It's always sad when an actor's career degenerates into self-parody. 'The Mighty McGurk' is a star vehicle for Wallace Beery, made late in his career. It's also a thin and obvious retread of material which Beery had done better several times before, in much better films than this ... notably in 'The Bowery' and his Oscar-winning performance in 'The Champ'.
McGurk (Beery) is a drunken, broken-down ex-prizefighter (sound familiar?), now employed as a chucker-out at the Bowery saloon owned by Mike Glenson (played by the usually reliable Edward Arnold, in a less dynamic performance than usual). McGurk trades insults with Mamie Steeple, the local pawnbroker (Aline MacMahon, whose performances always annoy me). Glenson's daughter Caroline is in love with Johnny, a roughly handsome Salvation Army officer who wants to close down all the saloons. Naturally, Caroline's publican father opposes the romance.
The only thing missing in this brew-haha is a tousle-haired orphan. Cue Dean Stockwell to enter upstage left, wearing Jackie Cooper's reach-me-down tousles. Dean Stockwell was one of the few male child actors whose performances consistently impressed me, and I'm also impressed that (unlike most other child performers, male or female) he went on to a respectable acting career in adulthood. In this movie, young Dean is an orphan saddled with the twee name 'Nipper'. Worse luck, our Nipper is an *English* orphan, so Dean Stockwell is forced to toddle through his scenes with a dead-awful cod accent that's meant to be from England by way of Pasadena. Too bad Freddie Bartholomew had outgrown his Fauntleroy britches.
SPOILERS COMING. Nothing in 'The Mighty McGurk' wasn't done better in some other movie, better-known than this one. It's bang obvious that McGurk will connive a happy ending for the bar-crossed lovers. It's also obvious that McGurk and Mamie will end up as a couple, despite (or because of) their bickering. After the success of 'Min and Bill', which memorably partnered Wallace Beery on screen with Marie Dressler, Beery tried to recapture that chemistry opposite a long downhill progression of other character actresses, with diminishing results: in this movie, it's Aline MacMahon's turn. (Offscreen, Beery was a truly nasty lout, who publicly criticised Dressler's physical appearance while she was dying of cancer.)
For all its faults, 'The Mighty McGurk' will please old-movie fans, due to brief appearances by some of the finest character actors of Hollywood's golden era. Gravel-voiced Al Bridge gets a brief moment to shine. Also welcome are Vince Barnett, Al Hill, Tom Kennedy, sourpuss Robert Emmett O'Connor, gargoyle-faced Oliver Prickett, banana-nosed Johnny Berkes, cadaverous Bill Wolfe, brawny Dewey Robinson (one of my favourites) and skull-faced Milton Parsons, the latter perfectly cast here as an undertaker. Joe Yule (Mickey Rooney's real-life father) does an annoying Irish brogue. Clinton Sundberg (oily of voice and oily of hair) gives his usual unpleasant one-note performance.
'The Mighty McGurk' was helmed by an untalented director who would be utterly forgotten today if not for the coincidental fact that he had the same name as a more notorious (and more talented) film director: John Waters, of 'Pink Flamingos' and so forth. I'll rate 'McGurk' 4 points out of 10, mostly out of affection for the supporting cast.
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