Brian Donlevy is "The Great McGinty" in this 1940 film written and directed by Preston Sturges. The film also stars two men who would become part of the Sturges group of actors, Akim Tamiroff and William Demarest. Muriel Angelus plays McGinty's wife.

Sturges always had interesting beginnings - or ends - to his films. This one begins: One man was always evil and had a moment of honesty; another man was always good and had a moment of evil. They both had to leave the country (paraphrasing). In a foreign country, a bartender tells his story to a suicidal man, an embezzler whom he has just saved, and a woman who works at the establishment. His story is a wild one - he was once governor of a state. As the story unfolds, McGinty - that's the man's name - was a hobo when he was paid $2 to vote to get a man into office. He voted 37 times and attracted the attention of a crooked political boss (Tamiroff) who gets him elected as alderman, mayor, and finally puts him up for governor. Along the way, he marries his secretary (Angelus) in order to have the appearance of a stable, good man. It's a marriage of convenience - she has two children and a dachshund. But he falls in love with all of them, and with her encouragement, decides to turn his back on the graft and the stealing and start thinking of the people. That's when he gets into trouble.

"The Great McGinty" isn't a crazy comedy like "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" or "The Palm Beach Story." The humor comes out of the fact that this bum rises to the office of mayor and locks horns with the big boss. The best scenes are between Tamiroff and Donlevy, who work beautifully together, particularly when they're trying to kill one another. Though one of the last scenes is a sad one, Sturges gives us our smiles back with the last moments of the film.

Brian Donlevy, who is usually in a supporting role, does a terrific job as McGinty - tough and belligerent, but with a kind side even he didn't know he had. Donlevy repeated his role of McGinty in "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" in a cameo. Muriel Angelus, a British leading lady who retired to raise a family in 1946, is lovely as Mrs. McGinty, who never wanted to get married again and then falls in love with her husband. Tamiroff makes a powerful "Boss" who has a volatile relationship with his puppet, who sometimes gets out of his strings. An excellent movie that pokes fun at political machinery and behind the scenes plotting. It also shows us what can happen when a little love comes into our lives.

Once again, Brian Donlevy ("Dan McGinty") provides pretty good entertainment. He isn't one of the more famous actors of the classic era but he did his share of good films and good performances. This certainly ranks among his best. And he mixed well with Akim Tamiroff in here, both verbally and physically. And.....Preston Sturges wrote and directed the film. All of that makes it a surprise there are so reviews of this film on this website.

The story of McGinty and his wife "Catherine" (Murel Angelus) also turns out to be nice with a unique twist to the relationship. It starts off as a business-type of deal, then turns romantic but ends sadly. However, the film doesn't end on a sad note.

To be fair, however, I have to admit I liked this far more on the first viewing. When I looked it at 6 years later after watching thousands of other classic films, this just didn't come across as strong. The first thirty 30 minutes was good with some snappy dialog but then it bogged down with that marriage-for-convenience angle and the politics got really sappy. So beware: you might really enjoy this, or you might find it really stupid. It could go either way, but if you are classic movie fan, you should consider checking this film out.

The 1940s saw the appearance of four major American directors: Orson Welles, John Huston, Billy Wilder, and Preston Sturgis. They had careers of varying degrees of success. Welles is usually seen as the great talent done to death by the jackals of the Hollywood system and his own personality quirks. Wilder and Huston were both more successful, although both met with serious problems as well - Huston with the threat of the blacklist in the last 1940s, and Wilder with increasing feelings of irrelevance in the industry after 1969. Sturgis actually had a far longer career in Hollywood, as he was a highly successful screenplay writer in the 1930s. But his heyday as a great comedy director lasted only from 1940 - 1948, and even then with two projects (THE SIN OF HAROLD DIDDLEBOCK and UNFAITHFULLY YOURS) failures at the box office. His last two films (THE BEAUTIFUL BLOND OF BASHFUL BEND and THE FRENCH THEY ARE A FUNNY FACE were not as good as the films that preceded them. He was finished as a filmmaker by 1955. Even Welles lasted longer.

His first film comedy (that he wrote and directed) is THE GREAT MCGINTY (1940) starring Brian Donleavy as the title character. It remains the best study of the weaknesses of the democracy our country prides itself on every 4th of July or other patriotic occasion. For the whole joke of the rise and fall of Dan McGinty is that he only succeeds when he fully works alongside the corrupt Boss (Akim Tamiroff) and the latter's underlings (William Demerest, Harry Rosenthal),and when he actually tries to personally reform and be the good statesman, he is brought down by the Boss in disgrace. Said this way the joke sounds flat, but Sturgis' witty and perceptive script is not flat at all.

Basically the problem comes down to this - how seriously do Americans take their system? As I said before we give a lip service to it, and we follow the forms, but do we really understand the nature of the public trust imposed on our elected officials (and the electorate)? It is doubtful.

The reason is that everyone is more concerned with earning a living for themselves and their families. At one point Muriel Angelus tells William Demerest she has just read a book in which the writer points out that the money spread around by political corruption actually does help everyone by stimulating business and prosperity. Demerest shoots back that he wishes that book was read by everyone in the country.

Of course Demerest's self interest would push this theory. But is he far from totally wrong? When Donleavy runs for Governor he is Mayor of the state's largest city. There is a series of inter-cut scenes of Demerest giving a speech for Donleavy while Robert Warwick gives a speech for the "reform" candidate. Warwick keeps harping on the useless public roads and public works that Donleavy and his cronies have foisted on the public to line their pockets. But Demerest reminds the public that as a result of these acts of public construction hundreds of families were fed during what was the depression, and the result gave the people "the most beautiful city in the world." For all of Warwick's high toned attack, the actually results of the corruption seem rather sensible.

Akim Tamiroff's boss seems like a typical political hood, but if you listen carefully his comments culminating in "America is land of great opportunity" merely mirrors comments like those of the Tammany Hall sage George Washington Plunkitt in the early 20th Century, who said he "saw his opportunities and took 'em." Plunkitt differentiated between "honest graft" (i.e. inflating the prices of public works projects which do benefit the city),and "dishonest graft" (stealing the iron roof of an almshouse to sell it to a scrap iron dealer). But there are examples of dishonest graft in Tamiroff's world - examples that Plunkitt would have known of. When Donleavy starts his way up the political power tree, he is an "enforcer" collecting bribes from bordello operators and bar owners. This is not as gray an area of corruption as the public works issue - how do you defend shake-downs of small fry?

Sturgis, in the end, destroys the machine and the would-be reformer by showing the impossibility of reform. Donleavy tries to make a stand, but his principled attempt is ignored as the public learns he took bribes. He is swept out of power as rapidly (in it's way) as his rise from bum to governor had been. Yet even Sturgis must have realized that in the real world such sudden altruism would not have occurred to rock the boat. In his later film, THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK, we find both Donleavy and Tamiroff back in power together, running the state - and (in the end of that film) solving the problems of the hero and heroine.