatly refuses; Dutch makes noise about Norma's safety, and Jimmy caves.This is a typical crime film interesting because of the cast. Davis' role is an ordinary ingénue one that could have been played by anyone. She was still getting a build-up and hadn't yet become a star with a special image. She's blond and pretty. Glenda Farrell has the role of Dutch's girlfriend, whom he throws over. Farrell, with her distinctive speaking voice and likable personality always stands out. Cortez does well playing the tough, uncompromising Baines.Charles Farrell, whom I used to see as an elderly man (your fifties were considered like the seventies back then) when My Little Margie was in syndication, was good-looking and popular in his day. He had a gentleness about him and also an earnestness which he displays here. He retired in 1941 to become a land developer, but returned for Margie, which was followed by his own show. Then he retired again.Cortez's career as a leading man was just about over. Though he continued working until he retired, he also became a successful broker on Wall Street.Of interest, the actor who played the young Jewish boy who buys ice cream (a cone was six cents), Sidney Miller, went on to become a director and composer, and actually revamped the Mickey Mouse Club for Walt Disney beginning in its second season. Amazing that Bette Davis was the only one to stay full-time in acting.

MikeMagi Back in the days when stardom meant signing a seven-year contract, Bette Davis didn't have much choice but to play the wife of a struggling pharmacist, who gets mixed up with the mob, in this mellerdrama. Hubby Charles Farrell is conscripted by gangster Ricardo Cortez to make counterfeit products like tooth paste and face powder. But when Cortez demands cheap knock-offs of high-priced medication, lives are in danger...Bette's included. She plays the ingénue role surprisingly well without the tics and mannerisms which would mark (and sometimes mar) her later career. Tall, handsome Charles Farrell, on the other hand, couldn't act. To say that he had two expressions is putting it generously. Fortunately, Cortez as the suave hood behind the counterfeiting scheme takes up the slack and Glenda Farrell drops seductively by as a gun moll who knows too much. A pretty entertaining B movie made moreso by the youthful Bette Davis.

LeonLouisRicci This is an Odd one to say the Least. Now that Prohibition has been Repealed Bootleggers get into the Fake Cosmetic and Drug Business. Making Generic and Ineffective Products and Slapping Brand Names on the Labels.There are Scenes that are Downright Bizarre, like a Row of Gangsters Brushing Their Teeth, a Jewish Teenager who keeps a Ledger and Wisecracks about Sales Tax, a Mother Buying Cough Syrup "for her child", "don't wrap it up I'll drink it, I mean carry it that way." A Cat Fight with some Slang Banter that is Priceless, a Miscarriage, a Brutal Torture Scene, and some Moralizing in the End that is so Over the Top it Defies Dramatic License, and there are Others.Bette Davis Fans can Check this out to see why She was so Disgusted with Light Weight Roles like this that She Fled to England. She Looks Beautiful here but doesn't have much to do. The Film is Worth a Watch for its Strangeness but not much Else. There is a lot of Drug Talk and Pre-Code References to Coke (the drug not the drink) but Nothing Racy or Raunchy.

mark.waltz A pharmacist who is too weak to turn down a crooked money-making opportunity, a charming villain who takes things too far (and gets a bath he will instantly forget about) and two blonde wise-crackers are the focus of this 60 minute B pre-code sleeper where a definite moral tale is disguised behind typical tough Warner Brothers dialog. Charles Farrell, after years of silent melodramas and perky early musicals with Janet Gaynor, is the owner of a neighborhood pharmacy which caters to the variety of characters who live in the neighborhood. A young Bette Davis is first seen selling an ice cream cone to the stereotypical Jewish teen Sidney Miller (a staple of many of these Warner Brothers pre-code films) who debates the need for the government all of a sudden charging tax and also expresses shock at the idea of ice cream served in a bowl rather than on a cone. Miller reappears briefly several times throughout the film making wisecracks which amuses Davis with their oddness. He's more appealing to her than the people who come in mainly for change, a postal stamp or to insist that owner Farrell change the brand of beer he sells. One visitor attempts to buy the drugstore as part of a chain yet disappears once the plot thickens thanks to beer baron Ricardo Cortez whose goon Allen Jenkins had made strong suggestions to Davis about Farrell changing the beer. Cortez finds out that Farrell can make the same creams, toothpastes and headache powders that a major brand does and sell them for less without the overhead of advertising. This upsets Davis who sees the sordidness of using the brand's name to make money and ultimately brings on violence thanks to the betrayal of Cortez's mistress (Glenda Farrell) who pays the ultimate price for being honest.Brisk, fast-moving and filled with witty dialog which made the Warner Brothers pre-code films the most delightful of that genre, this also has a slight element of horror to it with the sudden violent end of one of the characters in the climax that seems like something out of a Bela Lugosi/Boris Karloff horror film from Universal. There's a catfight between Farrell and the bitchy Renee Whitney as her competition for Cortez and a shocking scene where one of the victims of Cortez's theft of their product name takes a desperate way out as profits fall. Cortez is light-hearted and charming throughout, an interesting companion villain to Edward G. Robinson's "Little Caesar" and James Cagney's "Public Enemy" in earlier pre-code films. Some of the characters come in and out so fast they seem to have no character resolution and this is perhaps the film's one major weakness, seemingly either an editing of the film shot or deletions from the script. But nonetheless, there's also the comparison to today's pharmaceutical field which has de-humanized the importance of personal attention both in the medical profession and in dispensing medicine altogether. Films like this, the "Dr. Kildare" series and many of the classic T.V. medical shows prove that the old fashioned care wasn't so bad after all and make you wonder what the world of the Hippocratic oath has come to.