*Spoilers*
What exactly was the bartender's purpose in the robbery? Was he just there to make sure that the man who started the fight wasn't interfered with by the bartenders? That's the only thing I can think of that he really did.
Mike the barman had access to the employee locker-room, thus his job was to bring in the shotgun hidden in the flower box, and to provide the key so that Johnny could access the locker.
This was, perhaps, unnecessary - Johnny entered the track with a briefcase that could have had a broken-down sawn-off in it together with a canvas bag and the other things he needed; no-one was searching entrants at the gate, so the whole 'locker' thing seemed an unnecessary complication that required an extra man needing to be in on the plan and sharing the cash.
There were many other unlikely plot devices that meant the plan would in real life have been unfeasible. The policeman would have been seen getting the bag and stuffing it in his trunk, and in any case the windows to the office would have been heavily barred. Johnny would have stayed in an anonymous motel/hotel where he could give a false name, not at a hotel where the owner knew him and his real name. Shooting the horse was unnecessarily risky too - *not* shooting the horse and it winning would have produced a rush of punters to the pay-out windows (although the car-park scenes with Timothy Carey and the attendant are stunningly good and brilliantly written). George Peatty didn't need to be in on the job; all he did was open the door after the security guys rushed out (which wasn't locked anyway). Finally, the whole plan depended completely on the 'fight' needing seven or eight security guards to subdue one man, AND that someone would call upstairs to the cash office to demand the two guards there attend the fight, AND that those guards would be away for the five minutes or so it took to change in the locker room, do the robbery, change again AND exit the same door. Just wouldn't have been feasible in real-life.
I'd forgotten just how good this film was.....
It seems like the heist needed lots and lots of "coincidences" to fall neatly and magically into place to make it all work. And it just about *did* work... until the very end.
This was the same question that I had after seeing this movie yesterday. I think the theory that the bartender was needed to get the gun into the employee locker room is right. But, why couldn't George do that? He was already in the locker room when the gun was being brought in, so he could have done that himself.
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