Whiplash (1948)

Dane Clark and Zachary Scott are two of my noir favorites, and both star in Whiplash. I was really looking forward to seeing it, but I started dragging my feet when I learned that boxing was part of the plot. Boxing is not one of my favorite sports or film noir themes, but it was a mistake to let the boxing dissuade me. Yes, the film starts in the ring, but almost the entire film—approximately seventy-six out of ninety minutes—is an extended flashback, and it has little to do with boxers in a ring.

The film does start with Mike Angelo (played by Dane Clark) of California fighting Duke Carney of New York City at Madison Square Garden, and Mike is on the losing end. An announcer says that the middleweight challenge of the world should take fifteen rounds, but Mike is fading and almost knocked out in the fourth. While Mike recovers in his corner of the ring, he thinks about returning to a California beach, and the film turns into an extended flashback, where Mike is on that beach making a sand sculpture of two fighters, with a crowd of children looking on.

A boy calls Mike from the bluff overlooking the beach and tells him that Sam wants to talk to him. When Mike arrives in Sam’s bar and restaurant, Sam tells him that he sold one of Mike’s paintings. Mike is upset because, for him, his paintings are just studies, and they are not for sale. Mike wants to know where the purchaser, a woman, lives so that he can get the painting back. Sam tells him that she lives in Bungalow C at the Casa de Oro Hotel in Monterey.

Mike goes to Laurie’s hotel bungalow and finds the front door unlocked. He lets himself in (would he do this if he had known the purchaser was a woman?) and starts investigating some of Laurie’s possessions in her bedroom. He is so absorbed that he doesn’t notice when Laurie returns from the beach and finds him going through her things. He comes off as a creep, even though the music on the soundtrack makes the incident seem romantic. Laurie apparently thinks he is creepy, too, and starts for her phone to call the police.

Mike talks her out of making the phone call, but he can’t talk Laurie out of taking her money back and returning the painting. But now Mike doesn’t care because he likes her reason for buying it in the first place: Laurie says that she thinks the artist shows imagination. When Mike introduces himself as Mike Gordon, Laurie realizes that she is talking to the painter. She still won’t return the painting, but Mike does convince Laurie to go out on a date with him that evening.

Laurie and Mike have dinner at Sam’s bar and restaurant. She tells Mike that she used to sing professionally, in another life about which she reveals nothing. After dinner, Mike takes Laurie home and insists on coming in because he wants to talk to her. He asks her a lot of questions, and she remains evasive. She asks Mike to leave. He says that he will if she will go for a swim with him, he won’t ask any more questions. She agrees. On the beach, under the stars, Mike declares that he has already fallen in love with Laurie. She is taken aback at firsts because they barely know one another. Mike is pretty convincing, however, at least for Laurie, and she gives in to a passionate kiss.

It was hard for me to believe that Laurie would fall for Mike in the first place, or at least as quickly as she did. Mike was a man who had invaded her home and was going through her things (checking out her intimate clothing, sniffing her perfume bottle) when she came home from the beach. Why didn’t she run out and look for help? And when they arrive back at her front door after their first date, she gives Mike her key and lets him open her front door. I found that one simple act confusing, even a little alarming. Was this a custom in 1948 America? Why would a woman trust a near stranger with the key to her front door? And how much can she trust a man who proclaims his love for her after less than twenty-four hours?

Laurie not only trusts Mike; she has fallen in love with him. She comes to Sam’s place and talks with Sam about Mike. While Sam leaves to get some coffee for himself and Laurie, a man (Trask) walks in and plays a song on the jukebox. Laurie spots Trask and leaves the restaurant, seemingly in fear, and perhaps with good reason because Trask follows her out the door.

(This article about Whiplash contains spoilers.)

Mike learns from the front desk at Laurie’s hotel that she has checked out and left no message for him, no forwarding address. All he finds is a package that she wants forwarded to a Dr. Arnold Vincent in New York City. The package is wrapped, but it looks just about the same size as the painting that Laurie purchased from Sam in the restaurant. Mike becomes depressed after Laurie’s sudden departure. Sam tries to convince him to go to New York City, look for Laurie, and then go to Paris and return to painting if he cannot find her. Mike finally agrees.

