Mon 25 Apr 2022
Reviewed by Tony Baer: DONALD HENDERSON CLARKE – Louis Beretti.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
DONALD HENDERSON CLARKE – Louis Beretti. Vanguard Press, hardcover, 1929. Grosset & Dunlap, hardcover, photoplay edition, 1929. Novel Library #19, paperback, 1949; Avon #575, paperback, 1954. Film: Fox, 1930, as Born Reckless.
My golly. This novel is freaking amazing. I can’t believe it.
It’s the first novel by this NYC journalist who became close to famed NYC mobster Arnold Rothstein (who appears fictionally as Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby and as Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, and who was famous for, among others things, fixing the 1919 World Series).
One can’t help but think that Rothstein’s demise in 1928 freed Clarke to publish Louis Beretti along with the nonfiction In The Reign of Rothstein, both in 1929.
There’s an awful lot of inside mobster facts about beating prohibition in Louis Beretti (such as how to make ‘smoke’ out of a quart of denaturalized wood alcohol sold at paint shops and adding a few drops of iodine, shaking the concoction til it attains a milky hue), that give the novel an incredible verisimilitude. Also some timeless mobster advice on success with the ladies: ‘treat a whore like a duchess and a duchess like a whore.’
The novel is pretty much an episodic look at the life of a NYC mobster from birth to ‘maturity’. Think Little Caesar meets Studs Lonigan.
The thing is, it’s much more fun to read than Little Caesar, and for the life of me I cannot understand why Burnett’s mob novel is hailed as an important first of its kind while this one is forgotten.
It’s possibly because the film version of Louis Beretti is mostly forgotten (directed by John Ford in 1930), while the highly regarded film Little Caesar kept the novel’s title and has that iconic, genre defining performance from Edward G. Robinson as the lead.
In any case, don’t sleep on Louis Beretti. It’s really, really good. It also shows how natural it was for close relationships to form between alcoholic journalists and bootleggers with a speakeasy.
April 25th, 2022 at 7:24 pm
I have seen Born Reckless several times, it has a soul, as does Ford’s work generally. The cast is intriguing, Edmund Lowe, Marguerite Churchill, rank Albertson, Catherine Dale Owen, and in a small but clearly noticeable part toward the film’s end, not an extra, handsome Randolph Scott. I have no idea if it truly reflects the novel, but there must be something that triggered Jack Ford.
April 25th, 2022 at 8:21 pm
Born Reckless also has John Wayne in an uncredited role—so one of the earliest Ford/Wayne combos.
April 25th, 2022 at 9:10 pm
I’ve not seen the film, and it sounds like Barry, you’ve not read the book. But your mention of ‘soul’ in the film is interesting. That’s what is striking about the book also. It’s about a gangster that murders some people, sure. But he’s also a really solid, trustworthy guy. He’s as loyal as the day is long (??? What an odd idiom. Right?). He loves his mother. What’s remarkable is just how likable the mobster is, compared to the really unlikable little Caesar. He’s three dimensional, and you understand his motives, and why he would think them honorable, even though you’d disagree.
April 25th, 2022 at 10:12 pm
This is a really outstanding gangster novel and a pretty good book aside from that. It was fairly notable in its time, but Burnett followed up with a number of books in the genre and LITTLE CAESAR had that star making moment for Robinson.
Too, like PUBLIC ENEMY CAESAR’s portrait of a psychologically bent protagonist who comes to a deserved bad end and may have appealed to audiences more than the more nuanced BERETTI. Good bad guys were nothing new even in 1929, but sociopaths as the main character were and better reflected the headlines.
You can’t always make sense of these things. Why James Bond instead of Johnny Fedora who beat him into print and was equally well written?
Sometimes that’s all it takes for one book or film to become a classic and another to be virtually forgotten, just something that caught the public’s attention in a way something else did not. Quality isn’t always the defining difference.
April 25th, 2022 at 10:25 pm
David is 100% right about karma not getting Beretti the way it got Caesar—hadn’t thought of that being the reason for public preference but makes a lot of sense. Wasn’t there also a code provision requiring bad guys to not get away with it? Anyway—the Beretti ending, and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything too terribly by saying it—comes surprisingly close to that of Taxi Driver.
June 26th, 2023 at 12:12 am
[…] The book is okay but not great — and is soiled by Scarface developing a conscience by the end, naming names and setting the table for a cleanup of the city. I’d put it on par with Burnett’s Little Caesar — the latter which maybe wins by a nose by the protagonist’s consistent immorality. Better than both is Louis Beretti, reviewed here: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=79372 […]