The Secret Six (1931)This is MGM's attempt at a "B" gangster movie which was always Warner Brother's specialty. The film is well done thanks to Director, George W. Hill from a screenplay by Frances Marion but pretty much covers every cliché in the genre. MGM puts out a full cast, and includes the studio's relative new-comers, Clark Gable and Jean Harlow (their first movie together).Richard Newton (Lewis Stone) is an alcoholic defense attorney who secretly is the brains behind the Central outfit run by Johnny Franks (a sleazy looking Ralph Bellamy). Johnny brings in some new talent, Louie "Slaughterhouse" Scorpio (Wallace Beery) who sledgehammers cattle and does pig-sticking for a living, so you know he's going to be pretty brutal in his new career goals.Johnny is a bootlegger and owns a speak-easy, and has a gangster mall, Peaches (Marjorie Rambeau). You know that Scorpio is going to eventually take over the gang and Peaches too.Two competing reporters, Hank Rogers (Johnny Mack Brown) and Carl Luckner (Gable) are out to grab the crime story for their papers, as well as vying for the attentions of cute cigarette girl, Anne Courtland (Harlow) who, in fact, is working for Scorpio. She slides up to Hank to influence his coverage of Slaughterhouse Scorpio's activities, but she slowly falls in love with the guy. Unknown to anyone Carl is Operator 36, working undercover for the "Secret Six", a secret crime fighting organization of businessmen and political kingpins. When they talk to people, they need to be blindfolded to protect their identity. There was an actual Secret Six organization in Chicago that may have influenced the FBI.Hank has got an angle to steal Scorpio's gun and using modern ballistic technology to prove that his gun was used in several murders, but Scorpio is hot on his trail. Anne testifies against Scorpio in court, but you know that Scorpio is going to beat the rap until the Secret Six get on him.

Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way but I don't think the Secret Six had very much to do with the story. Quite late in the picture the masked tribunal is introduced as the greatest force for law and order in the country, formed to go up against the power of gangsters run amok. Once they come on the scene though they're gone just as quickly. Oh well, the title sounded cool anyway.For all it's inconsistencies and outright gaffes though, this was a pretty entertaining picture. An opening scene shows 'Slaughterhouse' Scorpio (Wallace Beery) plying his trade by using a sledgehammer, presumably to whack a side of beef to death. Shortly after, he's shown leaving the plant with one of his buddies, and they're both dressed in suits and ties! Think about that one for a minute.I'm not saying it's impossible, but the way Scorpio made his way up the ranks of the mob world seemed pretty peculiar to me, especially since his IQ seemed to place him at the lower end of the scale. I cracked up when he took out gang member Johnny Franks (Ralph Bellamy) with a burst of machine gun fire and when the camera panned back to him he was holding a revolver! Better yet, when reporter Hank Rogers (Johnny Mack Brown) filed his story with The Tribune, he stated that Franks had three bullets in his back. How did he know? Say, did you catch the signage at Franks Steak House after Scorpio took over - 'Eighteenth Amendment Strictly Observed"! Just like a bootlegger to flaunt his support of Prohibition. I wouldn't have minded trying his twenty five cent chili though, I bet it was pretty good.Well forget about the screwball stuff for a minute, this film has a cast list that would be the envy of most films of the era. Besides those already mentioned you have Lewis Stone, Jean Harlow, and Clark Gable, and they're just some of the supporting players. This might be the earliest picture I've seen Clark Gable in and it was uncanny how much he resembled a young George Clooney - check it out. Or if you're watching a Clooney flick, maybe he looks like a young Clark Gable - it works both ways.As an early gangster flick, this MGM picture doesn't quite measure up to the ones Warner Brothers put out the same year 1931 - "Little Caesar" and "The Public Enemy", but I'd still recommend a viewing to see all the principals at work. You have to see the look on Scorpio's face when he knows he'll get the chair for his misdeeds, it's enough to write Grandma and Aunt Emma home about.

