"I feel all dead inside . . . Backed up in a dark corner . . . And I don't know who's hitting me."
So Mark Stevens' Brad confesses to secretary-girlfriend Lucile Ball's Kathleen.
This particular dark corner has many angles, shadows and turns, as the two go sleuthing in search of an elusive villain--Clifton Webb's Hardy. Along the way Hardy's "hitman," Stauffer (William Bendix) gets the "ax," as the audience maintains rapt attention.
A nicely turned crime script by Jan Drather and Leo Rosten is given slick credibility by Director Henry Hathaway. The "Manhattan Melody" theme, used in so many New York drama films of the 40s, was first heard here. It was part of Cyril Mockridge's original score, so evocative of "big city pre-dawn street scenes" that it became a motif of dozens of similar efforts.
The film also showed what Ball could do in a straight dramatic role, and she proved quite capable of holding her own. Webb, forever "effete personified," offers a polished performance, while Bendix contrasts as the perfect "mug."
A "whodunit" worthy of a studio that produced loads of neat "forties thrillers": 20th Century Fox.
So Mark Stevens' Brad confesses to secretary-girlfriend Lucile Ball's Kathleen.
This particular dark corner has many angles, shadows and turns, as the two go sleuthing in search of an elusive villain--Clifton Webb's Hardy. Along the way Hardy's "hitman," Stauffer (William Bendix) gets the "ax," as the audience maintains rapt attention.
A nicely turned crime script by Jan Drather and Leo Rosten is given slick credibility by Director Henry Hathaway. The "Manhattan Melody" theme, used in so many New York drama films of the 40s, was first heard here. It was part of Cyril Mockridge's original score, so evocative of "big city pre-dawn street scenes" that it became a motif of dozens of similar efforts.
The film also showed what Ball could do in a straight dramatic role, and she proved quite capable of holding her own. Webb, forever "effete personified," offers a polished performance, while Bendix contrasts as the perfect "mug."
A "whodunit" worthy of a studio that produced loads of neat "forties thrillers": 20th Century Fox.