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| Hugh Beaumont and Richard Travers |
PIER 23 (1951). Director: William Berke.
Dennis O'Brien (Hugh Beaumont of Railroaded) lives on the San Francisco docks and operates as a troubleshooter. Father Donovan (Raymond Greenleaf) importunes Denny to meet up with an escaped con on Pier 23 and bring him to the priest, who hopes to convince him to turn himself in. Denny grabs the guy, who insists on taking time out to see a shady lady named Ann (Ann Savage). Denny is slugged and wakes up to discover that the escaped con is a corpse -- and it turns out that he wasn't even the guy he was supposed to bring to Father Donovan. This leads into a convoluted plot involving wrestling fraud (!) and murder.
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| Ann Savage with Beaumont |
In the early fifties Hugh Beaumont starred in three films featuring the character of Dennis O'Brien, who takes on cases but doesn't really seem to be a licensed private eye. His adversary was Police Inspector Lt. Bruger (Richard Travis of
Missile to the Moon.) Beaumont gets into the hard-boiled style even better than he did as Michael Shayne in the forties, but the character is callous and unlikable. The films were generally two radio scripts put together and it's sometimes hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Pier 23 is talky and convoluted but also fast-paced at 57 minutes, and it has an interesting cast.
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| Beaumont vamped by Margia Dean |
Ann Savage of
Detour is typically vivid but she doesn't have much time on-screen and it's never clearly delineated as to how exactly she fits in the story line. Mike Mazurki of
New Orleans Uncensored plays a wrestler named "Ape," and Edward Brophy is comedy relief as Professor Shickler, Denny's tippling roommate. Eve Miller gives a poor performance as Savage's nicer sister, Norma, but Margia Dean is more flavorful as a dead wrestler's widow named Flo. Frankly Dean and the other ladies are not exactly the sexiest women in the world, but the real beauties don't wind up in poverty row pictures. (Dean was actually the mistress of producer Robert L. Lippert.) On the other hand, Joi Lansing has a small role as a cocktail waitress and
is rather sexy. This is atmospheric and well-acted but the plot is poor.
Verdict: Despite a solid performance from Beaumont this never really catches fire. **.
Of course, always knew Beaumont as Beaver & Wally's father, but my favorite performance is his role as the mysterious suitor of Kim Hunter's missing sister in the wonderful 1943 film The Seventh Victim. He was a very appealing leading man.
ReplyDelete-Chris
When I reviewed that film years ago I noted that Beaumont was "surprisingly good." It's also a good picture, worth seeing again.
ReplyDelete