I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes. 1948

I discovered all these b movies and Noirs on youtube last night and its a goldmine an absolute goldmine. The first one I watched was this little rhinestone "I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes" based on a novel by the great Cornell Woolrich with a screenplay by the well known pulp writer Steve Fisher who is probably best known for his novel "I Wake Up Screaming" (and don't we all). The film stars Don Castle, an attractive lump of a guy who when the film opens is sitting on death row for a crime he says he didn't commit. Flashback to a hot steamy B movie back lot July New York City where Don who is an out of work dancer lives in a tiny room with his very pretty wife who is also a dancer and is working as an instructor at a sleazy dance school. She is played by Else Knox who in real life married football star Tom Harmon and had a son named Mark Harmon. Anyway back to the steamy night.  Don is irritable over not having a job, a wife who is working around guys who hit on her all the time,  the heat (tell me about it Don) and the two cats outside his window going at it hot and heavy. So what does Don do? Why he throws his only good pair of shoes out the window at them, and this sets up the plot involving the murder and robbery of a reclusive man who lives in a basement apartment next door. The Movie is cramped and crowded with lots of good cheap details as any good B Noir should be, and has lots of familiar character actors playing cops, lawyers and a woman candy store owner with  a vivid Yiddish accent and her heart on her smudgy sleeve. Directed with verve and imagination by someone named William Nigh who began making movies in 1914 and some of his other films listed here sound fabu. "Beauty and The Bandit", "The Gay Cavalier", "Allotment Wives", "Are These Our Parents?" "Lady From Chunking", "Zis Boom Bah" and "Dizzy Dames". I don't know about you but I would love to see them all.