User Reviews

This film is available on Alpha Video in a decent print and is most noteworthy as the final film of Roland West's career. He made three sound films, all with Chester Morris in the lead. This is also the least popular and in some ways the least artistic of the three. An additional behind-the-scenes interest of this film, is that Thelma Todd is the female lead, billed as "Alison Loyd" in an obvious attempt to distinguish her as a dramatic actress. She is fine in the film, but has a rather skimpy part.

The plot involves a young man who has just graduated from college who begins to work on Wall Street after being teased by Todd's character and clashes with his boss, who is her father. To prove his point and to get revenge, he becomes a modern day pirate, stealing liquor from illegal shipments at sea. Chester Morris is excellent in the role of John Hawkes, the young man.

Some great sharp camera angles and one very dark, sinister scene involving "Fish Face" and a female, Sophie, do not entirely make up for the fact that this film does not advance the techniques of film-making as ALIBI and THE BAT WHISPERS did. West's combination of editing with sound effects and music in ALIBI were a revelation in early 1929. And with THE BAT WHISPERS, he took miniature work to a new level in sound films with his 'bat's eye' camera moves through the cities and towns. CORSAIR seems rather routine in comparison.

That is not to say this is not a good little gangster film. Fred Kohler is solid as the bootlegger, Big John, and Ned Sparks along with Mayo Methot are great in support. The editing is crisp and the overall film has the dark touches you would expect from Roland West. It still holds up as one of the more effective gangster films of the early 1930s.

Ex-football player Chester Morris, egged on by rich girl Thelma Todd, tries bootlegging and piracy as a career. Will he continue to triumph over the villainous gangsters whose cargoes he hijacks, with friends Ned Sparks and Frank McHugh, or will Big John get his revenge on the crew of the CORSAIR?

This isn't a great work of art, and no new ground is broken. But once the plot gets rolling (it takes about a reel), this is a darn good action flick with a nice straightforward leading-man performance out of Morris, a surprisingly sympathetic turn out of Ned Sparks, and much of the fluid, frequently beautiful camera work and staging that is characteristic of director Roland West. Mayo Methot probably gets the best acting scene, and, in this case, is helped by her director, who has the sense to let the scene play out with simple lighting and staging. The director, indeed, helps himself by downplaying some of the camera showiness on films like Alibi and The Bat, and by improving, significantly, his direction of actors and his pacing of the story.

We do not have a perfect film here. Thelma Todd is around to look pretty, but she had not found her dramatic acting chops at the time this movie was shot. Also, the ending of the movie is utterly wrong and too drawn out. But in its middle reels, this movie is as spry and well-paced as a typical Warners movie, and suggests that Morris could have had a much better movie career with more films like this. Worth seeing -- particularly if you think 1931 movies are all people standing around and declaiming while the camera stays put.

After being told that he hasn't the right stuff for making it on Wall Street, former All American Football player Chester Morris goes in for a different kind of piracy. He decides to become a real pirate and beat the man who told him he was no good on the street Emmet Corrigan at his own game.

Which in addition to Wall Street stock manipulations is bootlegging. Corrigan's role is eerily like that of Joseph P. Kennedy. Only this Wall Street pirate and bootlegger has a daughter played by Thelma Todd a rather spoiled young lady used to getting exactly what she wants.

Todd's the main problem, she gives a spiritless and perfunctory performance, so atypical of her. She has absolutely no chemistry. As for Morris he gets a bit too self righteous.

On the plus side when the hijacking of bootleggers like Fred Kohler gets going Corsair gets a bit of life pumped into it. Frank McHugh plays a part he would repeat over and over at Warner Brothers as the hero's best friend and sets the mold here. Kohler is one nasty customer as the bootlegger Morris robs.

Corsair is an interesting, but in some stages rather lifeless film.

The early moments of Corsair offer a big buildup for our first look at Alison Loyd: we can hear her conversation with dance partner Frank McHugh, but our only view is of the back of her head. A moment later she is introduced to football hero Chester Morris, and again, she speaks unseen….until finally, in close up, her big smile flashes onto the screen. –Of course, it's Thelma Todd's smile. This big introduction apparently aims at establishing Todd as a mysterious and glamorous figure; presumably, this is why Todd is billed as "Alison Loyd" for the first and (I think) only time—to differentiate her "new" persona from the light comic actress Thelma Todd had been (and would continue to be, thank heavens!).

