The Bad-Good Good-Bad Guy: Dan Duryea in The Underworld Story

Nobody could deliver a line quite like Dan Duryea. My favorite comes in 1949’s Manhandled, when his slimy, gum-chewing private detective brags, “You’re not talking to a cluck Charlie. You’re talking to a guy who knows all the angles.” It wasn’t his wittiest line, nor was it the most hard-boiled or sarcastic, but it said a mouthful about Duryea’s screen persona. After all, the lanky blonde actor made a name for himself in the forties and fifties playing a series of pinstriped hustlers, leering hoods, and—believe it or not—two-fisted misogynists. His sardonic losers always thought they knew the score, but by film’s end were seldom on the right side of the law, if they were even breathing.

Yet in the period following the war, as the hopeful forties gave way to the uncertain and confused fifties, and as the fears of a disillusioned public began to creep into the movies, Duryea’s ability to contrast antisocial behavior with boyish charm, to “know all the angles,” or at least pretend to, made him more valuable than ever in Hollywood. He was uniquely able to actualize the audience’s itch to play those same angles, to grab a handful of that easy money, to flout those shiny post-war promises that most of them had missed out on anyway. And if the right property came along, Duryea might even get to play the good guy.

That property turned out to be 1950’s The Underworld Story, a nearly forgotten and oddly titled film (it has next to nothing to do with gangsters) that, thanks to the Warner Archive, is now widely available. No mere programmer, the United Artists production is one of those rare low-budget pictures that offer a frightening snapshot of its time—of everyday Americans, their optimism sapped, struggling to get by in a new world amidst the tumult of progress. The film is complex without being complicated, though a detailed synopsis would require much more space than I’m allotted here.

In a nutshell, it tells the story of Mike Reese, a venal big city reporter with a chip on his shoulder. Reese’s editors set him up as the fall guy after one of his stories gets a mob stoolie executed on the steps of city hall. Given a pink slip and blacklisted, Reese leaves town and buys into a sleepy suburban paper, but soon finds himself back in the thick of current events. A wealthy socialite has been murdered, and her maid—a black woman—is wrongfully accused of the crime. It just so happens that the murdered woman is the daughter-in-law of Reese’s former publisher, and the killer is the mogul’s spoiled son. Regardless, Reese believes the maid to be guilty, and burns through the majority of the running time playing both ends against the middle in an effort to line his own pockets. But as the story uncoils and the truth finally becomes clear to him, Reese is forced to make a decision between his own rank selfishness and the girl’s life.

Director Cyril Endfield turns in an intelligent and beautifully constructed film. It’s smart, well-paced, and looks gorgeous—Stanley Cortez’s lighting and camera work holds up against that of any iconic film noir. Endfield coaxed great stuff from his entire cast, but Duryea in particular shines—The Underworld Story is one of the best roles of his career. Endfield wrote the screenplay himself, adapting a story by Craig Rice (pseudonym of mystery writer Georgianna Craig) with assistance from Henry Blankfort. The resulting script is foreboding, laconic, and brimming with razor-sharp dialogue. It undertakes a range of issues, including the power of the fourth estate to manipulate public opinion, the capacity of the wealthy to influence the judicial process, the country’s never-ending struggle with racism, and the capriciousness of small town morality.

However, if the project represented a zenith for many of its principals, for a few the nadirs to come were life-changing. The film’s multi-layered criticisms of the Communist witch-hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee are so apparent that even the committee members themselves couldn’t have missed them. The Underworld Story goes so far as to give its lone black character, Molly (played by Mary Anderson, a white actress), the wrongly accused and persecuted murder suspect, the same surname as HUAC member John E. Rankin, the racist and bombastic congressman from Mississippi. Thus, it’s no surprise that Endfield’s film (along with his other incendiary 1950 piece, The Sound of Fury) drew the government’s ire: screenwriter Blankfort, actor Howard Da Silva, and Endfield himself would soon join the ranks of those defamed by the blacklist.

Dan Duryea’s task in The Underworld Story was formidable. He had to create one of noir’s more subtle protagonists, a cynical, manipulative, and morbidly opportunistic reporter, his idealism forgotten somewhere among all the column inches and carriage returns (Yes, Mike Reese will undoubtedly bring to mind the character of Chuck Tatum in Billy Wilder’s famous Ace in the Hole [1951], but The Underworld Story reached screens almost a full year earlier). Yet unlike Duryea’s heavies of the forties, this character had to take a sharp turn back towards the light, and bring a skeptical audience along for the ride. The Reese of the first two-thirds of the film is a scoundrel of the first order: a man who will exploit any situation for the sake of a payoff. Duryea’s tremendous range and feel for the part are most evident in two scenes involving Becker, a seedy defense attorney (Roland Winters).

The first—which shows Reese at his worst—happens over a T-bone lunch in the city, as he tries to convince the disinterested mouthpiece to take Molly’s case. Becker deflects him with a stack of fresh headlines that already have her head in a noose. “If she was white she wouldn’t stand a chance against these,” he says. Reese parries with money, offering to split the forty thousand dollars raised by the defense committee fifty-fifty. “She’ll hang,” sighs Becker. Reese’s response, “So she’ll hang,” is so callous that it stops the lawyer cold, a forkful of steak frozen in mid-air. Duryea knows that Reese must eventually turn the corner, but he also realizes that the payoff will be better if the audience harbors some doubt. The lunch scene is the linchpin in his character development—Duryea wants us to hate him.

Yet Reese’s primary function in the film is redemptive, and his moment of transformation— new territory for Duryea—comes during his next encounter with Becker. This scene takes place at the penitentiary, where the two men meet in order to persuade Molly to cop to a reduced charge of manslaughter. She flatly refuses, knowing that a guilty verdict at trial will mean the death penalty. In her anger she compares Reese’s schemes to those of a slave trader, and rises to leave. “Even if you die?!” he shouts in bewilderment, to which she fires back, “All I have left is that I’m innocent. I won’t give it up!” This is the film’s big moment, when the fact of Molly’s innocence finally obliterates Reese’s cynicism.

