NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL (1955)

Based on the novel of the same name by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, this eighty-eight-minute film stays several stories above ground thanks to a superior cast. Richard Conte is a standout. He plays the always smiling, polite, confident hitman for a Chicago mob, tarnishing an otherwise likable guy. Key to the film is Broderick Crawford as the knee-jerk, hot-headed mob kingpin who has worked his way to the top by intimidation and not necessarily brains. Crawford was blessed—or cursed—with the ability to speed-talk faster than your average Millennial, something that belies his facial appearance. His script alone is half as thick as the rest of the cast because he crams five pages into one.

Edward Small Productions, along with Clarence Greene, produced this “confidential” film—Small's second—centering on a crime syndicate's control of big-city movers and shakers obsessed with rising to the top by any means. It is directed by Russell Rouse, who along with Greene, wrote the screenplay. Though not a particularly busy career, Rouse wrote screenplays and/or directed a wide variety of films, spanning such diverse films as, Wicked Woman starring his wife, Beverly Michaels, and Doris Day's classic, Pillow Talk. Small's earlier Kansas City Confidential offered some uniqueness that this film lacks. Those Midwest folk were way more creative with their crime. This film is never exciting nor intense—a basic rehash of how a cartel can pressure ordinary businessmen with an offer each cannot refuse. As was common, opening narration sets up the premise by radio and television actor Marvin Miller.

Conte is on a relaxing East Coast assassination vacation when Crawford calls him into his office. He makes an immediate impression and the boss hires him at twice his Windy City salary to be his business “equalizer.” From the start, one gets the feeling these two devoted friends will face off one way or the other. Syndicate friendships can be fleeting. Strictly business. Nothing personal. Anne Bancroft plays Crawford's daughter who rebels against her dictated life and is embarrassed by her father's career. She is socially unacceptable. Her casting seems to be fortuitous timing being the right age and a relative newcomer.

A plan to cut the head off the syndicate is initiated by the governor's crime commission. Crawford sends three men to eliminate the primary target but they botch the assignment and leave behind too many clues. This will not be tolerated. The syndicate becomes smaller by three. Conte is sent out to finish the house cleaning. All the while Crawford is being pressured to turn state's evidence, relinquishing his hold on the cartel. The syndicate realizes they will all be implicated if he cooperates. Conte is given the heartless assignment. Later that night as he parks near his apartment—in a momentary lack of judgment—Conte exits down the middle of the dark street. What goes around comes around.

Note: New York Confidential was generally well-received, in part due to the familiar cast. J. Carrol Naish plays Crawford's right-hand man. A character whose inside knowledge of the syndicate becomes a liability. The widowed Crawford has attracted a new girlfriend, Marilyn Maxwell, who finds herself in the wrong place and time. She and Bancroft both have designs on Conte but he has learned to stay in his own neighborhood. Then there is the actor one would expect to be associated with gangsters, Mike Mazurki. As a life-saving measure, he actively pursues a plea bargain. Finally, Barry Kelly, in somewhat of his typecast character, plays the unethical syndicate attorney trying to work both sides of the legal fence.

WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS (1950)

This film hardly falls into the unknown category for any film noir fan. It is generally highly regarded despite a familiar B-movie path. Directed and produced by Otto Preminger with a screenplay by the typically great Ben Hecht, it follows the story of another cynical detective who hates criminals to the core. Subconsciously, because his late father was a gangster in his own time. His methods of getting a criminal to talk are not by the book and the Inspector, Robert Simon, in his first film role, repeatedly calls him on the carpet for it.

Dana Andrews plays the aforementioned detective, where violence seems to be around every corner. Murder suspect and gambler, Craig Stevens, who is particularly soused, strikes Andrews across the jaw, then he is decked, hitting his head on the floor. Andrews tries to wake him, but he is out. Permanently. Andrews turns white with fear. He will surely lose that parking spot in front of headquarters! When he finds out Stevens was a war hero and the silver plate in his head is what killed him, he feels even worse. Things get dicier after Andrews discovers that Gene Tierney was his wife. Andrews' web of deceit plunges him deeper into self-loathing. Andrews devises a plan to detour the manslaughter rap.

