***SPOILERS*** Nothing more then an average crime drama with an incredibly schmaltzy ending "Johnny Apollo" is only worth watching because of its all star cast that includes Tyrone Power as both Johnny Apollo, a name he took off a theater marquee, and collage swimming and rowing champ Bobby Cain.
It's when Johnny finds out that his dad Wall Street investment giant Robert Cain Sr, Edward Arnold, was indited for embezzling his clients that his entire life turned upside down. Not being able to face his collage classmates in that his father is an indited, and later convicted, crook Johnny drifts from one menial job to another trying to support himself. With the name Cain not helping Johnny, who's at the time known as Robert Cain Jr, to keep a job he changes it to Johnny Apollo and ends up working as a debt collector or muscle man for bad guy mobster Mickey, known as "The Mick", Dwyer played by perennial good guy-in almost all his other movies-Lloyd Nolan.
It's when old man Cain, known as Pop's behind bars, finds out that his clean cut collage boy son Robert/Johnny is in fact "In" with the "Mob" that he completely disowns him. This was an odd why of Pop's Cain treating his son Johnny who only got "In" with the "Mob" in order to spring him from behind bars with an early parole. The person that Johnny gets to do the springing is mobbed up shyster lawyer and ex-judge Emmett T. Brenner, Charley Grapewin, who got it through the grapevine, the D.A's office, that he can get Pop's off if his son Johnny turn evidence on his boss "The Mick".
The movie gets more and more ridicules as it goes along with "The Mick" getting the lowdown that Brenner is setting him up, but not knowing that his boy Johnny is involved in it, has Brenner iced, with an ice pick no less, while he's drying out, from too much scotch & milk, at a local Turkish Bath. The undoubtedly most bizarre part of the movie is saved for last with "The Mick" and his gang, including Johnny Apollo, indited on a number of fraud and embezzlement counts, just like old man Cain was, and sent up the river, Sing Sing Prison, for some 3 to 5 years.
"The Mick" who's supposed to be so smart doesn't plan to go on the lamb, together with his gang, but in fact turns himself over to the prison officials in order to break out the very next day! This brainless and cockamamie plan on "The Mick's" part, with Johnny willingly going along with it, even if it succeeds will not only add twenty or more years on his already short 3 to 5 year sentence but may very lead to the death, in an inevitable shoot-out, of a prison guard as well as "The Mick" and the members of his gang themselves!
****SPOILERS**** If you have a diabetic condition avoid at all costs the unbearably sugary ending in order not to overdose on it. Johnny and his dad are reunited outside, not in, prison with Johnny's girl Lucky, Dorothy Lamour, "The Mick's" former gun moll who alerted Pop's about the prison breakout-and almost got himself killed in trying to stop it-at Johnny's side as well.
It's when Johnny finds out that his dad Wall Street investment giant Robert Cain Sr, Edward Arnold, was indited for embezzling his clients that his entire life turned upside down. Not being able to face his collage classmates in that his father is an indited, and later convicted, crook Johnny drifts from one menial job to another trying to support himself. With the name Cain not helping Johnny, who's at the time known as Robert Cain Jr, to keep a job he changes it to Johnny Apollo and ends up working as a debt collector or muscle man for bad guy mobster Mickey, known as "The Mick", Dwyer played by perennial good guy-in almost all his other movies-Lloyd Nolan.
It's when old man Cain, known as Pop's behind bars, finds out that his clean cut collage boy son Robert/Johnny is in fact "In" with the "Mob" that he completely disowns him. This was an odd why of Pop's Cain treating his son Johnny who only got "In" with the "Mob" in order to spring him from behind bars with an early parole. The person that Johnny gets to do the springing is mobbed up shyster lawyer and ex-judge Emmett T. Brenner, Charley Grapewin, who got it through the grapevine, the D.A's office, that he can get Pop's off if his son Johnny turn evidence on his boss "The Mick".
The movie gets more and more ridicules as it goes along with "The Mick" getting the lowdown that Brenner is setting him up, but not knowing that his boy Johnny is involved in it, has Brenner iced, with an ice pick no less, while he's drying out, from too much scotch & milk, at a local Turkish Bath. The undoubtedly most bizarre part of the movie is saved for last with "The Mick" and his gang, including Johnny Apollo, indited on a number of fraud and embezzlement counts, just like old man Cain was, and sent up the river, Sing Sing Prison, for some 3 to 5 years.
"The Mick" who's supposed to be so smart doesn't plan to go on the lamb, together with his gang, but in fact turns himself over to the prison officials in order to break out the very next day! This brainless and cockamamie plan on "The Mick's" part, with Johnny willingly going along with it, even if it succeeds will not only add twenty or more years on his already short 3 to 5 year sentence but may very lead to the death, in an inevitable shoot-out, of a prison guard as well as "The Mick" and the members of his gang themselves!
****SPOILERS**** If you have a diabetic condition avoid at all costs the unbearably sugary ending in order not to overdose on it. Johnny and his dad are reunited outside, not in, prison with Johnny's girl Lucky, Dorothy Lamour, "The Mick's" former gun moll who alerted Pop's about the prison breakout-and almost got himself killed in trying to stop it-at Johnny's side as well.