In New York City, Mike is unsuccessful in finding Dr. Arnold Vincent. Like Laurie, he seems to have disappeared, too. Mike has rented a room where he paints, including one of Laurie from memory. His neighbor Chris Sherwood invites him out for an evening at the Pelican Club with her and a Texas oil man, Tex Sanders. (The oil man likes Chris; Chris likes Mike.) At the club, Chris and Mike learn that Laurie is one of the acts. Laurie is alarmed when she spots Mike in the audience. She runs off the stage when her song is done and refuses to talk to him when he comes backstage.

Trask, the stranger who showed up at Sam’s place in California, wants Mike to leave the nightclub and is willing to fight him. One of the man’s friends, Duke Carney (the prizefighter in the film’s opening sequence), also wants to fight him, but they don’t get anywhere because Mike is good with his fists. Someone named Costello finally comes up behind Mike and knocks him out with a handgun to the head. Costello and Trask bring Mike into the office of their boss, the owner of the club, Rex Durant (played by Zachary Scott), and Laurie follows them inside. Mike learns that Durant is Laurie’s husband and that he is confined to a wheelchair.

After Durant learns how Mike handled himself with Trask and Carney, he wants to know if Mike is interested in fighting professionally because he wants another fighter to win for him in the ring once again. Durant was once a prizefighter, but an injury in the ring paralyzed him. Mike refuses at first and walks out. Laurie meets Mike outside the club and warns him about getting involved with Durant. Her interference is enough to change Mike’s mind: He decides then to fight for Durant.

Mike reports the next day to Durant’s gym and learns that Dr. Arnold Vincent, the one that he had been looking for when he first arrived in New York City, is the gym’s doctor. He learns a lot now and quickly about Dr. Arnold Vincent. The doctor is Laurie’s brother, and Durant blames the doctor for his paralysis, even though he had nothing to do with Durant’s accident. And then he sees the painting that Laurie bought hanging in the doctor’s office.

Mike starts training and becomes a ruthless fighter. His drive comes from wanting revenge for his unrequited love for Laurie Durant and for what he perceives as her deception. Laurie is distressed at his transformation. She tells Mike that Rex is using him, but Mike is happy being a fighter. He doesn’t feel anything anymore, and he is happiest about that. Like Laurie’s brother, however, Mike becomes enmeshed in Durant’s schemes and convinces himself it is all for the best—until he is in the ring fighting and unaware that he was already seriously injured before the fight began.

The fight in the opening sequence may have started as a losing one for Mike, but when the long flashback is over, the fighting and the pause seem to have knocked some sense into him. The film moves back to the present with the referee’s whistle, back to Mike in his corner of the ring and the championship fight. Mike wins the championship but then collapses onto the canvas. Dr. Vincent arrives and says that Mike has been fighting with a concussion and needs to get to the hospital immediately. The two men in Laurie’s life that she cares for most—Mike and her brother—finally come to their senses and save her from a loveless and bitter marriage.

As I mentioned, it was already hard for me to believe that Laurie would fall for Mike in the first place: He invaded her home uninvited; he wants her key to let her in her own home after their date; he proclaims that he is in love with after their first date. And in New York, when Mike finally agrees to train as a fighter, he becomes crude, angry, and cruel. Laurie finally starts to wonder about Mike, but she forgives him rather quickly when he makes a turnaround after hearing about her marital situation and the predicament her brother has found himself in. Mike helps to save her from a bad marriage to Durant, but what happens when he starts being suspicious of her again for any reason at all?

If you can look past all that, maybe the attraction between these two would seem more natural. But I still had my original questions, and more questions: When Laurie found Mike (then a complete stranger) in her bedroom, why didn’t she run out and look for help? Was she afraid making a scene would attract enough attention to make the news and alert her husband? If that was the reason in California, it couldn’t have been in New York City, after she had already returned to her husband and watched Mike turn into a vicious boxer. His transformation back into a concerned lover was a bit rushed for me. The title of the film, Whiplash, could easily apply to Mike’s changing attitudes toward Laurie.

