I Stole a Million ***½ (1939, George Raft, Claire Trevor, Dick Foran, Victor Jory) – Classic Movie Review 11,414

Director Frank Tuttle’s 1939 Universal Pictures film noir crime thriller I Stole a Million stars George Raft as Down on his luck cab driver Joe Lourik, who gets into an argument with a finance company over payments owed on his new taxi, loses his savings in a swindle and is forced into a life of crime after reclaiming his payments but being arrested for robbery.

He runs from the law and tries to go straight when he meets and weds store clerk Laura Benson (Claire Trevor), but then she is jailed for shielding a criminal, so he returns to gangland crime in a big way.

I Stole a Million is a short (80 minutes) and punchy melodrama, made in early film noir-style, which deservedly played top on double bills. It is very well written and produced, and boosted with eye-catching central performances by the undervalued stars and tense, atmospheric handling from little known director Tuttle.

The pounding screenplay is strongly written by Nathanael West (The Day of the Locust) from Lester Cole’s original screen story, in turn based on the non-fiction article Roy Gardner’s Own Story by former bank robber Roy Gardner, J Campbell Bruce and James G Chestnutt, published in the San Francisco Call Bulletin in 1938.

Joseph Breen, director of the Production Code Administration, said that, while his office had handled about 3,600 texts a year, ‘it is our unanimous judgment, here in this office, that this new treatment by Mr West is, by far, the best piece of craftsmanship in screen adaptation that we have seen – certainly, in a year.’

Raft was reluctant to play crooked characters but he had left Paramount and wanted to stay a star, though he soon signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros.

Also in the cast are Dick Foran as Paul Carver, Victor Jory as Patton, Joe Sawyer as Billings, Robert Elliott as Peterson, Tom Fadden as Verne, and Emory Parnell as Friendly Cop, Henry Armetta, Stanley Ridges, Robert Irving, Irving Bacon, Dick Wessel, Willis Clark, Hobart Cavanaugh, and Sara Padden.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,414

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