Unfortunately, the plot and dialog of Corsair offer Todd/Loyd little else to do besides smile and act alternately spoiled and silly. Her character is a major motivator to the actions of other characters—but she really does little and develops less herself. Which is too bad! Director Roland West didn't do Thelma justice by setting her up as a dangerous female and then giving her practically no depth, surprises or even decent lines to speak.

Chester Morris comes off better as a football hero turned banker turned pirate. Fired from his broker job for being unwilling to steal a little old lady's savings, he sets out to prove the boss banker wrong in his assertion that Morris doesn't have the nerve to be successful. Nerve? Morris sets up a booze pirating operation that is daring, dangerous and profitable…and sells the banker liquor by the boatload.

The middle section of the movie builds tension around Morris's organization and the danger he faces as his victims—a gang of smugglers themselves—eventually catch on to his operation and hatch plans to capture and wipe him out. Indeed, it turns into a pretty good adventure movie once it gets rolling.

Frank McHugh adds liveliness in his role as Morris's right hand man. Fred Kohler is appropriately menacing as "Big John" the smuggler. Morris, a solid lead, gives an excellent performance as a man who chooses and sticks to his own unique code of conduct.

The scenes between Morris and Todd ought to be the highlights of a film like this….but it's just the opposite. They speak so slowly…how do you make Chester Morris and Thelma Todd into slow talkers? –It's not just a function of the movie being an early talkie, either; there's a deliberateness to these scenes apparently meant to be serious and dramatic—and instead, all it does is drag.

As an adventure, it's not bad. But darn, in the "dramatic" sections, this is a movie in bad need of some zippy dialog.

For Todd fans the first part showcases her lively appeal. Here, she's cast as a pampered debutante used to getting her own way. Then she meets football hero Morris who's self-disciplined down to his toes, and surprisingly rejects her romantic overtures. Unfortunately, Todd's stellar role soon recedes as the murky storyline with Morris's hijacking scheme takes over. Too bad for Todd fans.

The film's pre-Code 1931, but here there's surprisingly little innuendo to reflect those pre-censorship years. Still, there remains the lingering drama of Prohibition, and that's what the plot turns on, as Morris is out to prove that he's as effective at becoming rich as Todd's ruthless Wall Street father, Steve. The rivalry's set up when Morris refuses, as an employee in Steve's brokerage, to bilk an unfortunate old lady at Steve's command. Morris's heated exchange with his boss amounts to a telling snapshot of a time when stock markets were crashing and Wall Street needed money no matter how ruthlessly gotten. Thus football hero Morris shows his principled core despite the desperate tenor of the times. But how will he prove that his ethical approach to riches is as effective as Steve's unprincipled methods like bilking an old lady.

Here the story turns a couple of twists, as arrogant Steve bootlegs for needed money by running an offshore smuggling operation, while the ethical Morris surprisingly hijacks that operation with his gunboat, the Corsair. So it looks like the steely Morris has turned to a form of crime in order to compete with rival, Steve. So what's going on with the film's apparent hero. Has he lost his sense of right and wrong by becoming a hijacker even if it is for illegal booze.

Anyway, that's the nub of a good plot. Trouble is that on screen it plays out in fuzzy, dispersed fashion that fails to generate much suspense or involvement. In short, the story's potential is squandered along with actress Todd. Nor does it help that Kohler, the chubby gang boss Big John, mugs-it-up to a clownish distractive degree . All in all, the flick's no tribute to ace director West or to those who fleshed out the screenplay. Still, there are memories of the incandescent Todd shortly before her tragic death. Too bad she didn't get the screen time here that she so richly deserved.

An elegant but troubled production that decisively ended Roland West's career in films, even before Thelma Todd's untimely and mysterious death four years later permanently made him a pariah in Hollywood. The title suggests a swashbuckler, but it's modern piracy it depicts, and the title is the name of the boat carrying bootleg liquor into San Francisco.

To appease Hal Roach, Thelma was renamed 'Alison Loyd' (sic) for the first and last time to play a femme fatale. Although Chester Morris was already cast in the lead before West came aboard, the number of close-ups reveals the director's infatuation with his leading lady, briefly flaunted at one point in a bathing suit. (Hitchcock was similarly fixated three decades later on 'Tippi' Hedren while filming 'Marnie', and that Ms Hedren - now 90 years old - was a baby when 'Corsair' was in production serves as a reminder of just how long ago this all was.)