Dane Clark is one of my noir favorites, but he didn’t pull off the whiplash changes in his character Mike Gordon well enough to convince me like he convinced Laurie, although I was relieved that they reunited in the end. Zachary Scott plays a type of character for which he is most famous: a thug with a mean streak. But Scott is convincing. How many actors can be so menacing in a wheelchair?

My description may make Whiplash sound like a soap opera, but that is not true of the film. The love story between Laurie and Mike is the central theme, and it is the motivation for almost everything that Mike does. It’s true that I found it to be the weakest part of the story, but there is more to the film’s narrative than the love story. Whiplash is a film noir after all, and Zachary Scott and his henchmen have enough menace to give the film the tension that it needs. I enjoyed Whiplash in spite of all my questions about Laurie’s feelings for Mike and my reservations about boxing as a central theme.

December 24, 1948, release date  •  Directed by Lewis Seiler  •  Screenplay by Maurice Geraghty, Harriet Frank Jr., Gordon Kahn  •  Based on a story by Kenneth Earl  •  Music by William Lava, Franx Waxman  •  Edited by Frank Magee  •  Cinematography by Peverell Marley

Dane Clark as Michael Gordon  •  Alexis Smith as Laurie Rogers  •  Zachary Scott as Rex Durant  •  Eve Arden as Chris Sherwood  •  Jeffrey Lynn as Dr. Arnold Vincent  •  S. Z. Sakall as Sam  •  Alan Hale as Terrance O’Leary  •  Douglas Kennedy as Costello  •  Ransom M. Sherman as Tex Sanders  •  Freddie Steele as Duke Carney  •  Robert Lowell as Trask  •  Don McGuire as Jimmy Harkus  •  Jimmie Dodd as Bill, the piano player  •  John Harmon as Kid McGee  •  Charles Marsh as Charlie, the hotel manager

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures  •  Produced by Warner Bros.-First National

Flaxy Martin (1949)

I wanted to see Flaxy Martin because of Zachary Scott. I think he is an underrated actor, and I always enjoy his films. Scott is often associated with playing creepy cads, probably because of his outstanding performance as Monte Beragon in Mildred Pierce (1945). But many of his roles, including his roles in films noir, don’t always involve thugs or cads. In Flaxy Martin, he plays Walt Colby, a lawyer who gets in over his head as legal counsel for Hap Richie, a club owner who sometimes resorts to illegal activities to get what he wants. It doesn’t help that Colby has fallen in love with Hap’s girlfriend, the Flaxy Martin of the film’s title.

Flaxy Martin has shown up from time to time at the Internet Archive, which is where I saw it, but films sometimes come and go at the archive, and Flaxy Martin is no exception. I found it at the archive twice, then it disappeared twice. If a film disappears before you have a chance to see it, try searching on the film’s title once again at the archive’s website to find out if it has been reposted. Flaxy Martin sometimes shows up on the television channel Movies!, as it did earlier this week and will again tonight (July 16, 2026) at 10:15 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Check the website here for the schedule.

The film has one of the most startling openings I have ever seen. The credits roll while a familiar theme plays on the soundtrack. The music is close to a film noir theme often used by Twentieth-Century Fox. If you are a fan of The Dark Corner (1946), a Fox noir, and have seen it as often as I have, you will recognize the musical theme to Flaxy Martin. (The same theme is also used for other Fox noirs.) The credits end, the music stops, and the film cuts to a window in the middle of being shot out and its glass shattered. Once the shooting stops, a man jumps out of the window and runs down the dark city street. The transition is jarring, and it is perfect for film noir.

