Secret Six, The (DVD)

Wallace Beery gives a powerhouse performance in this hard-boiled Pre-Code crime saga costarring Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in her M-G-M debut. Beery stars as Louis Scorpio, a stockyard worker who takes over a bootlegging gang run by small-town hoodlum Johnny Franks (Ralph Bellamy in his screen debut). Muscling into the big city rackets, Scorpio is targeted by the Secret Six, a masked tribunal that works with reporter Carl Luckner (Gable) to dig up the dirt that could convict the mobster and send him straight to the chair. Borrowed from Howard Hughes, Jean Harlow was cast as one of Scorpio's molls, sharing a few scenes with the up-and-coming Gable. Although his part was small at first, Gable's role was beefed up during production, eventually tripling in size. Within a year, the pair would become two of M-G-M's biggest stars, reteaming five more times before Harlow's untimely death in 1937.

• crime