After she departs with the matron, the camera’s attention returns to him. Duryea underplays it—perfectly. His profile lit starkly against the shadows, he hems and haws, toying with his hat as he asks Becker to accept all of the committee’s money—including his cut—in order to give Molly a proper defense. Becker says the whole wad may not be enough. “How fat can you get?” scoffs Reese, the book on his cynicism slammed shut. Duryea makes the transformation so believable that by film’s end it’s impossible to imagine any other actor in the role.

What still matters about The Underworld Story and Dan Duryea’s vivid performance is the extent to which the character of Reese had to resonate, at least in a few ways, with post-war movie goers—people who could drum up the cost of a double feature easily enough, but had somehow missed out on the gravy train that everyone was so damn sure of back in 1945. Duryea understood their frustrations, and he becomes a proxy for the audience, fulfilling their desire to act out—to mouth off, to do the wrong thing, to get rich quickly. A self-centered knucklehead who still manages to save the day must have been a welcome, even liberating presence on the screen.
And although Duryea’s career playing the heel was typically thankless, he is now rightly regarded as one of noir’s essential performers. If his jaded screen persona is uninhibited by rules and morality, it’s only so the audience can bask in all that delicious freedom—at least until the end titles and house lights nudged them once again into conformity. ■

The Underworld Story (1950)

Written and Directed by Cy Endfield

Based on a story by Georgianna Craig

Cinematography by Stanley Cortez

Starring Dan Duryea, Gale Storm, Herbert Marshall, and Howard Da Silva

Released Through United Artists

Running time: 91 minutes

I originally wrote this piece for Noir City, the quarterly magazine of the Film Noir Foundation, and it is included in the recently released Noir City Annual 2013. Do yourself a favor and order a copy from Amazon here. The book is crammed full of the best in noir writing, and the proceeds go to the preservation of the original prints of these great films! 

VIOLENCE (1947)

Film noir’s definition may be as elusive as ever, but we can say with confidence that noir confronted the harsh realities of the postwar world more immediately than other kinds of Hollywood films. With their smaller budgets, noir movies developed a penchant for low cost, “ripped from the headlines” subject matter. They also often realistically depicted the internal and external struggle of veterans attempting to readjust to a culture irrevocably changed — more anonymous, more sophisticated, more neurotic — than the one they left behind at the outbreak of war.

Released originally by Monogram Pictures and recently made available through the Warner Archive, 1947’s Violence is concerned with the efforts of intrepid magazine reporter Ann Dwire (Nancy Coleman) and federal investigator Steve Fuller (Michael O’Shea) to uncover the truth behind veterans’ aid group the United Defenders. Headed by fire-breathing jingo “True” Dawson (Emory Parnell), and his cold-blooded right hand man Fred Stalk (Sheldon Leonard), the U.D. isn’t the legitimate organization it’s cracked up to be, but rather a picket-busting goon squad available to the highest bidder. Dawson uses his gift for polarizing oratory to enthrall returning servicemen, bellowing that the Defenders are the “…fearless spine that will stand behind you for all the things you’ve been promised: better housing conditions, your jobs back with privilege of seniority, and relief from the shortages that affect the happiness and well-being of you and your families!” Meanwhile, he and Stalk are secretly cultivating a six-figure deal with a mysterious “Mr. Big” figure to hire the Defenders out as club-wielding thugs: “We get ‘em young and tough, the kind that’s already wearing a chip on its shoulder — and then we’ll prime then for the payoff. We’ll prime them with hate! Hate for labor, hate for management, hate for the party that’s in, hate for the party that’s out!” During one such rant, a vet dares to challenge Dawson’s violent rhetoric, prompting the big man (in an obvious reference to HUAC — whether it’s an embrace or an indictment is unclear) to whine that the Defenders’ enemies can “get on the inside too.” He then calls for “a couple of red-blooded boys” to take care of the problem with their fists.

In order to properly come to grips with just how ‘of the moment’ Violence was, we need to take for a closer look at the domestic situation at the time of its release. It isn’t exactly correct, that conception most folks have about the period of time just after the war being a moment of unbridled prosperity and optimism in the United States. There was a short period of adjustment, before the renewed militarism of the Cold War and Korea (not to mention the rising middle class’s demand for new leisure and consumer goods) that would find returning soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines faced with a crisis of uncertain jobs, declining wages, sorry working conditions, and piss-poor housing.

Everyone who wanted a job had worked when the war was on, and while the home front labor shortages guaranteed high wages and almost unlimited overtime, rationing of staples and the general lack of luxury items led to out-of-control inflation, even after the surrender. After four long years folks were tired of going without; they had saved fastidiously during the war and now wanted to spend their money on their wants rather than their needs. By 1946 most families were eyeballing one of those new suburban bungalows, complete with a TV set in the living room and a Ford Super De Luxe in the carport. Yet as the economy was returning to a peacetime model and millions of G.I.s were rejoining domestic life, big business believed the transition period presented the right opportunity to slash wages and overtime, pare women from the labor pool, and return to a more profitable depression-era pay scale. An emboldened American people wouldn’t stand for it.

In the wake of the layoffs, the cuts in pay and overtime, and four years’ worth of stockpiled grievances (the AFL and CIO promised not to strike during the war), things got ugly. In what would become known as the Great Strike Wave of 1946, as many as five million Americans walked off the job. Steel, coal, oil, transportation, utilities, retail; it seemed to involve everyone. Entire cities went on solidarity strikes. Confrontations were commonplace, and there were those, like Violence’s Dawson, who were ready to cash in on the trouble. Big business had a long history of using the police and the National Guard to quash strikes, and when that wasn’t legally possible they turned to private contractors. By the time Congress opened the 1947 session, the labor situation was a national calamity, and more than 250 related bills were under consideration by lawmakers. It was during this maelstrom, in May 1947, that Violence hit theaters. Just a few weeks later, and over President Truman’s veto, congress passed the controversial Taft-Hartley Act, which, among other things, made it far more difficult for workers to strike.