The man escaping through the shattered window is Caesar, criminal associate of Hap Richie. Richie wants lawyer Walt Colby to get Caesar off the hook. Colby protests: He never agreed to be a lawyer for anything or anyone else besides Richie’s businesses, but Richie insists. Colby relents, but the conflict between the two men is already set up before viewers realize that Colby is in love with Richie’s girlfriend, Flaxy Martin. Martin is not loyal to anyone but herself, and she is the femme fatale of this film. This isn’t giving anything away: Viewers can see this almost from the start. After Colby visits Caesar in jail, he calls Martin, who is entertaining Richie, and both of them are entertaining various ways to play Colby.

(This article about Flaxy Martin contains spoilers.)

Before Caesar’s trial begins, Richie and Martin enlist a woman named Peggy Farrar to give false testimony. With this surprise witness, the case against Caesar goes south, and Caesar is acquitted. Richie is thrilled with the result. Colby knows that he has been double-crossed with a witness who gave false testimony. The district attorney isn’t happy with the verdict either and suspects foul play on the part of Caesar and Richie. Colby warns Richie about Farrar: She wants more money now, and she told Colby about her deal with Richie and lying on the stand. Colby threatens to leave and talk to the D.A. Richie finally agrees to cancel his contract with the Richie syndicate, but he hatches a plan to set up Colby.

Richie calls Caesar for “a little job,” and Peggy Farrar is fished out of the river the next day. Two police detectives go to Farrar’s apartment to start their investigation. One of them finds a marriage license for Farrar with Martin’s name as witness on it. Martin is the logical next step in their investigation. Martin goes to Colby for help. She wants Colby to leave Richie out of it, but Colby doesn’t think that is a good option because there is too much circumstantial evidence.

Walt Colby is so smitten with Martin that he offers to confess to Farrar’s murder and shield Martin and Richie from any involvement. He is convinced that he will succeed in diverting the case because there is no evidence against him. When the two detectives show up, Colby turns himself over to them.

This was one plot point that I found a bit hard to believe. Did Colby’s ego get in the way of his good judgment? Colby is convinced that he can escape a guilty verdict not only because he is innocent but also because he plans to defend himself. But perhaps love really is blind because he never foresees how Richie and Martin will double-cross him: Fred Banford, a cab driver, is hired by Richie to testify against Colby at his trial. Branford maintains that Colby killed Peggy Farrar, and not in self-defense. Colby realizes that Richie and Martin have set him up. He is found guilty and sentenced to twenty years in prison.

Sam Malko visits Colby in prison. This is Malko’s first appearance in the story, but he is at the prison because he feels that he owes Colby a favor. Colby helped his wife and children when he was in legal trouble. Malko overheard Caesar talking about Colby taking the rap for him, and he sees Flaxy Martin with Hap Richie, who comes to his garage all the time. It doesn’t make sense, according to Malko, because he always thought that Martin was Colby’s girlfriend. If Colby had any hopes about Martin before Malko’s visit, they are shattered now.

Colby escapes from a train while he is being transferred from the courthouse jail to prison after his sentencing. He walks away from the tracks and flags down a car driven by Nora Carson. He collapses in the road, and Carson brings him home to recuperate. Carson tells him that the D.A. is quoted in a newspaper article as saying that he thinks Colby is innocent. She also tells him why she brought him home to recuperate: “I guess you want to know why I helped you. Well, let’s just say it’s because I’m a sucker. I happen to feel sorry for anyone who runs away from something. I know what it is to run away.”

Carson’s nosy next-door neighbor calls the local sheriff because she is suspicious of Carson’s visitor. Carson tells the sheriff that Colby is her brother dropping in for a visit. Then Roper, another of Hap Richie’s associates, shows up, ready to use his gun. Roper takes the sheriff’s gun and orders him to use his handcuffs to cuff Colby and Carson together, then he locks the sheriff in a closet. (I did wonder at this point what happened to the nosy neighbor. Why isn’t she watching out for the sheriff now?)

