TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Anthony Mann’s Side Street (1950) with Farley Granger, Kathy O’Donnell, James Craig, Edmon Ryan, Paul Kelly and Jean Hagen

By David in TN
Friday, February 11, 2022 at 7:27:00 P.M. EST

TCM’s Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Anthony Mann’s Side Street (1950) with Farley Granger, Kathy O’Donnell, James Craig, Edmon Ryan, Paul Kelly and Jean Hagen.

Film Noir Guide: “A financially strapped part-time mail carrier (Granger), whose wife (O’Donnell) is pregnant, breaks into a filing cabinet in an attorney’s office to steal the money he had seen placed there while he was delivering the mail. Expecting to find just a few hundred dollars, he winds up walking away with thirty grand and some documents that could implicate a ruthless hood (Craig).

Understandably fearful, Granger wraps up the money and asks a bartender friend to hold the package for him for a few days. When he finally comes to his senses, he confesses to the attorney (Ryan) and offers to return the dough, which turns out to have been a blackmail payoff. Unfortunately, Granger discovers that the bartender has stolen the dough, and is in hiding.

On the lam from the cops, who think he’s a murderer, and from angry gangsters, Granger seeks a way out of his miserable predicament. Kelly is the homicide detective in charge of the case, and Hagen plays Craig’s former girlfriend, an alcoholic nightclub singer.

This suspenseful and beautifully photographed noir reunited Granger and McConnell after the sensational They Live by Night, and climaxes with an exciting car chase through the narrow streets of lower Manhattan.”

David in TN: This one was previously shown in 2017 on Noir Alley. As I observed then, James Craig, born in Nashville and a graduate of Rice University, plays a 1950 Manhattan street criminal. Funny, you might see this kind of casting in a Law and Order episode this year.

Craig was billed early on as “another Clark Gable,” and was kind of a substitute for him when Gable was serving in WW II.

Side Street has one of the first car chases.

N.S.: Two side notes: Edmon Ryan played the same sort of role the same year, in Mystery Street, which Red Eddie likes to roll out every couple of years, to show off his pro-Communist/anti-White mala fides.

And Jean Hagen, who plays the Craig character’s alcoholic ex-girlfriend, became a really big deal for a time as a featured character actress, giving a series of standout movie performances from circa 1950-1955. In Singin’ in the Rain (1952), she got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for playing the nasty, silent star whose terrible speaking voice, according to the story, had to be dubbed by the Debbie Reynolds character, but actually was done by Hagen herself, using a different voice. (This story line was not based on any real silent actresses.) Hagen then got the role of Danny Thomas’ TV wife on Make Room for Daddy, which got her three Emmy nominations for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress. However, after three seasons, Hagen complained that the role gave her nothing to do, and quit the series.

Around the time she hit 40, Hagen’s health completely collapsed on her. Her marriage to b-actor Tom Seidel (with two kids), did not survive, and her health woes snowballed, leading eventually to her death, in 1977, from esophageal cancer, at the age of 54.