That brings us back to Violence, a movie that attempts to cash in on the fears and the tumult of a country trying to get back to work, and hoping to recover from too many years of war and depression. It opens in the cellar of the United Defenders’ Los Angeles headquarters with the thuggish Stalk and simple minded crony Joker (Peter Whitney) murdering an employee who got too close to the truth, while Dawson blusters away to the Ladies’ Auxiliary in the meeting hall just over their heads. It’s a delightfully noirish beginning — dark and hardboiled — but the rest of the film fails to live up to these opening moments. As the action moves upstairs, we meet UD secretary Ann Mason, who appears dutiful until we realize that she’s using her secret bracelet camera to photograph everyone in the room! Mason is actually Ann Dwire, girl reporter for VIEW magazine. With microfilm negatives hidden in her bag, she departs for Chicago to pen her exposé. She hops a taxi outside the Union Station, but is tailed by agent Steve Fuller. The chase results in a fiery crash that sends Ann to the hospital with a bad case of — wait for it — amnesia. Deciding to play the situation to his advantage, Fuller sneaks into the hospital and convinces her that they’re engaged, and then tricks her into getting him a job with the UD. Unfortunately for Steve, Ann no longer remembers who she really is, and when she learns that he’s actually a G-Man, she rats him out to Dawson and Stalk!

Violence was Monogram’s follow up to its 1946 hit Decoy, and features many of the same principals: director Jack Bernhard, producer Bernard Brandt, writer Stanley Rubin, and actor Sheldon Leonard. But don’t go looking for a repeat performance. WhereDecoy was creative and stylish, Violence is drab and predictable. The cast often seems disinterested, the production design is tepid, and Bernhard’s direction is uninspired. Even the talented Leonard suffers in comparison. His droll delivery in Decoy acts as a foil to Jean Gillie’s outrageously over the top femme fatale, and his deadpan style doesn’t wash playing against two leads (Coleman and O’Shea) unable to parry his style. In short, Violence fails to deliver on either the tastiness of its title or the promise of its topicality — and it fails to capture even a little of the same verve that made Decoy so much fun. Rather than drawing attention to an issue of national importance — the problem of returning veterans in labor strife — Violence simply morphs its fascinating premise into grist for the Poverty Row mill. What it needed was a shot of Methylene Blue.

Violence (1947)Directed by Jack Bernhard
Produced Bernard Brandt
Written by Stanley Rubin and Lewis Lantz
Cinematography by Henry Sharp
Starring Nancy Coleman, Michael O’Shea, Emory Parnell, and Sheldon Leonard
Released by Monogram Pictures
Running Time: 72 minutes

THE CASE AGAINST BROOKLYN (1958)

“Don’t you know what this is? This is a million bucks every week! They’ve got hundreds of runners, a whole city sewed up! Cops right up to the top, they can squash you like a bug…”

As America entered the Eisenhower era, Hollywood screenwriters began to challenge many of the taboos of the earlier postwar period. Beginning with the groundbreaking success of 1948’s The Naked City, the movie industry shifted production away from the back lots and sound stages, and more authentic-looking kind of crime film came into vogue. Yet as the 1940s became the 1950s, film producers began to understand that audiences were not only more sophisticated than they had been before the war, but far more jaded as well. The rote escapist fare that had been a godsend in the bleak years of the Depression and the war was less palatable than it had ever been. Atomic-age audiences instead wanted movies that reflected the cynicism and uncertainty of the world in which they lived — and while the resulting films eschewed a rose-colored artifice for something more realistic, the crowds could at least take reassurance in knowing they were all in it together.

There are numerous social, political, and cultural tremors that occurred after the end of the Second World War that nudged America closer and closer to the upheaval of the 1960s. In terms of popular culture alone, film noir is merely one of many such tremors. Let’s not forget about the rebelliousness of Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, and the Beats; the explosion of Elvis Presley and Rock and Roll; the Kinsey report, Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, and Playboy magazine. Regardless, in the autumn of 1945, Americans were more united than they had ever been, sharing a common desire for a peaceful and prosperous future, bound up in high employment rates, low inflation, home ownership, and previously unheard of personal affluence. It practically goes without saying that by the 1960s this dream proved to be more or less unattainable (for many), unsustainable (for others), or simply unwanted—yet the twenty years in between proved to be a critical period of uneasy and confusing transition. One has only to watch a few episodes on television’s Mad Men to see the myriad ways in which prevailing attitudes were imploding in the face of clashing value systems: old-fashioned and conservative versus progressive and liberal—all set in the pressure-boiler of heretofore unseen gender and generational differences, compounded by an explosion in technology, information, and consumerism run wild. Truly the twenty years between the end of the Second World War and the beginning of Vietnam are some of the most fascinating in our history.

So what part did film noir play? While earlier films, even crime films, typically propped up the police force and civic leaders as pillars of the community, by the time the paranoid 1950s were in full swing such institutions became open to scrutiny — and the noir style was perfectly suited to confronting them on film. (With caution though: note the careful stance taken on the title lobby card shown at the end of the post.) The list of films that deal with corrupt officials is practically endless, though Hollywood’s Capra-esque populism always made it easier to pick on politicians rather than cops. Capra’s own 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington deals, as a plot point, with political corruption, while 1949’s Academy Award winner for Best Picture, All the King’s Men (1949) examines similar problems from a more exhaustive (and realistic) point of view. It took film noir, of which there are very few films that don’t involve the police, to expose crooked cops. The Big Heat (1953) is the most well-known such film, though The Turning Point (1952), Rogue Cop (1954) and Shield for Murder (1954) to some degree all tread similar ground. And while those films are concerned with bent police officials or individual officers, few ever dealt with the systematic corruption of a community’s entire police force. That brings us to 1958’s The Case Against Brooklyn.

