Very best movie i ever watch

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Charles Farrell, a great silent screen star, appears with Bette Davis and Ricardo Cortez in "The Big Shakedown," a 1934 film featuring Allen Jenkins and Glenda Farrell.Farrell and Davis are Jimmy and Norma, a boyfriend-girlfriend who marry later in the film. They run a corner drugstore. Cortez is a post- Prohibition gangster, Dutch Baines, looking for a new racket. Patronizing the store one day, he realizes that Jimmy can make his own products, which are identical to ones on the market. However, he isn't selling them claiming that they are the commercial brands; he makes them so he can sell a house brand for less.Of course, Dutch sees that if these products are sold under the commercial names, he can use their publicity and brand reputation to make a fortune. He talks Jimmy into making toothpaste and beauty products because Jimmy needs money. He's reluctant to do it and planning to quit when Dutch decides to go into medicine and have Jimmy make drugs. Jimmy flatly refuses; Dutch makes noise about Norma's safety, and Jimmy caves.This is a typical crime film interesting because of the cast. Davis' role is an ordinary ingénue one that could have been played by anyone. She was still getting a build-up and hadn't yet become a star with a special image. She's blond and pretty. Glenda Farrell has the role of Dutch's girlfriend, whom he throws over. Farrell, with her distinctive speaking voice and likable personality always stands out. Cortez does well playing the tough, uncompromising Baines.Charles Farrell, whom I used to see as an elderly man (your fifties were considered like the seventies back then) when My Little Margie was in syndication, was good-looking and popular in his day. He had a gentleness about him and also an earnestness which he displays here. He retired in 1941 to become a land developer, but returned for Margie, which was followed by his own show. Then he retired again.Cortez's career as a leading man was just about over. Though he continued working until he retired, he also became a successful broker on Wall Street.Of interest, the actor who played the young Jewish boy who buys ice cream (a cone was six cents), Sidney Miller, went on to become a director and composer, and actually revamped the Mickey Mouse Club for Walt Disney beginning in its second season. Amazing that Bette Davis was the only one to stay full-time in acting.

The Big Shakedown has Ricardo Cortez looking for a new racket for his mob now that Prohibition is a thing of the past. While in Charles Farrell's drugstore Farrell says to Cortez that a whole lot of things that are sold can be easily counterfeited and he has the chemical know how to do it. As it is Farrell and fiancé and soon to be wife Bette Davis are barely keeping their heads above water with the chain stores moving in. Farrell and Cortez start manufacturing things like toothpaste, cosmetics, various other things you find in pharmacies.But when they start manufacturing their own cut rate pharmaceuticals Farrell balks, but he's in way too deep. This film definitely belongs to Ricardo Cortez. He is really a piece of work even keeping two women on a string Glenda Farrell and Renee Whitney. Featured in the film is a chick fight between the two of them over Cortez whom if these women thought about would have dumped him. It ends badly for one of them. Allen Jenkins and Dewey Robinson make a fine pair of pharmaceutical salesmen.Bette Davis is here and puts whatever life she can into her role as Farrell's faithful wife. But this was one of those thankless parts that Warner Brothers gave her in the beginning.The Big Shakedown is a decent enough B drama, but my big question here is where was the Food and Drug Administration while all this was going on?

Back in the days when stardom meant signing a seven-year contract, Bette Davis didn't have much choice but to play the wife of a struggling pharmacist, who gets mixed up with the mob, in this mellerdrama. Hubby Charles Farrell is conscripted by gangster Ricardo Cortez to make counterfeit products like tooth paste and face powder. But when Cortez demands cheap knock-offs of high-priced medication, lives are in danger...Bette's included. She plays the ingénue role surprisingly well without the tics and mannerisms which would mark (and sometimes mar) her later career. Tall, handsome Charles Farrell, on the other hand, couldn't act. To say that he had two expressions is putting it generously. Fortunately, Cortez as the suave hood behind the counterfeiting scheme takes up the slack and Glenda Farrell drops seductively by as a gun moll who knows too much. A pretty entertaining B movie made moreso by the youthful Bette Davis.

This is an Odd one to say the Least. Now that Prohibition has been Repealed Bootleggers get into the Fake Cosmetic and Drug Business. Making Generic and Ineffective Products and Slapping Brand Names on the Labels.There are Scenes that are Downright Bizarre, like a Row of Gangsters Brushing Their Teeth, a Jewish Teenager who keeps a Ledger and Wisecracks about Sales Tax, a Mother Buying Cough Syrup "for her child", "don't wrap it up I'll drink it, I mean carry it that way." A Cat Fight with some Slang Banter that is Priceless, a Miscarriage, a Brutal Torture Scene, and some Moralizing in the End that is so Over the Top it Defies Dramatic License, and there are Others.Bette Davis Fans can Check this out to see why She was so Disgusted with Light Weight Roles like this that She Fled to England. She Looks Beautiful here but doesn't have much to do. The Film is Worth a Watch for its Strangeness but not much Else. There is a lot of Drug Talk and Pre-Code References to Coke (the drug not the drink) but Nothing Racy or Raunchy.