Pickup *** (1951, Beverly Michaels, Hugo Haas, Allan Nixon, Howland Chamberlain) – Classic Movie Review 12,452

Hugo Haas’s tacky pulp 1951 American B-feature film noir Pickup is based on Josef Kopta’s 1926 novel Watchman 47 and stars splendid Beverly Michaels as a two-timing blonde sexpot.

Czech independent film director and producer Hugo Haas’s tacky pulp 1951 American B-feature film noir Pickup is based on the 1926 novel Watchman 47 [Guard No. 47] by Josef Kopta, and stars splendid Beverly Michaels as a two-timing blonde sexpot, Hugo Haas, Allan Nixon, and Howland Chamberlain.

Hugo Haas fancies himself as a five-star tearjerking performer in this tale of Jan ‘Hunky’ Horak, a hard-of-hearing, lonely-heart widowed railway official (Haas) falling for grasping hooker Betty (Michaels), who vamps him to get her hands on the wealth she thinks he has. They marry and she and her lover Steve Kowalski (Allan Nixon) plan a little murder, dressed up as a car accident. But Jan discovers their murder plot when he regains his hearing in a chance accident.

The first of Haas’s cheap 1950s mini-melodramas, Pickup is pretty trashy, trivial, tacky pulp stuff, with a plot similar to that of the 1946 film The Postman Always Rings Twice, based on the 1934 novel by James M Cain, so interestingly this story came first.

However, tacky pulp though it may be, it provides considerable entertainment value, with plenty of intrigue and suspense, and a special bright spot is the star role for Beverly Michaels, who is really splendid as a two-timing blonde sexpot, a truly memorable femme fatale. So it can be viewed in a favourable light and admired as a low-budget noir classic.

It opened in New York on 30 August 1951 and was released by Columbia Pictures only in secondary and independent cinemas. But it was a surprise hit, launched Haas’s career as a Hollywood director, and played a significant role in the development of the 1950s cycle of bad girl movies.

Haas and Michaels reconvened for The Girl on the Bridge (1951)

Beverly Michaels (December 29, 1927 – June 9, 2007) arrived in Hollywood in 1948 at 21, found modelling work and landed a contract to MGM Studios, making her first screen appearance in East Side, West Side (1949). Her short career includes the 1951 film noir Pickup, The Girl on the Bridge (1951), the Bowery Boys comedy No Holds Barred (1952) uncredited as Blonde at Party, the film noir Wicked Woman (1954), the 1955 noir film Crashout, and Hammer Films’ Women without Men (1956).

It is remade as Guard No. 47 [Hlídač č. 47], a 2008 Czech film by director Filip Renč, starring Karel Roden and Lucia Siposová.

The cast are Hugo Haas as Jan Horak, Beverly Michaels as Betty, Allan Nixon as Steve, Howland Chamberlain as Professor, Jo-Carroll Dennison as Irma, Mark Lowell as Waiter, Marjorie Beckett as Secretary Doctor, Art Lewis as Driver, Jack Daley as Company Doctor. and Bernard Gorcey as Joe.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,452

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