Face the Music [The Black Glove] ** (1954, Alex Nicol, Eleanor Summerfield, John Salew) – Classic Movie Review 10,897

For the 1954 black and white crime thriller Face the Music [The Black Glove], Hammer Films brought US action star Alex Nicol over to Britain to play a trumpeter who has to show he wasn’t the one who killed a singer. 

‘Excitement! Thrills! Suspense! Will grip you like never before!’

For the 1954 black and white crime thriller Face the Music [The Black Glove], Hammer Films brought US action star Alex Nicol over to Britain to play a trumpeter called James Bradley, who has to show he wasn’t the one who killed a singer and finds evidence with a sound-recording device and a photograph to nail the actual killer. He nearly winds up dead when someone puts poison on the mouthpiece of his trumpet. Ah, death by trumpet, an unusual way to go!

Just arrived in the UK, jet-lagged American trumpet player Brad Bradley (Alex Nicol) goes to the apartment of a beautiful blues singer he has just met and hours later is accused of her murder. With just two little clues, he narrows the list of suspects to four people…

Though neither the story nor characters nor the Fifties music scene seem truly convincing, it is still a fair mystery from Hammer’s pre-horror days, performed with eager enthusiasm and neatly handled by director Terence Fisher.

Music by Kenny Baker’s Dozen. Alex Nicol’s trumpet playing is dubbed by Kenny Baker.

Ernest Borneman’s screenplay is based on Ernest Borneman’s novel Face the Music.

Face the Music was released in the US as The Black Glove.

It is shot at Bray Studios, Down Place, Oakley Green, Berkshire, England.

Also in the cast are Eleanor Summerfield as Barbara Quigley, John Salew as Maxie Maguilies, Paul Carpenter as Johnny Sutherland, Geoffrey Keen as as Maurie Green, Ann Hanslip as Maxine Halbard, Fred Johnson as Detective Sergeant MacKenzie, Martin Boddey as Inspector Mulrooney, Arthur Lane as Jeff Colt, Paula Byrne as Gloria Lewis Colt, Gordon Crier, Leo Phillips, Freddie Tripp [Fred Tripp], Ben Williams, Frank Birch, Jeremy Hawk, James Carney, Mark Singleton and Melvyn Hayes as Hotel Bellhop, with producer Michael Carreras in a cameo as Band Member.

In 1950, Hammer Films set up a deal with American producer Robert L Lippert to produce low-budget crime dramas to be made in the UK starring a Hollywood veteran or promising American newcomer supported by fine British character actors. This five-year deal produced more than a dozen well-made B-noirs.

Face the Music [The Black Glove] is directed by Terence Fisher, runs 84 minutes, is made by Hammer Film Productions, is released by Exclusive Films (UK) and Lippert Pictures (US), is written by Ernest Borneman, is shot in black and white by Walter J Harvey [Jimmy Harvey], is produced by Michael Carreras, is scored by Kenny Baker and Ivor Slaney and designed by J Elder Wills.

It is included on an eight-film Hammer Film Noir Double Feature DVD box set. Hammer Film Noir Collector’s Set 2: 4-7 includes Terror Street (1953), Wings of Danger (1952), The Glass Tomb (1955), Paid To Kill (1954), The Black Glove (1954), Deadly Game (1954), The Unholy Four (1954), and A Race for Life (1954).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,897

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