An interesting supporting cast includes Ned Sparks and Mayo Methot in nobler roles than we're accustomed to seeing them.

"Johnny Hawks" (Chester Morris ) is an extremely talented football star at a college out west who all the young ladies adore--to include one particularly rich and attractive heiress named "Alison Corning" (Thelma Todd). Yet even so, she thinks he is terribly unsophisticated and because of that asks her father "Steve" (Emmett Corrigan) to give him a job in a corporate office at the New York Stock Exchange. Unfortunately, he is fired a year later because he refuses to lower his ethical standards. Needless to say, this angers Johnny and because of that he decides to set out on his own and prove to Steve the error of his ways. To do this he comes up with a plan to hijack ships carrying illegal alcohol and reselling it in a legal manner--to Alison's father. But his profession is a dangerous one and it's only a matter of time before his luck runs out--and Alison just happens to be there when it does. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that I thought that this was an incredibly interesting film from a unique period in American history. Admittedly, the script was rather weak and the camera work could have used some improvement. But even so this film still manages to entertain quite nicely and I have rated it accordingly. Above average.

There is more to the back story of the principles than this soggy telling about a Wall Streeter gone bad on the high seas. Featuring a stiff Chester Morris and miscast Thelma Todd as a spoiled rich kid the film remains flacid from end to end with the two leads lacking zero chemistry.

Football hero John Hawks (Morris) goes to work for spoiled Alison Corning's father. A tease, she toys with the noble Hawks who finds himself tossed from his job when he refuses to burn a client. He takes up high seas piracy where he once again confronts his old boss and his daughter who still has the hots for him.

Spoiled, sophisticated or otherwise Todd was never meant to play a society type and proves it here. The limited Morris simply broods through most of the film with little help to be found in the supporting cast outside of Ned Sparks.

What is interesting is that Todd, an established star at the moment is billed as Allison Lloyd for some unknown reason. The director Roland West was linked to Todd romantically before she was found dead in 1935. West bolted Hollywood after and supposedly on his death bed confessed to killing Todd but it has never been proven conclusively. It is a far more interesting story than Corsai which capsizes almost immediately.

Pretty good adventure flick as Wayne Morris, fed up with the petty piracy of Wall Street, goes into business for himself, highjacking rumrunners' ships bound to Prohibition America. Some pretty good sequences featuring Fred Kohler as a sadistic gangster, although Thelma Todd is pretty well wasted as a role that calls for her to play an idiot.

Corsair (from 1931) is a real moldie-oldie, that, in spite of its obvious age and creakiness, still manages to be fairly entertaining, in the long run.

This 83-year-old Comedy/Romance/Adventure story tells the roundabout tale of how dashing, college, football hero, Johnny Hawkes, meets cheeky, spoilt, heiress, Alison Corning.

Before long Hawkes finds himself captain of the Corsair (a sleek, high-speed gunboat).

Imminent danger lurks everywhere once Hawkes and his crew begin dealing with ruthless, modern-day pirates involved in big-time liquor smuggling.

With its story set mainly in the West Indies, Corsair (at 72 minutes) certainly had its fair share of high-seas action, violence and double-crosses.

This fast-paced story starred blond beauty, Thelma Todd (murdered at 29) and early-talkies heart-throb, Chester Morris (suicide at 69).

I wasn't expecting much from this film. I watched it mainly because it stars two favorites of mine - Chester Morris and Thelma Todd. I was very pleasantly surprised. The film opens with John Hawks (Chester Morris), a collegiate football star, winning the big game. Later that night, at a society party, he meets Alison Corning (Thelma Todd) who personifies every argument in favor of the inheritance tax you've ever heard with the saying "spare the rod spoil the child" thrown in for good measure. She's beautiful, spoiled, used to getting whatever and whoever she wishes, and will do anything for a thrill. John's bad luck is that she wants him from first sight. She convinces her big Wall Street financier dad, "Steve" as she calls him, to give John a job at his firm. John is hardly enamored by Alison. He can see right through her, and on the surface that's got to be a pleasant experience for any guy, but then you get to the not-so-gooey middle. This is what repels him.

So John takes the job, not really knowing what to do after college anyways, but soon he sees that Alison is the apple that has not fallen far from the tree. Dad is all about making money and he doesn't care if he has to scam orphans and widows to do it. When John refuses to hard sell some worthless stock to an old lady in exchange for her solidly performing bonds he's tossed out without a second glance by dear old Steve.

