Trick Baby (1972) Exceptional West Philly Neo Noir

You gotta ask yourself, at times, what the hell is going on here.

Not "here" in the present but in the rhetorical sense. What was responsible for the effect of a trend or say a tendency, which basically was to, back in the day, shit can a lot films into a sort of movie limbo. These are mostly non Hollywood films that came out after the demise of the Motion Picture Production Code. They were, maybe by the sheer volume of productions, all lumped together, the great and the mediocre, seemingly by caprice, into the various "exploitation genres" and not given any time to find much public appreciation or critical recognition. Grindhouse theaters predominately showed these particular films, and they were always considered by association, of poor quality or low (artistic) merit.

Add the fact that none of these films showed up uncut on major or local network TV in "premiers" close enough to the time they were actually in theaters to gather any type of a lasting cachet. They basically would be one run and done. Films between say roughly 1967 and 1980. By the 1980s, home video and cable movie channels were a means to screen and revisit some of these titles.

I cannot believe that Trick Baby hasn't found more acclaim. It's a great film, stand alone. It's a great Neo Noir and it's one of the best of the Blaxploitation films if you consider it as being such. It's story is a nice twist on a scenario that has been done before.  It has excellent cinematography that captures the West Philadelphia ghetto in an invaluable time capsule. It's cast of mostly unknown actors are all quite believable, not burlesqued, and treated quite seriously.

Blue (Mel Stewart)

It's a film about a couple of con artists. It's right up there with some of more serious, non comedy con artist films. My personal favorites are, The Good The Bad And The Ugly, Paper Moon, The Sting, Confidence Girl, and Skin Game. Trick Baby is closest to Skin Game in that we have a Black actor and a White actor playing the con men, but Trick Baby puts a twist on that.

White Folks (Kiel Martin)

Mel Stewart is the black actor of the team. Mel, played the part of the elevator operator who has dialogs with both  Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte in the last of the Classic Studio Noirs, Odds Against Tomorrow. Stewart plays the seasoned old school con man "Blue" Howard. Kiel Martin (probably best known as a regular on Hill Street Blues TV Series (1981–1987)) is a white actor who plays "White Folks" a black man who can pass for white. White Folk's mother, a black woman, was an old friend of Blue. Blue took him underwing and taught him the art of the con.

The two have teamed up in the West Philly ghetto, and operate non discrimination con games against the stupid. whether white, black, sinner, saved, even a cop.

The two use use their apparent racial differences as one of the main gimmicks of their cons, i.e. the white man taking advantage of the poor desperate black man, getting something for far less than it's worth.

The artist at work

The finished "work of art"

When the film opens we see Blue working as a literal con "artist." He's dressed in a sweat stained, torn "T" shirt, moving around a cheap dive hotel flop. He fills ashtrays with stubbed out cigarette butts, he scatters old newspapers papers around. He's creating a work of art. An installation. It's called "desperate man holed up for days in a four dollar room."

The mark Frascatti (Dave Thomas) with White Folks

It's all for the benefit of the "mark" that Folks is bringing up, old man Frascatti (David Thomas). Blue plays the part of a small time hustler wanting to unload some stolen jewels. Folks, the part of the steerer, and a tough guy with just enough menace to exploit the situation by forcing the blackman to sell the jewelry for $10,000 way less than the $50,000 that Folks tells Frascatti that they're worth. The scam works like a dream, the outlay expense of $50 for the glass jewelry and the cost of the room parlays into $5,000 a piece. Easy money.

The Con

The guys celebrate, up at Blue's high rise apartment. Folks announces to to Blue.

"I didn't want to tell you this..."

White Folks: Blue I didn't wanna tell you this, But I ain't gonna play the con no more. I wanna lead a different kind of life, close to the earth, as far as a man can see, green fields rolling out towards the horizon.
Blue Howard: Don't do it Folks in your heart your a city boy.
White Folks: [takes a gulp of his Pinch whiskey} OK, I'll spend it all on hookers.

They both break into laughs, Cleo (Vernee Watson), Blue's wife is there but she is not happy with the even split and she doesn't trust Folks. Blue tells her again that he's black like us and ignores her.

Cleo (Vernee Watson)

Folks takes off and down in the hood, meets a high society blonde Susan (Beverly Ballard) out on the street who can't flag down a cab. Folks offers to help, he stops a cab and each likes what the other sees, the two hook up, and make love.

