Best movies like City of Shadows

The inside story of a criminal empire spawned on city streets...its laws executed in back alleys in bullets and blood

A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like City of Shadows Starring Victor McLaglen, John Baer, Kathleen Crowley, Anthony Caruso, and more. If you liked City of Shadows then you may also like: Whistle Stop, Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie, Our Town, Rackety Rax, Risky Business and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

After several years of supporting parts, Victor McLaglen once more landed a leading role in Republic's City of Shadows. McLaglen plays Big Tim Channing, an ageing but powerful gangster who raises young newsboy Dan Mason as his own son. Upon reaching adulthood, Mason (John Baer) becomes a law student, with the covert (and illegal) help of Channing. Despite his checkered past, Mason opts for honesty when he falls in love with Fern Fellows (Kathleen Crowley). This decision ultimately spells the doom for Mason's mentor Big Tim.

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Whistle Stop

When beautiful Mary returns to her "whistle stop" hometown, long-standing feelings of animosity between two of her old boyfriends leads to robbery and murder.

Our Town

Change comes slowly to a small New Hampshire town in the early 20th century. We see birth, life and death in this small community.

Rackety Rax

Gambler/racketeer "Knucks" McGloin takes note of just how much money and action (aside from the game itself) takes place around and about the annual Rose Bowl football game, and decides this is one sweet proposition and could be even sweeter if one had his own college and football game and had a large say beforehand as to the outcome of any game this team had. So he ups and creates his own college---Carnasie after his own neighborhood. His gangster rival. Gilatti, thinks this give McGloin a definite inside advantage and, if there is one thing a gambler can't abide, it is that someone has an inside advantage and they are not that someone. Gilatti gets himself a college football team. Education marches on.

Risky Business

Radio commentator Dan Clifford takes desperate chances to save the life of a young girl who has been kidnapped.

Abe Lincoln in Illinois

Abe Lincoln in Illinois is a 1940 biographical film which tells the story of the life of Abraham Lincoln from his departure from Kentucky until his election as President of the United States.

The Catered Affair

At breakfast, Jane announces that she and Ralph are getting married the next week. All Jane and Ralph want is a small wedding with the immediate family and no reception. This is because Jane's parents are poor and Jane and Ralph can borrow a car for their honeymoon. However, at dinner that night all Ralph's parents talk about are the big weddings they gave their daughters and everything escalates. All of a sudden, it is a big wedding breakfast with hundreds of guests. The problem is that for 12 years, Tom has been saving money to buy his own cab and license, but now that he can, all of his money is going towards a wedding neither he, or Jane or Ralph really want.

The Miami Story

Fed up with the raising crime in Miami, the police chief and the leading members of the city council hire a former Miami gangster, gone straight, to help eliminate the biggest crime syndicate in the city.

Emergency Call

A surgeon and an ambulance driver fight racketeers who take over their hospital.

Maggie's Plan

Maggie's plan to have a baby on her own is derailed when she falls in love with John, a married man, destroying his volatile marriage to the brilliant and impossible Georgette. But one daughter and three years later, Maggie is out of love and in a quandary: what do you do when you suspect your man and his ex wife are actually perfect for each other?

The Paper Chase

A first-year law student struggles with balancing his coursework and his relationship with the daughter of a stern professor.

Girls Can Play

The Hollywood Post's sports writer, Jimmy Jones (Charles Quigley), yearns to be a crime reporter, and thus looks for foul play on even the most routine assignments. In writing a piece about a girl's softball team, Jimmy discovers that their sponsor, Foy Harris (John Gallaudet), is a notorious racketeer who has supposedly gone straight. Jimmy suspects Foy is still up to no good. He begins hanging around the team to do a bit of snooping, and also to be near the cute new pitcher, Ann Casey (Jacqueline Wells).

Father Takes the Air

In the fifth and final movie in Monogram's "Father" series, Henry Latham and Mayor Colton dream of reliving their WWI flying careers, leading to an increasingly antagonistic competition.

