Genre: get me to the gallows on time. A new clean-up governor is told by the local crime boss that he'll regret being a new broom. A young protégé of the boss is in love with the beautiful singer (Frances Drake, who should have gone on to better things) in the night club which fronts the rackets. One of which is a wire service for a gambling joint: the clock runs slow so the joint knows the results whilst the punters are still betting (genre: the gee-gees are running late tonite).The boy refuses to throw a jockey out of his aeroplane for failing to lose a race, and plans to quit. The boss explains that in fact he is the boy's father by the governor's wife. He stole the boy when the relationship broke up and put him through reform school to train him for a life of crime. In a fight the boy shoots his father. At his trial he is sentenced to hang, not least because he offers no defence (he wants to protect his mother who believes her baby had died). At the appointed hour, the audience assembles to watch the hanging and the boy is led in. Meanwhile, outside the correctional, correction, terminal facility, the girl waits. Later she goes to see the governor to ask for the corpse to give is a decent burial. The governor agrees and rings the warden to arrange matters. However, the warder explains the hanging was deferred on receipt of a call from the governor's office. The boy has been saved, and everybody gathers in the office to find out what happened (it was the governor's soft-hearted but indomitable mother who made the call). At that moment a member of the crime boss's gang rings up to tell the governor the dead boss had the last, laugh, as it was his wife's son they've just topped. It is now clear why such a play was made of the wire scenes. Based on the play, The Noose, it all worked very smoothly and tautly, so one could forgive any number of implausibilities and bureaucratic nonsenses.
Review of I'd Give My Life