THE SECRET SIX looks like an antiquated crime film, despite some of the comments here talking about "MGM gloss". It doesn't have any gloss and it doesn't compare favorably to the tougher Warner Bros. crime dramas of the same period.The only surprises here are in the odd casting choices. RALPH BELLAMY (Mr. Nice Guy or "other man" in most films) playing a rotten gangster type with lines like "Easy on the rods" to his fellow gangsters and a tough guy sneer on his face. He's a double-crossing leader of a gang who tries to get rid of WALLACE BEERY, but fails and is shot in the back by Beery for his efforts. Since this comes pretty early in the film, it's a bit of a surprise. So is seeing Bellamy as a gangster.The other surprise is seeing LEWIS STONE (Andy Hardy's dad) as a crooked lawyer who rules the mobsters with a firm hand, but makes the fatal mistake of turning his back on Beery toward the end. Stone seems out of his element here as the dapper lawyer with the cane.And finally, into the film comes a very young CLARK GABLE (sans moustache) looking fit and chipper as a rather callow newspaper man who jokes around with another newspaper guy JOHNNY MACK BROWN, who happens to be Harlow's love interest (instead of Gable).Despite these surprises, the film itself is as ordinary as they come, a simple gangster story with a Prohibition background about bootleggers who get mixed up with gun molls, crooked lawyers and crime stoppers like "The Secret Six" who are able to capture bad guy Beery and put an end to his monopoly on crime in the city. The plot sounds vaguely like it may have been based on Al Capone's true-life story.Summing up: Only gets lively toward the end with all the shoot-outs, but pretty stale stuff most of the time.Trivia note: Interesting for the glimpse it gives of CLARK GABLE and JEAN HARLOW before they hit the big time stardom waiting for them.

While not on the level of the work being done in Warners crime films during the same period ("The Public Enemy," "Little Caesar"), "The Secret Six" is a fine picture with a lot to recommend it.Primarily, this comes from the cast. Wallace Beery, then at the height of his fame, makes for a good central figure as Louis "Slaughterhouse" Scorpio, as the name implies, a former slaughterhouse worker turned bootlegger and murderer. His ordering "a hunk o'steak" after spending all day crushing animals heads with a sledgehammer suggests, right at the beginning, that killing means nothing to this huge primate of a man. Lewis Stone, on the wrong side of the law for once, is Newton, the dandyish crooked lawyer and head of the gang, giving an understated, sinister performance and making every scene count. Ralph Bellamy, one of the movies' perennial nice guys, plays a very, very bad guy here, as the gangster who brings Scorpio into the gang, to his later regret. And veteran Marjorie Rambeau, while she has little to do overall, is good as Bellamy's blowsy mistress, Peaches, a far cry from the society matrons she would specialize in later in her career.But the big surprise, and one of the main reasons for watching this picture, are the solid early performances of Jean Harlow and a young, sans-mustache Clark Gable. Both were free-lancers who were hired for this film on a one-time basis. MGM was so impressed with their work as, respectively, Anne, the cigarette girl who loves and loses reporter Johnny Mack Brown, and Carl, the crusading reporter who aids the Secret Six of the title in bringing down Stone and Beery's criminal organization, that they were hired to long-term contracts right after the picture was completed. Both turn in solid performances. Those who think Harlow couldn't act should see her in the last third of the film, particularly the trial scene. And the sheer mile-a-minute energy Gable brings to his role makes his every scene watchable. Within the next few years, these two would establish themselves as the stuff of Hollywood legend.Directed by the excellent, underrated George Hill ("Tell It To the Marines," "Min and Bill," "Hell Divers"), scripted by the great Frances Marion, and with the aforementioned solid cast and the usual MGM gloss, "The Secret Six" makes for a very enjoyable film, for historians, crime film buffs, fans of the stars, and just those of us who appreciate a good, involving story.