Slip, who has difficulties in keeping any job for long, is hired by the District Attorney's office to serve summons and warrants to problematic citizens.Slip, who has difficulties in keeping any job for long, is hired by the District Attorney's office to serve summons and warrants to problematic citizens.Slip, who has difficulties in keeping any job for long, is hired by the District Attorney's office to serve summons and warrants to problematic citizens.
- Whitey
- (as Billy Benedict)
- Boyfriend (Dynamite Doyle)
- (as Billy Christy)
- Mr. Barton
- (as Robert E. Keane)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe first of 48 Bowery Boys movies released from 1946 to 1958. In 1945, when East Side Kids producer Sam Katzman refused to grant Leo Gorcey's request to double his weekly salary, Gorcey quit the series, formed his own production company (owning 40% of it) with his agent Jan Grippo called Jan Grippo Productions, revamped the format including getting rid of the teen-aged stories, and rechristened the series The Bowery Boys (i.e., "Leo Gorcey and The Bowery Boys").
- GoofsAs Slip and Sach argue before the street hustler, Sach unfolds his arms, turns to Slip and says "I don't think it's any good." The shadow of the boom microphone is visible, moving on and off Sach's right side.
- Quotes
Terrence 'Slip' Mahoney: [Sach and Slip inside an ice cream parlor noticing a crowd gathering around someone out in the street] Looks more like somebody's trying to incite a riot.
'Sach' Jones: What do you mean inside? The guys outside.
Terrence 'Slip' Mahoney: [Slip turns to Sach] Whoever said "Ignorance is bliss" must have been talking to you first.
- ConnectionsFollowed by In Fast Company (1946)
LIVE WIRES has some comedy and familiar schtick, including Gorcey's patented mangling of big words ("why, they'll put me up on a pedestrian") and lots of slapping each other with hats, but it's much more interested in a routine crime tale that gets unnecessarily convoluted as more characters pile on. Slip Mahoney (Gorcey) has trouble holding a job and is seen failing at one thing after another (including a long, tiresome routine involving the sidewalk peddling of a phony stain remover) until he joins Sach (Hall) as a "skip tracer," basically repo men assigned to track down deadbeats and repossess merchandise that hasn't been fully paid for. It's an unlikely profession for these two and not something we'll ever see them do again. Slip does, however, prove quite efficient and, in one clever scene, manages to trick an unlucky nightclub chanteuse out of her coveted convertible. Eventually, the boys are recruited to track down and serve summonses to the ringleaders of a citywide car theft ring. This leads to a comical encounter in the film's final 15 minutes with a childlike but physically aggressive mountain-sized gangster who effortlessly (and "playfully") bounces the hapless Slip off the walls of a well-appointed lounge with a fully-stocked bar. (The gangster is played by third-billed Mike Mazurki as a take-off on Moose Malloy, the not-so-gentle giant he played in the Philip Marlowe film noir classic, MURDER, MY SWEET, 1944, a connection referenced in the ads for LIVE WIRES.)
Too much of the film takes place in spacious offices, apartments, stores and a fancy club. You'd think the film actually had a budget. There's very little East Side or Bowery flavor on view. When addresses are given, they're not recognizable Manhattan addresses. (I'm sorry, but there are no "Walnut and 3rd" or "4th and Main" in Manhattan.) Slip's sister Mary (Pamela Blake), who plays the mother figure in his life, has far more screen time than any of the other Bowery Boys, aside from Sach. There's a Louie's Ice Cream Parlor, but no Louie Dumbrowsky. The actor who later played Louie, Bernard Gorcey (Leo's dad), shows up at the parlor here, but as a bookie named Jack Kane. Of the five Bowery Boys, in addition to Slip, Sach and Bobby (Jordan), there are Whitey (Billy Benedict, also a regular in the East Side Kids) and the wildly unfamiliar Homer (played by William Frambes in his only Bowery Boys movie), a farm boy who seems to have wandered off the set of one of Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle films.
LIVE WIRES was the fifth film directed by Phil Karlson, who is better known for his violent, hard-hitting crime thrillers from the 1950s (KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL, 99 RIVER STREET, FIVE AGAINST THE HOUSE, THE PHENIX CITY STORY, THE BROTHERS RICO) and '70s (WALKING TALL, FRAMED). He keeps things moving when he can and throws in a couple of action scenes, including a brawl started by Slip at a nightclub, but the script gives him little opportunity to craft anything particularly memorable out of this. Later films in the series would perfect the formula by placing Gorcey and Hall in center stage as a comedy team and putting them in all manner of slapstick situations and crimefighting shenanigans, sometimes keeping them at home in the Bowery and sometimes sending them off to such not-so-very-convincing locations as Paris, London, Bagdad, Las Vegas, the Wild West, the Ozarks, and assorted military bases.
- BrianDanaCamp
- Mar 6, 2010
- Permalink
Details
- Runtime1 hour 5 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1