Inside The Law

A mom-and-pop band of pickpockets makes a fat haul in New York City and decide that a change of scenery is due. After a long road trip across the country, they reach the Los Angeles city limits, where they interfere with a drunk-driving arrest just long enough to lift the driver's wallet. While there's no cash in it, there is a letter of introduction to a local bank. Gang member Billy assumes the arrested driver's identity and cons the bank president into taking him on as manager. Quickly hiring the rest of the gang as clerks, Billy plots to steal the institution's entire assets.

With roots in vaudeville and Broadway, Wallace Ford switched to film work in 1932, appearing with Joan Crawford in Possessed. Ahead of him was a long career that would include 200 films and scores of TV shows. Wallace's co-star in Inside the Law, Luana Walters, was a vivacious presence in dozens of B-westerns and adventure films in the 30s and 40s, but today many remember her most fondly for her appearance opposite Bela Lugosi in The Corpse Vanishes (1942). Others are more partial to her roles in the exploitation films, Assassin of Youth (1939) and No Greater Sin (1941).

• comedy