Du sang sur le tapis vert

Although Gordon MacRae was signed for musicals by Warner Brothers, Jack Warner like the rest of his fellow Hollywood moguls did not believe in keeping players idle. With no musical properties at the ready, MacRae starred in Backfire about a World War II veteran trying to locate a friend whom the police suspect of murdering gambler Richard Rober.

The friend is Edmond O'Brien and MacRae thinks so because he got a woman visitor with a mysterious foreign accent while he was still all doped up on anesthetic from a final operation. The visitor turns out to be Viveca Lindfors and MacRae despite warnings from police captain Ed Begley is on the hunt, aided and abetted by his nurse Virginia Mayo who took a real liking to MacRae while in her care.

Backfire is not a mystery as such because the more MacRae looks, people get bumped off right and left. When MacRae is finally closing in on solving the mystery, the suspect is rather obvious.

For the most part however Gordon MacRae confined himself to musicals of varying quality and later on left the Hollywood scene altogether for nightclubs. Still he did show he could handle a straight acting job in Backfire and Warner Brothers did give him a strong supporting cast. Backfire still holds up well for today's audience.