Murder by Proxy [Blackout] ** (1954, Dane Clark, Belinda Lee, Betty Ann Davies) – Classic Movie Review 11,082

‘EXPLODES… in a sinister network of evil!’

Director Terence Fisher’s 1954 British film noir crime drama Murder by Proxy [Blackout] stars Dane Clark and Belinda Lee. The story, based on Helen Nielsen’s novel Murder by Proxy published in 1952, concerns drunk, broke and down-on-his-luck American Casey Morrow (Dane Clark) who is approached in a bar in London by young and beautiful blonde heiress Phyllis Brunner (Belinda Lee), offering him a lot of money to marry her. He wakes up the next morning in another woman’s apartment with blood on his coat from the murder of Phyllis’s father.

It was the first movie in an eight-film contact between UK’s Hammer Films and the US company Lippert Pictures.

Also in the cast are Betty Ann Davies as Mrs Alicia Brunner, Eleanor Summerfield as Maggie Doone, Andrew Osborn as Lance Gordon, Harold Lang as Travis / Victor Vanno, Jill Melford as Miss Nardis, Alvys Maben [Alvis Maben] as Lita Huntley, Michael Golden as Inspector Johnson, Nora Gordon as Casey’s mother and Alfie Bass as Ernie.

There was trouble on set. Script supervisor Renee Glynne recalled that Belinda Lee ‘was still very inexperienced at that time so I’d have to correct her and try to help her out. Dane Clark obviously fancied her and got very cross with my professional interference. He got quite nasty and was actually pushing me away from her.’

‘After some shots Dane Clark would have to put his head under cold water because he was so enraged that I was even there. Eventually he realised how silly it all was and went down on his knees, tears streaming down his face, begging me to forgive him. But I still asked producer Tony Hinds to take me off the next film he was in.’

Dane Clark fluffed a line in the private detective’s office. The line was ‘He knew!’ but he says ‘I knew’. Realising his mistake, he sits down, pauses and says ‘He knew’. Director Fisher liked it and kept it in.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,082

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