Castle on the Hudson: I'll Do Anything To Get Outta Here!

This is my contribution to the John Garfield 100th Birthday Blogathon, hosted by They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To.  Please take the time to read all of the wonderful tributes to this very special actor.

Let's see.... tough but charming hoodlum lives the high life in the Big Apple. He is a swell dresser, has a load of untrustworthy "friends," and a swell dish for a girlfriend. A bit of bad weekend luck (Saturday is always his bad luck day) gets him sent up the river to that famous Castle on the Hudson known as Sing Sing. He thinks he can run the joint, but soon the reforming warden sets him straight. After some drama, a few laughs, and ultimate redemption, the mug goes to the chair a better man. Plus, everyone talks very fast and a 2-hour movie is condensed into 77 minutes. Must be a Warner Brothers production, right? Right.

1940's "Castle on the Hudson" is a remake of 1932's "20,000 Years in Sing Sing." I'm not really sure why Warner felt it necessary to recycle the story, but perhaps it seemed a good fit for its stars John Garfield and Ann Sheridan.

Garfield plays Tommy Gordon, an almost unlikable hood who went to the James Cagney school of cockiness (and graduated at the top of the class). There is no doubt that Garfield can handle the little tough but tender guy role with ease, but it has all been done before. He is wonderful but wasted. Wasted, too, is Ann Sheridan as Kay, at the peak of her celebrated "oomph" but required only to look beautiful and sincere while gazing through tear-glistened orbs.

But it's a good, professional Warner product with the usual wonderful group of supporting players, so let's focus on the fun things:

Tommy is a very natty dresser and prides himself on his good taste. In fact it is a lost shirt stud that is found at the scene of the crime that does him in. Tommy's vanity is rather adorable and Garfield puts it over with great charm.

Tommy after the heist - well dressed and ready for fun

Kay has a really neat wardrobe, too. The costumes by Howard Shoup are beautiful and I wish I could have found some better photos to illustrate how lovely Sheridan looked in them.

It always amazes me how these molls seem to
have evening gowns at the ready

An interesting cast member here is Burgess Meredith as an intellectual fellow inmate who organizes a break but ends up choosing a dramatic death over the chair. He is a bit out of  sync with the rest of the Warners rhythm section and shakes the film up a bit by his presence.

A publicity photo of the 3 stars

Following the story of Tommy's love of good clothes, there is a fun scene where he has to submit to the prison issued uniform. He goes from baggy, to union suit to rags before we finally see him in a better fit.

Tommy in rags: still cute

The ever-reliable Pat O'Brien as the warden who finds the good in Tommy. Sure, we've seen it before, but he always makes things better just by being there, doesn't he?

It is exhausting trying to reform all of these A-list stars!

Ann Sheridan, looking beyond beautiful after she leaps out of a speeding car to avoid Jerome Cowan's animal advances. She also lives in a beyond swank apartment that looks big enough to host the Superbowl. How does she afford it?

Right after the leap from the car and right
before she plugs Cowan. What a gal.

While the film is fun in an ordinary sort of way, the genre is tired. At one point Tommy Gordon cries "I'll do anything to get outta here!" and you get the feeling Garfield is saying the same thing. He can do this sort of role with his hands tied behind his back. He is ready for something better, something more challenging, something more modern. He belongs to the future, not to the past.

Happy birthday, Johnny Boy - you look great at 100.