Shadows! Action! Camera!

This B-picture gem directed by Robert Parrish provides a fun and satisfying excursion through Hollywood’s idea of the post-World War II Angeleno underworld.

Detective Lt. Gus Cobb (Regis Toomey) and Rocky Mulloy (Dick Powell) in Cry Danger.

The film is a masterpiece of the form. The plot is tight. A salad garden of character actors make for a colorful ensemble. The dialog is snappy. The montage is intricate and beautifully laid; deft editing punctuates the narrative. The music cries ‘Danger!’ And Parrish delivers the whole package in under 80 minutes. MP’s rundown includes no spoilers.

A dreamy-eyed cigar stand clerk (Gloria Saunders) dissolves in Cry Danger.

After a Marine war hero’s testimony leads to the release of a man doing a life sentence, the ex-con returns to Los Angeles to get to the bottom of the wartime Aetna payroll robbery and killing for which he was convicted. The civilian, Rocky Mulloy (Dick Powell), and his best friend, an ex-Marine named Danny Morgan were convicted for the heist five years before. Morgan got a 5-to-10-year sentence as Mulloy’s accomplice. The $100,000 take never was recovered. 

The action as though revolves around Los Angeles City Hall, first shown from Union Station and seen in the last shot from a trailer park on Bunker Hill.

Fresh out of prison, Mulloy first heads to see Danny’s wife Nancy (Rhonda Fleming) who once had been Mulloy’s girlfriend. Detective Lieutenant Gus Cobb (Regis Toomey) picks up Mulloy right after he gets into Union Station and makes clear to him that he expects to Mulloy to lead him to the missing money. Walter De Long (Richard Erdman), the decorated Marine veteran whose testimony cleared Mulloy, also turns up. De Long is less motivated by justice than a sporting man’s interest in the whereabouts of the robbery take. 

In the time-tested movie detective story tradition, no one following the newspaper reporting of the robbery actually believes in the rule of law: the governor’s pardon means only that Mulloy beat the system and got over on the squares. These wised-up gentry do not believe in Santa Claus: Mulloy has a line on the missing money and will recover it. On the other hand, it is unclear how Mulloy makes a living. His murky connection with the robbery thickens the plot, and he is acquainted with at least one Los Angeles organized crime figure, the cherubic, smiling Louis Castro (William Conrad).

Rocky Mulloy (Dick Powell) and Louis Castro (William Conrad) in Cry Danger.

Mulloy’s job is to walk the cat backwards to the money. He partners with De Long, a disabled veteran with one leg and a drinking problem, to get himself back on his feet. They share a rattletrap trailer in the trailer park where Nancy Morgan lives, and De Long’s car, a uni-body, two-door 1950 Nash Statesman 600, a dream car for any latter-day Angeleno lowrider.

Lowrider dream car: a uni-body, two-door 1950 Nash Statesman 600 in Cry Danger.

Their trailer park neighbor Darlene ‘Fingers’ LaVonne (Jean Porter), who introduces herself as ‘a sort-of part-time model’ is another benefit. This is a day when men were men, girls were girls, and boy did they have a high old time playing each other. Light-fingered, I-call-everybody-honey Darlene is the first of a number of character actors that make this story fun to watch.

Darlene ‘Fingers’ LaVonne (Jean Porter), ‘a sort-of part-time model’ in Cry Danger.

There is also Williams (Jay Adler), the trailer park manager and bard who plucks the blues on a ukulele; Alice Fletcher (Joan Banks), the lustful young widow of a bribed witness; Russell (Benny Burt), the bartender at Castro’s Los Amigos bar; a dreamy-eyed cigar stand clerk (Gloria Saunders); and Harry, a self-deprecating bookie in a zoot suit (Hy Averbach), among others.

Harry, a self-deprecating bookie in a zoot suit (Hy Averbach) in Cry Danger.

This movie is not a Great Classic like The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep in the sense that Elmore Leonard’s novels are not Great Literature. But like Leonard’s work it delivers more than the total of its fine parts, it is fun, flawlessly executed, and there are no boring parts.

As De Long says to Darlene: ‘Let’s get out of this sun and into a nice cool bar.’


De Long and Darlene: ‘Let’s get out of this sun and into a nice cool bar.’

Shadows! Action! Camera!

Cry Danger 1951 U.S. (79 minutes) RKO Radio Pictures. Directed (and edited) by Robert Parrish; screenplay by William Bowers based on a story by Jerome Cady; director of photography Joseph F. Biroc; music composed and conducted by Hugo Friedhofer.