Associate producer Bryan Foy once again teams Dick Purcell, June Travis and John Litel for another derivative Warners program picture. But star billing for the prison film Over the Wall (1938) goes to the former band singer Dick Foran. Given leading roles mostly in westerns - where he was sometimes billed as Dick Foran the Singing Cowboy - the handsome man with the smooth voice would soon be providing comic support in the James Cagney-Pat O'Brien comedy Boy Meets Girl (1938), lampooning himself as a dimwitted cowboy star. The story for the drama Over the Wall is by Warden Lewis E. Lawes, who had written Warners' pre-Code hit 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932). The earlier studio trend of social criticism having all but vanished, Dick Foran's prison stretch is pictured as an uplifting experience that teaches spiritual values. A gangster (Purcell) frames the hotheaded young boxer Jerry (Foran) for the murder of his manager (Ward Bond). Filled with hate, Jerry bucks the rules of the prison system until a dedicated Chaplain (Litel) gets him into the prison choir. Jerry is soon crooning songs of faith on the radio, but his problems aren't over yet. His dedicated girl (Travis) is helping to clear his name when he foolishly breaks out to prove his innocence. Church groups and the censors didn't mind an insulting plot that solves a convict's problems by having him become a radio star. Jerry sings several songs by M.K. Jerome and Jack Scholl, as well as 'Ave Maria'. The New York Times critic noted that Over the Wall was pleasantly calm for a prison film, and added that, 'No man need fear Sing Sing, unless he just can't carry a tune.'

By Glenn Erickson