I Was a Shoplifter

Principal roles in I Was A Shoplifter fell to Scott Brady (Lawrence Tierney's brother), the evergreen Mona Freeman, Andrea King and the young `Anthony' Curtis. Smaller, almost invisible parts go to Charles McGraw, Peggie Castle and Rock Hudson. That's not a dream cast, but all had done and would do better work in far better vehicles than this dead-serious and deadly dull documentary-style look at `boosters' – organized shoplifters.

Mousy librarian and prominent judge's daughter Freeman saunters through a big department store absently filling her pockets with trinkets, like a magpie flying off with anything that glitters. She's spotted, hauled into the manager's office and forced to sign a confession. Also caught in this retail dragnet is Brady, a professional booster as opposed to Freeman, who's written off as a `klepto' – a basically harmless nuisance.

But later Freeman has visitors. The first is hard case King, who has a photocopy of Freeman's confession and blackmails her into joining the her nest of boosters; the second is Brady, who works undercover on a police task force trying to crack the ring. He falls for her, as does, more brutally, Curtis, one of King's torpedoes. The `action,' such as it is, moves south to San Diego then crosses the border to Tijuana for an (almost) final reckoning.

Laughably, the shoplifting syndicate operates on a level of ruthlessness and secrecy on a par with the Nazis in The House on 92nd Street, the heroin smugglers in To The Ends of the Earth, or the Communists in The Woman On Pier 13. But I Was A Shoplifter has been picked clean of wit, style and suspense; it stands as a grim example of a particular post-war posture of humorless self-importance, passing itself off as entertainment.

How about, "I became a Hollywood has been in five films or less."

Andrea King and Scott Brady were up and coming stars after World War II. By 1950, Brady was on the booze and it showed. No more A features for him. I don't think Hollywood knew what to do with Andrea King. She ended up on Dragnet 1969 in a turban.

Mona Freeman did nothing but play put upon whiners. When she is listed among the cast you know it is going to be a Stinker.

You are never clear about how their racket is run and you stop caring.

Look out for small roles by Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson during their Universal International starlet days paying their dues on the casting chair.

Universal released this weak crime movie, very low on entertainment content. It's portrayed as one of those "true stories", as phony as any random Hollywood product.

Mona Freeman stars as the winsome kleptomaniac, whose dad is a judge. She gets caught shoplifting and then gets blackmailed by sleazy criminals led by Andrea King, okay as a femme fatale.

Nearly all the roles are stereotypes, including Scott Brady in the lead role posing as a professional shoplifter. From the Universal stable of young talent, Tony Curtis is prominently featured as Pepe, a one-dimensional lady's man and creep. The Rock Hudson bit part is just that, a nothing assignment.

Directed by untalented comedy director Charles Lamont, whose career dated back to Silent Era short films and ended up with the "Mickey Mouse Club".

When the daughter of a judge is caught shoplifting, she has to sign a confession in order to go free. "Faye" (Mona Freeman) is not the only one in the shop who's been apprehended in this annual $100m scam - "Jeff" (Scott Brady) has also been arrested and he is determined to befriend his new rookie friend. She works in the library and receives a visitor summoning her to a bar where she meets up with the manipulative "Ina" (Andrea King) and now she finds herself involved in a blackmail plot to ensure she continues to lift goods to order for the gang. Luckily for all, "Jeff" isn't quite what he seems and what now ensues is a decently enough paced drama that illustrates just how easy it is to steal and just how lucrative a business it is for the perpetrators. There's a strangely miscast, and rather weedy, Tony Curtis aboard here as the rather un-menacing enforcer "Pepe" and at times it adopts a slightly documentary approach to the polling techniques used to ensnare these criminals, but there's enough chemistry between Brady and Freeman and King reminds me of a baddie from a Rathbone/Bruce "Sherlock Holmes" film. The ending is a bit rushed, but it's still worth a watch if you want to know how easy it is to sell-on a dodgy three-blade electric razor!

Mona Freeman is the daughter of a judge. She's caught shoplifting, and is made to sign a confession by store detective Larry Keating, in return for not prosecuting... this time. It's standard procedure. What's not standard procedure is she's contacted by a gang of shoplifters who have access to that confession, and who say they will destroy it if she does a few jobs for them.

It's one of those Universal programmers that they produced by the hundreds, played for a few years, and then were forgotten. It's competently directed by Charles Lamont, competently shot by Irving Glasberg, and competent played by the cast. Andrea King is catlike as the manager of the gang, even though it's quite clear from the set-up and a well- focused shot who actually is in charge. Tony Curtis plays a Mexican-American hood in a good-sized role, Rock Hudson a store detective in a blink-and-you'll-miss-him role. Scott Brady and Charles Drake fill out the top of the credit card, and it's another decent time-waster.