LARCENY, INC. Warner Bros., 1952.  95 min. Edward G. Robinson, Broderick Crawford, Jane Wyman, Jack Carson, Edward Brophy, Anthony Quinn, Harry Davenport, John Qualen, Grant Mitchell, Barbara Jo Allen, Jackie C. Gleason. Based on the play The Night Before Christmas by Laura and S. J. Perelman.  Director: Lloyd Bacon.

         “Weepy, I don’t like the idea of going into a bank through the front door.”

   Edward G. plays J. Chalmers Maxwell, known to his associates as “Pressure.” He and his not-so-bright pal Jug Martin (played to lunk-headed perfection by the greatly underrated Broderick Crawford) have just been released from prison and plan to go straight. All they need is some money to buy a dog track in Florida, but when Pressure applies for a loan at the bank. he is turned down — the “c” word: collateral. (Those were the days when bankers actually considered such things.)

   Pressure figures that to get the dough he needs for his enterprise, why he’ll just have to extract it from the very bank that turned down his application, nyah. But he’ll need a cover and finds it in a luggage shop located right next door. He buys the shop, not realizing until later that he has acquired a cash cow.

   Oddly enough, in spite of a plethora of criminals, some with guns, nobody dies in this movie.

   The entire cast is great, but this is still very much Edward G.’s show.