Director Robert Florey's career uniquely spans B-movies, A-listers and the avant garde. While the French-born director was responsible for the Marx Brothers' feature length debut The Cocoanuts (1929), as well as other studio pictures like Murder In The Rue Morgue (1932), he's most beloved for his utterly unique and Deco-stylish experimental short The Lif eAnd Death Of 9413, A Hollywood Extra (1928) (made in partnership with montage sequence innovater Slavko Vorkapich). Even while slumming in B-noirs like this one, under the pseudonym "Florian Roberts," aficionados of that art film can spot similarities in close-ups, dutch angles, and the comings and goings of nobodies in this bare story about a bank robber (Faye Emerson, soon to be daughter-in-law to the Roosevelts) whose heist involving a purloined dog leads to jailhouse trouble. A Remake of pre-Code Stanwyck picture Ladies They Talk About (1933), Jackie Gleason can also be spotted here in an early role.

By Violet LeVoit