Blind Alley (1939)

Director:

Charles Vidor

Writers:

Philip MacDonald (screenplay) &
Michael Blankfort (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

11 May 1939 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Plot:

Gangster Hal Wilson takes psychiatrist Dr. Shelby hostage. While captive, the doctor analyzes Wilson as though he were a patient.

Plot Keywords:

Psychiatrist | Hostage | Warden | Trooper | Student

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

Chester Morris	...	Hal Wilson
Ralph Bellamy	...	Dr. Shelby
Ann Dvorak	...	Mary
Joan Perry	...	Linda Curtis
Melville Cooper	...	George Curtis
Rose Stradner	...	Doris Shelby
John Eldredge	...	Dick Holbrook (as John Eldridge)
Ann Doran	...	Agnes
Marc Lawrence	...	Buck
Stanley Brown	...	Fred Landis
Scotty Beckett	...	Davy Shelby
Milburn Stone	...	Nick
Marie Blake	...	Harriet

Runtime:

69 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #5135) | USA:TV-PG (TV rating)

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

This film was re-made as The Dark Past (1948). It starred Lee J. Cobb as the psychiatrist and William Holden as the killer.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: The gangster's fingers are supposedly paralyzed, but when he pushes the "Insanity and the Criminal Mind" book back onto the shelf, you can clearly see him flick it into place with one of his "paralyzed" fingers.

Movie Connections:

Version of Blind Alley (1941) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Waltz Op. 64 No. 2 in C sharp minor

An escaped con hides out in the beachfront home of a psychiatrist and allows him to psychoanalyze him

I saw this movie when I was seven, 'way back in 1939. I had never seen anything like the dream sequence and the psychiatrist's explanation. They both were shot from the camera's viewpoint, something I wasn't to see again until Robert Montgomery's version of Raymond Chandler's "The Lady In The Lake. This stuck in my cerebellum since. The remake, "The Dark Past," with Wm. Holden wasn't quite as good, but then I was older and more sophisticated when I saw that one. And, anyone who says Chester Morris couldn't act obviously hasn't seen "The Big House," "Three Godfathers" (not the John Wayne one), or any of the Boston Blackie movies. P.S. Where are the Boston Blackie movies?