Johnny Eager (1942) - film review

Recently released from prison, former gangster Johnny Eager convinces his parole officer he has gone straight by masquerading as a taxi cab driver.  In truth, he has resumed his illicit activities and hopes to make it big when he opens his greyhound track.  One thing stands in his way: district attorney John Benson Farrell has raised an injunction to prevent the track from opening.  Fate throws Johnny a winning card, in the guise of  Farrell’s stepdaughter Liz Bard.  Realising that Liz has fallen in love with him, Johnny cons her into believing she has shot a man to save his life.  This allows him to put pressure on Farrell to achieve his aims.  But when he realises the consequences of his actions, Johnny decides he must put Liz’s best interests before his own, but at a far greater price than he imagined...

Just as Mervyn LeRoy kickstarted the American gangster movie of the 1930s with Little Caesar (1931), so he would provide impetus to the hardboiled crime drama of the 1940s with this equally influential film noir.  Pairing Lana Turner, the seductive blonde who had debuted in LeRoy’s They Won't Forget (1937), with matinee idol Robert Taylor was inspired and allowed both actors to gravitate to more substantial roles in the years that followed.  Turner sizzles with the charisma and sensuality that would ignite many of her subsequent films, most famously the superlative film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).  As the cynical and apparently heartless gangster lead, the devastatingly photogenic Taylor proves that he can handle more serious and darker dramatic roles whilst retaining his audience’s sympathy.  What makes Johnny Eager so memorable is the electrifying on-screen chemistry between Turner and Taylor ("T’n’T are dynamite!" one poster humorously proclaimed), an iconic screen coupling which proves to be more than adequate compensation for the convoluted (and pretty nonsensical) plot.  The film also offers some exceptional supporting contributions, from such talented performers as Edward Arnold and Van Heflin - the latter of whom won the Best Supporting Oscar for his scene-stealing portrayal of Johnny’s melancholic sidekick.

LeRoy directs the film with his customary flair, establishing most of the conventions of the film noir gangster film whilst also investing the film with an emotional heart which is seldom glimpsed in the tougher noir crime dramas.  Johnny Eager is essentially an old-fashioned morality tale in which a thoroughly nasty piece of work (who might have turned out differently if he had had a dog when he was a boy) is redeemed by the love of a good woman, although, in the best tradition of film noir, this act of redemption comes at a terrible price.  One of the few films noirs made by MGM, Johnny Eager is a far glossier production than the similarly themed noir B-movies that would be churned out by the other Hollywood studios over the next decade, although the film’s polished look does slightly denude it of the dark and sinister atmosphere that we associate with classic film noir.  That said, the film’s spectacular denouement is one of the most dramatic and heart-wrenching the genre has given us, every bit as shocking as the ending that LeRoy served up for Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, but with a deliciously ironic twist.

© James Travers 2011

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