The Pay-Off
About The Pay-Off
Gene Fenmore runs the city's largest mob and limits it to crooked businessmen, with no killing. His lieutenant Rocky, who has taken Fenmore's girlfriend Dot, robs the engaged couple Nancy and Tommy of their last dollars. Fenmore returns the money and gives them honest work. Rocky drags them into a jewelry-store holdup, kills the owner, and frames them. Fenmore shoots Rocky, then tells the district attorney he will confess if the couple go free.
Cast & crew
More about The Pay-Off
Lowell Sherman directed and played Fenmore. Jane Murfin, Samuel Shipman, and John B. Hymer adapted Shipman and Hymer's 1927 play Crime. William LeBaron and Henry Hobart produced for RKO. J. Roy Hunt photographed, and Rose Smith edited. RKO released it in the United States on October 15, 1930.
Themes
Background
RKO issued the film in the pre-Code window, when a gang leader could state his own code on screen and walk out under arrest without a moral tag beyond that line.
Making
Sherman was acting in and directing talkies at the same time. The source play, Crime, had been on Broadway in 1927.
Look
J. Roy Hunt photographed the 65-minute feature.
Notes
- It is a pre-Code crime drama.
- George F. Marion plays Mouse, and Alan Roscoe plays the district attorney.
- Marian Nixon and William Janney are Nancy and Tommy; Hugh Trevor is Rocky; Helene Millard is Dot.
- Fenmore's rule is that the mob never kills and only steals from dishonest men.
- The closing line, spoken in handcuffs, is “If it wasn't for men like me, they wouldn't need men like you.”
Scenes
- Rocky robs Nancy and Tommy for sport, and Fenmore hands the money back.
- The jewelry holdup goes wrong and Rocky kills the owner.
- Fenmore, in handcuffs, speaks his line to the officer leading him out.
Influenced by
- Crime, the 1927 play by Samuel Shipman and John B. Hymer
Quotes
If it wasn't for men like me, they wouldn't need men like you.