John then decides to take to piracy on the high seas - after all it's not too different from what Alison's dad is doing - except he will steal from crooks not orphans and widows. John sets his sights on one bootlegger in particular, and with the help of a wealthy friend who backs him financially by helping him buy a boat (Frank McHugh as Chub), he starts to regularly hijack gangster "Big John's" haul of bootleg liquor and sell it to Steve, his old employer, who is into bootlegging himself as a sideline.

Now the problem here is that John doesn't spread the pain around to various bootleggers - he picks strictly on Big John's boats. He should realize that Big John did not get where he got by dropping out of Sunday school and sooner or later he is going to retaliate. I'll let you watch and see how this all shakes out.

I just thought it was very clever and timely for a filmmaker to equate the robber barons of Wall Street with piracy on the high seas. In fact, it makes pirates look noble compared to the Wall Street banksters. There's also some gritty reality thrown in via Mayo Methot's Sophie, the typist for Big John who's beautiful but beaten down by life in the Depression and the constant companionship of ruffians just trying to make a living. Her relationship with Ned Sparks' "Slim" is touching. Slim is one of Big John's men, and the couple is helping out John Hawks in his acts of piracy against Big John in return for a percentage, hoping to get out of "the life" once and for all. The ever present danger of getting caught - if they are lucky, by the law, if not so lucky, by Big John, makes them underplay their emotions for one another and their emotional caution turns out to be quite touching.

If you like Chester Morris or Thelma Todd, if you want to see a different kind of gangster film, if you think that many of the people running Goldman Sachs and AIG deserve to be cell mates with Bernie Madoff but will probably never learn their lesson from anybody or anything in this life, give this almost forgotten little film a chance.

Being a Thelma Todd fan I had to watch this movie. Well, that's an hour and fifteen minutes I'll never get back. Many have accused Roland West, the director, of killing Thelma Todd. The only thing we have proof of is that he could kill a movie. It was horribly injured from the beginning yet took 75 minutes to finally die. Not to make light of Miss Todd's mysterious death that it is still unsolved regardless of some self appointed experts who claim they have solved the case, Corsair proves that Roland West couldn't pull off directing the simplest of films much less orchestrate a major crime and get away with it. Direction?, he'd need a compass. Make-up? Thelma at best looks like a hooker and Chester Morris is just a cheap wig and a frock away from being a drag queen. Thelma knew her strengths and as she proved in most any other project, she was star quality. Behind the scenes she was involved with Roland West when this movie was made but that ended and when they collaborated on Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe, there was no proof that they had rekindled a romance. Fortunately this movie didn't destroy the next 4 years of her career. Unfortunately she was a star that never got to shine to her mult-talented potential. I rated this a 1 because there was only 1 redeeming factor. Thelma Todd. May she rest in peace.

Corsair (1931)

** (out of 4)

This is a rather interesting movie as it would turn out to be the final film for director West. The director would take time off after this film to do other business but of course this would end in scandal as his girlfriend, Thelma Todd, would be murdered and a lot of fingers pointed at West. Todd also appears in this film under the fake name of Alison Loyd. A former football star (Chester Morris) can't cut it on Wall Street and after being fired he swears to make money no matter what it takes. He decides to become a pirate and hijack boats carrying alcohol so that he can re-sell it on the streets. When the film finally ended after 74-minutes I was asking myself if that was it because there's really not too much going on. The film has a low budget, which keeps it from being more epic like I'm sure the director and stars wanted but West's direction keeps things floating throughout. The screenplay is pretty standard without many twists or turns in terms of the story. Being from the pre-code era and considering how much trouble West and Morris got into with Alibi I was expecting more in terms of grittiness but that's not here. The entire film plays pretty safe with the exception of one death scene on a hijacked boat but everything is pretty much lost with the really bad ending. I was also rather disappointed with the performance as Morris who has become one of my favorites. He really seems to sleepwalk through the role and doesn't have any of his normal charm. Todd, I'm guessing, tried a dramatic turn here, which might explain the name change but she doesn't come off any better. She certainly isn't bad in the film but she can't fill that Jean Harlow type role too well. Cagney's buddy Frank McHugh steals the film playing a drunk. Fans of the director might want to check this out since it turned out to be his last movie but I doubt too many find it that entertaining.