TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 a.m. ET is Robert Gordon's Blind Spot (1947), with Chester Morris, Constance Dowling, Steven Geray, Sid Tomack and William Forrest

By David in TN
friday, november 7, 2025 at 3:24:00 p.m.

TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12:15 and 10 a.m. ET is Robert Gordon's Blind Spot (1947), with Chester Morris, Constance Dowling, Steven Geray, Sid Tomack and William Forrest

Film Noir Guide: "Narrator Morris plays a has-been novelist accused of murdering his conniving publisher (Forrest) in this tightly plotted, locked-room murder mystery. Stewed to the gills, Morris shows up at the publisher's office and denands an advance on his royalties."

"The publisher refuses and suggests that Morris start writing more marketable books à la the company's best-selling mystery writer (Geray), who witnesses the confrontation. When Forrest is found dead, Morris, who's experiencing hangover memory loss, is arrested and later released. The publisher's glamourous secretary (Dowling) offers to help him prove his innocence."

"It's not difficult to figure out who the killer is, but the question of how the murderer got out of a room bolted from the inside will have the viewer thinking. Between 1941 and 1949, Morris starred in a string of Boston Blackie films, and later had a role in the short-lived 1960 TV series, Diagnosis Unknown.


N.S.: During the early Sound Era, Chester Morris was a pretty big star, but he soon became a denizen of B pictures. Late 40s, B crime picture, amnesia: check. And it's always nice to see Steve Geray, even briefly. During the late 1940s and early '50s, the diminutive, Hungarian character actor enlivened any number of pictures (Gilda, Unfaithful, All about Eve, etc.), before he, like so many other character actors jumped the sinking ship of the Hollywood studios for TV.