Fri 16 Oct 2020
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: FLAXY MARTIN (1949).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[11] Comments
FLAXY MARTIN. Warner Brothers, 1949. Virginia Mayo, Zachary Scott, Dorothy Malone, Tom D’Andrea, Helen Westcott, Douglas Kennedy, Elisha Cook Jr., Douglas Fowley. Monte Blue. Director: Richard L. Bare.
Speaking of Douglass Fowley, he plays a snide cop with an exaggerated opinion of his own brains in Flaxy Martin, one of those great Warner’s B’s like they just don’t do no more. Zachary Scott is an underworld lawyer who wants to quit working for gangster Tom D’Andrea, but can’t tear himself loose from chanteuse Virginia Mayo, who — unbeknownst to Scott — has a business/pleasure relationship with D’Andrea herself, and is being well-rewarded for keeping him on the string.
Tom D’Andrea [later best known for playing Chester A. Riley’s close buddy on TV] does a fine job as a virile, half-sharp gangster, kind of in the nasty-Ronald-Reagan mode, and stands up quite nicely against noir archetypes Scott and Elisha Cook Jr., who is a bit scarier than usual here as a sawed-off wanna-be who keeps calling Scott “Shamus” – shouldn’t it be Mouthpiece?
Director Richard Bare is best remembered for his work on 77 Sunset Strip, but he does a workmanlike job here, making the most of bits like Scott being stalked through the streets by Cook Jr., a roof-top fist-fight, and a really memorable scene of our hero leaping from a speeding train and plummeting down a ravine.
Anyway, the story offers no surprises whatever, and the characters seem motivated by nothing so much as a need to move the plot along, but there’s enough old-fashioned Style here, backed up by a syrupy echt-40s Musical score, to make it lotsa fun.
October 16th, 2020 at 9:08 pm
I’ve always liked this one as an example of what Warners could do almost effortlessly with this sort of story.
Since the term Shamus was coined by Hammett for Wilbur in THE MALTESE FALCON that Cook, who played it, uses it is an appropriate nod to that role, but humorous in that Shamus didn’t mean “detective.”
Hammett was annoyed with Joe Shaw at MASK for always censoring his legitimate slang so he slipped two ringers into FALCON, both tied to Wilbur. “Gunsel” had nothing to do with guns, but meant a young homosexual prisoner and “Shamus” rather than detective was a guard at Sing Sing who extorted sexual favors from prisoners.
If course no one here knew that, but it does deserve a laugh or two, unintentional or not .
D’Andrea really plays against type here. He was more likely to play roles like the cab driver who helps Bogart in DARK PASSAGE or his best known role with Bendix. This really is not a typical D’Andrea role, but he is very good in it.
October 17th, 2020 at 12:48 am
Now that’s what I call a great cast! A movie I’ve always mean meaning to watch, somehow, and I never have. I think but am not sure that it has played on TCM, and if so, I probably taped a copy. Looking online, I can’t find any channel that’s streaming it, but it is available on DVD. If nothing else fails, I may have to buy a copy.
October 17th, 2020 at 1:16 pm
I heard the same story about Hammett, but the word was gunsel, not shamus. Also, I’ve always assumed that shamus was an anti-Irish slur, derived from Seamus, at a time when the Irish were over-represented on our big city police forces.
October 17th, 2020 at 1:55 pm
David already noted the word “gunsel” in his comment. But you may be right about “shamus”. Wiktionary agrees with you about that:
“Said to be from the Irish name Séamus, on account of many American police officers being of Irish descent.”
But David, I like your version.
October 17th, 2020 at 1:57 pm
Ha! We’re famous. I Just Googled
“shamus” guard at Sing Sing who extorted sexual favors from prisoners.
And this blog post came up first!
October 17th, 2020 at 6:57 pm
My version was from Erle Stanley Gardner quoting what Hammett supposedly told him. Hammett, of course, could have been gilding a lily or two, or Gardner for that matter.
It started from Shaw censoring the phrase “on the gooseberry lay” from a Hammett story. It was a harmless hobo term that meant stealing cooling pies from window sills, but Shaw thought it was dirty and Hammett wanted a little revenge so used gunsel and shamus which he claimed as prison terms used at Sing Sing.
October 17th, 2020 at 7:07 pm
And I might point out calling Sam Spade “Shamus” for “Seamus” makes no sense in the context of THE MALTESE FALCON since neither Wilmer nor Spade are indicated to be Irish.
That doesn’t mean Hammett had the right interpretation of the term, but it is quite likely he thought guards at Sing Sing, who for economic and cultural reasons were often Irish, were called that because of sexual abuses and not ethnicity.
It simply makes no sense as the insult Wilmer intends if all it means is a vague insult for the Irish.
October 17th, 2020 at 7:32 pm
I’ve been scouting around, and the Merriam Webster site says that the first known use of the word “shamus” was in 1925, used in reference to an English bobby (source not cited), and according to their History and Etymology for shamus is “perhaps from Yiddish shames shammes; from a jocular comparison of the duties of a sexton and those of a store detective.”
October 17th, 2020 at 11:22 pm
Not Wilbur, but Wilmer.
October 17th, 2020 at 11:55 pm
Oh, my. Thanks, Barry. I didn’t catch that and I should have. David, I’ve gone ahead and changed it.
December 11th, 2023 at 7:40 am
How does anyone who knows anything about film mistake Tom D’Andrea for Douglas Kennedy?It’s Kennedy who plays Hap, the gangster. D’Andrea appears in the minor role of a mechanic.