Slaughter on 10th Avenue

A rookie assistant DA is assigned to investigate the murder of a longshoreman, killed for exposing gangster involvement on the piers, and meets up with a "code of silence" amongst all potential witnesses.

The Midnight Lady

The hard-boiled owner of a big-city speakeasy is reunited with her daughter, who has been raised to believe that her mother is dead, then finds herself accused of murdering her daughter's no-good boyfriend.

The Drag-Net

A playboy takes a job as an assistant district attorney, finds himself up against a tough crime boss and his gang.

The Pay-Off

A thug robs a young engaged couple of their last few dollars. When the thug's gang boss hears of the robbery, he gives them back their money and takes them under his wing. The thug, resentful of the couple, plans to organize a mutiny against the gang's boss, but when he is killed in a botched robbery, the police focus their attention on the young couple.

Hot Pepper

In this comedy, a pair of ex-Marines team up and get involved in a nightclub. Trouble ensues when they both fall in love with a feisty woman and begin fighting over her.

I Stole a Million

A cabbie and petty thief dreams of the big heist that will end his thieving ways.

I Cover the Underworld

Gunner O'Hara is about to be released from prison after serving a five-year sentence, and receives a visit from his twin brother John, a divinity student soon to be ordained as a priest. Aware that Gunner plans to resume his criminal career, John decides to stop him.

Don't Turn 'em Loose

A conscientious attorney who is a member of the State Parole Board, finds his own son, using an alias, up for parole and makes the decision to cast the approving vote.

The High Powered Rifle

A private detective (Willard Parker) falls for the girlfriend (Allison Hayes) of a racketeer whom he believes has targeted him for death.

The Final Hour

A down-and-out lawyer gets back on his feet with help from a singer who later retains him to defend her on a murder charge.

Fighting Shadows

Mountie Tim O'Hara is sent to Indian River to investigate a fur trading racket. But he quickly finds himself in trouble when he is accused of shooting a prisoner in the back and is then put in jail by a fellow Mountie.

The Man from New Mexico

The cattle on the Langton Ranch are mysteriously dying and cowhands are disappearing or being shot. Two Langton riders bring a wounded rider they found wounded and hung up in a barbed-wire fence to Sally Langton and report that her father is missing. A lone rider, Jess Ryder, tops a rise and sees a band of men working on some calves in a secluded corral, and he frowns as he sees what Bat Murchinson is doing.

The Squealer

A gangster's wife, fearful that he is about to be murdered by his rivals, tips off the police to his whereabouts in order to save his life. Her husband, however, believes her reason was that she wanted him out of the way so she could have his best friend.

Exposed

A magazine reporter exposes a crooked District Attorney, resulting in his trial. Complications ensue, however, when the man is acquitted.

The Branded Sombrero

A cowboy promises his dying foster-father, "Honest" John Maggert, that he will return the cattle that Maggert rustled from the local ranchers.

The Lady and the Mob

Hattie Leonard sets out to break a criminal gang controlling the dry cleaning business.

Another Part of the Forest

This 'prequel' to The Little Foxes tells how the ruthless members of the old-South Hubbard family got that way.

Miss Tatlock's Millions

After the accidental death of an idiot heir, a stunt man is hired to impersonate him while the family gathers to determine the dispersment of the estate of Miss Tatlock's millions.

The Town Went Wild

Comedy concerning two feuding fathers dealing with the shocking news that their sons were switched at birth, meaning that one of their daughters is about to marry her own brother.

The Devil Is Driving

Gabby Denton, a hard-drinking, down-on-his-luck drifter, seems to get a chance at redemption when his brother-in-law helps get him a job as a mechanic. Not realizing the garage he works for is actually a front for a stolen car ring, Gabby soon finds himself mixed up in both murder and a liaison with the boss's girl.

The Gay Caballero

Football star Ted Radcliffe goes west to manage an inherited cattle ranch. Empire builder and cattle thief Don Paco is hounded by El Coyote (who is really Don Bob) who now has a partner in Ted. Unfortunately Ted is also falling love with Don Paco's daughter Adela.

