Johnny Apollo

The son of a stock executive jailed for embezzlement tries to raise the money to get his father out. Unable to find it honestly, he drops his own name and joins a gang as Johnny Apollo. While the father learns honesty inside, the son loses it outside. The film is not interested in the criminal world. It is interested in two generations changing places: across the film the father softens and the son hardens, and they meet in the middle. The form is late-thirties studio crime: fast scenes, nightclubs, a courtroom and a brief prison riot. Henry Hathaway directed. He was making melodramas like Now and Forever in the same period; this work is harder and darker. Tyrone Power plays the son. He was the studio's romantic star, and this is one of his attempts to step outside that mould; Dorothy Lamour plays the singer and Edward Arnold the father. Who it is for: viewers who like classical Hollywood crime and Tyrone Power. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a complex plot. The story runs straight and the moral outcome is clear from the start.