Try and Get Me focuses on America’s thirst for vengeance perpetrated by sensational journalism to incite the public’s wrath. Howard Tyler, a recently returned World War II veteran, is a seemingly moral guy who just can’t score a job. His search leaves him desperate and unable to support his pregnant wife and young son. Their prospects look increasing bleak.
Tyler thinks his luck might change where he meets slick Jerry Slocum who tempts Tyler to be his driver in series of nighttime stick-ups. Tyler tells his wife that he’s working the night shift. With a guilty conscious, he begins hitting the booze.
Tyler is seduced into this life of petty crime until Slocum decides to kidnap a rich man’s son for ransom. Guilt-ridden Tyler tells Slocum this will be his last job.
During the kidnapping, Slocum kills the man in a moment of panic while Tyler watches by in horror.
A ransom note is sent. Tyler continues to drink heavily. And that’s his downfall. In a drunken state, he inadvertently confesses to the murder.
On a parallel track, local newspaper reporter, Gil Stanton, has been convinced by his editor to write a series of articles about a purported crime wave committed by outside criminal gangsters. Stanton believes he is performing a service by stirring up public sentiment but is oblivious that he is complicit in manufacturing public hysteria. His editor insists that it’s good for the newspaper’s circulation.
A third-party observer, Dr. Vito Simone, a visiting Italian professor (and presumably a witness to Mussolini’s fascism), lectures Stanton about the consequences of irresponsibly sensationalizing the events that will inevitably incite public’s thirst for vengeance.
Tyler, then Slocum, are caught by the police and locked into jail cells.
A trumped-up crowd is whipped into a frenzy by Stanton’s sensational articles. They demand immediate vengeance. The jail is stormed by a lynch mob.
The film's climax reaches an apotheosis of hysteria when an angry mob storms the jail. The mob succeeds, breaking down the jail doors, clambering up the stairs to the cells, dragging Slocum and Tyler away while Stanton and the sheriff watch helplessly.
The final scene is one of silence, shattered twice with a distant cheering like a football chant, one cheer each man who’s being lynched.
The barebones plot of the film loosely reflects the 1933 San Jose events. The movie’s only direct link to those events is the portrayal of the ringleaders wearing shirts emblazoned with University of Santa Sierra, a clear reference to the University of Santa Clara.
Given that Try and Get Me was released in 1950, reaction to the film was less about Depression era San Jose and more inclined as a reflection of the then contemporary threat of McCarthyism. When released, the film was met with negative reviews. The New York Times wrote that: “Mob violence, of course, is horrible, as it is made to appear in this film. But so, its hoodlumism ugly. That's the main weakness of this movie. We are asked to expend pity and resentment towards society in the cause of a common thief.” Theater managers caught flak for exhibiting such an “anti-American” picture and the film quickly sank into obscurity.
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In 1951, Cy Endfield, the film’s director, was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities to testify against his left-wing political associations in Hollywood. Given the choice to ‘name names’ or disregard the subpoena, Endfield left for England. He was blacklisted until 1960 when he recanted to the House Committee allowing him to work again in Hollywood.
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