City That Never Sleeps **** (1953, Gig Young, Mala Powers, William Talman, Edward Arnold, Chill Wills, Paula Raymond, Marie Windsor) – Classic Movie Review 8919

Producer-director John H Auer’s ambitious 1953 film noir-style crime drama City That Never Sleeps stars Gig Young, later a talented light comedian, who enjoys a useful straight role as Johnny Kelly, a married Chicago cop who decides to throw away his marriage to wife Kathy Kelly (Paula Raymond) because of a worthless striptease singer Sally ‘Angel Face’ Connors (Mala Powers), after Angel Face says that she will go off with showman old flame Gregg Warren (Wally Cassell) unless Johnny leaves his wife.

Meanwhile rich crooked attorney Penrod Biddel (Edward Arnold) offers Johnny (Young) loads of money if he will pull a fake arrest on Hayes Stewart (William Talman), who is canoodling with his wife, though what Biddel (Arnold) doesn’t know is that Stewart (Talman) is Johnny (Young)’s buddy. So Johnny (Young) plans to resign from the police force, leave his wife and run away with his stripper girlfriend the next day. But first, he has a packed last night on duty.

The movie has a creditable and complex screenplay, and the characters and incidents are really quite fascinating, though it is very much a B-movie melodramatic stock script, and there is the usual low budget from humble Republic Pictures. But the cast and their performances are plenty good enough, while director Auer gets the best out of his Chicago street location filming, giving it a surface gleam of convincing realism at odds with the artificiality of the contrived, hard-to-believe story written by Steve Fisher. John L Russell’s strikingly stark black and white cinematography makes the most of the locations. However, there is of course less convincing realism in the studio filming at Republic Studios, North Hollywood.

Also in the cast are Chill Wills, Marie Windsor, Otto Hulett, Ron Hagerthy, James Andelin, Tom Poston, Bunny Kacher, Philip L Boddy and Thomas Jones.

City That Never Sleeps is an earlier companion piece to John H Auer’s 1954 black and white drama Hell’s Half Acre, also written by Steve Fisher and a using similar crew.

City That Never Sleeps is directed by John H Auer, runs 90 minutes, is made by Republic Pictures, is released by Republic Pictures (1953) (US) and Republic Pictures International, British Film Division (1953) (UK), is written by Steve Fisher, is shot in black and white by John L Russell Jr, is produced by John H Auer, and is scored by R Dale Butts, with Art Direction by James W Sullivan and Set Decoration by John McCarthy Jr and Charles S Thompson.

It is presented by Republic Pictures boss Herbert J Yates.

The Silver Frolics nightclub in this film was an actual Chicago attraction located at 400 400 North Wabash Avenue. The robbery building location is the Marquette Building, 140 South Dearborn Street, in downtown Chicago.

This forgotten movie apparently did play in Britain – it was released by the British Film Division of Republic Pictures International on 6 September 1953. It has more recently been championed by Martin Scorsese, helping to revive it from oblivion. It’s now on Amazon Prime and DVD.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8919

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