Susan (Beverly Ballard)

Folks later gets invited by Susan to a upper crust dinner party. While they eat he overhears a discussion of race relations between a doctor Howard Morrison (Donald Symington) and an investor Paul Phillips (Don Fellows).

A fancy dinner party

Paul Phillips (Don Fellows)

Paul Phillips: You never should have lifted them up Howard.
Howard Morrison: Paul you conservatives make a mistake, you can't afford to strangle hope in people. Without Hope people will become dangerous.
Paul Phillips:  No Howard you liberals have let them invade our society, you give them jobs, political jobs.
Howard: Paul you miss the point, it's only the smart ones they move up.
Paul Phillips:  Ha! That makes it even worse.
Howard: You know we have to move them up, if we leave a smart one in the ghetto, he might develop into a leader against us. If we raise him up into white society we neutralized. He feels compelled to try to act like us, he loses his identity, and uh, his racial anger if he has any. He becomes alien to his brothers, and they realize he sold them out and they grow to hate him. He becomes worthless to them and safe for us. In fact in his love for the creature comforts, except for his color, he become one of us.

Howard Morrison (Donald Symington)

Folks see a couple of easy marks. He tells the men that he has an opportunity to make a half million dollars on a one hundred thousand dollar investment in ghetto tenement apartment houses. They question Folks on the details. He tells them that the group he's dealing with are local investors. He is putting up ten thousand they are coming up the ninety thousand.

Folks sets up the nest con

Morrison and Phillips want to know if they can get in ahead of the local group if they offer the ninety thousand in cash. Folks tells them that he'll have to call the broker putting the deal together to see. Folks calls Blue who is sitting in a poker game and tells him about the con he's running. Blue will have to scramble to set up another "artistic" fake office or rent one temporarily and quickly. Some place in the ghetto as a front.

Pawn shop

Meanwhile greedy old man Frascatti takes the fake jewels to a fence at a pawn shop who tells him he got took. Tell him they are worthless. Frascatti ends up have a heart attack and dies.

heartattack

Fascatti was the uncle of a local Philly mob boss Nino Parelli (Tony Mazzadra). Parelli finds out from a 6th District black cop, Dot Murray (Dallas Edward Hayes) that the old man got conned just before he had his attack. Pirelli tells Dot that he'll pay five thousand apiece for the conmen. Dot splits to do some investigating and Pirelli has two hoods tail him.

Nino Parelli (Tony Mazzadra)

Dot Murray (Dallas Edward Hayes)

five thousand a piece...

It all goes Noirsville for Blue and Folks both as Dot and Pirelli begin to begin to close in on them.

White Folks: What do you want more The money or to keep on breathing.
Blue Howard: I want both
White Folks: You can't have both.

Noirsville

Tail Fins

Trick Baby's director was Larry Yurst. Larry was Philadelphia born and grew up in the suburbs of New York and Chicago. He was given a Super 8 camera when he was a teenager, graduated in theater from Stanford University and worked in television until he was able to start making his own films. He lives in Los Angeles where he is now an accomplished photographer. "I always keep a tight rein on the art direction for my films and personally scout to find the locations I need." He only has a few full length films to his credit, too bad, he showed a lot of potential.

The film was based on the book of the same name by Iceberg Slim (aka Robert Beck (born Robert Lee Maupin or Robert Moppins, Jr). He was a pimp who became an influential author in the black community. Born in Chicago he moved around with his family to Milwaukee,and Rockford before settling back in Chi town. After his old man split his mama ran a beauty salon. She made enough money to send him to Tuskegee University. He was still a punk though, and got kicked out for bootlegging. Back home again, he started pimping claiming in his biography to, over his 24 year career, have run a stable of over 400 women black and white on the streets. He got busted in 1961, and served 10 months of solitary confinement in a Cook County jail. In jail he decided he was too old for the streets. He drifted to Los Angeles married Betty and became an insecticide salesman.

Betty encouraged him to write the story of his life as a novel. Pimp was published in 1967. It was the first insider look into the world of black pimps. Trick Baby was his second published novel.

The supporting actors in the cast are all excellent. Of note Dallas Edward Hayes appeared in (Across 110th Street (1972), Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)), Vernee Watson first film was Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) and she is still active to this day, Don Fellows was in The Detective (1968), and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

The excellent cinematography was by Isidore Mankofsky, the only other film I saw of his was Somewhere in Time (1980), too bad he didn't do more similar films.

Screen caps are from the Soul Showcase DVD. A must see Neo Noir 8/10.