User Reviews

Despite its very disappointing conclusion, this is one of Mickey Rooney's most appealing "B" vehicles. In fact, he makes a first-rate con-man, while Eddie Bracken provides the ideal foil for Rooney's "gas". And although she's neither costumed nor photographed very attractively, I also really liked Elaine Stewart's seductive heroine. Another plus is that some of my favorite character players, including Charles Halton, Dabbs Greer, Douglas Fowley and Ida Moore can be glimpsed momentarily in support cameos. For once, Don Weis's direction is unusually capable, while the film editing of all the 2nd unit, stunt and studio shots is nothing if not remarkably smooth. And there's at least one stand-out comedy sequence with a runaway van that features Rooney mugging away most delightfully.

Rooney and Eddie Bracken team up to sell gasoline that they steal from an underground pipeline that enables them to run a chin gas station out of business. The movie has a few good laughs with Rooney playing the "brains" of the outfit with Bracken playing the beleaguered old army buddy who goes along with the scheme against his better judgment. Bracken plays a more grown up version of the characters he played for Preston sturgeon a decade earlier in Miracle of Morgan Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero. THe movie is only about 70 minutes long and resolves itself quickly once a crisis causes Bracken to seize control of the situation.

'A Slight Case of Larceny' came out in 1953, about the time my dad and I, a 7-year-old, began to take weekend trips to New Orleans, the Gulf Coast, and Houston. I remember those high gasoline prices of 20 to 30 cents a gallon. So, here in this movie, where the posted 'discount' was 5, 6 cents a gallon, all the way up to 11 cents, was really a big percentage discount. But where were the lines of cars, waiting to fill up at those low prices? It was set in Galveston, but it was obviously filmed on back lots and on California highways. Galveston does not have hills and rocky roadside cliffs. The beach scenes looked a lot like Galveston did back in the 1950s, but could have been southern California beaches. Both main characters wore WWII leather flight jackets, just like the jacket I wear every winter, and that was fun to see.

Mickey Rooney stars as Augustus 'Geechy' Cheevers, a born schemer. Operating "Cheevers and Clopp's Gasoline and Oil Station", along with Frederick Clopp (Eddie Bracken). Meanwhile, a wealthy owner of 15 stations puts up his own right across the street, and begins to undercut their prices to try to put them out of business. So Geechy Cheevers has to figure out a scheme to counteract that.

SPOILERS are contained in the rest of my comments, you may want to quit reading now if you have not seen the movie. Geechy's scheme is to dig a tunnel from his station, under the road, to his competitor's gasoline pipeline, tap in, and use the "free" gasoline as a way to undercut prices and stay in business. He does, and after a long price war, causes the other station to close down. But a robbery results in a cigarette spark that burns down the station. Afraid they will be exposed they get on Geechy's motorcycle and run away, eventually turning themselves in because of guilt. They were not being sought, but tried anyway after the confession, found guilty of petty larceny and sentenced to 6 months plus repay all the stolen gasoline. Last scene, working for their women, who refuse to let them drink beer during the day, we see that Geechy has tapped into the draft beer "pipeline" to get his free beer!

Rooney was 33 here, and in fine form. Already a veteran of movies, even today in 2004 he has roles in three more. As of this count his 259th movie, although many of them were B&W film shorts back in the silent days.

For the first half-hour of this frenetic comedy, stage and screen actor Eddie Bracken can barely get a word in, and then it seems as if tired of Mickey Rooney's non-stop banter decided to fight fire with fire. From then on, he's nearly as obnoxious as Rooney is, both of them playing to go getters who get into illegal activity by siphoning gas from another station and selling it at an extreme discount. Of course it gets them into trouble, but a good majority of the film deals with the impact on their personal life and the variety of customers and of course their dealings with the owner of another station. Then there's the comedy, a mixed bag by today's standards.

The story involving the gas station larceny doesn't really begin until the second reel of the film, showing the two men in the military, their efforts to find honest work and finally their decision to do something shifty. The domestic part of the story isn't really interesting and the two starlets playing Bracken's wife and Rooney's girlfriend really don't have screen charisma. The presence of some good character actors does bring us up a notch but I want more than just 30 seconds of the adorable Ida Moore and others. Rooney and Bracken actually don't even seem to like each other, another big misstep. This seems like something that Columbia rather than MGM would do, but Columbia obviously had better comic contributors where most of MGM's comic talent worked in the A unit. This one is seriously only for the obsessive Rooney fan, here during one of the darkest points in his career.