“Blackmail”

Northern Advocate, 14 September 1940, Page 10

“Blackmail”

Against a spectacular background of oil well fires, in a tensely dramatic theme, Edward G. Robinson is said to play one of the greatest roles of his career in “Blackmail.” It is a vital, different, sympathetic role, one that, when coupled with Robinson’s portrayals of racketeering gang leaders and ruthless gunmen, finds him emerging one of the most versatile actors on the screen today. Although he is once more on the wrong side of prison bars he is there for a crime he did not commit. The heavy is Gene, Lockhart, curiously enough nearly as well known for his kindly' or comic roles as Robinson is as a killer. Robinson is cast as an oil well shooter who nine years before had escaped from a prison camp after being sent there for a crime committed by Lockhart. Seeing Robinson’s picture in a newsreel, Lockhart shows up in town, professes friendship, worms his way into Robinson's confidence, then blackmails him for 25.000 dollars in exchange for a confession to the crime. By a ruse, Lockhart receives his confession back, destroys it, and turns Robinson over to the police. Robinson is returned to prison, escapes from a road gang camp in the swamps when he learns that Lockhart has secured all his property, and in a dramatic climax threatens to burn Lockhart alive in an oil well fire. Lockhart screams his confession so that Robinson’s friends may hear. Bobs Watson, the brilliant boy star of “On Borrowed Time,” is cast in the role of Robinson's son, while Guinn (Big Boy) Williams plays Robinson’s partner in the precarious business of dynamiting oil well fires. Others in the cast are John Wray, Arthur Plohl and Esther Dale. The picture was directed by H. C. Potter.