Strange Impersonation 1946

 

This little “B” blue plate Noir special runs a tight and fast 68 minutes and is what I would call a shoe string production, looking as I have said many times before about Little cheap B’s that it looks like it was shot in that shoe. This marked the beginning of Anthony Mann’s impressive career in which he made movies of all kinds well into the late 60’s. His filmography includes some 40’s b&w tight noir B’s,  a few of which I would call masterworks along with some well-respected westerns in the 50’s and a few brightly colored epics most notably “El Cid” in the early 60’s.  He also made some bombs.

This strange little stain and strain of a movie is about a woman research scientist who works along side her doctor boyfriend at Mindret Wilmott Chemical Institute which by the way is the name of the screenwriter Mindret Lord. Cute. The Institute is situated somewhere on the back lot of Republic Pictures so you know that every expense has been spared, and Mann works this lack of big bucks for everything he has. The female scientist named Nora Goodrich is played in a tight manner by the limited but good-looking Brenda Marshall who made very few films and devoted most of her life to her husband William Holden and their  30 year marriage.  William Gargan not exactly my idea of a romantic lead plays her doctor squeeze who wants to get hitched to her, but Nora is more hot to trot for her experiments especially the major anesthetic breakthrough that she spends most of her waking hours on. Nora is prim and plain especially along side her sexy blonde bombshell assistant played by that tall drink of water the always threatening Hillary Brooke who stole more than her share of scenes during her long career in films and television.

The minute we see Hillary we know trouble in on its way, and all I’ll say about her is that she has a flirty eye for Gargan. Into the mix comes another hard edge dame Jane Karaski played by Ruth Ford who Nora hits with her car as she is backing out of a driveway. Jane is not hurt but will come back to haunt Nora. Ford had an interesting line of life, married to the bicoastal and bisexual Zachary Scott and then to the actor Peter Van Eyck who nicknamed her “Ruthless”.  She did more theatre and t.v. than films and along with her noted literary surrealist brother Charles Henri Ford  was a presence on the New York art and literary scene entertaining the elite in her Dakota apartment. The film moves on to a terrible accident, and Nora winds up in the hospital burned and in need of some big time plastic surgery. Also on view is the wonderful Mary Treen who plays a talky happy nurse, H.B. Warner who is the plastic surgery doctor, George Chandler as a creepy ambulance chaser and Lyle Talbot as a no holds bar police inspector. So I now must end my review because I don’t want to give away anything else away except to say that while it is not high end noir, it might give some pleasure to some and I will add and warn  that a friend threw his shoe at the tv at the “surprise” ending.