Based on a true story, the Warner Brothers film Blackwell's Island is a routine B programmer boasting the studio's usual staccato pacing and familiar troupe of contract players. The lone exception is newcomer John Garfield in the role of Tim Hayden, a crusading journalist out to get rackets boss "Bull" Bransom. Much happens in the brisk 71 minute film but a consistent tone is never established. Many scenes are played for laughs but there are several murders of good people (including a direct steal from The Public Enemy) that add drama to the piece.The main character is Bransom, a dim-witted gangster who controls many rackets in New York. He is enacted by Stanley Fields, kind of a bargain basement Wallace Beery (Fields played an identical role in the classic Little Caesar). He is fond of practical jokes (particularly exploding cigars) and not shy about rubbing out those who get in his way. Fields portrays this thug with relish and bounces between comedy and drama in expert fashion. His relegation to fifth billing is interesting given the amount of screen time he enjoys.Garfield is brash and cocky and a lot of fun to watch. He insults Bransom at every opportunity but never seems to be in any real danger. Given the former's predilection to violence this seems remarkable. The usually villainous Victor Jory is on board as a crusading DA. I had a hard time accepting him as a good guy and was waiting for him to double-cross Garfield at some point. Granville Bates as the spineless Warden has a funny scene when he learns he must bow to Bransom's wishes when the latter is remanded to the prison. His comments and underlying sense of resignation at having to tolerate the thug's outrageous demands are hilarious.All in all Blackwell's Island is a diverting piece of entertainment that will make 71 minutes zing by. And watching John Garfield in one of his first roles before he exploded into the national consciousness is a treat.

After being convicted, an egotistical crime boss corrupts the prison he's sent to, until a crusading commissioner and crime reporter get on his trail.If you like the blustery Wallace Beery you might like this movie. After all, the film's real star is a Beery impersonator, Stanley Fields (Bull Bransom), who has the most scenes and screen time. Looks to me like Garfield's only got a featured part though he gets top billing. I guess (IMDB) the top billing is because his smash hit Four Daughters (1938) was made after this film but released before Blackwell. So Warner's shot more scenes for him in this film before releasing it, knowing they had a budding star. Anyway, as a Garfield fan, I've never seen him look so young. Still, he's got his usual fast-talk delivery but without the patented tough guy demeanor. All in all, this may be his first screen appearance.At the same time, why top bill Rosemary Lane when she's only got about a minute of screen time. No doubt she was also added after initial shooting because she played so well with Garfield in Four Daughters. I've spent some time on these oddities because the movie itself is ordinary, at best. Fields makes a comical crime boss in a routine screenplay that relies mainly on his Beery-like qualities. Warner's does get to use a lot of its stock footage of prison turmoil, a topic it specialized in. Still and all, except for the evolution of Garfield's career, the movie itself is nothing more than a routine bottom-of-the-bill programmer.

***SPOILERS*** Hard hitting writing and take no BS investigative reporter Tim Haydon, John Garfield, who's been a torn in the butt of New York City Mob Boss Bull Bransom, Stanley Fields, gets himself arrested to end up in the notorious Blackwell's Island on the East River for slugging Manhattan District Attorney Hampel, William B. Davidson. That's after Bransom was sent there for an assault and battery against NYPD cop Terry Walsh, Dick Parcell, after his men tried to murder hospitalized boat captain Pedersen, Wade Boteler, that officer Welsh tried to prevent. Pedersen who refused to pay protection money to the Bransom Mob was later murdered, together with Oficer Welsh, by them after his testimony sent Bransom for a six month "vacation" to Blackwell's Isand.Hayden as an inmate at Blackwell's Island is actually working undercover for the NYC D.A's office in order to expose the corruption that's going on there that Bransom is wholly responsible for. Yet at the same time befriends Bransom in order to get on his good side as well as get the goods on him and his paid off stooge Warden Stuart "Stu" Granger, Granville Bates. It's later when Bransom gets wind of what Hayden is really up to he sets him up to be shot trying to escape from the island. A plan that backfires on him and ends up sending Bransom up the river in Sing Sing Prison on murder extortion as well as racketeering charges for the next 99 years!John Garfield who would have celebrated his 100 birthday yesterday March 4, 2013, he didn't lived long enough to celebrate his 40th, in one of his first tough guy roles that he soon was to became famous for is very convincing as reporter Tim Hayden who goes all out to take down big time mobster Bull Bransom as an act of both justice as well as revenge for his goons murdering his girlfriend Sunny Welsh,Rosemary Lane, brother Officer Terry Welsh and does it John Garfield style. He also has help from the new straight as an arrow and incorruptible Correction Commissioner Thomas MacNair,Victor Jory, who ends up not only putting Boss Bransom away for good but his stooge of a warden "Stu" Granger and his entire paid off,by Mob Boss Bransom, prison crew as well.

About four years before Warner Brothers made the film Blackwell's Island, the reform LaGuardia administration made a well publicized raid on Blackwell's Island prison and exposed systemic corruption within the correctional facility. It was a high point of Fiorello LaGuardia's first term as mayor of New York. LaGuardia's Corrections Commissioner Austin McCormack is fictionalized here in the character that Victor Jory plays.What could have been a good film based on modern headlines of the times got turned into a B movie that should have been rated lower. It was certainly a low point in the career of John Garfield who plays your typical crusading newspaperman that Thirties era films loved. The villain if you could call him that is Stanley Fields and it's from him that Leo Gorcey and the rest of the Bowery Boys learned their impeccable diction and grammar. He's a blithering idiot who loves practical jokes like exploding cigars and squirting carnations. He's such a china shop bull that the politicians upstairs would like him to just cool it for a while. When he doesn't he gets six months in the Blackwell's Island prison until after the election.Not that prison cramps Fields's style in the least. He turns Blackwell's Island into Club Med for he and a few select cronies, throwing out the patients from the prison hospital and setting up his own posh suite. Garfield gets involved professionally when he writes some expose articles and it gets personal when Fields and henchmen on their own private work release program kill honest patrolman Dick Purcell who also happens to be the brother of Rosemary Lane who is Garfield's girlfriend. Garfield gets himself thrown into Blackwell's Island where he can get the lowdown.When Dutch Schultz got out of control, Lucky Luciano had him hit with the connivance of Tammany Hall politicians, simple as that. I watched this film in utter amazement that the powers that be actually kowtowed to Fields. As for the prison scenes, even the wise guys from Goodfellas didn't live it up half as well as Fields and his pals. Those guys based on some real characters knew the limits they could push things in the joint. Stanley Fields was a poor man's Wallace Beery and Beery and Fields could be both sinister and oafish, but never in the same movie. What could have been a nice drama based on a true incident was turned into a mess that couldn't make it's mind up whether it was comedy or drama. The film was a low point in the career of John Garfield during his Warner Brothers contract years. I'm not sure if Garfield did anything worse than Blackwell's Island, but I haven't seen all his films.