20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932)

I watched this movie for the first time last night. I was blown away by the acting of Tracy and Arthur Byron (who plays the warden at Sing Sing). Byron has a commanding voice (he was a famous stage actor) and it is well used here. Director Curtiz obviously liked him because Byron gets a lot of screen time. There are a lot of reaction shots from Byron and Curtiz lets the camera linger on him - his thoughtful face fills the screen. Bette Davis is surprisingly feminine and very sexy. Her characters got edgier later in her career. Here she is very attractive and interesting to watch. The acting from the other supporting actors is not very good and the script is bad. The script simply does not make sense in places. Rockcliffe Fellowes plays Tracy's friend near the end of the picture. Fellowes was the excellent star of 1915's Regeneration (Raoul Walsh dir.)but his career nosedived in talkies. He is worth seeing. If you like pre-Code drama this is definitely worth a look.

Michael Curtiz directed this above average prison, crime drama adapted from the book of the same name written by Lewis Lawes (who really was a Warden at Sing Sing!) by Courtney Terrett and Robert Lord, with a screenplay by Wilson Mizner and Brown Holmes. It stars Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis (their only film together), as well as Arthur Byron and Louis Calhern (among others).The title refers to the cumulative sentencing time of all the inmates held at the famous New York state prison.The film was later remade by director Anatole Litvak as Castle on the Hudson (1940) with John Garfield, Ann Sheridan, Pat O'Brien, and Jerome Cowan (respectively).Since I saw the latter first, the plot summary is contained within my review of that film on IMDb.com.As far as I can tell, there is little difference between the two films. In fact, their run-times are within 5 minutes of each other; this one is the longer of the two, and its ending does drag a bit.Even though Tracy played a number of tough characters early in his career (like Davis, this was one of his first 10-15 roles), I think Garfield was better suited to the role. Tracy's character is named Tom Connors in this one.Ms. Davis, who is perhaps my favorite actress (and the greatest who ever lived?), wasn't as much of a factor in her ingenue days (e.g. in this film, as Fay Wilson, she didn't stand out) as she was later in her career whereas Ms. Sheridan (whose performance is very good) was given more to do in the remake.Byron, who was in scant few films, does a credible job if not as effusive as O'Brien, as Warden Long. Lyle Talbot and Warren Hymer play the smart and dumb cons, Bud Saunders and Hype respectively, though Burgess Meredith and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams had already established themselves in these type of roles by the time they appeared in the remake. Calhern's lawyer Joe Finn isn't much different from the one Cowan played.The role that's changed the most between the films is that of the death row prison priest, played by an uncredited actor (Hardie Albright?) in this one and John Litel, who's given a little more screen-time in the latter. Grant Mitchell appears uncredited in both films as the prison's IQ tester.It's ironic that the first film is longer when the second film contains a court scene (with Henry O'Neill) and more of Garfield's planned escape being shown, including his being conscious of "the heat" being put on the warden by the press.

After several assaults with a deadly weapon, gangster Spencer Tracy (as Thomas "Tommy" Connors) goes to spend 5-30 years in New York's "Sing Sing" prison. At first, Mr. Tracy good-naturedly jokes about jail. But he loses his cool when the clothing is too baggy, and punches out a policeman. Tracy is made to wear his underwear - long johns, actually, and nobody changed the scripted line about how Tracy's legs made him look like Marlene Dietrich, after the wardrobe change...Tracy is allowed kissing time with shapely blonde girlfriend Bette Davis (as Fay Wilson). He tries to get along with reform-minded warden Arthur Byron (as Paul Long) and stay out of trouble with sneaky inmate Lyle Talbot (as Bud Saunders). For responding well, Tracy is allowed time out of jail to see Davis. Unfortunately, this leads to bigger trouble for Tracy… "20,000 Years in Sing Sing" are the total years the inmates are serving there. This was the only pairing of Tracy and Davis.****** 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (12/24/32) Michael Curtiz ~ Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis, Arthur Byron, Lyle Talbot

This movie is a tame, toothless wannabe prison/crime drama that doesn't hold a candle to its pre-Code siblings such as Scarface, Little Caesar, and Public Enemy, to name a few. I was quite disappointed.The movie starts out promising enough, with Spencer Tracy as a hardened tough guy being hauled off to Sing Sing. The problem with this movie is that is was really all over the map -- it didn't pick one genre and stick to it. At times it was a crime flick (or was pretending to be), at other times a light-hearted comedy, at other times a buddy flick (with the prison warden and Tracy being the buddies, no less!). The actors did well with their individual roles (including a very young and beautiful Bette Davis) and the story moved fairly apace, but in the end it added up to a whole lot of nothing for me.To top it off, there were some inconsistencies and/or hard-to-follow plot developments that bothered me: 1 - During a psychological test session to determine which manual labor to place the prisoners in, Tracy and Lyle Talbot do good enough on their puzzle to earn the "shoe shop" (top of the line job at the prison, according to the story), but dolt Hype can't fit the square piece into the square slot even after 5 minutes, so he is assigned lavatory duty. However, minutes later when we see the boys toiling away in the shoe shop, there's Hype too! 2 - While on his honor leave, Tracy decides he needs to get out of town rather than returning to prison. He talks to one of his buddies to make arrangements to leave on a train, and even hands over $5,000 to help grease the wheels and make the escape happen. Then, a scene or two later, we see Tracy showing back up at prison. What gives? 3 - The whole business with Tracy's lawyer and his girlfriend and the $5,000, I just didn't understand it. The movie tried to explain it but either they did a really bad job of it, or there were things going on in 1932 that you just had to be there to understand it (and hence my 2005 mind didn't quite catch), or I'm as big of a dolt as Hype. (I prefer not to think it's the latter!) Overall, it was fun to watch Tracy and Davis early in their careers, but honestly wasn't really worth having to sit through this movie in order to do so.