SOuthside 1-1000

Don DeFore is a Secret Service agent whose investigation of a major counterfeiting ring that leads him to a commercial hotel in Los Angeles and its manager, Andrea King.

There are flashes of brilliance in the third and last movie directed by Boris Ingster, but they look to be matters of the professional he was working with, particularly the final sequence as Miss King flees from a wounded DeFore in a welter of rail tracks and bridges. After a downbeat ending, we get a jaunty little tune over the closing credits which is just weird. And Gerald Mohr's narration adds a sententious matte finish to the entire proceedings. DeFore is adequate in the role, Miss King is very good, as is George Tobias as a suspicious henchman. Ingster later went into television on the production side, and died in 1978 at the age of 74.

This is a Rivers Brother's production and Boris Ingster's second film noir. Famous for stretching a penny, this film created an interesting role for Andrea King, who plays badass gang boss Nora Craig.

The overall story begins with a narrator discussing the entry into the Korean War and concluding with the importance and the power of currency. Then we join an elderly dying prisoner who manages to make counterfeit plates in prison and smuggle them out with an unsuspecting priest. For the rest of film we follow a secret service agent on behalf of the U. S. Treasury as he hunts down and attempts to infiltrate a counterfeiting gang.

One of the best scenes in the film is the final scene that involves a chase between our agent Don DeFore's John Riggs / Nick Starnes and lady boss Nora. There is fantastic lighting and views as Nora climbs a bridge over the train tracks, shooting back and winging Riggs...before the ultimate climax. One snaffu of note is the change in arms having been shot, from right to left.

I also really enjoyed the smuggling out of the plates, which was pretty elaborate.

While not my favorite noir, worth a watch for film noir aficionados and definitely for fans of Andrea King.

I admit I missed the part where this particular phone number was mentioned though I did hear others.

This 1950 film was directed by Boris Ingster, actually known as a writer and tv producer. I bet his only other directing credit is Stranger on the Third Floor.

Expert counterfeit plate engraver Eugene Deane (Morris Ankrum) is serving a prison sentence where he spends reading the Bible. However, part of the Bible is cut out so he can continue to make counterfeit plates. He packages them and sneaks them out through an unknowing priest.

When it's discovered he's still on the job, FBI agent John Riggs (Dom Defore) infiltrates the gang as a wealthy criminal who wants to buy a huge amount of counterfeit currency. He becomes involved with a woman (Andrea King) who works at the hotel where he is staying.

Deane is a dying man and, while being transported to a care facility, he escapes and makes his way to the gang, putting Riggs in danger.

Typical FBI procedural film. Crime dramas like this were often narrated, making the films semi-documentary. I've seen tons of them, and I have to say this one is the most heavily narrated I've ever seen. The opening narration about the Korean war, Communism, and the soundness of the dollar was nearly enough to stop watching.

The most interesting thing occurs when Riggs sends one of the thieves out with a $10 bill (carrying a help message) to buy food. Well what didn't they buy - a bunch of sandwiches, beer, pizza - it came to $4.49. That's $60.05 today. They may have overpaid.

It's a noir pseudo-documentary counterfeiting crime drama set in 1950 in Washington, D. C. and Los Angeles, California. Secret Service agent John Riggs (Don Defore) tries to track a counterfeiting ring using high-quality plates engraved by Eugene Deane (Morris Ankrum), who is serving a prison term. One lead, Bill Evans (Barry Kelley), dies before Riggs can track Evans' boss. So he goes undercover as a principal in a large Boston bank robbery. He meets gang enforcer, Reggie (George Tobias), and an intriguing hotel manager, Nora Craig (Andrea King). A final climactic confrontation resolves the issue in favor of the Feds.

"Southside 1-1000" (one of the phone numbers called in the film) is a workmanlike story that's never convincing. Don DeFore doesn't do convincing noir. The film is hindered by a bizarre patriotic Korean War plug that morphs into a Feds-can-do-no-wrong introduction. George Tobias is a good thug, and Andrea King is OK as the femme fatale, but she has no chemistry with DeFore. Reviewer Dennis Schwartz said the film reminds him of the old "Dragnet" TV series, and the narration does have that feel.

Southside 1-1000 has to work hard to wash out the sour taste left by its obligatory, patriotic opening: Stock battle footage runs under a voice-over linking the importance of a sound national currency to the Korean conflict (then playing at a theater of war near you) and the diabolical, all-encompassing threat of Communist domination. Whew! (It was the early cold-war era, and viewers were all but required to swear a loyalty oath before they could enjoy even a B-programmer.) Unluckily, it doesn't work hard enough.

Locked up in a federal pen, a top-notch forger pores over his Bible until lights out, when he whisks out his engraving tools and etches the plates for `queer.' Smuggled out, they go on the presses turning out counterfeit bills to be uttered at race tracks and Vegas poker parlors. G-Man Don DeFore (an avuncular figure familiar from television - Ozzie and Harriet, Hazel) goes undercover to track down and infiltrate the source of the funny money. Middleman Barry Kelley goes down (literally, through a window) but the brains of the operation stay at large. Then, as a big-spending good-time Charley, DeFore catches the eye of Andrea King, daughter of the old jailbird. But his cover is blown at his moment of greatest peril....

The director, Boris Ingster, occupies a curious niche in Hollywood lore. In 1940, with Stranger on the Third Floor, he gave the public an elliptical, dreamlike suspense movie that came to be regarded by many fans as the very first film noir. That's a tough call to make, and at any rate Ingster can hardly be counted among the noir maestros (in fact, he directed but three movies). He returned to the cycle as it was peaking and had even begun to cannibalize earlier successes.

Despite two or three sequences that rise a notch or two above the pedestrian, Southside 1-1000, can only be graded ho-hum. The best thing in it has to be Andrea King, but she's allowed to bare her fangs fully only too briefly at the end. And while its numerical title remains so evocative of the noir series as a whole (Call Northside 777, Dial 1119, 99 River Street, 711 Ocean Drive), Southside 1-1000 simply warms over material than had been often traversed over the few years previous, most remarkably by Anthony Mann in T-Men.