Jul 2, 2019

On DVD: Wallace Beery and Dean Stockwell in The Mighty McGurk (1947)


Wallace Beery picks up where he left off with Jackie Cooper in the 1930s in The Mighty McGurk (1947), a drama of an ex-boxer in the Bowery who finds himself responsible for a British orphan (Dean Stockwell). Now available on DVD from Warner Archive, if you didn’t see the extra mileage on Beery, it would be easy to mistake this film for also being a product of the thirties.

Beery is the titular McGurk, nicknamed Slag, retired from the ring and making a living as a bouncer at a saloon for the morally crooked Mike Glenson (Edward Arnold). His pawnshop owner sort-of-girlfriend Mamie Steeple (Aline MacMahon) keeps him from starving as he looks to open his own place. When Slag goes to retrieve Mike’s daughter (Dorothy Patrick) at the docks after a boat journey, he tips off her former love, and his former boxing protégé Johnny Burden (a young and adorable Cameron Mitchell). Mike sent his daughter away to end their relationship, but Slag approves of the relationship.

At the docks, Slag finds himself suddenly the custodian of Nipper (Stockwell), who has been shipped to his uncle. He is pressured into finding the man for the lad, but soon finds that Nipper would rather stay with him. While he deals with what he hopes to be temporary parenthood, Mike is up to no good, and Mamie is losing her patience with the commitment shy McGurk.

Every element of this movie, from the script to the 1800s setting could be dropped right into the 1930s and seem perfectly in place. Beery, MacMahon and Arnold could also have even been plausible in the same roles, as they would have had the chops to find the necessary world weariness in their earlier years.

The big difference is in Stockwell, who certainly had his cutesy moments, but for the most part was a more sober and realistic child performer than Cooper. He doesn’t have the same chemistry with Beery as Cooper did, but he’s also pleasant for being a little lighter on the sugar than the typical juvenile star.

Though I respect his ability, I’m not a fan of Beery. I’ve always felt that too much of his real life nastiness has always seeped into his performances to make them very palatable for me. He appealed to me here though. It’s as if age settled him a bit, making him seem more pleasant and shaving a bit of the ham off his acting style.

It’s a cute flick, briskly paced and essentially what you’d expect from taking a gander at the poster.

Many thanks to Warner Archive for providing a copy of the film for review. This is a Manufacture on Demand (MOD) DVD. To order, visit The Warner Archive Collection.

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