The Sellout **½ (1952, Walter Pidgeon, John Hodiak, Audrey Totter, Paula Raymond, Thomas Gomez, Everett Sloane, Cameron Mitchell, Karl Malden) – Classic Movie Review 12,056

MGM’s 1952 crime film noir The Sellout stars Walter Pidgeon as a big-city newspaper editor who digs the dirt on a corrupt small-town sheriff and finds his life threatened. Audrey Totter also stars notably as Cleo Bethel.

Director Gerald Mayer’s 1952 MGM American film noir The Sellout stars Walter Pidgeon, John Hodiak, Audrey Totter, Paula Raymond, Thomas Gomez, Everett Sloane, Cameron Mitchell, and Karl Malden.

Walter Pidgeon plays campaigning big-city newspaper editor Haven D Allridge, who digs the dirt on rotten corrupt small-town sheriff Burke (Thomas Gomez), but he soon finds his life threatened when he is abducted. When the public defender, state attorney Chick Johnson (John Hodiak), takes up the fight, a freed Allridge (Pidgeon) joins the others in not spilling the beans on Burke (Gomez).

The Sellout is a routine, rather smug B-movie crime melodrama, but it is robustly handled, with entertaining performances from a strong cast to help to pull it through. Audrey Totter also stars notably as Cleo Bethel, though her seven-year contract with MGM ended afterwards and sadly her film career went into unfair decline.

Writers: Charles Palmer (screenplay) and Matthew Rapf (story).

It failed at the box office. The film cost $596,000, and made $434,000 in the US and Canada and $211,000 elsewhere, resulting in a loss for MGM of $227,000. It is films like this that started MGM abandoning film noir and creating more family-themed films.

The cast are Walter Pidgeon as Haven D Allridge, John Hodiak as Chick Johnson, Audrey Totter as Cleo Bethel, Paula Raymond as Peggy Stauton, Thomas Gomez as Kellwin C Burke, Cameron Mitchell as Randy Stauton, Karl Malden as Captain Buck Maxwell, Everett Sloane as Nelson S Tarsson, Jonathan Cott as Ned Grayton, Frank Cady as Bennie Amboy, Hugh Sanders as Judge Neeler, Griff Barnett as Attorney General Morrisson, Burt Mustin as Elk M Ludens, Whit Bissell as Wilfred Jackson, Roy Engel as Sam F Slaper, Frankie Darro, Ann Tyrell, and John Dierkes.

Audrey Totter (1917–2013) signed a seven-year film contract with MGM in 1944 and made her film debut in Main Street After Dark (1945) and established herself as a popular female lead in the 1940s, especially in film noir, for example High Wall. Totter recalled: ‘The bad girls were so much fun to play.’ Her contract with MGM ended after The Sellout (1952) and her film career went into decline, though she worked steadily on TV.

Audrey Totter died of a stroke in 2013, eight days before her 96th birthday.

Gerald Mayer was born on 5 June 1919, the nephew of MGM studios owner Louis B Mayer and the son of studio manager Jerry Mayer.

He directed The Violent Hour, Inside Straight, The Sellout, Holiday for Sinners, The Marauders and Diamond Safari before a long, busy TV career.

He died on 21 September 2001, age 82.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,056

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