Dick Tracy

If you're expecting MALTESE FALCON you're in the wrong place. This first in the RKO Dick Tracy movies based on Chester Gould's hardboiled policeman is very faithful to the source material and a LOT of fun.

The cast is well chosen and Morgan Conway looks like he stepped right off the comics page.

What is unexpected is the inky black noirish camera work, something that was very rare for a B-picture. The entire series was entertaining, with Ralph Byrd replacing Conway for the third and fourth installments, and the two earliest entries were geared towards an adult audience as shown in the violence depicted.

Pull the stick out of your crack, sit back and enjoy some very entertaining little films from a more innocent time, when our good guys were someone to look up to.

If you had given Dick Tracy's name to any police type in any movie of the forties, it would be indistinguishable. The fact is that while this is a modestly entertaining movie, the comic strip being of it is just not there. Where is the technology, the distinctive sense of the comic strip? It's just not there. There is some semblance of humor, the byplay among the other detectives and Tess's frustration with dating the great detective (she never gets to go to dinner), but it still doesn't reproduce the comic strip. All that considered, it's a decent movie with an interesting plot. Like so many Tracy characters, Split Face is carrying around his angst, wanting to get back at those who convicted him. He is nasty, but has the fatal flaw of carelessness. Tracy is pretty dull, but I was a religious reader of the comic strip as a child and liked his silence. His romantic relationship always seemed forced to me. A real comic book hero shouldn't have time for women, right.

I suppose everyone has his or her own idea of what Dick Tracy should look like out of his cartoon realm. It seems from reading some of the comments that Morgan Conway was no one's idea.

I guess in my head I've always thought of John Larkin, the original Mike Carr on "Edge of Night" to be a good person for Tracy. Conway seems more of a character actor and less of a lead than I imagine Tracy. He has a pleasant smile, though.

Anne Jeffreys, now at 80+ and absolutely gorgeous to this day, was asked about the Dick Tracy series a few years ago, and she denied ever making any Dick Tracy movies. It wasn't that she disdained them, but they were turned out so quickly, she had no recollection of doing them.

This was a decent programmer but not much came through as far as personalities, except perhaps from Mike Mazurki as Splitface. The film moves along well. The subplot with Jane Greer seemed totally superfluous and never was resolved. Oh, well, soon enough, she would be on to better things.

DICK TRACY has the film noir look of the '40s and some interesting plot devices involving a slasher out for revenge. With its brief running time and low-budget values, it's strictly the kind of fare that used to play the lower half of double bills for the Saturday matinee crowds.

Still, it's not bad as far as these B-pics go (some excellent B&W photography)--but MORGAN CONWAY is nobody's idea of what the famous sleuth should look like. RALPH BYRD was a much better choice in those Tracy serials--he must have been busy when they got to making this one. Anne Jeffreys is pert and pretty as Tess but has little to do. (Did Hollywood ever give her a substantial role?) Little Mickey Kuhn (he was Beau Wilkes in GWTW and the young man Vivien Leigh flirted with in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE) is delightful as the boy detective who helps solve the case.

For the villain of the piece, we have Mike Mazurki wearing a scar that looks like a decent make-up job and hulking in the shadows whenever the next murder takes place.

Not bad, and certainly one of the better entries in the DICK TRACY films of the '40s--but what it needed was square-jawed RALPH BYRD in the title role.

Summing up: a good programmer.

Despite a rather routine production, this B-mystery is worth watching for the story, which is not bad. The beginning sets things up rather well, with Tracy trying to figure out both who the elusive 'Splitface' might be, and how he chose his apparently unconnected victims. There are several fairly interesting characters that he encounters along the way, and things move at a good pace most of the time. With a bigger budget and perhaps a little better writing here and there (in particular, to give poor Tess some better lines), it could be quite good. But there's no reason to quibble too much with it the way it is, since it's more than enough to provide decent entertainment for an hour or so.