Once a Thief

This "B" movie fails to rise above its budgetary restrictions, but still entertains. In essence, it gives you a villain you love to hate.

Margie Foster (June Havoc) loses her job and becomes desperate to make ends meet, especially if she wants to be a good girl. She runs into a woman named Pearl (Iris Adrian), who shows her how to make money via theft. Margie then tries to turn her life around, leaving San Francisco for Los Angeles, where she finds a job waitressing. She makes some good friends and builds a stable life.

Then she meets Mitch Moore, played with delicious unctuousness by Cesar Romero. She fails to see through his façade of caring and pays the price. Besides Romero's solid performance, Lon Chaney, Jr. Is very watchable as Mitch's sidekick, Gus.

This is no noir classic, but it is like watching a train wreck. The viewer can anticipate almost every development. Most of the film is told in flashback, to explain how Margie comes to her final condition. And it is done seamlessly.

However, some of the acting lacks verisimilitude. And the film's score is melodramatic, intrusive and overcooked---more like what you might expect in an episode of "Dragnet".

Since the movie starts with June Havoc turning herself in to the LA police, it's no spoiler that it's about her descent.

The rest is all flashback. The old story of a luckless seeker of employment tempted to join forces with a criminal, in this case Iris Adrian, a shoplifter in San Francisco.

Havoc manages to escape unscathed to Los Angeles and get a job as a waitress but falls heavily for small-time crook Cesar Romero, whose specialties include bilking gullible working women of their savings. To make matters worse, Havoc takes in Marie McDonald as a roommate who proves untrustworthy. And then Adrian turns up in LA.

All very Dostoevskian (like I know anything about Dostoevsky). Anyway a gripping drama with various twists and turns. And it's always a nice change of pace to see a noir without issues being decided by fistfights and gun battles.

Definitely not upbeat but well-acted and absorbing.

Cesar Romero and June Havoc star in this shoestring B film about a woman who falls for the wrong guy and both pay for it in the end.

June Havoc plays a waitress in a Los Angeles beanery who's been around the block a few times and sets in motion a train of events when she feels sorry for Marie McDonald when she can't pay her bill and gets her a job at her place of work.

McDonald barely escaped from a heist she was in on up north and she's wanted. Romero is a flashy small time crook who runs a bookmaking parlor with Lon Chaney, Jr. in back of Chaney's tailor shop.

All three, Romero, Havoc, and Chaney are in parts that they would have gotten more critical acclaim for had they been at a major studio for this film. Romero who was usually second leads and/or romantic rival of the leading man really shows some acting chops in this part. Chaney also showed he was capable of more than the horror films Universal Pictures put him in.

As for Havoc she spent most of her career on the stage, but her film appearances were in mostly B films. She's the hardboiled dame in love with the wrong guy and great at the part.

Fans of all three of these people, this dental floss budget film should not be missed by any of you.

The bit actors with two lines speak like zombies. The score is intermittent and overwrought. The plot is set in motion by a voice-over, and then stupidly recapitulated by actors. Yet this movie is a tough film noir about how ex-shoplifter June Havoc gets dragged down by cheap, chiseling, womanizer Cesar Romero, and it works because he is such a dull, cheap thug, living off little people who hope for something decent and nice. He sucks them dry and throws them away and walks off, thinking he's smart because he only plays the sure thing.

Producer-Director W. Lee Wilder (brother of Billy Wilder) clearly did everything in this production to make it as cheaply as possible, but the three leading actors (Havoc, Romero and Marie McDonald) and the script are good enough to overcome him. Fans of old movies will be pleased to see perpetual dumb cop Fred Kelsey as a desk sergeant.

A shoplifter (June Havoc ) tries to go straight but falls for the wrong man (Cesar Romero).

This a low budget but watchable crime film, directed by Billy Wilder's brother W. Lee Wilder. He seems to be trying to imitate his brother's films like "Double Indemnity" and it is all told in flashback. Havoc is very good in the lead and Romero oozes sleaze as the womanizing bookie. The real reason I wanted to see this was because I am big Lon Chaney Jr fan and was trying to see as many of his films as I could. It was a little disappointing since he is just playing another Lennie type role from "Of Mice And Men" but he does get a bit more screen time then he usually got in 1950s films. He adds a clever bit to his character where he constantly holds his eyeglasses by the ear piece in his mouth. This is worth seeing if you like gritty B movies of this era, plus there is some nice on location shooting in seedy Los Angeles.