The Return

After the death of his father, a brilliant college student returns to his family home where he learns that the horrors from his childhood aren't as dead and gone as he once thought.

The Careless Years

A high school girl from a wealthy family falls for a fellow student from a poor family. Both families disapprove, and, unable to stand the pressure, the couple quit school and flee to Mexico.

The Isle of Retribution

Five people are stranded on an island off the coast of Alaska. The poor girl, Bess Gilbert, competes with the rich girl, Lenor Harderworth, for the attentions of the heroic Ned Cornet. A snow-slide resolves a few issues.

Special Agent

Newspaperman Bill Bradford becomes a special agent for the tax service trying to end the career of racketeer Nick Carston. Julie Gardner is Carston's bookkeeper. Bradford enters Carston's organization and Julie cooperates with him to land Carston in jail. An informer squeals on them. Julie is kidnapped by Carston's henchmen as she is about to testify

Monte Carlo Nights

A man wrongfully convicted of murder escapes custody and goes in search of the real killer. The problem is that he only has one clue to go on.

Sealed Lips

There's something very odd about Romano, a notorious gangster serving time in the federal pen. For one thing, Romano doesn't sound much like himself. For another, he always seems to be hiding something. Detective Lee suspects that something's amiss, and he's probably right!

Headline Hunters

A rookie reporter in pursuit of an expose gets tangled up with big-time mobsters.

Love, Honor and Oh-Baby!

In despair after breaking up with his girlfriend, a man hires a thug he has never seen to kill him. However, he changes his mind when he falls in love with another woman--but he can't stop the man trying to kill him because he doesn't know who he is.

When G-Men Step In

Having paid for the education and legal training of his younger brother, Bruce, with the idea that he would become a lawyer and join his business, Frederick Garth, a racketeer posing as an honest businessman, is dismayed when he learns that Bruce has become a G-Man instead.

No Living Witness

An assistant district attorney tries to stop his girlfriend's father from being swindled out of his money by a crooked lawyer in a racetrack scam.

Mirele Efros

Mirele Efros, "the Jewish Queen Lear," was the masterpiece of Ukrainian-born Jacob Gordin, an enormously influential Yiddish playwright whose works sought to describe and promulgate the ethos of mentshlekhkeyt: the practice of honesty, decency, and devotion toward family and community. This sophisticated version of his stage classic faithfully recreates Jewish life in turn-of-the-century Grodno, Poland.

Silk Hat Kid

Eddie Howard, a fast-thinking, two-fisted bodyguard, is hired by nightclub-owner Tim Martin to protect him from chiseling gangsters operating an extortion-racket. But Eddie meets and falls in love with Laura Grant, Tim's sweetheart, and complications quickly arise.

I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby

In I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby, Broderick Crawford plays a sentimental gangster who abducts songwriter Johnny Downs and forces him to write a love ballad. It is Crawford's hope that the song will reach out and touch his long-lost childhood sweetheart. I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby was based on James Edward Grant's short story Trouble in B Flat; echoes of the basic premise later resurfaced in the 1957 "A" picture The Girl Can't Help It.

Shadows of Sing Sing

Muriel Rossi (Mary Brian), the sister of a racketeer, Al Rossi (Harry Woods), falls in love with Bob Martel (Bruce Cabot), the son of a police detective, Joe Martel (Grant Mitchell). Their love affair causes bot families problems when Bob is framed, but saved as a result of his father's access to police department films.

Counsel for Crime

Otto Kruger once again plays a dynamic, bombastic attorney in Columbia's Counsel for Crime. Kruger plays William Mellon, a shifty shyster whose underhanded methods loses him the love of his sweetheart Anne (Nana Bryant), who subsequently marries a powerful senator (Thurston Hall). What Mellon doesn't know is that Anne has borne him a son, whom the senator has adopted. Reaching adulthood, Paul (Douglass Montgomery) opts for a legal career himself, taking a clerical job with his own father's firm. In typical "B"-picture, Mellon is charged with murdering one of his more odious clients -- and Paul is appointed prosecuting attorney in the case.

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