WARNING: SPOILERS

It’s 1930, sound has just come in, and you plan to remake a 10-year-old gangster flick featuring an actor who became emblematic of the decade: Lon Chaney. Except Chaney is dying of throat cancer so you need to recast the role. Who do you choose? An actor who would become emblematic of the next decade: Edward G. Robinson. 

I love it when that happens. (Cf., Brando/De Niro as Vito Corleone.)

How else does Tod Browning’s “Outside the Law” (1930) differ from Tod Browning’s “Outside the Law” (1920)?

Instead of a jewel heist it’s a bank heist, and instead of the gangster setting up the thieves out of some bizarre vendetta, Robinson’s gangster, Cobra Collins (shades of “Hairspray”!), just wants his cut. I like that. It’s not personal, it’s business. We also lose Chinatown and Nob Hill and really any sense of place. Don’t like that. But at least there’s no yellowface here. Collins’ mother appears to be Chinese but there's no effort to make Robinson appear half-Chinese. It’s just, “Yeah, good enough.” Or is she not his mother? Maybe she's just a lookout named “Mother”? Either way, the racial embarrassment for this version is the maid across the hall (Louise Beavers), who, after rocking the kid to sleep with a tale of baby Jesus, calls downstairs to get some gin from some partying Black folks—which is why the kid is alone at the crucial hour. 

As for what’s the same? Sadly, the dull, unlikable couple at the center.

Innocence
The movie begins with some scenes that require asterisks today. An actor in a bank window draws a crowd playing a kind of mechanical man pointing out various sales items: “Our Vaults are Burglar Proof!” and the like. Was this a thing back then? In banks? One of the crowd is Cobra Collins, who knowingly, slyly, writes a message on the window: “Hello Fingers.” Initially I thought maybe Fingers (Owen Moore) was on the lam, and now found, but it turns out he’s a yegg—a safecracker. Cobra Collins figures he’s going to rob the bank. Since it’s his town, he wants his cut.

Then we get more odd gawkery: At Cobra’s club, PALACE OF FINE ARTS, the peep shows are done up in homage to great works of art. Basically it’s an excuse to present near-naked women for male perusal—but, you know, classy. There’s a large gilt frame, and a curtain, and a barker with a cane. Love the mix of high and low culture as the barker makes his pitch:

The original painting is valued at 5 million francs and youse slugs are getting the chance to lav it* for 15 cents. Now hold yer breath: Da Carryin’ Away of Psyche.**

* Could not figure out what the verb is. Anyone? Bueller?
** Was Robinson already an art collector? He certainly became one of Hollywood’s more famous ones, so the venue here is interesting.

Connie (Mary Nolan), the woman acting the painting Innocence, turns out to be far from it. She’s partners with Fingers, makes a play for Cobra, but he’s wise. Back at her place, they plot it out. We see Fingers, nattily dressed, and hear her off camera with the sounds of bathtub splashing. But no, it’s not her; she’s just giving the dog a bath. Browning keeps doing this—tricking us with sound. Having fun with the new tech.

Eventually Fingers robs the bank and they lam it—as much from Cobra as the cops. After that, the movie plays out as before. They’re getting on each other’s nerves, he’s going stir crazy, but he occupies himself by playing with the kid across the hallway (Delmar Watson), whom she can’t stand. The gender dynamic that felt oddly unmentioned in 1920 gets called out here. “I can’t figure you out,” he says. “You’re the first dame I met that didn’t like kids.”

We also get dialogue based on the jokes of the day:

Fingers: Say, if I had a wooden whistle that wouldn’t whistle, could I blow it? Ha! Joke.
Connie: [Sarcastic, affected] What a riot you’d be on Broad-way!

Another update is when stir-crazy Fingers decides to go out—risking being spotted—he now returns with a radio. That was less of an option in 1920, but by 1930 it was everywhere.

While he’s away, as in the original, the door turns slowly, she gets out her gun, but it’s just the kid across the hall with a puppy. Then more puppies! The kid almost shoots her, she gets the gun back, yells, the kid cries, and her hard heart softens. Same as before. Plus the battered kite casts the sign of the cross on the floor. Same old.

In a nice touch, the kid’s cop-dad, Capt. Fred O’Reilly, is played by silent film’s original gangster—Rockliffe Fellowes of “Regeneration” (1915). Meanwhile, the one casting through line in Browning’s films is John George playing Humpy, a dwarf sidekick to the Chaney/Robinson gangster. He’s uncredited in the original, credited here, even though the part is much smaller. In the original, he fingers both the girl’s father and the male lead traipsing through town. In the remake, we barely see him.

So how does Cobra figure out their hideout? It just seems like he’s suddenly on their doorstep. (The version I watched wasn’t exactly high res.) Capt. O’Reilly recognizes him, there’s a shootout, and much of the rest of the film is Fingers and Connie trying to save O’Reilly’s life while Cobra tries to get away with the loot. He winds up dying on the landing a floor down, money scattered around his corpse. A lesson for the kids.

More lessons: Despite saving O’Reilly, our leads get 1-5 of hard labor. In the original, everything was forgiven. The moral force there was Confucius; here, it’s the rule of law. Not to mention the Production Code.

See?
This is pre-“Little Caesar” but Robinson's patter already seems a parody of what it’d become. In one scene, he’s called before the cops and sits down with his cigar:

Alright, alright, that’s enough, that’s enough. You fellas better put on a new record. You ain’t got anything on me, see? Now what I came over to tell ya, see, is to tell ya how I feel about it.

It already feels like Billy Crystal’s imitation of him.

I like that Browning never shows us the cops in the above scene. Same as, in the end, not showing faces, just hands. It’s the judge’s gavel and his hands, and our leads wringing theirs. Browning’s artistry is apparent even when the movie isn’t worth much.

This Minneapolis newspaper ad does a lot of heaving lifting for the plot.