This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

While undeniably entertaining "The Secret Six" does suffer from a rather messy screenplay courtesy of Frances Marion that makes the audience feel as though they are random passersby who picked up a few bits and pieces from some strangers' conversation. The plot which treads on familiar ground as it regards the rise and fall of a gangster (Wallace Beery) whose rise commends as his criminal friend (Ralph Bellamy) brings him in front of a crooked drunken attorney (Lewis Stone) who is also the brains behind a large underworld bootlegging operation. Later on as our main crook nicknamed "Slaughterhouse" begins to climb up the ranks within this gang of low lives by backstabbing pretty much anyone that stands in his way for the top. Two investigative reporters (Clark Gable and Johnny Mack Brown) decide to stop him from getting there with the help of an employee (Jean Harlow) who works at a restaurant operated by the bootleggers as their front. This is all quite easy to follow despite plenty of lousy dialogue (which the phrase "oh yeah?" makes about 30% of) but it's the final execution itself that's confusing. The movie starts off with us following "Slaughterhouse" for better or worse but then when those two male Nancy Drews show up the picture shifts gear and they become our main protagonists afterwards there's hardly any glimpse of him unless one of these guys is hanging about.Despite all of that "The Secret Six" does manage to provide lots of entertainment mainly thanks to it's colorful players - Beery is one mean bum, Bellamy fits surprisingly well is this dreary setting, Gable while he doesn't really have all that much to do except spit out his iffy good guy dialogue still manages to give a good show the same goes for Brown, Harlow's character seems like the biggest casualty here since there are little glimpses into her personalty but not much else.Marjorie Rambeau, Paul Hurst, John Miljan, DeWitt Jennings, and Murray Kinnell deliver highly stellar performances in their supporting roles but there's no doubt that my absolute favorite of the bunch was Lewis Stone he was simply tops. Of course one can't forget the masterful direction by George Hill. All in all very enjoyable could have been a classic if it wasn't for it's so-below-so writing.

sounds like a super hero movie but it's not.Its about a Victor Mclaughlin who works in the stock yards in Chicago. His buddy Raplph Bellamy brings him into the bootlegging business where he excels and eventually takes over for Bellamy. Into the mix comes Jean Harlow, Johnnie Mack Brown, and some guy named Clark Gable, who impressed MGM so much they made him into a superstar (actually watching him he did it on his own- they just signed him). Its a crime pays until the final fade out tale that Hollywood used to do so well.This is a dense potboiler of a film. Its full of great characters and sets and lines and is super meaty. The trouble is it's almost too much. Actually its too much and too knowing. This is a big budget picture and it knows it, wearing it on it's sleeve. It's the sort of attitude that kind of gets in the way since it has too polished.I like the film, though the film to me is more curio for the casting and the filmmaking. rarely have I ever seen a film quite like this (the title refers to a band of good citizens who hide their identity to trip up our antihero.Definitely worth a look. Its something you'll probably like more than love and which you'll sing it's technical and casting praises more than it's story.

not the greatest of all crime dramas, but very interesting to watch a very young, relatively unknown Clark gable, and the pre-sexpot Harlow in the typical crime drama of the early talkies. plenty of clichés and tired sub-plots, Harlow is actually a bit boring, not a really great actress by any means, but well-suited to these low-budget early talkies. Seems the studios didn't really know what to do with the young Gable, before Thalberg hired him and he was on his up to stardom! He seemed quite a versatile character player for his era, until he became stereotyped into the superstar vein. the story itself is fairly typical of the B features of the area, but well worth watching, as I enjoy seeing later superstars in their "salad days" just getting started!

While not on the level of the work being done in Warners crime films during the same period ("The Public Enemy," "Little Caesar"), "The Secret Six" is a fine picture with a lot to recommend it.Primarily, this comes from the cast. Wallace Beery, then at the height of his fame, makes for a good central figure as Louis "Slaughterhouse" Scorpio, as the name implies, a former slaughterhouse worker turned bootlegger and murderer. His ordering "a hunk o'steak" after spending all day crushing animals heads with a sledgehammer suggests, right at the beginning, that killing means nothing to this huge primate of a man. Lewis Stone, on the wrong side of the law for once, is Newton, the dandyish crooked lawyer and head of the gang, giving an understated, sinister performance and making every scene count. Ralph Bellamy, one of the movies' perennial nice guys, plays a very, very bad guy here, as the gangster who brings Scorpio into the gang, to his later regret. And veteran Marjorie Rambeau, while she has little to do overall, is good as Bellamy's blowsy mistress, Peaches, a far cry from the society matrons she would specialize in later in her career.But the big surprise, and one of the main reasons for watching this picture, are the solid early performances of Jean Harlow and a young, sans-mustache Clark Gable. Both were free-lancers who were hired for this film on a one-time basis. MGM was so impressed with their work as, respectively, Anne, the cigarette girl who loves and loses reporter Johnny Mack Brown, and Carl, the crusading reporter who aids the Secret Six of the title in bringing down Stone and Beery's criminal organization, that they were hired to long-term contracts right after the picture was completed. Both turn in solid performances. Those who think Harlow couldn't act should see her in the last third of the film, particularly the trial scene. And the sheer mile-a-minute energy Gable brings to his role makes his every scene watchable. Within the next few years, these two would establish themselves as the stuff of Hollywood legend.Directed by the excellent, underrated George Hill ("Tell It To the Marines," "Min and Bill," "Hell Divers"), scripted by the great Frances Marion, and with the aforementioned solid cast and the usual MGM gloss, "The Secret Six" makes for a very enjoyable film, for historians, crime film buffs, fans of the stars, and just those of us who appreciate a good, involving story.