Lippert Pictures Series

Robert L. Lippert controlled a successful low-budget American film production and distribution company from 1948 to 1956, producing short, fast-paced westerns and crime films with a penchant for obligatory humor, and the occasional jarring edits. This is my sixth of eight Lippert films.

ROARING CITY (1951)

This oddly-titled low-budget crime film was surely forgotten a week after leaving the theater. As noted elsewhere online, this movie has two distinct halves unrelated to one another except for the three main stars. This film and two others from the same year, Danger Zone and Pier 23, were meant to become part of a thirty-minute television series but wisely, the Networks saw no future for them. Each plot has slightly confusing twists but both stories are wrapped up between the male leads to explain what transpired. As a film, it did eliminate commercial breaks. It is directed by William Berke, produced by Jack Leewood, and distributed by Lippert Pictures. Not helping on the excitement level is an innocuous score with its travelogue opening by Bert Shefter. I could not assess what all the roaring is about in this film.

At just under sixty minutes, this is an ordinary murder mystery on one hand, yet it stars Hugh Beaumont on the other. He played Dennis O'Brien in the two aforementioned films as an unlicensed private investigator eking out a living along the San Francisco pier renting boats and hoping the next phone call gets him a paying assignment. Vintage radio fans would remember this premise from a previous series, Pat Novak, For Hire, starring Jack Webb. Both characters narrate the story, rent boats, and deliver hard-boiled pulp fiction dialogue and one-liner quips. Beaumont does not corner that market. Most of the actors provide quips to the point of overkill. Beaumont remains cool and collected but he is not an acerbic Novak, who was always on the cusp of decking someone. Beaumont is more Jim Rockford and would seem to avoid violence except in self-defense. Like Rockford, there are enough knocks to his head to follow concussion protocol.

Beaumont opens the film with a drowsy—slightly inebriated—voice-over about San Francisco being a "conservative town." How times have changed—I digress. There is the ever-present dialogue bringing the viewer up to speed. Here is the gist: a crook wants Beaumont to place some bets in his name on a boxing match that has been rigged. But when the “losing” boxer wins, things start to unravel, especially for Beaumont, who is suspected to be part of the thrown match. He gets tangled up with a brunette for the boxing story then accepts an assignment from a two-timing blonde in the second half which opens in a diner. Upon her departure, Beaumont's voice-over says, “She left a trail of perfume that was two parts garden and one part chloroform.” Richard Travis plays the licensed detective who always thinks Beaumont is guilty of something—like Rockford.

Note: It is a delight to see Ed Brophy as Beaumont's roommate, not playing a well-meaning buffoon or sidekick. Like Pat Novak's legman, Brophy has a fetish for strong drinks. With a convincing British accent and multi-syllable dialog seeming lifted from Shakespearean theater, he amusingly plays "ex-Professor" Frederick Simpson Schicker in low-key fashion.