Loosely based on a the story “I Broke the Brooklyn Graft Scandal” first chronicled in True magazine, the movie stars one of filmdom’s most beloved fathers, Darren McGavin, in a key developmental role. McGavin had splashed as a pusher in Otto Preminger’s 1955 picture The Man with the Golden Arm, and by 1958 he was a three-way veteran of stage, film, and television. The Case Against Brooklyn would prove to be McGavin’s springboard into a two-season TV run as the title character in Mike Hammer, where he cemented his reputation as an actor who could excel in tough-guy roles on both sides of the law. In The Case Against Brooklyn, McGavin plays Pete Harris, an idealistic young cop plucked straight out of the academy by the district attorney, a man intent on bringing down the numerous bookie joints wreaking havoc in the borough. Ironically (particularly considering Hollywood’s ongoing war against television), it’s a small-screen news exposé that sets the wheels of justice in motion. When the news piece points the finger at corrupt cops, the DA figures that the only way to get untouched officers is to pull them right out of the academy (a la DePalma’s The Untouchables). McGavin’s Pete Harris is no fresh-faced pup either (the actor was 36 when this was made), in spite of his inexperience as a police officer. His non-traditional age is explained away as the result of a ten-year stint in the Marine Corps.

A garage owner got in too deep and was beaten to death by the bookies — the DA’s only lead is the dead man’s wife (Maggie Hayes). Harris is told to get close to the widow, which he’s plenty eager to do. Other recruits pound the pavement, and some even enroll in college: “a hotbed of bookie activity.” Harris makes it clear early on that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get next to the woman, even if it means shoving his own wife (Peggy McCay) onto the back burner. This notion of infidelity for the sake of professional advancement is one of the most curious in the film, and also one that only seems possible in the wake of the 1956 weakening of the Motion Picture Production Code. It strikes at the heart of placing materialism and personal prestige ahead of traditional values, while reinforcing the film noir trope of the police officer as a thoroughly alienated character unable to maintain a healthy personal relationship.

Most cinematic cops were still married in the fifties, though their unions were increasingly on the rocks. Howard Duff’s character in The Naked City is an idealistic young cop just like Pete Harris, but a decade later Harris’s wife is just so much extra baggage. Even when she is brutally murdered (in a sequence lifted directly from The Big Heat) his grief barely registers; by the final reel it’s clear that in spite of the idealized characterization of his wife, Harris will be just as content to end up with the widow. By the early 1970s screenwriters wouldn’t even bother with marriage — cops wore their divorces as prominently as their badges. This failure at personal life has become an enduring factor in establishing the modern movie policemen, one of cinema’s most well worn clichés. The idea would further evolve in the 1980s, when the cop’s absent wife was just as likely to have been killed as a sympathy ploy (Lethal Weapon) or in order to motivate revenge (Hard to Kill). Al Pacino’s character in Heat (1995) has multiple exes, yet the film exhaustively details the collapse of his current marriage. In Die Hard (1988), which harkens back to the heroic bravado of John Wayne films, Bruce Willis is estranged from his wife, and he’s only able to win her back when his reckless determinism actually saves her life — to turn her back on him then would demonstrate more ingratitude than audiences could tolerate.

 

As illogical as it might sound, Pete Harris’s relationship with the widow actually does lead him to the heart of the Brooklyn bookie rackets. We are deep into B-movie concessions here: Harris goes undercover, and the DA brass don’t even give him a new name — it would have ruined a plot point. It turns out that Rudi (Warren Stevens), one of the racket toughs who laid the beat down on the widow’s dead husband, is also trying to hone in on Harris’s play with the woman. Contrivance and coincidence work their magic and by the end of the movie we get the expected showdown between the forces of good and evil, complete with a hospital bed finale and newfound romance.  Along the way, McGavin’s athleticism and imposing physical presence are on display as Harris relentlessly plugs away at his job, breaking anything that gets in his way. (After seeing this, his casting as Hammer is a no-brainer.) When he’s finally brought to bear by the bureaucracy of the police force, Harris turns over his badge and his gun (The Big Heat, again) and squares the job on his own terms — again establishing precedents for the cop dramas of the 1970s and 1980s.

Despite its rather late-cycle release, The Case Against Brooklyn is solidly a film noir. It makes a half-ass stab at voice-over narration, and the music is melodramatic and intrusive at times, but the cinematography is impressive. Many of the interiors are shot in the blandly-lit middle-distance takes popularized by television, but the exteriors are often fantastic: one scene in particular finds Harris in a low-light, low-angle face off with the dirty cop who has just murdered his partner. The framing, high-contrast, and blocking are as good an anything you’ll ever find in a quintessential film noir. However, it’s by other means that The Case Against Brooklyn’s truly establishes itself as a film noir. Even the title is significant in its ambiguity: it indicts not only the civic bureaucracy of the borough, but seemingly its people as well — after all, the bookie joints couldn’t fly without their clientele —suggesting that in the noir milieu, everyone has a little dirt on their hands. It would have been easy enough to call this Cops for Sale, or something along those lines, so the vagueness of the title seems purposeful. Yet it’s the characters that really drive the point home: Pete Harris is in the classic mold of the noir protagonist: alienated, obsessive, driven to the point of recklessness. The movie gives us the two classic female types: the fatale and the perfect wife. And although the script requires its fatale, Maggie Hayes, to transform from one type to the other along the way, her initial impression is entirely contrived to sexualize her character and motivate audiences to imagine her as something dangerous. It’s her presence in the picture that creates tension between Harris and his wife, causing us to question his motivations: is he relentlessly pursuing the bad guys, or is it just the girl? In the gray half-light of the noir world, the answer is both.

