Hard Guy

Doris Cavanaugh, a flashy show girl, marries wealthy heir Anthony Tremaine, scandalizing the groom's father. Not knowing the marriage is a plot devised by racketeers to extort money from the family, the elder Tremaine pays the girl off. Doris has a change of heart about her role in the swindle and wants to return the cash, but she is shot and killed before getting the chance.

Doris' sister Julie (Mary Healy) suspects that bad-to-the-bone Vic Monroe (Jack LaRue) is behind the murder, and she goes undercover in his nightclub to prove it. Working as a cigarette girl, she meets detective Steve Randall (Kane Richmond), and they soon marry. Trouble mounts when Steve suspects that he is just a "mark" to his new bride and that he might be the next target for murder.

Often cast as the "heavy," Jack LaRue appeared as memorable gangsters in the crime mysteries, Footsteps in the Dark and Gangs, Inc., the same year he made this film. His most famous villain was sadistic gang leader, Trigger, in The Story of Temple Drake (1933). LaRue played one of his last tough guys in the comedy crime musical, Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964).

When it transpires that a marriage between a showgirl and a wealthy heir is simply a ruse so that a group of boisterous racketeers can lay their hands on the heir's sizeable fortune, all hell breaks loose. The showgirl is mysteriously assassinated, and her sister, who investigates the crime, becomes embroiled in underworld activities herself as she tries to uncover the murderer and his intentions. A taut black & white crime drama from 1941, HARD GUY features a memorable performance from Jack La Rue, who made his name in many similarly themed movies.