The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy is a 1930 American pre-Code crime drama film directed by Leslie Pearce and adapted for the screen by Tim Whelan. Based on the 1925 Broadway hit The Fall Guy, a Comedy in Three Acts, which was written by George Abbott and James Gleason, the RKO production stars Jack Mulhall, Pat O'Malley, and Mae Clarke. The year after this film's release, Clarke would become famous as a result of her minor role in another crime drama, The Public Enemy, in which James Cagney shoves a grapefruit into her face. Plot When Johnny Quinlan loses his job in a drug store, he is afraid to tell his wife, Bertha, and therefore keeps up the pretense of leaving each morning for a non-existent job, as he begins the search for a new job. As the days pass and he is unable to find employment, their household, which includes his sister, Lottie, and Bertha's brother, Dan Walsh, goes through what little savings they have. As he gets more desperate, he agrees to do small jobs for "Nifty" Herman, a small-time gangster. Nifty had loaned Johnny $15, as part of a plan to entice him to work for him. After Johnny gets insulted by a common laborer job offer from a neighbor, Nifty lies to him and says that he has a friend who will get him a managerial position at a liquor store. All Johnny has to do is hold onto a case of high-priced alcohol for a few days. Dubious, Johnny reluctantly agrees and takes the suitcase back to his apartment. However, when Bertha finds out who he got the suitcase from, she demands that he return it, threatening to leave him if he doesn't. Taking the case back to Nifty, he finds the office locked, and so returns home. When he arrives, his sister's suitor, Charles Newton, is visiting. Newton is a government agent. Even though Johnny tries to hide the case, his efforts are futile, and Newton spies it and becomes suspicious, seeing a resemblance to a case he and his men have been attempting to track down. Opening it, he discovers it contains a cache of drugs. When he interrogates Johnny, he gets the whole story, and is about to arrest Johnny, when Nifty arrives to retrieve the suitcase. Johnny tricks Nifty into confessing, and then subdues him, when he is resisting the efforts of Newton and his deputies to arrest him. The film ends with Johnny being rewarded for the way he handled himself by becoming Newton's assistant.