Love That Brute

Love That Brute is a fun gangster-with-a-heart-of-gold flick that belongs in the 1930s. You can easily picture Edward G. Robinson in it fifteen years earlier, with Humphrey Bogart as the heavy. If you're a Paul Douglas fan, you'll be happy to see him in his typical type of role. He's a natural in front of the camera, in only his first year of making movies. Jean Peters is also unrecognizable from her other movies; it's hard to see the sleazy floozy from Pickup on South Street in her prim and proper character here. But it's not hard to imagine her as Sister Sarah in Guys and Dolls, with Paul Douglas perhaps as Nathan Detroit. He may be a gangster, but he's a total softie.

Paul has a tough reputation as he battles it out with rival mob boss Cesar Romero. When he sees the decent Jean Peters caring for a group of children in the park, he vows to do anything to win her. So, he comes up with an outrageous lie and gets all his friends and cronies (Keenan Wynn, Joan Davis, and Arthur Treacher) to play along. He rents a problem child, pretends he's a struggling widower and hires Jean as a governess. Do you think she'll find out? Do you think she'll love him anyway? Rent this sweet oldie to find out. And if you like this one, check out the original from ten years earlier - in Tall, Dark, and Handsome, Cesar Romero plays the Paul Douglas part! Ninety percent of the movie is word-for-word like the original, even down to the "Chicago" song in the beginning and the Christmas setting. I watched both movies back to back and was tickled by the script, and I laughed just as hard each time!