Johnny Allegro (1949)

• Year: 1949
• Released: 26 May 1949
• Country: United States
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041527/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/johnny_allegro
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: Approved
• Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
• Runtime: 81 min
• Writer: Karen DeWolf, Guy Endore, James Edward Grant
• Director: Ted Tetzlaff
• Cast: George Raft, Nina Foch, George Macready
• Keywords: black and white, noir, san francisco, california, florida keys, horse track,

	6.4/10
	45% – Audience

Johnny Allegro Storyline

Johnny Rock is an escaped convict from Sing Sing. Having gone straight in part to evade capture, he, reverting to his pre-criminal life growing up in Hell’s Kitchen, is now operating a retail florist business in an upscale hotel in Los Angeles under his name at birth, John Allegro. Knowing nothing about her beyond her request, Johnny helps a beautiful hotel guest, Glenda Chapman, evade the police who are tailing her. In the process, the two start to fall for each other. It is his association with her that Johnny himself attracts the attention of the authorities, specifically Agent Schultz – “Schultzy” – of the US Treasury Department, he who knows John Allegro is Johnny Rock. Rather than bring him in, Schultzy offers him a proposition: to help them find Glenda’s connections to a crime in return for a reduced remainder of his time behind bars, which is only aided by Johnny already having served his country in war in distinguished service post-his escape. While Johnny accepts the offer much against some of Schultzy’s colleagues who believe he will use the opportunity to disappear, Johnny only discovers much of what Schultzy didn’t tell him in the process of working on the case: Schultzy knows that the mastermind of the crime is Morgan Vallin, Glenda’s husband, who is planning on flooding the country with already printed counterfeit currency. What Schultzy does not know is where the money is being hidden and how Vallin is planning on circulating the money without detection. Beyond the issue of Glenda, the problem for Johnny is being isolated in the money being hidden on one of the many islands off the Florida coast, he a voluntary captive on the unknown island with Glenda, Vallin, and his skipper Roy, neither of Vallin or Roy trusting Johnny with Vallin a sadist who takes pleasure in psychological torture before killing his human prey.

Johnny Allegro Play trailer

Johnny Allegro Photos

Johnny Allegro Torrents Download

Johnny Allegro Subtitles Download

Johnny Allegro Movie Reviews

bow and arrow

Johnny Allegro (George Raft) is a florist in Los Angeles with a dark secret. Femme fatale Glenda Chapman (Nina Foch) gets him to help elude the police. Treasury Department agents blackmail him into going undercover to discover her secret plot.

Setting up the plot is a little bit wonky and a little rushed. Raft does fine but this cannot rise above its B-movie nature. There is also an element of James Bond villainy and trying to be high class style. I sorta expected Allegro to order a martini although Raft is definitely no Bond. The movie is trying to be a few things at the same time but it falls a little flat. The tension is never raised that high. The bow and arrow is probably the definition of that. It’s a little odd but it’s not intense. It’s also a little camp like summer camp. I’m giving this a passing grade.

A Little “Most Dangerous Game” Thrown In

George Raft is “Johnny Allegro” in this 1949 B movie also starring Nina Foch, Will Geer, and George Macready. Raft plays a florist who is in actuality an escaped prisoner in hiding; he’s approached by treasury agent Geer to clear his record by getting cozy with a woman he just met (Foch). Her husband (Macready) is distributing counterfeit (and ripping off his Soviet boss). They live on an island in the Caribbean. While she’s trying to get out of town and away from the Feds, Raft kills a police officer to help her. Then he insists that she take him along or he’ll be captured. This sets him up with her suspicious husband (McCready).

Not bad; the ending is reminiscent of “The Most Dangerous Game.” George Raft couldn’t act, but for someone who played gangsters so much, he had a warmth and a smoothness. By 1949, some of his gravitas had gone, but he was still pleasant to watch. When I was growing up, Nina Foch was playing skinny socialites on TV. It’s always nice to see her as a young leading woman. Will Geer as the treasury agent is delightful, very laid back.

You might want to see this for the cast.

Too much to handle

Johnny Allegro has George Raft in the title role as an ex-con trying to go straight. Under an alias he’s living life as a hotel florist, but manages to get himself involved with the beautiful Nina Foch and get himself framed for a cop killing.

Foch is slightly married to the epicene George MacReady whom the Feds want to nab real bad. It’s not just his elaborate counterfeiting operation that they want to shut down. MacReady is being financed by the Soviet Union and he’s got quite a setup in distributing counterfeit and raking off a big bundle from his Soviet handler Ivan Triesault. MacReady and Foch live in fine style on an unknown Caribbean island that the Feds would like to know the location of to bust MacReady and his operation. In the end MacReady proves too much for his Soviet bosses.

Not so with Raft and his contact Will Geer who plays a Treasury agent. Geer in many spots steals the film from the leads with a nice laconic performance, not unlike his Wyatt Earp in Winchester 73.

Johnny Allegro is typical of the action/noir type films that Raft was doing at this point in his career. Soon he’d be working for Poverty Row Lippert films and Johnny Allegro from Columbia’s B picture unit looked like Citizen Kane next to their stuff.

Fans of George Raft will be pleased. Especially with that ending borrowed from The Most Dangerous Game.