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Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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Timely! Tremendous! Thrilling! Drama of Love and a Jail-Break!
Convicted of manslaughter for a drunken driving accident, Kent Marlowe is sent to prison, where he meets vicious incarcerated figures who are planning an escape from the brutal conditions.
CinemaSerf
Oct 12, 2025 · via TMDB
This is one of my favourite early examples of the dog-eat-dog world in prison as the young “Marlowe” (Robert Montgomery) is sent down for a decade after a road accident led to a fatality. Not surprisingly, he’s as anxious as hell - not least when he learns that he is to share facilities with “Morgan” (Chester Morris) and convicted murderer “Butch” (Wallace Beery). The governor (Lewis Stone) is broadly sympathetic, as is the chief warder (George F. Marlon) as they reckon putting this naive and impressionable young man in with folks like this isn’t going to aid his chances of survival, much less rehabilitation. Quickly, though, “Marlowe” learns there is a code of practice to be honoured here, and the first rule is never welch to the authorities. When he is misled into breaking that rule, he incurs the wrath of “Morgan” whose parole is promptly cancelled! It isn’t him that’s the target, though, because when “Morgan” decides he’s leaving anyway he decides to target his new nemesis’s sister “Annie” (Leila Hyams) on the outside. Thing is though, might she end up have a far more mellowing and civilising effect on this hitherto bank robber than his years behind bars? The curmudgeonly, knife-wielding, Beery steals the show for me here but both Morris and Montgomery also deliver quite potently as this pretty scathing analysis of the flaws of the prison system and it’s rotten eggs in one basket is writ large. The screenplay keeps the dialogue tight and the direction really does offer us a sense of the perilous claustrophobia that prevailed in their overcrowded environment where a survival of the fittest mentality and solitary confinement techniques that wouldn’t have shocked Spartacus still ruled the roost.
User reviews courtesy of TMDB.
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Chester Morris
John Morgan
Wallace Beery
Machine Gun 'Butch' Schmidt
Lewis Stone
Warden James Adams
Robert Montgomery
Kent Marlowe
Leila Hyams
Anne Marlowe
George F. Marion
Pop
J. C. Nugent
Mr. Marlowe
Karl Dane
Olsen
DeWitt Jennings
Wallace
Matthew Betz
Gopher
Claire McDowell
Mrs. Marlowe
Robert Emmett O'Connor
Donlin
Tom Wilson
Sandy
Roscoe Ates
Putnam
Fletcher Norton
Oliver
Noah Beery Jr.
Convict in Yard (uncredited)
Chris-Pin Martin
Inmate (uncredited)
Louis Natheaux
Morgan's Lawyer (uncredited)
Herbert Prior
Prison Doctor (uncredited)
Harry Wilson
Inmate #46375 (uncredited)
Angelo Rossitto
Inmate (uncredited)
Cedric Gibbons
Art Direction
Joseph Farnham
Additional Dialogue
George W. Hill
Director
Irving Thalberg
Producer
Douglas Shearer
Sound
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Jun 7, 1930
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Jun 14, 1930
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Seven Dorms of Death
2015
Preview
1982
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Battle your watched movies head-to-head
Community Top Movies
Evil Dead II
1987 · 14 wins
The Dark Knight
2008 · 14 wins
Halloween
1978 · 13 wins
Final Destination
2000 · 12 wins
Halloween II
1981 · 11 wins
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