The Case Against Brooklyn (1958)

Directed by Paul Wendkos (The Burglar)

Screenplay by Bernard Gordon (Blacklisted, credited as Raymond T. Marcus) and Julien Zimet

Screen Story by Danial B. Ullman. Based on an account by Ed Reid

Produced by Charles H. Schneer

Cinematography by Fred Jackman, Jr. (The Night Holds Terror, Cell 2455 Death Row)

Art Direction by Ross Bellah (The Lineup, Nightfall)

Starring Darren McGavin, Warren Stevens, Maggie Hayes, and Peggy McCay

Released by Columbia Pictures

Running time: 82 minutes

8.0.3

APPOINTMENT WITH DANGER (1951)

Let me tell you about you, Al. That badge and a few law books have turned you into a nut. You don’t like anybody. You don’t believe anybody. You don’t trust anybody. You think everybody has a pitch.

Everybody has.

Double Indemnity is a damn good movie. When people start talking film noir, it usually comes up first. Billy Wilder, James Cain, Barbara Stanwyck, and Freddie Mac, all cavorting in Edith Head costumes for Pete’s sake. Straight down the line to seven Academy Award nominations. Can you beat it? Nah, you probably can’t — but big budget studio noirs like Double Indemnity or Laura don’t get me going like a first-rate second-rate picture. Dark, violent, gritty, neurotic, fatal, sleazy, cheap — these weren’t typically part of the vernacular over at the Metro lot. It’s a shame that film noir isn’t somehow spelled with a B, the two go together so well. Now that Appointment with Danger has been given a wide DVD release (yet expensive at $24.95), I decided to finally look at my copy, lest I get left in the cold on the off chance it comes up in conversation. I’ve owned a dusty bootleg for ages, but never watched — after reading a plot description I assumed it was a cookie cutter knock-off of Anthony Mann’s T-Men. Brother, was I all wet.

“The story begins in the rain of a murky summer night in Gary, Indiana.” Following a brief PSA homage to the postal service Appointment with Danger gets going — and how: two thugs (Jack Webb and Harry Morgan, that’s right) are seen lurking in the shadows of a cheap hotel room, neon lights ironically pulsating the words “Hotel Compton: The Friendly Hotel” through the gauze of the window, as the rain outside flails away at the night. One hood is huddled over the body of a murdered postal inspector, coldly recoiling his strangulation rope — a real pro, this one. Cut forward in time to a sedan splashing though the vacant streets, the murderers now prowling for a quiet place to deep-six their victim. A nun (Phyllis Calvert), at war with a cheap umbrella, happens by just as they begin to dump the body in a dark alley. She sees the faces of both men, but is so grateful for Morgan’s righting of her umbrella that she buys his story of a sodden buddy “getting some air.” Nonetheless, her suspicions rise in the moments that follow, and she relates her story to a passing motorcycle cop before moving on. He glances toward the alley just before a speeding motorist steals his attention and he rushes off in the opposite direction. As the camera once again takes up position in the alley to watch the cop vanish into the night, it pans down to reveal the corpse, unceremoniously abandoned in the gutter.

The action described in the preceding paragraph takes only three minutes of screen time, but it’s one of the sharpest and most exemplary openings of any crime picture out there. Let’s put the rest of the plot summary in a nutshell: Al Goddard (Alan Ladd), another postal inspector, is brought in to investigate and discovers the killing is part of a much larger scheme to “knock over the mails.” Goddard feigns crooked in order to infiltrate the gang, led by Big Earl (Paul Stewart), all while getting to the bottom of the murder and protecting the nun. If the story of Appointment with Danger is routine or unspectacular, the atmosphere, characters and dialog aren’t — and that’s what makes it such a damn good time. Here’s a picture that has it all: dark corners; wet streets; gunsels and gun molls; crackerjack dialogue that spits faster than machine gun fire and sharper than a straight razor; and a noir icon at the absolute top of his game — a guy so hard boiled he describes a love affair as “what goes on between a man and a .45 pistol that won’t jam.” Later on he even tries to convince the nun to protect herself by borrowing his ankle piece. The man is Alan Ladd, who crashed the scene in This Gun for Hire and quickly became Paramount’s golden boy in a series of successful crime pictures: The Glass Key, The Blue Dahlia, Calcutta, and Chicago Deadline. His role in Shane made him a Tinseltown legend, but as far as film noir is concerned Ladd is never better than in Appointment with Danger.

Al Goddard is no fresh-faced G-Man. As a matter of fact, he seems less like a cop than a bounty hunter, operating in the hazy area just outside the law. He plays by his own rules and doesn’t answer to anyone so long as he delivers, which apparently he always does. Goddard is so relentless that the movie takes its own denouement for granted — letting us know early on that he’s sure to make good: his boss is lecturing him about his ruthlessness when Al smirks, “Now, do you mind if I go find out who killed Harry Gruber?” The response is frank, “I’m sure you will Al — because you’re a good cop. But that’s about all you are.” It’s an interesting moment in the film, and a prescient one in the maturation of noir: we continue to see a shift in the cinematic depiction of the law enforcement officer, from the community-centered and morally infallible family man, supported in his work by the efficient bureaucracy he serves, to the lone wolf: single, obsessed, unable to adjust, embittered by that same bureaucracy. It’s a compliment to Ladd to suggest that his work in this film is worthy of comparison to that of Robert Ryan in On Dangerous Ground, though maybe it’s the other way around — the Ryan film went into production well after Appointment’s theatrical run.

We’ve gotten used to the idea of a determined, maverick cop through the decades, but if there was ever an era of conformity and team spirit in this country it was in the years during and just after the war. However Goddard doesn’t seem to need the uniformed officers, APBs, or array of gadgets available to him. He holds all that garbage in contempt, instead making do with his wits, his fists, and that can’t-jam police special. When he decides to pass himself off as a bent cop and go undercover he does it on the fly, smoothly convincing the thugs he’s capable of theft, bribery, even murder. The lines between film hero and villain have blurred. Only once does Goddard rely on colleagues to help him out of a jam, despite a dozen close calls. And who can blame him? His job is a thankless one. The same men who place in harm’s way chastise him for not fitting in with polite society, telling him, “You’ve been chasing hoodlums for so long, you don’t know how to treat ordinary people.” Yet Goddard is no cardboard caricature either, he’s generally polite and occasionally even kind. The clever writing of a nun as his character foil, situating the two leads at opposite ends of the “nice” spectrum, is ample proof. The fact that Ladd and Calvert have such easygoing chemistry makes their relationship that much more enjoyable.

