Claudio Carvalho Cliff Taylor (George Raft) and his pal Chuck Martin (Humphrey Bogart) are released together from Sing Sing. Cliff wants to regenerate and have a straight life while Chuck has no intention of changing his lifestyle. Cliff wants to support his mother Mrs. Taylor (Flora Robson) and his younger son Tim Taylor (William Holden) that can not afford to get married with his girlfriend Peggy (Jane Bryan). However he is discriminated by the society and has difficulties to get a job. When he sees Tim thinking to switch to a life if crime, Cliff seeks out Chuck and decides to join his gang to heist banks and make money to buy a garage for Tim. What will happen to the Taylor brothers? "Invisible Stripes" is an entertaining gangster film with the story of an ex-con that wants to go straight during his parole but is discriminated by the society, returning to the crime. The fate of Cliff Taylor is predictable. The greatest attractions are probably William Holden very young is his second credited role and Humphrey Bogart in a support role. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): Not Available on Blu-Ray or DVD.

blanche-2 Somehow at the age of 22, William Holden looked like a better-looking Tom Hanks. And I'll bet there are a lot of people who could sit through "Invisible Stripes" and not know it was William Holden."Invisible Stripes" stars George Raft, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, and Jane Bryan.George Raft plays Cliff Taylor who, once released from prison, decides to stay on the straight and narrow. His pal, Chuck Martin (Bogart) has no such intentions. Cliff, who has a brother (Holden) and a mother (Fay Robson) finds the going tough, unable to get a job he can keep for various reasons, usually someone making trouble for him. His kindly parole officer encourages him to keep trying. With his brother Tim wanting to marry his girlfriend Peggy, and the job situation, Cliff decides to go in with Chuck's group.Pretty good gangster flick, with Bogart, not long before his breakout role in High Sierra, giving the strongest performance. Raft is playing a good guy so he doesn't demonstrate a lot of bite. The film has some exciting scenes, particularly toward the end.Holden, as stated above, is just a kid but does a good job as a man in love who wants to give his girlfriend the world, if only he had some money. It would be 11 years before he made his mark in "Sunset Boulevard" and became a true superstar.As an aside, Jane Bryan retired to marry Justin Dart, who took over Rexall Drug chain. She died in 2009 at the age of 91.In many ways a typical Warner Brothers gangster film, but a good one.

gullwing592003 It's high time this movie is released on DVD, it was never released before on VHS. This is one of my favorite Warner Bros. gangster films that stars both George Raft & Humphrey Bogart. I'm a fan of both actors & the gangster genre. But this isn't just another typical "knock down, drag out, car chasing, gun blasting gangster film, it's also a social commentary on just how tough it really was to live in depression era 1930's America. In the early 1930's public enemies like Al Capone, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly etc. were celebrated folk hero's & the public had no respect for law & order until G-men like Melvin Purviss, Elliot Ness & Thomas E. Dewey cracked down & stopped these colorful characters dead in their tracks. Only then the tide turned & the people had a new found respect & admiration for law & order.Invisible Stripes opens in Sing Sing prison with Cliff Taylor (Raft) & Chuck Martin (Bogart) on their way out of prison. Raft chooses the straight & narrow path while Bogart chooses to take up where he left off as a criminal. Both men have justifiable reasons for their paths. Bogie reasons that the odds are stacked up too high against them to go straight because of the economic hardship & the way the system is set up. A paroled convict only has a short time to get a job or end up back in jail. Raft soon finds out just how tough getting a job is & how cold & unfair the outside world is to an ex-con. He is greeted with suspicion, distrust & joblessness, his girlfriend quickly rejects him as soon as he gets out. Because Raft is an ex-con now he's not good enough for her anymore.Raft has a kid brother named Tim played by a young & "very different" William Holden, Tim is a grease monkey & dreams of a better life & wants a garage of his own. When the going gets tough he starts to become rebellious but Raft discourages him from following in his convict footsteps & beats some sense into him. Raft needs to get from "Rags to Riches" quickly & looks up Bogart & decides to join Chucks gang in a series of bank robberies just to get enough jack saved up to buy an auto shop for him & his kid brother (Holden) to keep him straight. After Cliff quits the gang in a subsequent botched up heist Chuck uses Tim's garage as a hideout until the heat cools off. Chuck lies to Tim by making him think that Cliff was in on the armoured car heist to assure his silence. After helping Chuck & his gang escape Tim is later arrested by the police & thrown in jail, placing Raft in the middle between a loyalty to Chuck & his kid brother Tim. But Cliff will not let his kid brother take the rap for Chuck & his gang & convinces him to rat on Chuck & the other gangsters by identifying them at the police station. Chuck helps Cliff anyway against the other gangsters out to shoot Raft for betraying them & Bogart even takes a bullet for Raft as both are shot & killed. Bogart is a likable bad guy in this movie unlike his other gangsters during this period like "Angels With Dirty Faces" & "The Roaring Twenties" We all sympathize with Raft's character as he suffers much hardship, injustice & humiliation from the outside world because he's wearing invisible stripes. Bogart's role as Chuck Martin is also sympathetic in a way because of the bond & close friendship that grew between the 2 men while they were in prison. It was tragic to see both actors getting killed in the end. If you're a fan of Raft & Bogart & the gangster genre this is a good watch. Recommended !

