I Was a Shoplifter

 (1950)
Directed by Charles Lamont
Written by Irwin Gielgud
Starring Scott Brady, Mona Freeman, Andrea King, Tony Curtis
IMDB Entry

The title I Was a Shoplifter is an odd one. The structure portends some sort of big event, but when you get to the final word, it disappoints.* Shoplifting is usually a pretty minor crime.** Still, the movie ends up being quite good despite it.

It starts with a narrator talking about the crime of shoplifting, then we see Faye Burton (Mona Freeman) moving suspiciously through a department stores, gaining the attention of store security and Jeff Andrews (Scott Brady), who warns her she's being watched. When she leaves, she is picked up, and Andrews is, too.  Faye is daughter of a judge and doesn't want the incident known. She signs a confession, which the store will keep on file and use against her if she's caught again, and she is let go. 

Once she leaves,  Jeff comes out. He's an undercover cop pretending to shoplift. There has been a ring working the city, recruiting young shoplifters -- usually woman -- who get caught, and then manipulate them into shoplifting for them, promising to steal the confession.  Jeff wants to break of the ring.

Ina Purdue (Andrea King) approaches Faye and brings her into the gang and Jeff, who has been keeping an eye on her, volunteers to also join the gang. 

The movie becomes a tutorial for shoplifting tricks, and soon Faye is set up to do her first job.  But things go wrong. There's a chase scene that doesn't go the way you would predict, and a search to find the real mastermind of the ring. And, of course, Jeff and Faye fall in love.

The most notable performance is that of Andrea King. Ina is a very smart woman -- probably smarter than Jeff. You can't put much over on her, and there is a particularly good scene where she explains that they have no way of escaping the police, so their smart move is to just surrender.

Tony Curtis has a small role as Pepe, one of the gang's thugs. It was his fifth credited role.  Larry Keating, who plays the store owner, later became familiar as Wilbur Post's neighbor in Mister Ed.

The movie is surprisingly good and Andrea King probably should have become a bigger star than she was.

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*Compare it to I was a Teenage Werewolf of I was a Communist for the FBI.

**Yes, I'm aware of the big shoplifting rings that are in operation today, but most shoplifters tend to pick up a couple of items.

The Chase

 
(1946)
Directed by Arthur Ripley
Written by Philip Yordan
Starring Robert Cummings, Michele Morgan, Steve Cochran, Peter Lorre, Jack Holt
IMDB Entry

Sometimes you can see when a movie goes off the rails. What seems like an excellent film falls apart in just one scene. The Chase is obscure, but could have been much better if it weren't for a cliche that even beginning writers are told not to do.  Which is too bad, because it could have been a great one.

Chuck Scott (Robert Cummings) is a down-on-his-luck veteran who stumbles upon a wallet with a considerable amount of money in it. Starving, he buys a meal, and, finding a name inside, he decides to bring it back to its owner, Eddie Roman (Steve Cochran). Roman is impressed by his honesty (Scott admitted he did buy a meal with the money) and hires him on as a chauffeur. We learn that Roman is a ruthless gangster who, aided by his henchman Gino (Peter Lorre), murders a competitor by locking him up with his vicious dog. Scott doesn't know about it, but begins to suspect that Roman is no good. Scott begins to drive Roman's wife Lorna (Michele Morgan), who tells him of her bitterness and her desire to visit Havana. 

They make plans to leave that night, and soon find themselves in Cuba. But Lorna is murdered and Scott is framed to be the killer. Gino is there, and goes all out in the frame.  It's a tense and fascinating situation.  

And then, Scott wakes up. The trip to Havana was all a dream. They hadn't left yet.

This is what I meant by a cliche.  "It was all a dream" was hackneyed years before the movie came out, and is one of the first things they tell beginning writers to avoid. It destroys the first-class tension and sense of paranoia the movie had built up.

They try to rationalize it. Scott calls his psychiatrist (Jack Holt) who's been treating him for PTSD* and the many nightmares he's been having. But Scott realizes there is still time to get Lorna and escape.

I also found the ending too much of a deus ex machina. It doesn't come out of the blue, but it is too convenient.

Robert Cummings is best known as light comedian, but before TV, he played a similar role in Hitchcock's classic Saboteur. He makes Scott an everyman who is caught up in a sinister web. 

