Detective Story **** (1951, Kirk Douglas, Eleanor Parker, William Bendix, Cathy O’Donnell, Lee Grant) – Classic Movie Review 2385

Producer-director William Wyler’s 1951 sturdy and thoughtful film noir crime drama 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.

Among the people 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 Charley Gennini (Joseph Wiseman) and a scared shoplifter (Lee Grant).

Philip Yordan and Robert Wyler skilfully base their screenplay on Sidney Kingsley’s 1949 hit Broadway play.

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.

The cinematographer is Lee Garmes but John F. Seitz shot the last three weeks of production, uncredited.

There were four Oscar nominations and three Golden Globe nominations but no wins.

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.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2385

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