bkoganbing George Raft and Humphrey Bogart after a stretch in prison are getting out together. Raft is going to make a go of the straight life, but Bogart just wants to get back to being a criminal.Raft makes a try at it, but the fact he's an ex-con is continually being held against him. Eventually he rejoins the old gang, but keeps it a secret from mother Flora Robson and brother William Holden.Holden in the mean time is barely keeping his financial head above water at the gas station he works at. He's thinking real hard himself that brother Raft might have the right idea. All this is most distressing to Flora Robson and his fiancé, Jane Bryan.At Warner Brothers, it's all been done before, the players slip comfortably into roles that are very familiar to them. George Raft, a guy with limited skills was always believable in the urban criminal milieu because of who he hung out with. From Owney Madden to Meyer Lansky and most importantly Bugsy Siegel, Raft inhabited the wise guy world and basically was what you saw on the screen. Please recall Warren Beatty's film Bugsy which was spot on about Raft's relationship with him.It's interesting to speculate that if Raft had been at Warner Brothers from the beginning of his career instead of Paramount what path it might have taken. The best gangster flicks were done by the Brothers Warner, but by 1939 with their stable of gangster stars established, Raft is like a spare tire there.This was Bill Holden's second film and his joint contract holders of Paramount and Columbia lent him out here. He's playing the callow youth parts he specialized in before Sunset Boulevard. 'Smiling Jim' roles was what Holden disparagingly called these parts. It is rumored that Holden is also one of the extras in the prison yard in the James Cagney-George Raft film Each Dawn I Die. I've never been able to spot him though.Flora Robson's one great actress, her talents allowing her to play a slum mother and Queen Elizabeth the first. Some critics say she's wasted here and maybe she is, but one of her better later roles is as Mrs. Gonzo, the Maltese mother in Alec Guinness's The Malta Story. Very similar part.Jane Bryan's career was cut short all too soon, but not with tragedy, far from it. Shortly after this Bryan married Rexall Drug founder Justin Dart. She concentrated on the wife and mother thing and she was the wife of one of America's wealthiest citizens. Later on she had a hand in convincing her husband to back another of her former Warner Brothers contract players in a political career and lived to see Ronald Reagan become our 40th president.Both Bill Holden and Humphrey Bogart would feud legendarily on the set of Sabrina in the Fifties. No hint of their future troubles here in Invisible Stripes. Bogart's done it all before at Warner Brothers. George Raft helped Bogey in his career by shortly turning down High Sierra, The Maltese Falcon and later Casablanca. Fans of all the players mentioned here including myself will enjoy this film which admittedly won't rank in the top 10 of any of their credits.