The Clay Pigeon **** (1949, Bill Williams, Barbara Hale, Richard Quine, Richard Loo, Frank Fenton, Martha Hyer, Frank Wilcox) – Classic Movie Review 4309

Director Richard Fleischer’s neat and short (63 minutes) 1949 black and white film noir movie The Clay Pigeon is one of those vintage Forties thrillers with the familiar but usually effective set-up of an amnesiac hero in deep water for some reason or other.

This time it is the turn of sailor Jim Fletcher (Bill Williams) to wake up from a coma and be hauled before a court martial accused of an act of treason and the death of his friend, charged with informing on fellow inmates in a Japanese prison camp during World War Two. This is the infamous Cabanatuan POW camp run by the Japanese Army on the island of Luzon.

But, fortunately, Barbara Hale, as the suspicious widow Martha Gregory, is on hand to help Jim find the actual bad guy.

This is an entertaining little movie, performed with conviction and tightly written by Carl Foreman (both the story and screenplay), imaginatively photographed by Robert de Grasse in black and white and tautly directed by Fleischer. If Foreman’s premise seems implausible, it is actually based on a real event when a US serviceman recognised his former Japanese POW camp guard in Los Angeles. There is outside filming in Chinatown, Los Angeles.

Also in the cast are Richard Quine, Richard Loo, Frank Fenton, Martha Hyer, Frank Wilcox, Marya [Mary] Marco, Robert Bray, Harold Landon, James Craven, Grandon Rhodes, Harry Cheshire, G Pat Collins, Kernan Cripps, Joseph E Bernard, Ann Doran, Kenner G Kemp, Howard Negley, James Nolan, Bert Stevens, and Ken Terrell.

Richard Loo plays the Japanese villain, Ken Tokoyama aka The Weasel, but there is a sympathetic Japanese-American war widow, Mrs Helen Minoto, played by Marya [Mary] Marco whose husband was a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

The Clay Pigeon is directed by Richard Fleischer, runs 63 minutes, is made and released by RKO Radio Pictures, is written by Carl Foreman (story and screenplay), is shot by Robert de Grasse, is produced by Howard Hughes and Herman Schlom, and is scored by Paul Sawtell, with Art Direction by Albert S D’Agostino and Walter E Keller.

It is the first film produced at RKO Radio Pictures under new owner Howard Hughes.

Barbara Hale (1922–2017).

Barbara Hale, who died on 26 January 2017, aged 94, married Bill Williams in 1946 and had their actor son William Katt in 1951.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4309

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