The Burglar ***½ (1957, Dan Duryea, Jayne Mansfield, Martha Vickers, Peter Capell, Mickey Shaughnessy, Phoebe Mackay) – Classic Movie Review 4,677

In her first star role, Jayne Mansfield plays Gladden, sidekick of crook Nat Harbin (Dan Duryea), who sets out to steal the emerald necklace of a Philadelphia spiritualist. The moody 1957 film noir crime thriller The Burglar is written by David Goodis.

‘A trail of perfume… and violence!’

In her first star role, Jayne Mansfield plays Gladden, one of three sidekicks of desperate crook Nat Harbin (Dan Duryea), who sets out to steal the emerald necklace of Sister Sara (Phoebe Mackay), a Philadelphia spiritualist who has just inherited a wealthy man’s estate and fortune.

Director Paul Wendkos’s moody, extremely interesting 1957 little film noir crime thriller The Burglar is neatly scripted by David Goodis, from his own 1953 novel The Burglar. There’s a good, strong plot, intriguing characters, fascinating situations, a few surprises, and much agreeable pulp dialogue.

Nat forms a gang with Baylock (Peter Capell), Dohmer (Mickey Shaughnessy) and Gladden, who cases the spiritualist’s home and tells Nat where to find Sister Sara’s safe and when to rob it, that is as Sister Sara is watching the night-time TV news downstairs.

As Nat robs the safe, two cops approach the thieves’ car outside, and Nat nips out and seems to convince them he just has car trouble. Nat steals the necklace and the crooks make their getaway, but they are followed by another car.

At their hideout, Nat tells Blaylock and Dohmer they have to wait to fence the necklace till the heat dies down and he sends Gladden off to Atlantic City for her safety, but she is followed by a man. At a Philadelphia bar/ diner, Harbin meets the sympathetically sexy Della (Martha Vickers), who invites him to her apartment, but he wakes up to find her conspiring with a man to get the necklace. With Gladden in danger, and the cops moving in, the crooks then go on the run to Atlantic City.

Jayne Mansfield

Both stars, plus the alluring and involving Martha Vickers as Della, give very effective turns, with Mansfield slightly hesitant but nearly holding her own against the expectedly clever Duryea performance, brooding and intense, while Stewart Bradley as bent cop Charlie and Wendell K Phillips as Police Captain Keebler are solidly convincing. Capell and Shaughnessy are well cast and look right, but long dialogue scenes give them chances to over-emote.

Director Wendkos films atmospherically and excitingly outside the studio on telling locations (Philadelphia and Atlantic City). When it is outside it is great, and very striking looking, though it is not nearly as good in the cramped studio interiors. Cinematographer Don Malkames’s work is admirably inventive, particularly given the fast, cheap film-making required of him. The film certainly has its rough edges. Some of the acting is wobbly and the thriller is sometimes slightly patchy, with some over-wrought scenes underlined by an over-insistent score. But it is often admirably tense, imaginative and exciting.

All this on a budget of just $90,000.

Nevertheless, producer Louis W Kellman struggled to find a buyer for the film until Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn said that he would do him a favour and take it off his hands if the director Paul Wendkos, was part of the deal. So it was filmed in July and August of 1955 but not released until June 1957.

Dan Duryea

Also in the cast are Peter Capell, Mickey Shaughnessy, Stewart Bradley, Sam Elber, and Wendell K Phillips.

The Burglar is directed by Paul Wendkos, runs 90 minutes, is made by Samson Productions, is released by Columbia Pictures, is shot in black and white by Don Malkames, is produced by Louis W Kellman, and is scored by Sol Kaplan, with Art Direction by Jim Leonard.

All its credits are in lower case.

It is Wendkos’s first feature film.

Philadelphia sports-caster John Facenda plays a news anchor in one key scene at the start of the film as Sister Sara is watching the night-time TV news.

The Burglar was remade by Henri Verneuil in 1971 as The Burglars [Le Casse] with Omar Sharif and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

David Goodis admirer François Truffaut based his 1960 film Shoot the Pianist [Tirez sur le Pianiste, Shoot the Piano Player] on David Goodis’s 1956 novel Down There.

The Burglar is Goodis’s only solely authored screenplay produced as a movie, though he did co-write with James Gunn the 1947 murder mystery film The Unfaithful, starring Ann Sheridan, Lew Ayres and Zachary Scott. The Philadelphia-born writer Goodis’s big break came in 1946 when his novel Dark Passage was serialised in The Saturday Evening Post and then filmed as Dark Passage (1947) with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. After his early death in 1967, aged 49, his work went out of print in the US but it remained popular in France. Similarly movie-wise, it was mainly French film-makers (François Truffaut, René Clément, Henri Verneuil, Jean-Jacques Beineix) who were interested in his work.

Malkames was head of the camera department at the Astoria Studios, invented a lenticular motion-picture process, designed a newsreel camera and was technical adviser to several US film museums.

The cast are Dan Duryea as Nat Harbin, Jayne Mansfield as Gladden, Martha Vickers as Della, Peter Capell as Baylock, Mickey Shaughnessy as Dohmer, Stewart Bradley as Charlie, Wendell K Phillips as Police Captain Keebler, John Facenda as a news anchor, Phoebe Mackay as burglary victim Sister Sara, and Sam Elber as burglar Gerald.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4,677

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Martha Vickers