Peter Lorre is Peter Lorre, though he plays the role with quiet sinisterism. Steve Cochran was often cast as a gangster, including roles in Danny Kaye vehicles and in White Heat. Writer Philip Yordan was a pretty busy man and acted as a front for several blacklisted writers in the 50s.

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*Not that they called it that back then.,

Foyle's War (TV)

 

2002-2015
Created and Written by Anthony Horowitz
Starring Michael Kitchen, Honeysuckle Weeks, Anthony Howell
IMDB Entry

I've been watching a lot of TV now that I'm retired, and a big part of it are British mysteries. The BBC and the other channels have a menu of top-notch mysteries, often cozy that turn out to be excellent. I came upon Foyle's War and am loving it.

The show follows Christopher Foyle (Michael Kitchen), the chief detective of the police in Hastings in the UK. The show is set during World War II. Foyle would prefer to be fighting, but is not called up. Instead, he solves mysteries and murders with the background of the war creating roadblocks. The show is praised for its accurate portray of life during that time -- the fear during the Blitz, the profiteering, the rationing, and the conflict of the investigations with the needs of the war effort.  Foyle is assisted by his driver, Samantha Stewart (Honeysuckle Weeks*) and Sgt. Paul Milner (Anthony Howell), who lost a leg at Dunkirk and this cannot serve again.

The episodes were each set in a specific month during the war and shows what life on the home front actually was. 

The war adds an extra dimension to the stories but the show is carried by Kitchen's performance. Foyle is motivated in finding justice, and doesn't give up even when it carries him into places where the military doesn't want him. He had a nicely sardonic streak when he tears apart people's excuses with a quiet sarcastic comment, but he's never afraid to show compassion when it's warranted.

Honeysuckle Weeks plays Sam as a fairly independent woman, who does more than drive, and discovers things to help Foyle figure things out.  Anthony Howell is an able assistant, but loses some of his personality as the show progresses and he adapts to his prosthetic.

The show was created by Anthony Horowitz, the same guy who created the most successful of British mystery shows, Midsomer Murders, and has many of the same qualities.  Various guest stars appeared, including two future Doctor Whos.  

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* I love that name.

The Road to Ruin

(1934)
Directed by Melville Shyer, Mrs. Wallace Reid (Dorothy Davenport)
Written by Mrs. Wallace Reid (Dorothy Davenport)
Starring Helen Foster, Neil Monroe, Glen Boles, Virginia True Boardman, Richard Tucker
IMDB Entry

Dorothy Davenport was a woman with a mission. She was an actress and married Wallace Reid, who was became a major silent film star in the last teens. Sadly, Reid developed an addiction to morphine after an injury and died in 1923, shocking Hollywood* Davenport, who had dropped out of acting to raise her children, started directing and producing message films, beginning with one on morphine addiction and billed herself as "Mrs. Wallace Reid" to get authenticity. One of these was The Road to Ruin.**

Ann Dixon (Helen Foster) is a high school girl who starts to hang out with her friend Eve Monroe (Nell O'Day). Evel is wild, hanging out with boys, smoking cigarettes, and drinking and Ann gets drawn into it all. She starts to date Tommy (Glen Boles) and, one night when they go to a lake to party, she loses her virginity to him.*** Ann becomes further mixed up with the bad eggs, and one night, Ralph Bennett (Paul Page), a man in his twenties, seduces her away from Tommy. There is another wild party, where the women are enticed to play a form of strip dice and swim in a pool. The cops arrive. Taken to the hospital, they discover that Eve has syphilis and Ann is pregnant. Ann goes to an abortionist,**** but the surgery is botched and she dies.

One odd thing is the three musical numbers in the movie. Very strange, given the downbeat tone of the film, but in 1934, musicals were expected.

The move is not crazily sensationalist like Reefer Madness and the code makes it oblique and tame, but it's an interesting document of how the keepers of morality saw young women at the time.

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*News of the addiction was kept under wraps.

**There are three versions of it -- a silent one in 1928, a reissue with dialog in 1929, and a full sound version in 1934. I'll be talking about the latter.

***I think. Since the film was post-code, and Davenport wanted it to be seen by conservative audiences, it's a bit vague on exactly what went on. But Ann is clearly regretful and Tommy tries to console her.

****They dance around what's going on, and never mention the word.