Shakedown **** (1950, Howard Duff, Peggy Dow, Brian Donlevy, Lawrence Tierney, Bruce Bennett, Anne Vernon) – Classic Movie Review 9479

Director Joseph [Joe] Pevney’s 1950 Universal International Pictures black and white B-movie crime thriller Shakedown is a little gem of a movie in the best film noir crime drama tradition.

Howard Duff plays unscrupulous Jack Early, a San Francisco newspaper photographer whose drive for fame leads him from a cynical, career-moulding affair with his boss Ellen Bennett (Peggy Dow) on to err increasingly from the straight and narrow and into the harsh world of extortion rackets. He even talks gangster Nick Palmer (Brian Donlevy) into permitting him to take pictures of a job by one of Donlevy’s henchmen, Harry Colton (Lawrence Tierney), leading to a bloody revenge.

Starting at a cracking pace and never letting up for its whole 80 minutes, it is as ruthless as it is surprising. Duff is about as unsympathetic and unsentimental a protagonist as you can get, perfectly at home in a deeply corrupt world, as depicted by director Pevney with more than a touch of film noir. Rock Hudson has an early bit part as a building keeper called Ted.

Also in the cast are Bruce Bennett, Anne Vernon, Stapleton Kent, Peter Virgo, Charles Sherlock, Jack Rice, Roy Engel, Forbes Murray and Chester Conklin.

The screenplay by Alfred Lewis Levitt and Martin Goldsmith is based on the story by Nat Dallinger and Don Martin.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9479

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