Chester Morris gets ready to go to the dungeon, the name for solitary confinement in this fantastic still from The Big House, 1930.* Chester Morris never impressed me as a great actor but I always found him likable in movies like the Boston Blackie series and early sound soap operas like The Divorcee. Alas, The Big House is another early thirties film I've yet to see and not carried by Netflix. Curses! One day I will see every film made in the early thirties that isn't lost. But for now I must wait.
The movie also stars Wallace Beery, nominated for Best Actor for his role as the convict chum of Morris, and Robert Montgomery as the un-hardened criminal, killing someone while drunk driving. It seems like just last week I was looking for Hell Below with Montgomery and couldn't find it, now this. Oh wait, it was last week.
*Scanned from The MGM Story, c 1975.
