Van Johnson is an honest Los Angeles cop whose partner is murdered by the Syndicate. The whole LAPD, which seems to consist of about nine guys, wants the murders found, but nagging wife Arlene Dahl wants Johnson to quit so they can have a baby, and stripper Gloria DeHaven offers some alluring comfort.
With Dore Schary at MGM, trying to make movies on lower budget, you still had the problem that MGM's people wanted to apply gloss to everything. Furthermore, while it might do to show that stars could perform more than their signature sorts of roles, people didn't come to the theater to see them for their versatility. They liked to see them in the sort of pictures they liked seeing them in. No one was terribly interested in seeing if Van Johnson could be the next Humphrey Bogart (or as they call him here, "Humpty Bogart").
So this modestly budgeted -- by MGM standards, anyway -- programmer showed a decent profit, and why not? It's a pretty good mystery, with some decent performances, even if the sequence in which Johnson beats up a thug while the radio plays jazz loudly seems over the top. By the end Paul Vogel had figured out how to shoot some noir lighting effects, and there is a happy ending. Just like in all film noir. Isn't that what people want?
With Dore Schary at MGM, trying to make movies on lower budget, you still had the problem that MGM's people wanted to apply gloss to everything. Furthermore, while it might do to show that stars could perform more than their signature sorts of roles, people didn't come to the theater to see them for their versatility. They liked to see them in the sort of pictures they liked seeing them in. No one was terribly interested in seeing if Van Johnson could be the next Humphrey Bogart (or as they call him here, "Humpty Bogart").
So this modestly budgeted -- by MGM standards, anyway -- programmer showed a decent profit, and why not? It's a pretty good mystery, with some decent performances, even if the sequence in which Johnson beats up a thug while the radio plays jazz loudly seems over the top. By the end Paul Vogel had figured out how to shoot some noir lighting effects, and there is a happy ending. Just like in all film noir. Isn't that what people want?