Colby and Carson escape, take Roper’s car, talk their way out of a police roadblock, and head back to New York City to ask Malko for help getting out of the handcuffs. Colby wants to talk to Caesar, but he is dead, shot in the back, by the time Colby arrives at his walk-up apartment. Caesar’s (old, black, landline) phone rings, and Colby picks up the receiver, just to listen. It’s Roper, and he knows Colby is listening on the phone. Colby has no choice but to leave Caesar’s apartment, which leads to a rather lengthy cat-and-mouse chase between him and Roper.

Flaxy Martin has heard what happened to Caesar and Roper at Richie’s club, and she arrives home to call Richie and tell him that she is leaving town. By this time, Colby is hiding in Martin’s apartment (he escaped Roper), and he overhears her talking to Richie. Martin tries to insist that she loves Colby, but he is not as easy to convince anymore. Richie arrives, and Martin pulls a gun and tries to double-cross both of them. Martin shoots Richie and kills him, and Colby takes her gun. He calls the police and leaves her to face them alone. He returns to Malko’s garage to see Nora Carson. But Carson isn’t interested in running away anymore. She tells Colby, “Nobody ever ran away and ever had anything but bad dreams. I’ve had enough of them.” Carson leaves without Colby, and Malko is on hand to set Colby straight. He tells Colby that Carson loves him and that he shouldn’t let her get away. Colby agrees, and he and Carson get their happy ending. But this is film noir: They have to face the police and their questions first.

The plot of Flaxy Martin is not as complicated as those of other films noir, but it still pays to see it more than once to catch all the details. For example, the first time that I saw it, I couldn’t figure out why Sam Malko took such an interest in Walt Colby’s predicament. His visit to Colby in prison is his first screen appearance, and there didn’t seem to be any backstory between them. It was only on a second viewing that I heard Malko say that he feels he owes Colby a favor because of his help in the past.

A second viewing also cleared up some of my confusion about Nora Carson’s reasons for not wanting to go on the run with Walter Colby at the end of the film. In the middle of the film, she tells Colby that she understands the need to run away because she has done it herself. But in Malko’s garage, she tells him that she doesn’t like his plan to run away. What was she thinking? It turns out that I missed some important lines of dialogue: Carson is tired of running. She is in love with Colby and doesn’t want to keep moving. She would rather settle down and forego the bad dreams that plague people on the run. Malko sets Colby straight and helps him see what his future could be.

Maybe I would have had an easier time following the film’s dialogue if I had had a DVD copy that came with subtitles. The Internet Archive doesn’t have captioning, but free is free and hard to beat.

It was a pleasure to see the film more than once, in spite of a few fuzzy plot points. Zachary Scott is fantastic in the role of Walter Colby, and Tom D’Andrea is the same as the trustworthy Sam Malko. He shows the right amount of hesitation about helping Colby and Carson when they arrive in handcuffs at his garage before helping them in the end. Virginia Mayo has the title role, and she is entirely convincing as the femme fatale playing two men against one another. But the film isn’t really hers. Zachary Scott is the true lead, the true star, which just added to the fun for me.

February 15, 1949, release date  •  Directed by Richard L. Bare  •  Screenplay by David Lang  •  Based on a story by David Lang  •  Music by William Lava  •  Edited by Frank Magee  •  Cinematography by Carl Guthrie

Virginia Mayo as Flaxy Martin  •  Zachary Scott as Walter (“Walt”) Colby  •  Dorothy Malone as Nora Carson  •  Tom D’Andrea as Sam Malko  •  Helen Westcott as Peggy Farrar  •  Douglas Kennedy as Hap Richie  •  Elisha Cook Jr. as Roper  •  Douglas Fowley as Max, the detective  •  Monte Blue as Joe, the detective  •  Jack Overman as Caesar  •  Max Wagner as Charles McMahon  •  John Harmon as Fred Branford  •  Harlan Warde as McClane, assistant district attorney

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures-First National Pictures  •  Produced by Warner Bros. Pictures-First National Pictures

Guilty Bystander (1950)

Guilty Bystander may be the most noirish film noir I have seen so far. The filmmakers decided to shoot the film on location in New York City, and that decision certainly helped them achieve a gritty verisimilitude, in spite of using actors in the leading roles who were well known in 1950. The griminess felt real, even from the viewer’s seat.

