Deadline at Dawn **** (1946, Susan Hayward, Paul Lukas, Bill Williams, Osa Massen, Lola Lane, Joseph Calleia) – Classic Movie Review 5259

This 1946 thriller is the sole movie direction effort of Harold Clurman, luminary and co-founder of the renowned New York-based collective Group Theater that ran from 1932 to 1941.

Another member of the Group Theater, the great playwright Clifford Odets, adapts a William Irish (aka Cornell Woolrich) thriller about a sailor on leave, Alex Winkley (Bill Williams), who picks up a call-girl named Edna Bartelli (Lola Lane).

And, when she is murdered, he finds that he is the number one suspect because he has woken up from a drink-induced blackout with her large sum of blackmail money. But then cynical dance-hall gal June Goffe (Susan Hayward) and chatty cabbie Gus Hoffman (Paul Lukas) come to the rescue and help sailor Alex find the real killer.

Hayward gives the standout turn in this rather splendid, too-little-known Forties film noir. Odets’s hard-boiled poetic dialogue is a strong asset (‘In New York to be alone means to die’). And director Clurman films the beefy mystery with considerable brio, though satisfyingly bringing off the ending slightly eludes both him and Odets.

Also in the cast are Osa Massen, Joseph Calleia, Jerome Cowan, Steven Geray, Marvin Miller, Roman Bohnen, Joe Sawyer, Constance Worth, Joseph Crehan, Eddy Chandler, Dick Elliott, Virginia Farmer, Edward Gargan, Dorothy Granger, Philip Morris, Emory Parnell, Lee Phelps, Jason Robards Sr, Dick Rush, Billy Wayne, Isabel Withers, Walter Soderlind and Larry Wheat.

Many former members of the Group Theater were called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the Fifties. ‘Friendly witnesses’ such as Odets, director Elia Kazan and actor Lee J Cobb avoided the fate of those who refused to name Communist Party members and were blacklisted.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5259

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