ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Skunkyrate Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

MikeMagi Despite the title, the Secret Six (a group of masked crime-fighting citizens) don't have much to do in this gangster thriller. On the other hand, it's a chance to see a young Clark Gable just a few years before MGM promoted him to super-stardom. As a probing newspaperman, he's billed way down in the cast list but gets more than ample time to show off his acting chops. Another surprise is Ralph Bellamy before he was sentenced to a life of losing the girl in countless comedies as an urbane mobster -- and he's surprisingly menacing. The star of the movie is Wallace Beery as a slaughterhouse worker turned mob boss and he does his usual job, growling, grimacing and chewing the scenery. Well worth watching in a genre that MGM usually left to Warner Bros.

calvinnme I have a hard time believing that Frances Marion - one of my favorite screenwriters of the silent and early talkie era - wrote this, it has so many holes. It's almost like someone locked Frances Marion in a closet, wrote this script, and forged her signature to it. Let me just say only one paragraph at the end of the review somewhat spoils the film. I try to leave out details in the rest of it. First off, the film is like two different movies. At the beginning you see "Slaughterhouse" Scorpio, so-named because he is working in a slaughterhouse, take up with the gang of his pal Johnny Franks (Ralph Bellamy). Scorpio has an extra "rod", actually has it on him, and likes the idea of extra money for what seems like the relatively easy work of bootlegging and whatever violence comes with it. Upstairs to gang headquarters trudges the gang.Then all of the questions start to appear.There is an older man, Robert Newton (Lewis Stone), in a somewhat drunken stupor, who seems to be in charge and is suspicious of the new gang member. Newton insults the gang freely for "thinking", but for some reason he is not afraid of them just shooting him and they just take these insults. Why? Is Robert Newton head of the gang? Is Johnny Franks? Why are Johnny and Scorpio fighting over a run-down used-up looking woman who is obviously trading on rapidly diminishing if not completely depleted assets (Marjorie Rambeau as Peaches) when the beautiful Anne (Jean Harlow) is working downstairs? Why would Newton or any of the gang think that trespassing on a bigger gang's territory, headed by John Miljan as the tux-wearing piano-playing Colimo, lead to anything but violence and little or no profit - which it does? And that's just the first half of the film.The second half of the movie, in almost one frame exactly, introduces for the first time three of MGM's biggest stars - Jean Harlow is Anne, who is a cashier at the restaurant that serves as a front for the gang, and Clark Gable and Johnny Mack Brown are two newspaper reporters, Hank and Carl, friends but trying to best each other for the biggest scoop. Anne is enlisted by Scorpio to sweet-talk Hank into not writing so much scathing material about him, and Carl seems to be on the take - but is he? Now more questions, raised not by a good plot, but by plot holes. If Newton has so little respect for Scorpio, why does he just accept him as the new gang leader? Why bother to use the courts to try Scorpio for murder and then, when that fails, that very night just use the Secret Six - who have been introduced some time before as some quasi-legal branch of law enforcement - to flood the gang with legal papers that deport practically the entire gang, disbar Newton, and indict Scorpio for tax fraud? Why the orderly arrest of Scorpio for murder but this no holds barred tommy-gun blasting surrounding and invasion of Scorpio's headquarters over all of these non-violent offenses? Let me just say I can't even see the reason for putting the secret six in the same room. They never say anything to each other, and those skimpy masks they wear are not going to fool anybody who might know them as to who they are anymore than The Lone Ranger's mask would have fooled anybody who knew him. And the second from the last scene is just goofy, and the only reason I have a spoiler warning on this review. There is Scorpio and his gang on death row, practically queued up, with ten minutes between the executions of all of them. Scorpio was arrested the second time around for tax fraud not murder...how did he wind up with the death penalty? Perhaps we can lay all of this nonsense at the feet of William Randolph Hearst, whose Cosmopolitan Production company backed the film and a film with a similar tone "Gabriel Over the White House". It seemed that when dealing with thugs Hearst didn't mind throwing the law books out the window and just lining everyone up and shooting them. Plus Hearst had so much money and power nobody was going to tell him - your film is goofy.What's the last scene? Gable as reporter Carl, telling his editor he's going to sleep for a month, he's worked so hard...but, no, there's a big story brewing and he's out to cover it like the energetic trooper of a reporter he is. Huh??? How did this film start out being about gang warfare and end up being about a reporter not introduced until the film's midpoint? Inquiring minds want to know. I'd watch this for some great acting and the great gangster film atmosphere. Then there is the irony. Plotwise there is the irony concerning how Scorpio is apprehended -I'll let you watch and find out what I'm talking about. Film history wise, there is the irony of seeing Gable and Brown as rivals on film, when in fact Gable's appearance at MGM was curtains for Johnny Mack Brown, because Gable's growly voice is what people expected Johnny Mack Brown to sound like, plus Gable just had such screen presence. I'd recommend it, but prepare to be confused.

wes-connors During Prohibition, scruffy stockyards worker Wallace Beery (as Louis "Slaughterhouse" Scorpio) is offered a more lucrative job bootlegging with pal Ralph Bellamy (as Johnny Franks). After a shooting, mob boss Lewis Stone (as Richard Newton) covers for Mr. Beery, who has become his right hand man. Investigating reporters Clark Gable (as Carl Luckner) and John Mack Brown (as Hank Rogers) try to avoid bribes while getting close enough to blow the lid off the racket. "The Secret Six" assists in crime-solving...This film is too cluttered, though it helps that Mr. Stone doubles as a lawyer. The crowded cast tries, with Mr. Beery continuing to be an engaging "talkie" presence. Berry first appeared in the "Quigley Publications" annual poll of money-making stars in 1931 (at #6) and remained for most of the 1930s. While listed down in the credits, by the end you'll know Mr. Gable is a star on the rise. Platinum blonde Jean Harlow (as Anne Courtland) and floozy Marjorie Rambeau (as Peaches) provide feminine companionship.**** The Secret Six (4/18/31) George W. Hill ~ Wallace Beery, Clark Gable, Lewis Stone, Jean Harlow

drednm Rather trite and confusing gangster story that nonetheless boasts some good performances by Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Marjorie Rambeau and Lewis Stone. I have no clue who the Secret Six (they wear little What's My Line masks) are supposed to be, but the cast is game and the story bumps long nicely. Beery plays a thug who rises in the gangster ranks after killing rival Ralph Bellamy (with scars and blacked out teeth). Gable and Johnny Mack Brown play rival news men. There's a good scene while both men phone in their stories and flirt with Harlow at the same time. Very funny. Stone is the elite lawyer/head of the gang. Rambeau is a floozy who hates Beery. Somehow it all comes together more or less, but never quite makes sense. The parts are sometimes more than the whole. Harlow is quite good. Carol Tevis is funny as the manicurist. John Miljan, Murray Kinnell, and Paul Hurst have co-starring parts. Harlow is a scream as the floozy with the MGM fine-lady accent! And Gable is definitely the star on the fast rise.