Guilty Bystander is available for free online. Click here to watch it at the Internet Archive. If you would like to watch the film with Spanish subtitles, click here.

But on-location shooting wasn’t the only reason Guilty Bystander is so noirish. The two main characters, Max and Georgia Thursday, are flawed in very noir ways. Max Thursday (played by Zachary Scott) is a disgraced police detective who was suspended from the force because he shot Red Folger after drinking on the job; a newspaper reporter discovered the facts and published them, forcing Max’s boss, Captain Mark Tonetti, to suspend him. Max turns to the bottle to console himself, and it isn’t long before he leaves his marriage to Georgia (played by Fay Emerson) to live in the Riverview Hotel, a flophouse near the Brooklyn Bridge, where he lives and scrapes out a living as its house detective.

(This article about Guilty Bystander contains spoilers.)

All this information is part of Max’s backstory, which viewers learn as the film progresses. The narrative actually begins with Georgia Thursday looking for her husband one evening because she is desperate for help finding their young son Jeff. She arrives at the Riverview Hotel, obviously alarmed at the living conditions. She cannot help herself from wiping her fingers when she touches a banister. Georgia has to rouse her husband from a drunken stupor to convince him to help her. The only clue she has about Jeff’s disappearance is a note in which her brother Fred Mace claims to be going on an errand and taking Jeff with him. They were supposed to be back by dinner, but that was more than twenty-four hours ago.

Max Thursday is not such a dedicated drunkard that he isn’t moved by his wife’s distress and the plight of their son. Neither he nor Georgia seem to care too much about Fred, except that his involvement just makes the alarm they feel even more pronounced. Max may be a disgraced police detective, but he jumps into the investigation knowing that he still has the skills and wherewithal to do some good. Both parents can feel some relief knowing that Max is on the case.

But Max isn’t exactly a gentleman. Yes, he loves his wife and son, and he would do anything to protect both of them. But that is actually part of his problem. He is not above telling Angel, one of the leads he is following in his investigation, that he and she should move to Florida and live on the beach for the rest of their lives. To make his act more convincing, he kisses her passionately (enough) while they are on their way to find his brother-in-law. He promises Angel the world because he wants her to lead him to Fred. He will tell her anything as long as he can find Fred and thus his son.

And just in case viewers aren’t convinced that Max Thursday is a heel, he tries to save himself when two thugs show up at the bottom of a staircase by shoving Angel down into them and running up the stairs. By this point, Angel is distraught because she knows she has been taken in by yet another creep. In fact, I was sure that the two thugs would kill her and Max, but no. She runs off shrieking about her close call with death and the betrayal by Max. After all of this, I could still root for Max because I was really rooting for Jeff. Without Max, Jeff could be gone forever, and without his quest for Jeff, Max would be nothing but a corrupt cop who got what he deserved.

And to say that Max is vital to the investigation is not an understatement. The police are on the case, but they do have other priorities, and his wife Georgia does nothing to help, other than showing up at the start of the film and asking Max to get involved. And yet she is not exactly the sweet woman waiting at home for her husband to get his work done. Later in his investigation, when Max returns to her apartment with a gunshot wound in his upper arm, she tends to it expertly enough to extract the bullet.

Max threatens to stop investigating. He cannot even carry a gun anymore since his suspension and so he cannot defend himself. He believes that is how he was wounded in the first place. He knows that he drinks too much and has the shakes, which would affect his aim. When Max feels that he will never find Jeff, Georgia hurls angry statements at him such as “You haven’t gone as far as you can until you’re dead,” “If you haven’t got a gun, go without one,” and “You can’t walk, crawl. But you’re going to bring Jeff back.” Her arguments about Max continuing his investigation have their intended effect: Max is apparently susceptible to a bit of emotional manipulation. Why should Georgia care what happens to Max as long as their son is safe?

