Manhandled

A woman gets murdered and her jewels are missing... with a heaping handful of likely suspects, the cops and the insurance investigator have their work cut out for them. The crackerjack script is skillful at doling out information in a series of intriguing twists and turns, with a lot of clever details. It's also laced with some humor, some of it doesn't work but a lot of it does. Dan Duryea does what he does best as the sleazy parasite of a private dick, Sterling Hayden plays it a little shabbier than usual as the insurance man, and Art Smith has an enjoyable turn as the homicide detective. Dorothy Lamour falls a little short but it's not a very meaty role. There's a lot of nice little bits of business and a cynical, seedy edge that occasionally cuts through the more light-hearted nature of the film. A fun little movie.

A stuffy novelist (Alan Napier) suffers recurring nightmares that he bludgeons his rich jewel-horse of a wife (Irene Hervey) to death – with a `quart' bottle of cologne. That's bad enough, but what's worse is that he confides his dreams to a shrink (Harold Vermilyea). Didn't he know that it was the 1940s, when psychiatry was little more than a hotbed of scheming quacks? So when his wife inevitably winds up dead (and her diamonds stolen), he becomes the prime suspect, even though she had been out clubbing with another man (Philip Reed).

That's the uptown side of Manhandled; there's a seedier angle as well. The psychiatrist's transcriptionist (Dorothy Lamour) not only sits in on his sessions but later climbs the stairs to her Manhattan walk-up and spills the beans to her neighbor Dan Duryea, an ex-cop now doing repo jobs and divorce frame-ups. So much for codes of confidentiality. But when a signet ring she found while vacuuming her sofa and then pawned brings the police to her door, along with insurance investigator Sterling Hayden, it starts to look bad. It doesn't help that she just blew in from Los Angeles with forged letters of reference....

Manhandled unfurls an elaborate, and none too plausible, mystery plot competently enough, even with a few skillful touches (in its final quarter, it takes a sharp turn toward noir, and better late than never). Director Lewis Foster, however, failed to optimize the solid cast he was handed: Hayden's part never comes into clear focus and Lamour plays little more than a bland patsy. Duryea dominates, with his familiar two-faced persona as the cheery suck-up who likes to slap women around; Art Smith, as the comic relief of the police detective, becomes, after Duryea, the movie's most memorable character. It's not a bad movie, despite a couple of clunky flashbacks. But in better hands, it could have become one of the better noirs. As it stands, it merits that dark and honorable designation only by the skin of its teeth.

One thing about Manhandled there are no shortage of suspects for the murder of Irene Hervey. About three quarters of the way through the murderer is revealed. It's what happens after that which gives Manhandled a rather unusual twist.

What's really odd about the film is that other than being a leading man and someone for Dorothy Lamour to take an interest in, Sterling Hayden has very little to do with the solving of the case. Hayden plays an insurance investigator whose company sends him in to help the police solve the case and recover the stolen jewels. But usually in these films it's the private investigators who show up the slow witted cops. That's not what happens here, lead detective Art Smith is very much on the job, more so than the audience is lead to believe all through the film.

I'm thinking that Paramount and Sterling Hayden were about to come to an unfriendly parting and Paramount did not want to exhibit Hayden in any kind of good light. He did two films before his war service and this was the third of three afterwards. Still Hayden did do well with what little to do he was given.

Manhandled is made by the host of character actors in the film playing some interesting parts. There's Alan Napier, Hervery's husband who has been having recurring dreams about killing his wife. There's Harold Vermilyea the psychiatrist Napier was seeing about said dreams and who Dorothy Lamour works for. There's Dan Duryea who is a private detective who's been seeing Lamour. Finally there's Philip Reed who Hervey's been seeing on the side.

So when Hervey is murdered the suspects are a plenty. I will say this that the actual culprit is someone who thinks fast on their feet. But it turns out the cops have not been as dumb as the culprit suspects.

Paramount as a studio did not do much in the way of noir. But when they did do it, the results were pretty good like Manhandled.

The shot of an ecstatic Duryea running down a terrified Vermilyea in the narrow, darkened alley way is a great slice of noir. Too bad the tension comes so late because, despite the promising title and noir icon Duryea, the narrative holds together about as well as an O J Simpson alibi. Looks like three different scriptwriters came up with three different results, so you may need a chart to track all the threads meandering through the plot. What the screenplay lacks is focus. There really is no central character holding developments together. Hayden's the headliner, yet his role as insurance investigator remains oddly inessential. Instead, lowly Art Smith gets the law-and-order screen time and in fact most of the movie time. Now, I like actor Smith as much as the next guy, especially in sly roles (Ride the Pink Horse {1947}); still, his comic relief here is not only misplaced, but too often sounds like it's being done by the numbers. (And whoever is it that thought a cop car without brakes is funny!)

On a more positive note, Alan Napier gets a delicious turn as the snooty novelist husband, but unfortunately soon drops out of sight, and I'm really sorry Irene Hervey's sexy wife bites the dust early on. She's a lively and interesting presence, making her spats with Napier a movie high point. And that's another source of trouble. Everyone disappears from the narrative for significant periods, such that a nudge is sometimes needed to remember who they are, even the largely wasted Lamour. All this might be okay if the plot or direction generated some suspense, but they don't, at least in my little book. In fact, if it weren't for the great Duryea doing another of his patented oily operator roles, the movie would be much more forgettable than it already is. From the title, I certainly expected better.

Manhandled is directed by Lewis R. Foster and adapted to screenplay by Foster and Whitman Chambers from the novel "The Man Who Stole A Dream" written by L. S. Goldsmith. It stars Dorothy Lamour, Dan Duryea, Sterling Hayden, Irene Hervey and Art Smith. Music is by Darrell Calker and cinematography by Ernest Laszlo.

I'm going to kill you, Ruth. I have to.

Manhandled is one of those late 40s crime mysteries that feature film noir legends and film noir narrative tints, thus why it finds itself under the film noir banner. This is more a curse than a blessing. For it's not a particularly great film, where the presence of Hayden and Duryea - and Laszlo on photography - just about keeps things bubbling away to make it watchable till the end. It has been said that the narrative is too tricksy for its own good, yet that isn't apparent since the story is very easy to follow. The twists come and go at regular intervals, but always with narrative clarity.

The main thrust of the plot finds Lamour being set up as the killer of Mrs. Alton Bennet (Hervey), with Bennet's jewels the reason for the crime. But there are a few other candidates in the frame, all of which are written to be believable suspects. The cops investigating are waspish of tongue, with Smith as dry as the Sahara, and Hayden is playing an insurance investigator who is along for the ride doing exactly the same job that the coppers are doing!

Duryea is the star attraction, playing a homme fatale type who chews gum a lot, calls his girlfriend Kitten and clearly is as untrustworthy as it gets (classic Duryea portrayal really!). Hayden doesn't show up until half an hour in, but he's a welcome arrival even if he isn't given much to get his teeth into. While Lamour pouts and ponders whilst gaining sympathy, which ultimately makes us wish she had of done more film noir type films.

There's some nice metaphorical touches, such as Duryea encamped in his apartment watching a vermin species consistently running on its wheel, and Laszlo's photography goes up a notch in the latter half of film - Lamour's apartment becomes foreboding and all the hall staircase sequences take on a greater oppressive meaning. A dream sequence is chilling, and there's one particular violent scene that is unforgettable. Unfortunately some of the comedy, whilst funny at times (drugs scenes are chucklesome), takes the pic out of its dramatic comfort zone.

Hayden and Duryea fans are safe in the knowledge that this is one to see, but it still winds up as a wasted opportunity to be something far more tougher and poignant. 6/10