Let’s get back to the rest of the cast, beginning with the fellows from Dragnet. Jack Webb and Harry Morgan were paired in two films before beginning their long television association – and both find them in similar roles: Webb as a crook and Morgan as a dimwit. What’s more, in neither picture do they get along. In Dark City they appear as habitués of a New York bookie joint, ex-pug Morgan sweeps up while Webb takes part in crooked card games. Morgan’s role in Appointment is fairly small, but splashy — and dig that creepy mug shot! Three pops for armed robbery and five years in Lewisburg for dodging the draft. Morgan’s part is unfortunately small, but his exit is legendary — so spectacularly brutal I deserve a free drink for not spoiling it.

Another standout performance belongs to Jan Sterling, who makes the most of a small part as Dodie, Big Earl’s girlfriend. There’s something … trashy … about Sterling, and I mean that as high praise. She’s the kind of actress born to portray gun molls: attractive to be sure, but her charisma comes from a combination of slightly frayed sex appeal and the sense one gets that she’d never stick with a guy unless her heart was in it. Yet there’s also a brain lurking behind the pretty face. If there’s anyone other than Goddard in the picture that knows the score, it’s Dodie. Like other women in film noir she finds herself a victim of unlucky love, but Dodie is too smart to allow her fate to be bound to that of her man. Knowing her horse isn’t a winner, she hedges her bets with Goddard and gets out. This is no stand-by-your-man fifties house frau; this is a woman who thinks on her feet and looks out for number one. But unlike the femme fatale, she takes responsibility for her actions. When Goddard’s caught in his most vulnerable position it’s Dodie who bails him out, and while it’s apparent she’s acting in her own self-interest, and likes Goddard in spite of herself, she doesn’t hesitate with one of Appointment’s most delicious lines after he offers his thanks, “Don’t bother, Earl was good to me. I hope he kills you.”

Appointment with Danger is a fast moving, entertaining, punch in the gut of a movie. In spite of its obscurity Appointment is a crime film of the first order. It’s a textbook example of the visual aspects of the noir style, transforming the industrial wasteland of northern Indiana into a nightscape as rich as any found on the hallowed streets of New York or L.A. It sounds even better, with classic dialog delivered by a game cast and a score to match. One memorable scene follows the next, making it worthy of multiple viewings. And finally Alan Ladd’s Inspector Goddard is one hell of a cop, the mean uncle of Harry Callahan and Popeye Doyle. A brazen tough guy who does things his way and manages to get results. Go watch the movie — I won’t even mention the handball match.

Appointment with Danger (1951)

Director: Lewis Allen
Producer: Robert Fellows
Cinematographer: John F. Seitz
Art Direction: Hans Dreier and Albert Nozaki
Written By: Richard Breen and Warren Duff
Starring: Alan Ladd, Paul Stewart, Phyllis Calvert, Jack Webb, Jan Sterling, and Harry Morgan.
Released by: Paramount
Running time: 89 minutes

THE MOB (1951)

$685.00
How much off for the police force?
Why should I knock off anything just because you’re a policeman?
Thought you might want to try and bribe me, I’m always readin’ about cops being bribed.
I’ve got more influential friends than you in the boy scouts.





It’s Broderick Crawford versus the waterfront and the world in 1951’s The Mob, a just-okay noirish cop picture from Columbia. The effective opening sequence is the most visually striking of the entire film, and does much to establish the cynical attitudes portrayed throughout. It’s late night on the rain-soaked streets of New York City, where we find detective John Damico (Crawford) in a pawnshop haggling (the exchange highlighted above) over the price of a piece of jewelry — a potential gift for his girl. Walking home he hears gunfire, and spots a shadowy figure with a gun hunched over a crumpled body in the middle of the deserted street. Crawford shouts his policeman’s warning but is placated when the shooter produces a badge and claims to be on the job — which he most certainly isn’t. Crawford is taken in by a shiny Lieutenant’s shield and police-issue .38 super chief. He only gets wise after the killer heads for a lunch counter to supposedly call in the report and instead vanishes through the back door. By the time a prowl car makes the scene Crawford is beset by visions of his career and his pension running into the gutter, awash with the dead man’s blood and the foulness of the street.


In 1951 New York, the blame-game is the only game in town, and the news-hungry public likes to play. A convenient schmuck if ever there was one, Crawford is rewarded with a sixty-day vacation — at least as far as the papers are concerned. Privately the police commission charges the cop with getting to the bottom of the waterfront rackets, the ultimate source of the predicament our Damico finds himself in. In order to infiltrate the mob, Crawford is given a new name, Tim Flynn, and a made-up rap sheet courtesy of the New Orleans P.D.


The opening ten minutes of The Mob are emblematic of one of the best qualities of the movie business: a film can throw subtle jabs about public attitudes directly at the masses without overtly preaching — camouflaging its message within the entertaining slickness of the medium itself. By situating Crawford in a pawn shop late at night tells us many things about his role as a police officer: he works terribly long hours (it’s night), in terrible conditions (it’s pouring), he’s underpaid (he frequents pawnshops), and even in his off hours he remains a vigilant public servant (he responds to the gunfire) — yet for all of his risks and sacrifices his grasp on his job and his pension are tenuous at best (he falls for a ruse that would have fooled any of us.) Furthermore, his masters are quick to make him the scapegoat, a fact he understands so well that he makes no protest. Finally, they place him in greater danger by wooing him undercover with a carrot of redemption — that he dutifully chases due to an ingrained desire to uphold public order and protect his own place in the world.