Smitty is the proprietor of the Riverview Hotel, where Max lives, and she helps Max with his investigation by providing information. Her position running the flophouse makes her privy to gossip and pertinent information, but she also encourages Max to drink whenever she can. Sometimes he gives in, which adds to the complexity of his investigation and brings him back to the attention of the police and Tonetti, his former boss. Max was the last person to see one of his leads, Doctor Elder, before Elder was found murdered. Max is a strong suspect given his background on the police force and the fact that he accepted Elder’s offer of alcohol when they met. Tonetti wants Max to leave the investigation of his son’s disappearance to the police force, but he lets Max go, his prime suspect in Elder’s murder, for lack of concrete evidence against him.

The search for his son leads Max to a smuggling ring that deals in guns and illegal drugs—and murder. Doctor Elder is his first lead, and the alcohol that the doctor convinces Max to drink tastes a bit like licorice. Audiences in 1950 must have known what Max was referring to when he mentioned the taste of licorice because no other mention is made of this substance, so I did a little research. The alcohol was probably absinthe, and Wikipedia offers a lot of information about it, including bans on its production and consumption. (Click here to read more; scroll down to the subsection called “Bans” if you want that information specifically.) Thus, Max probably guessed right away that Doctor Elder dealt in illegal substances, and 1950 audiences probably would have guessed the same.

The only false note in the film was the ending. Max is suddenly cleaned up and dressed in a suit, and he and Georgia arrive to find Jeff safe and sound, just as Fred Mace had told Max he would be. The happy family walk away down the street together. There is even a moment when the little boy struggles out of Faye Emerson’s arms and reaches his arms up to Zachary Scott to be picked up and held. It’s a charming moment that I think had more to do with the little boy (no credit line for Jeff) and Zachary Scott than it did with Jeff and Max Thursday. In fact, I wondered if the little boy was related to Scott or possibly his own son. But “charming” is hardly a way to describe Guilty Bystander overall. It’s the ending that everyone wants, to be sure. But it comes with no transition, no explanation about Max’s seemingly sudden transformation. The ending felt tacked on, or maybe any intervening scenes had been cut for the sake of brevity.

Guilty Bystander has only recently been restored and made available for viewing. I found this information courtesy of Eddie Muller and his discussion of the film for the program Noir Alley at Turner Classic Movie (TCM). Click here for the YouTube version of Muller’s introduction to the film, which includes lots of information about the writers of the novel that the film is based on and the film’s producers. Muller’s outro (click here) provides more information about the restoration of this film.

In spite of all his flaws, Max is determined to find his son. And Zachary Scott is perfect in this role. I have always been a fan of Scott’s, and I always look forward to seeing a film with Scott in any role, lead or supporting. His performance in Guilty Bystander does not disappoint. It’s a great story, too. The happy ending may not match the rest of the story, but the rest of the story and Zachary Scott’s performance are the reasons to see Guilty Bystander.

April 20, 1950, release date  •  Directed by Joseph Lerner  •  Screenplay by Don Ettlinger  •  Based on the novel Guilty Bystander by Wade Miller  •  Music by Dimitri Tiomkin  •  Edited by Geraldine Lerner  •  Cinematography by Gerald Hirschfield, Russell Harlan

Zachary Scott as Max Thursday  •  Faye Emerson as Georgia Thursday  •  Mary Boland as Smitty  •  Sam Levene as Captain Mark Tonetti  •  J. Edward Bromberg as Otto Varkas  •  Kay Medford as Angel  •  Jed Prouty as Dr. Elder  •  Harry Landers as Bert  •  Dennis Patrick as Fred Mace, Georgia’s brother  •  Ray Julian as Johnny  •  Elliot Sullivan as Stitch Olivera  •  Garney Wilson as Harvey  •  Donald Novis as Detective Johnson  •  Jesse White as the man in the bar  •  Scott Landers as Shaunessy, the police officer in the jail cell  •  Lester Lonergran as the coroner  •  Lou Herbert as a police detective

Distributed by Film Classics  •  Produced by Edmund L. Dorfmann Productions, Laurel Films, New York Film Associates