DEADLINE AT DAWN (1946)

An interesting race-against-time thriller, sort of a "noir lite," and well worth watching. Bill Williams plays a sailor at liberty in New York City until 6 a.m. when he has to catch a bus back to his barracks. The movie opens after Williams wakes up at a sidewalk newsstand from a drunken blackout--he was slipped a mickey by sexy good-for-nothing Lola Lane--and realizes he has a bundle of money in his pocket that belonged to Lane; when he goes back to her apartment, he finds her dead and fears that he killed her. With some help from a sympathetic dance hall girl (Susan Hayward) and a philosophy-spouting cab driver (Paul Lukas), Williams tries to figure out what happened and who was responsible for Lane's death. Was it her ex-husband (Marvin Miller), a blind pianist whom we saw come to Lane's apartment to get money? Was it Joseph Calleia, a gambling thug who knew Lane? Was it Jerome Cowan, a sleazy Broadway producer who was worried about being blackmailed by Lane? Or was it the drunken sailor after all? Although this has strong film noir elements (a shadowy big-city night, a hero who is ready to accept as fate that he might be guilty), there is, at times, a Hardy Boys feel about the proceedings, with the sailor, the girl, and the cabbie joined in their sleuthing by other characters eager to clear their names. And our gang runs across plenty of other characters who are active in the wee hours of the night, including Osa Massen, Constance Worth, and Phil Warren.

Williams is very good at striking a balance between "gee whiz" naivete and fatalism; Hayward is even better as the world-weary (and physically weary) heroine, long before she made a habit of going over the top in her 50's "women's pictures." Lukas seemed a bit too old to be playing the gregarious cabbie (I was thinking Cagney, or for a limited RKO budget, Jack Carson), but we discover later that there's a plot point that calls for him to be that age. Playwright Clifford Odets ladles the stagy dialogue on a bit thick at times, but there are also some nice lines: Hayward, saying it's time "to pause for station identification" as Williams is telling his story; Lukas continually beginning his observations by saying that "statistics tell us that..."; Lola Lane (who is quite good in her very short amount of screen time) opening the movie by opening her door to her ex-husband and exclaiming, "Sleepy Parsons! Aren't you dead yet?" Based on a book by Cornell Woolrich, one of the major noir writers of the era. Definitely recommended. [TCM]