The Great O'Malley

Pat O’Brien is miscast to comical effect in this crime melodrama featuring Humphrey Bogart in a small but significant role.

O’Brien plays a New York beat cop who spends his days writing nuisance citations and his nights studying the city code in search of new ordinances to enforce. To teach O’Brien some humanity, his chief assigns him to work as a crossing guard for a city grade school, where he develops a bond with a crippled young girl.

Humphrey Bogart plays the crippled girl’s father. Early in the film, O’Brien writes him a ticket for a noisy muffler, making Bogart late to work and costing him his job. Desperate, Bogart robs a pawnbroker, and ends up sentenced to two to ten years.

After learning Bogart is the girl’s father, O’Brien arranges surgery for the girl, and a parole for Bogart. This is presented as the film’s dramatic turning point, but falls flat because O’Brien’s wrong for the part.

An Irish cop? Sure. But this part proves less about the character’s ethnicity and more about his neurotype. The character should be rigid, obsessed with detail and routine, and zealous in his job. We’re told O’Brien is all these things, but he appears laconic throughout. He never changes, rendering this would-be dramatic shift just another plot beat.

Then what’s already a contrived plot becomes ludicrous. Ten minutes off the bus from prison, Bogart’s bug-eyed and shaking, convinced O’Brien is out to get him. When O’Brien does arrive, Bogart’s so paranoid and delusional, you could make the case he belongs in prison, despite O’Brien just wanting to give Bogart some toys for his daughter.

At least the finale commits to the inanity, with Bogie saving O’Brien’s life via a blood transfusion, literally putting the everyman into O’Brien. It’s a ham-fisted way to make a point, but, then again, maybe all O’Brien needed was some Bogie blood in his veins all along.