Tom Connors is sentenced to Sing Sing believing his influential friends will soon have him out on parole. A trouble maker, he gets ninety days in solitary and no parole. His girlfriend Fay is injured and Warden Long lets Tom visit her on his honor to return. During a fight with mobster Joe Finn Fay shoots Finn, Tom jumps out the window and is blamed for the death. He gives himself up but it sentenced to the electric chair. —IMDb
Michael Curtiz was one of Hollywood’s most prolific and colorful directors. Born to a well-to-do Jewish family in Budapest, he ran away from home at age 17 to join a circus, then trained for an acting career at the Royal Academy for Theater and Art. He worked as a leading man at the Hungarian Theatre before directing stage plays and then films. His first cinematic effort was Az Utolsó Bohém (1912), which was also the first feature-length film ever made in Hungary. Curtiz soon moved on to the more progressive Danish film industry, returning to his homeland in 1914 and serving a year in the Austro-Hungarian infantry before resuming his film career. While it may be arguable that Curtiz was Hungary’s finest director, he was certainly its busiest, making no fewer than 14 films in 1917, most of which starred his first wife, actress Lucy Dorraine. When the Hungarian film industry was nationalized by the new communist government in 1919, Curtiz packed his bags and headed for Sweden… read more
3 1/2. Solid film with great camera work by Barney McGill and clever editing by George Amy. Arthur Byron is very good in it as the warden. Tracy and Davis keep the movie from being dull. Good direction by Michael Curtiz, marred only by its desire to keep going when it should have ended 10 minutes earlier. Still, only 81 minutes long and worth checking out though.
A look at posters in which actors are absent and the title treatment is king.