Detective Story **** (1951, Kirk Douglas, Eleanor Parker, William Bendix, Cathy O’Donnell, Lee Grant) – Classic Movie Review 2,385

William Wyler’s 1951 sturdy and thoughtful film noir crime drama Detective Story provides a great role for Kirk Douglas as hard-nosed cop Detective Jim McLeod.

Producer-director William Wyler’s 1951 sturdy and thoughtful Paramount Pictures film noir crime drama Detective Story provides a great role for Kirk Douglas as hard-nosed cop Detective Jim McLeod. The story finds him confronting a sea of troubles and an ill assortment of characters on one gruelling day in the New York City 21st Precinct squad room.

It also features Eleanor Parker, William Bendix, Cathy O’Donnell and George Macready, while Lee Grant and Joseph Wiseman play large roles in their film debuts. 

Among the people angry Detective McLeod is having to cope with are his neglected wife Mary (Eleanor Parker), his fellow cop Detective Lou Brody (William Bendix), Susan Carmichael (Cathy O’Donnell), Miss Hatch (Gladys George), snivelling thief and burglar Charley Gennini (Joseph Wiseman) and a scared shoplifter (Lee Grant).

Philip Yordan and Robert Wyler (William Wyler’s older brother) skilfully base their screenplay on Sidney Kingsley’s 1949 hit Broadway play.

On 11 April 1948 the 47-year-old Robert Wyler married the 24-year-old Cathy O’Donnell after meeting two years earlier while she was being directed by his brother William Wyler in The Best Years of Our Lives. Incidentally, Robert Wyler was also a nephew of Universal Studios head Carl Laemmle. 

Re-creating her Broadway stage role, Grant is terrific in her movie début and she won the Best Actress award at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival. But then immediately after this she was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, a victim of the McCarthy-era witchhunt, refusing to testify against her husband, the blacklisted playwright/ screenwriter Arnold Manoff. She got very little work for about 12 years but later won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Shampoo (1975). 

Also in the cast are Cathy O’Donnell, George Macready, Horace McMahon, Gladys George (as Miss Hatch), Gerald Mohr, Frank Faylen, Luis Van Rooten, Craig Hill, Burt Freed, Warner Anderson, Burt Mustin, and Michael Strong.

It is shot in black and white, and the cinematographer is Lee Garmes but John F Seitz shot the last three weeks of production, uncredited.

There were four Oscar nominations, including Academy Award for Best Director for Wyler, Best Actress for Parker, and Best Supporting Actress for Grant, and three Golden Globe nominations, but no wins.

It was considered controversial and was a hit. It did well commercially, costing $1.5 million and taking $2.8 million at the North American box office.

The film omits the play’s details about the criminal underworld and the dangers of a police state but even so still got into censorship problems. The Motion Picture Production Code did not allow plotlines about the killing of police officers or references to abortion, and American film censor Joseph Breen suggested that explicit references to abortion would be altered to ‘baby farming’. After Wyler suggested that the Production Code be amended to allow the killing of police officers if it was absolutely necessary for the plot, they agreed, and the code was amended. It was cop killings in gangster films that they were concerned to ban.

The play ran on Broadway for 581 performances from 23 March 1949 to 12 August 1950. It starred Ralph Bellamy as Detective McLeod, Meg Mundy played his wife and Maureen Stapleton played Miss Hatch. But Horace McMahon, Joseph Wiseman, Michael Strong and Lee Grant all re-enact their stage roles.

Joseph Wiseman went on to play the title role in Dr No (1962).

The cast are Kirk  as Detective Jim McLeod, Eleanor Parker as Mary McLeod, William Bendix as Detective Lou Brody, Cathy O’Donnell as Susan Carmichael, George Macready as Dr Karl Schneider, Horace McMahon as Lt. Monoghan, Gladys George as Miss Hatch, Joseph Wiseman as Charley Gennini, Lee Grant as Shoplifter, Gerald Mohr as Tami Giacoppetti, Frank Faylen as Detective Gallagher, Craig Hill as Arthur Kindred, Michael Strong as Lewis Abbott, Luis Van Rooten as Joe Feinson, Bert Freed as Detective Dakis, Warner Anderson as lawyer Endicott Sims, Grandon Rhodes as Detective O’Brien, William ‘Bill’ Phillips as Detective Pat Callahan, Russell Evans as Patrolman Steve Barnes, Burt Mustin as Willy the Janitor.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,385

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