Considering this month marks my tenth anniversary, one hopes that the next nine films on the list for our upcoming Noirvember ’55 draft would be bangers, every one of them! (Here’s the entire list.) Today’s trio, sadly, does not bode well!
Murder Is My Beat
The premise for this one sounds like something out of Hitchcock: investigating a businessman’s murder, a P.I. chases down the man’s nightclub singer girlfriend and brings her in. She’s found guilty, and the P.I. escorts her to prison. When she insists that she has spotted the “dead” man at the train station, the P.I. leaps off the train with her and promptly falls in love. Now on the run from a sympathetic homicide detective, the P.I. is determined to prove his girl’s innocence by finding the man whom everyone believes she killed.
Director Edgar G. Ulmer packs enough plot into 77 minutes to fill the nearly double running time of North by Northwest with no room to spare. And he does it on a budget of $1.37. That worked for 1945’s Detour, one of the grubbiest hours of noir you’ll ever sink your teeth into. Here, though, it was tiresome. It didn’t help that the leading lady was played by Barbara Payton, whose career was marred by scandal, alcohol and drug use. (She looks cross-eyed here!!) I don’t mean to denigrate Ulmer’s, or anyone else’s, contributions to the genre, but this one made me sleepy!
* * * * *
The Naked Street
Okay, the cast is great here! Anthony Quinn stars as Phil Regal, a vicious gangster who loves his mom and his sister Rosalie (played by a very young and pretty Anne Bancroft). Farley Granger and Peter Graves play the guys in Rosalie’s life: Granger’s the punk and Graves the crusading journalist.
The plot can be easily summed up . . . in six tightly spaced pages of text. Seriously, this is much more of a melodrama than a noir, and you really can’t think about the story too long. Like, Rosalie is supposed to have gotten pregnant by Nicky (Granger) – but when did that happen? She’s not showing when she spills the news to her anxious mom and furious brother, right about the time that Nicky has been arrested, tried and convicted of murder and sentenced to death row. (Maybe 50’s girls never showed!!) Since Nicky is the father of Phil’s niece or nephew, the gangster manages to intimidate or bribe every witness for the prosecution, thus reversing Nicky’s conviction just in time to marry him off to Rosalie. Since this is noir, you know Nicky is going to be a disappointment as a husband – but first the melodrama kicks in and they lose the baby. Then there’s the big/little brother relationship that blossoms between Phil and Journalist Joe – despite the fact that Joe is trying to write a stunning exposè that will bring Phil’s empire down. That’s okay to Phil, who seems to understand that Joe would be a much better match for his sister.
The plot goes on and on and on and finally reaches (SPOILER) a happy ending. It’s never boring, but it’s not very convincing, either. Anthony Quinn was the big, Oscar-winning star here, and he’s worth a watch. Bancroft had only started making films a few years earlier, but she was being used steadily; her glory days were ahead of her. Sadly, the same can’t be said of Granger: he transferred his interests to Broadway but didn’t fare so well there. He would make plenty of B-films and do a lot of television, including several soap operas. It’s possible that his sexuality was too big a barrier to becoming a top star, but frankly I don’t think he had the talent for it.
* * * * *
New Orleans Uncensored
Another unwitting mug (Arthur Franz) gets entangled with yet another mob boss (Michael Ansara), this time on the New Orleans docks. Director William Castle tries to set this up with a semi-documentary tone: the movie begins with a narrator talking about New Orleans, the docks, and the Mob. A real-life Louisiana Senator tells us that the movie we are about to see will expose how the crime syndicates infiltrate the docks and poison the work system. Castle then fills the cast with real-life New Orleanians: the Superintendent of Police, the Fire Chief, the President of the Longshoreman’s Union, and more. They are given lines, and none of them can act. It doesn’t help matters at all.
If the previous year’s On the Waterfront weren’t still fresh in our minds, this would still be a pretty lousy movie. The cast (those who are professional actors) gives it their all, especially Beverly Garland as the wife of one of Ansara’s doomed employees, and Helene Stanton as a femme fatale with a heart of gold. Garland’s brother is a washout boxer, which allows Castle to inject a touch of Body and Soul into the mix. It doesn’t help much. In its ’55 review of the film, The New York Times used words like “undistinguished” and “banal.” You will, too.
* * * * *
The rankings?
None of these was a noir to write home about, so I’ll rank them for their casting:
1st place – The Naked Street – Anthony Quinn is softened by little sister Anne Bancroft
2nd place – New Orleans Uncensored – Arthur Franz is clued in by sexy widow Beverly Garland
3rd place – Murder Is My Beat – Paul Langton risks his career for the love of Barbara Payton
I’m 100% certain that our next trio of films holds far more of interest!
Ah Sweet Mystery! 
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