TCM's Film Noir of the Week at Midnight ET Saturday Night/Sunday Morning is Cry Danger (1951), starring Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming

 

 

By David in TN
Thursday, April 19, 2018 at 7:37:00 P.M. EDT
 

 

TCM's Film Noir of the Week at Midnight ET Saturday Night/Sunday Morning is Cry Danger (1951), starring Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming.
 

 

Powell plays a prototypical Noir protagonist, a tough guy just out of prison for a “crime he didn't commit.” He had been released when an alcoholic ex-Marine provided him with a false alibi, in the hope of being cut in for a share of the loot. Powell tells him he's really innocent.
 

Dick Powell, Jean Porter, a second actor, and the neighborhood as character, L.A.’s Bunker Hill.
 

Meanwhile Powell's best friend is still in prison, so Powell goes after the real culprit, played by William Conrad.
 

William Conrad as the heavy. A 25-year-old Conrad played one of the hit-men in Robert Siodmak’s Hemingway-inspired masterpiece, The Killers (1946), and was the narrator of the legendary Roy Huggins-David Janssen series, The Fugitive (1963-1967), but didn’t become famous until TV titan producer, Quinn Martin, tapped him to play the eponymous, middle-aged, bulldog-faced, private detective in Cannon (1971-1976). Conrad also made a minor fortune with his baritone voice, doing voice-overs for TV commercials. Late in life, he co-starred in the series, Jake and the Fat Man (1987-1992), as a morbidly obese, old D.A. who solves crimes with the help of his handsome, relatively young private detective partner, played by Joe Penny.
 

L-R: Regis Toomey, Dick Powell, and Dick Erdman. Rhonda Fleming is still alive, at 94, as is Dick Erdman, at 92!
 

Fleming is Powell's ex-girl, now married to his imprisoned friend.
 

Now, I get it! All of the pics I’ve seen of Rhonda Fleming, save for this movie, had her looking voluptuous. Granted, Hollywood could not only turn ugly ducklings into beautiful swans—“in just a half an hour, you’ll look like Tyrone Power!”—but also, with artful foundation garments, turn walls into racks. But some of the pics I’ve seen of Fleming in her prime, revealed too much to be cases of artful deception. Her shape was her own. However, in the stills from this picture, she appears to be shapeless.
Now, look at her biceps and elbows above. She’s anorexic! Whether she was going through something personally, or the brass ordered her to lose weight for this role, the 5’6” Fleming weighed 15-25 pounds less than usual.
 

 

It all shakes out in typical Noir fashion.
 

L-R: Powell, Fleming, Conrad and Toomey 

Cry Danger repeats at 10 a.m. ET Sunday, April 22.