Unholy Partners (1941)
Even though I liked the cast list of Edward G. Robinson, Edward Arnold, and Laraine Day, I didn’t end up liking Unholy Partners. Robinson is a veteran returning to his old job at the newspaper, but his ambition gets the better of him and he wants to start his own paper. He brings his faithful secretary, Laraine, and his Army sidekick, William Orr, but he doesn’t have the collateral to start his business. He gets the idea of going 50-50 with a gangster, Arnold, as a silent partner. He also gets the idea of “creating” news before the other papers get ahold of the headlines. For example, Robinson telephones instructions to his newspaper about a nightclub raid, then calls the police to orchestrate the raid.
The film felt a little uneven; was it a gangster picture or a newspaper drama? Robinson’s character was obsessed with having the most popular newspaper in town, but we never saw the transition to him becoming unethical. One could argue that if he was that ambitious of a newspaperman, he was automatically unethical, but I didn’t think that was what the story was trying to prove.
Laraine’s character was completely one-dimensional. She was very pretty and underused as a secretary, and Robinson just treated her like part of the furniture. She was never given anything to do, or shown any explanation as to why she loved him so much when he treated her like parsley, or why she put her life on hold for years and years waiting for him to notice her when any other man would gladly have taken her off the market.
There was also a side romance between Orr and Marsha Hunt, a nightclub singer and “friend” of Arnold. They were both pretty immature, and their relationship consisted of petty bickering. All in all, there wasn’t anyone I was rooting for, except for Laraine to stop loving someone who was incapable of giving her attention.
Want to watch it? Click here to see it on ok.ru and thanks "Classic Movies Kristine Rose" for posting!
More Edward G. Robinson movies here!
The film felt a little uneven; was it a gangster picture or a newspaper drama? Robinson’s character was obsessed with having the most popular newspaper in town, but we never saw the transition to him becoming unethical. One could argue that if he was that ambitious of a newspaperman, he was automatically unethical, but I didn’t think that was what the story was trying to prove.
Laraine’s character was completely one-dimensional. She was very pretty and underused as a secretary, and Robinson just treated her like part of the furniture. She was never given anything to do, or shown any explanation as to why she loved him so much when he treated her like parsley, or why she put her life on hold for years and years waiting for him to notice her when any other man would gladly have taken her off the market.
There was also a side romance between Orr and Marsha Hunt, a nightclub singer and “friend” of Arnold. They were both pretty immature, and their relationship consisted of petty bickering. All in all, there wasn’t anyone I was rooting for, except for Laraine to stop loving someone who was incapable of giving her attention.
Want to watch it? Click here to see it on ok.ru and thanks "Classic Movies Kristine Rose" for posting!
More Edward G. Robinson movies here!