Gary Merrill is Andrew's gangster nemesis. It was Andrew's father who set Merrill up in the mob. His character is somewhat in the mold of Richard Widmark's screen debut role, though not mentally unstable. Cool, calm, and polite with nice threads, Merrill's quirk is his apparent addiction to nasal inhalers. A medicinal gimmick that seems to only afflict the underworld. Hiring Neville Brand as a heavy, here doing double duty as a massage therapist, was also a customary gimmick during this period.

Tierney was another actress of the era with a slight overbite. This physical “feature” is noticeable only when she speaks. Which is her every scene. I guess they cannot all be Grace Kelly. I digress. Her father, Tom Tully, is a cabbie who has been understandably angry with his good-for-nothing son-in-law, Stevens. Because of this and his whereabouts near the time of Stevens' demise, he is inadvertently accused of homicide. Newly promoted Lieutenant, Karl Malden, is convinced Tully is the killer despite Andrews' attempt to throw the killing in Merrill's direction.

At his personal sidewalk ends, Andrews is abducted and driven to the gangsters' hideout. There is a creepiness of being helplessly trapped inside a car as it is hydraulically lifted to the upper level of a parking garage. No dialogue. No music. Just the sound of the lift's mechanics. Feeling more despondent and no better than his father, he hopes to be killed so the authorities can at least pin one murder on Merrill, who is not taking the bait. The gangsters hightail it when the sirens get louder and they lock Andrews in the garage. In their hasty retreat, the gang forgot about an unlocked rooftop door, and out pops Andrews. He stops the elevator's descent between floors, with Merrill and his gang being arrested.

Andrews had written a confession letter to be opened in the event of his death. Simon, now all smiles and grateful to Andrews for bringing down the mob, indicates there is no reason, thankfully, to open it. Awkward. He wants the letter to be read anyway in front of Tierney. The Inspector's smile is turned upside down. Andrews will have time to contemplate his future career move. Perhaps security detail at a Woolworth's. 

THE HOUSTON STORY (1956)

William Castle offers up his final noir about an ambitious oil driller who discovers a way to steal oil and then sell it to distributors or foreign interests for huge profits. The film's first half is the stronger section, as one is not sure of the main character's intent, played by Gene Barry. The opening morgue scene involving a female's body gets the intrigue award. Barry purposely misidentifies her. The script can be complicated in laying out the benefits of underworld “investing” and whose pipes are being gleaned. It starts to disintegrate during the last third of the film, however, offering a commonplace resolve. There is enough backstabbing in this film to be another Castle horror movie.

Barry puts the con in conniving. A greedy, unscrupulous businessman who romances a nightclub singer to infiltrate a Houston mobster's organization. He is a decent fit for this role as a womanizer. More believable than the original choice, Lee J. Cobb. Barbara Hale—the aforementioned (in name only) morgue lady—is now a nightclub singer with a different name. Her single vocal number is quite mesmerizing and convincing. No dubbing. Her bleached hair and facial features are also stunningly perfect.

Mob boss Edward Arnold, in his next-to-last movie, could play corrupt like few others. Barry needs his financial backing. Arnold goes along with Barry's scheme, vouching for their newest board member, chaired by “Mr. Big,” John Zaremba. But Arnold never wavers from his plan to dispose of Barry once the funds start rolling in. Apart from Houston's temperatures, Barry begins taking heat from investigators. He sets up nightclub owner Paul Richards, another Arnold associate, to take the fall for an oil well sabotage to get them off his back. But Richards shifts the blame to Arnold, putting him on a slippery slope. For the first time in his career, he is a hunted man with no place to go. Out of nowhere, instantly, Arnold spits out his startling confession to Barry, “Now I gotta run! I never had to run before! I don't even know how to run!” At his weight and age, he was accurate. Zaremba wants Barry removed “peacefully” from the “board of elders” and sends a gangster, Chris Alcaide, to...uh...find him. 

Barry's passed sweetheart, Jeanne Cooper, runs a cafe in oil derrick territory. She expects a future with him. Now in big trouble, he tells her to go to his house and get the 100 grand from the safe, then they will meet up later. Cooper arrives to find Hale already removing the money, which she does not plan to share. A lightbulb turns on for Cooper. With all his shrewd and detailed planning, Barry would have made an excellent professional organizer some fifty years later. Organized for him will be a trial. Sentencing for graft, corruption, and an itty-bitty murder. Digging himself out of prison might be his next drilling adventure.