Any effort to suggest The Mob as a precursor to later films such as On the Waterfront or even Edge of the City is misspent. The film only pays lip service to the notion of exposing corruption, and instead the exposition is concerned primarily with uncovering the identity of some mysterious criminal mastermind behind the corruption. As for the corruption itself, there’s little evidence of it. In one scene (where we get a great early look at Charles Bronson) longshoremen are obliged to pony up four bucks before they can work for the day, but one of them smiles it off as mere “cigarette money.” As the sequence unfolds Crawford namedrops his way into a cushy job running a forklift, while the previous driver, a much more experienced man, is forced to sling crates. Along the way a few men get killed, all resulting from a desire to inform on the mob to the police, but there’s nothing about the killings that’s particularly germane to the waterfront rackets — after all, this is what the movies had been teaching audiences about gangsters since the twenties — they kill informants. The notion is as stale in 1951 as it ever was, and handled with somewhat less panache in The Mob.


Crawford is the whole show, and it’s almost impossible to imagine another actor fronting The Mob. Crawford was similar to Edward G. Robinson in that he possessed two distinctly different screen personas. Unlike Robinson however, who projected either a meek bookishness or a swaggering violence, Crawford’s two screen faces were less far apart, more subtlety differentiated because both were characterized by something simmering just beneath the surface — something quite dangerous. In his most famous roles he’s at his most outrageous: playing politician Willie Stark in 1949’s All the King’s Men and as Harry Brock in Born Yesterday. As a racketeer in New York Confidential, or just pretending to be one in The Mob, Crawford shows his range — creating characters that can make a pretense at class but still scare the pants off you. In The Mob gives him the chance to be both: the moral and upright policeman and the New Orleans thug.


Crawford’s John Damico has much in common with the filmic cops and detectives of a generation before — he navigates the squarejohn world and the underworld with the same ease. He’s a creature of the city who knows how to use the urban landscape to his advantage. Women can’t seem to help themselves around him. Yet it’s hard to imagine Sam Spade falling for the ruse that burns Damico — the forties private detective seemed more superman than man. Maybe that's because Damico’s post-war world is far more complex: corrupt, amoral, pessimistic, neurotic…political. Throughout the film Damico is hounded — even tortured — by Bennion (Walter Klavun), a sleazy cop-on-the-take from another precinct. Despite the this corrosive presence, Damico’s changing world still demands that his faith in the righteousness and authority of the system be absolute, so the idea of working undercover doesn’t faze him. The dramatic tension to be found in unglued cop films such as Serpico and Prince of the City were still a lifetime away. The Mob is forced to rely on shoot-em-up theatrics and a damsel in distress to get the job done.

The Mob (1951)


Director: Robert Parrish
Produced: Jerry Bresler
Cinematographer: Joseph Walker
Screenplay: William Bowers, based on a story by Ferguson Findley
Starring: Broderick Crawford, Richard Kiley, Ernest Borgnine, Neville Brand.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Running time: 87 minutes

THE FEARMAKERS (1958)

Dana Andrews is one of the more iconic actors of the film noir cycle, yet in the grand scheme of things he’s one of the most underappreciated in film history. The image of him standing amidst the hulking carcasses of bombers at the end of The Best Years of Our Lives is so viscerally powerful that the thought of brings tears to my eyes. I’ve always admired him as a “film first” kind of guy, meaning that he never allowed his ego to get in the way of his characters. “Low key” for him wasn’t a vapid Hollywood actor’s false modesty; it was his personal way of exploring character and demonstrating faith in his audience’s ability to empathize. He was a fairly regular Joe who suffered through the ups and downs of life as most people do, though it can be argued that he had more than his share of bad luck. That he struggled mightily with alcohol in the years after his career began to decline isn’t surprising—less was known of alcoholism in those days when the evening cocktail was an intrinsic part of American culture. It didn’t help that in 1935 he buried a young wife, and then in 1964 their child. He worked as he found it in his later years and died without fanfare in the early 1990s. His body of work is extraordinary, and it’s easy to imagine that his screen persona was probably not much different than the man in real life.

Oddly, one of the roles for which I best remember him is as Ted Stryker from 1957’s Zero Hour!. In the film, famously lampooned in Airplane!, Andrews plays a neurotic WWII fighter pilot who can’t get past the guilt he feels over the deaths of his squadron members. Years later, Stryker gets his shot at redemption aboard a commercial flight that is bedeviled by food poisoning. (“Don’t order the fish!”) The film depicts Andrews as a shaky, sweat-drenched wreck—he may even be a coward. But by the final fade-out he’s a hero—albeit a reluctant one. You leave thinking that had anyone else been able to fly the plane, Andrews would have kept his ass strapped in row F. Even as the flight crew asks if anyone on board has flight experience, he keeps quiet. It isn’t until his ailing son volunteers that his “pop flew in the war” that Andrews grudgingly acknowledges his personal history. The guy in the control tower is, of all people, Sterling Hayden. The hulking actor browbeats Andrews through his ordeal until the plane alights on the tarmac. Even then, Stryker is denied that moment of movie heroic adulation that eighties action film heroes were willing to destroy block after city block to achieve. Instead of a rousing ovation, the distressed passengers seem joyously relieved that a schmuck like Stryker didn’t get them all killed. The film’s treatment of Stryker is lukewarm and ultimately disappointing, yet Andrews brings the role the same level of professionalism and dignity evident that defined his career.

