Radio review – SGP – “Blind Alley” (1940) **

Years before Analyse This, Hollywood produced another movie about a gangster who gets psychoanalysed. Only this isn’t a comedy; it’s closer to The Petrified Forest – the gangster holds the shrink hostage, and the action is treated seriously. That’s still not a bad idea for a film, although what follows is mild. Maybe part of the problem is you want the gangster to be played by Bogie or Cagney or Robinson, but here it’s Joseph Calleila (a good actor, don’t get me wrong – just not one of the big boys); Edward G Robinson plays the shrink. (The leads in the film version were Chester Morris and Ralph Bellamy, so that lacked star power too.)