Wed 22 Jan 2020
KING OF GAMBLERS. Paramount Pictures, 1937. Claire Trevor, Lloyd Nolan, Akim Tamiroff, Larry Crabbe. Helen Burgess, Barlowe Borland. Based on an unknown story by Tiffany Thayer. Director: Robert Florey.
You’d have to call this a gangster movie, but most of the overt gangster-like violence takes place in the first eight minutes, as bomb goes off in a barber shop whose owner is balking at stocking the latest model slot machines. Two young children are killed, and gambler, suave night club owner, and mob boss Steve Kalkas (Akim Tamiroff) is beginning to feel the heat.
To which he has an immediate answer. He’s a hands-on sort of mob boss, and there is a reason he always keeps a gun in his office desk drawer.
But no. What the movie really is is a three-way romance between Kalkos, a night club singer named Dixie Moore (Claire Trevor), and a newspaper reporter by the name of Jim Adams (Lloyd Nolan). Dixie is blissfully unaware of Kalkos’s true attentions to her, but Adams is not quite so slow in catching on.
It’s too bad that Lloyd Nolan’s character is out of town for much of the middle part of the book, or their love affair might have been consummated a lot sooner, as well as Kalkos’s final fate.
I’m in line second to none when it comes to watching a movie with either Claire Trevor or Lloyd Nolan in it, but in my opinion, Akim Tamiroff walks off with the high acting honors in his one. He’s both unctuously outgoing when he wants to be, but that’s on the outside. Inside, whenever he needs to be, he can also be as viciously cruel as any other crime boss in town.
This seems to be a movie that’s until recently has been hard to find. [See Comment #1.] Luckily someone did, and someone, that person or someone else, has put it up on YouTube. Enjoy this one while you can.
PS. Larry Crabbe is also in this one, without the Buster, and boy, in a tuxedo and sporting a nifty mustache, does he make a great right hand man for Mr. Tamiroff. Who would have thought?
January 22nd, 2020 at 8:25 pm
There is, for example, only one other External Review for this movie that’s linked to from IMDb. Much to my surprise, after just checking it out, that review was written by our mutual friend Dan Stumpf, and it was posted here almost four years ago:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=38430
January 23rd, 2020 at 1:22 am
Paramount had a great B series going in those days with a revolving stock company that included Akkm Tamiroff, Lloyd Nolan, Buster Crabbe, Anthony Quinn, and occasional appearances by Anna May Wong, J Carroll Naish, and many many more in fast-paced, elegant little films consistently entertaining.
January 25th, 2020 at 1:14 am
This one is quite entertaining, clearly stolen by Tamiroff, though Trevor and Nolan are great in it. The bit with the elevator is telegraphed, but still well staged.
Crabbe is in at least one other Nolan film from the era as Nolan’s gangster partner (still with the lip hair) though he gets killed early on.
January 25th, 2020 at 1:43 pm
Based on going back and reading Dan Stumpf’s review, I’ve added Barlowe Borland to the list of cast members. He plays an underling named Parker in this one, a toady who assists Karkos in doing his dirty work for him, to quiet unctuous perfection. (Early on I thought he might be related to Percy Helton, but I eventually discarded the possibility.)