Shortly after Zero Hour! Andrews and director Jacques Tourneur made two films together, The Night (Curse) of the Demon—which everyone and his ma has seen—and the obscure The Fearmakers, a communist exposé picture situated in the world of DC lobbyists and public relations firms. Andrews plays Alan Eaton, an old-school PR executive who believes his firm’s primary function is merely to ascertain public opinion—not manipulate it. But Eaton has been a prisoner of war in North Korea for the past few years, relentlessly beaten and tortured. The opening credits roll over top of one of his beatings, and the film’s first real scene takes place on Eaton’s flight back to the States. It’s here that he meets a “fellow traveler,” nuclear physicist Dr. Gregory Jessup, who preaches nuclear disarmament and warns Eaton that PR companies have begun to manipulate public opinion far more often than they reflect it. He cites as an example how the big tobacco companies have begun to employ PR firms to help them explain away medicine’s claims that cigarettes are the cause of “certain malignant ailments.” Jessup just so happens to be looking for a good PR man and asks Eaton for his contact information.

Let’s pause for a second. The close-read of this scene is that Jessup is a communist—the fact that he’s stumping for disarmament is a dead giveaway. This notion has confused some who have commented on this film in recent years, as if the filmmakers are suggesting that anyone with a “no-nukes” bumper sticker must be a Red. These folks fail to grasp that Jessup’s position doesn’t suggest that communists are peace-lovers who despise nuclear power—it’s merely the movie’s way of showing the audience that he’s a clever liar. The film’s actual attitude however, if viewed through the lens of the late 1950s, makes a great deal more common sense. Jessup really wants to use Eaton’s PR firm to spread a no-nukes message, so that the communists can speed ahead of the United States in the burgeoning arms race. Remember that nuclear stockpiling was only just beginning in earnest, and that American views about the defense program were by-and-large pro-nuke, and not yet as fatalistic as they would become in subsequent decades. That’s an attitude the Soviets would have liked to change. After all, this was the atomic age. In the minds of many, the Fat Man and Little Boy detonations had saved the lives of thousands and thousands of US servicemen; deeper implications allowed by the passage of time weren’t yet part of the public consciousness.

In the same year The Fearmakers was in theaters, the Ford Motor Company was fervently developing a nuclear-powered concept car, complete with onboard reactor. The excess of the buildup was still in the offing, and the “bomb” remained an essentially American concept. When The Fearmakers debuted the Soviets had possessed nuclear capability for only eight years, and lagged behind in the associated technology. Even by 1964, the US held in reserve 7,000 warheads to only 500 for the Soviets. The truly frightening concept of remote delivery hadn’t yet taken hold either, though in October of ‘57 the Russians would deploy Sputnik via the first functional ICBM, changing attitudes forever. With all of this in mind, Jessup’s pitch to Eaton is a logical ploy: let’s get a respected American PR man to sway public opinion in the direction of disarmament, while in the meantime we secretly catch up to the US in the arms race. Of course communists would want to sow the seeds of disarmament in America—and Andrew’s Eaton is perfect for the job: he’s naïve, rattled, and has possibly even been programmed to be sympathetic by his North Korean / Chinese captors.

It also seems to be a plot contrivance of the first order that Jessup would happen to be on the same plane as Eaton in the first place, but we later learn he’s a plant. As it turns out, Eaton’s former business partner died under mysterious circumstances just after exercising his power of attorney and selling the their PR firm to a third man, Jim McGinnis (Dick Foran), an unscrupulous, greedy chap. McGinnis in it for the money and doesn’t care much who he works for or what political agenda he asked to spin. The film’s depictions of the PR racket falls well short of its clever take on the DC attitudes that find their locus in the vicinity of Connecticut Avenue and K Street. (Take my word for it, I paid my dues there in my early twenties. The only thing I remember with any fondness is the “L Street Chicken” sandwich at Jonathan’s Gourmet Deli.) Despite the fact that Eaton and Baker is one of the most respected agencies inside the Beltway, nobody seems to actually work there. McGinnis’ only employees are right hand man Barney Bond (played like a weasel in coke bottle glasses by crooner Mel Tormé) and secretary Ms. Dennis (amateurish Marilee Earle). The empty office is likely a product of the movie’s low budget, but it requires Tormé and Earle to pull their weight, and both fall short. Earle in particular is far, far out of her depth.

Eaton of course knows none of this—he expects to return to the company that he built from the ground up and resume his old life. Instead he gets hit by a ton of bricks: not only is his former partner long dead and gone, despite seeing that his name is still on the door, he’s shocked to discover that the business has been sold out from under him. (McGinnis kept the name for the strength of its reputation) McGinnis recognizes that Eaton still has some juice, so he offers him the chance to “write his own ticket” if only he can secure the account of a senator whose business was lost when McGinnis took over. Eaton agrees, but when he meets with the senator and a reporter friend, they give him the dope on who McGinnis really fronts for.

Horrified, Eaton becomes an impromptu double agent and works to bring McGinnis to justice. Why? Because his name is still on the letterhead, and in his mind that makes him responsible for whatever the company has become in his absence. And although Eaton endured hell in Korea he’s still compelled somehow to do the right thing. Yet not surprisingly, he decides that as soon as he can untangle this mess he’s getting out of the DC rat race and heading for an easier life in California. Eaton has no desire to return his company to its former level of respectability—he knows a lost cause when he sees it. The Fearmakers wraps up with a series of conventional movie run-ins with colorful communist agents in various guises, and all’s well that ends well. The end titles find Eaton and Ms. Dennis necking at the feet of Abraham Lincoln.

As much as The Fearmakers can be praised for being conceptually ahead of its time, its fails to understand that not all criminal enterprise is violent. The movie is about how politicians and the power-hungry conspire to corrupt the truth, yet the notion must have been deemed too obtuse for 1950s audiences, because in the end the filmmakers reduce the crooks to mere thugs with fists and guns.Though, more importantly, it could be that those 1958 audiences were still clinging to a make-believe world where a lone good man could trumpet down the walls of Jericho. My god, how the world has changed. 

The Fearmakers (1958)

Director: Jacques Tourneur

Cinematographer: Sam Leavitt
Screenplay: Chris Appley and Elliot West, based on the novel by Darwin Teilhet.
Starring: Dana Andrews, Dick Foran, Mel Tormé.
Released by: United Artists
Running time: 85 minutes

8/17