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Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Faye Emerson | ... | Gladys Wayne | |
Van Johnson | ... | Bert Bell | |
George Meeker | ... | 'Scoop' Conner | |
Frank Wilcox | ... | Randall | |
Tod Andrews | ... | 'Dapper Dan' Malloy (as Michael Ames) | |
Roland Drew | ... | 'Mile-Away' Gordon | |
Ruth Ford | ... | Irene Gordon | |
Joseph Crehan | ... | Jim F. Ainslee | |
William Gould | ... | Warden John Bevins | |
Douglas Wood | ... | Bill Burgen | |
John Maxwell | ... | Prison Doctor | |
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Patrick McVey | ... | Chief Electrician (as Pat McVeigh) |
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Dick Rich | ... | Death House Guard |
Fred Kelsey | ... | Death House Keeper | |
William 'Bill' Phillips | ... | Mike - Henchman (as Bill Phillips) |
When a prisoner on Death Row is "accidentally" killed just before his execution, a reporter smells something fishy. His investigation reveals that the condemned man was about to reveal some damaging information about the connection between the city's corrupt political machine and its major organized crime ring. The reporter hatches a plan, with the help of the paper's alcoholic political columnist, to get himself thrown in prison to get the information the murdered prisoner was going to reveal and expose both the crooked politicians and the gangsters they're in cahoots with. Written by frankfob2@yahoo.com
This is quite comparable with "His Girl Friday" a few years earlier, it is the same kind of virtuoso journalism with the dialog rocketing like crossfire all through, and the story is ingenious and interesting. A new journalist happens to get the chance of a first rate scoop, when he notices irregularities in a prematurely executed convict, who had something to tell and had threatened to do it, if he was executed. He didn't have to do it, as the journalists posthumously found it out anyway by clever tactics and maoeuvres, and the road through this mess of smokescreen jungles is a sustained thriller, Van Johnson doing his first great lead, followed by many others, in spite of his rather undramatic appearance but demonstrating his stage presence entirely by his integrity and personality. It also reminds very much of Richard Brooks' "Deadline" ten years later, an even more advanced virtuoso journalism thriller, while this one has a good position between the two chief masterpieces in the genre.