Woody,
Re your comments below:
> Burnett was never actually credited with writing a
screen
adaptation of Saint
> Johnson. Who knows if he might have given John
Huston a hand in the
original
> version directed by Edward Cahn. By the way, Saint
Johnson was
adapted for
> the screen on three occasions, all entitled Law and
Order. The
first L&O in
> 1932, directed by Cahn, script by John Huston. The
second in 1940,
directed by
> Ray Taylor, starring Johnnie Mack Brown, and the
third in 1953,
starring
> Ronald Reagan.
In the first place, there were two more film adaptations of
SAINT JOHNSON, and, in the second place, Burnett was the
co-writer on one of them.
One was entitled WAY OUT WEST, a multi-chapter serial which,
like the second feature to be entitled LAW & ORDER,
starred Johnny Mack Brown. There was little of the
Earp/Clanton feud to be found in this one. Nevertheless,
Burnett's SAINT JOHNSON was credited as the source
material.
The second, coming just a year after the first LAW &
ORDER, also starred Walter Huston. It was called BEAST OF THE
CITY. In this one, Burnett, one of the credited
screenwriters, reversed the usual pattern done with film
versions of his work (that is taking a gangster story and
reworking it as a western) and instead took his western and
reworked it as a gangster story.
Huston played Captain Jim Fitzpatrick, commander of Homicide
in a city that is unnamed but is obviously Chicago. Jean
Hersholt plays the Capone figure (standing in for the
Clantons). And Wallace Ford plays the weak-willed kid
brother, who's also a detective on the Force. Fitzpatrick,
unpopular with the powers-that-be, is transferred from
Homicide to a remote precinct to get him out of the
limelight, but, through a series of fortuitous events, gets a
fast- track promotion to police chief and goes after the Mob
with guns blazing. The final scene, parallelling the OK
Corral shoot-out, is a gun battle between the cops and
mobsters in a gangland nightclub.
Burnett was quite proud of this film, thinking it quite the
equal of the three seminal gangster films of this period,
LITTLE CAESAR, SCARFACE, and THE PUBLIC ENEMY. Notably,
Burnett had something to do with the first two of those
three, being the author of the source novel of the first, and
the screenwriter of the second.
JIM DOHERTY
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