Bullets or Ballots

One of the greatest elements of William Keighley’s Bullets or Ballots is the appearance of noir icon Humphrey Bogart, who in 1936 had not yet become a well-known actor, let alone a superstar, and was relegated to supporting gangster roles (another film released this same year, The Petrified Forest, gave his reputation a major boost). In this film, however, and in what might have been a one-dimensional role as the ambitious, murderous “Bugs” Fenner, his star potential shines through and arguably overtakes lead actor Edward G. Robinson, who portrays Johnny Blake, an NYPD cop known for nabbing racketeers loosely based on real-life NYC cop Johnny Broderick. When Blake is forced off the force, he accepts a job  with powerful crime boss Al Kruger (Barton MacLane), who reports to a trio of mysterious business leaders. The cynical and violent Fenner (Bogart), who runs the produce markets, sees Blake as a threat and a possible police informer, and he may turn out to be right. A decade before playing an over-the-hill carnie in the brilliant Nightmare Alley (1947), Joan Blondell plays Blake’s girlfriend Lee Morgan, who runs a highly successful numbers racket uptown with her partner, the entrepreneurial Nellie LaFleur (Louise Beavers), an astonishingly strong, self-confident, and well-rounded character for a black woman in 1936 Hollywood (“You thought of this game, you’re the one who deserves to get rich from it,” Lee tells her). The film’s opening scene sees Kruger and Fenner buying tickets for the latest “crime picture,” undoubtedly another gangster production from Warner Brothers, the studio that critic Andrew Sarris later described as “the most reliable source of entertainment through the thirties and forties.”