TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Boris Ingster, Leo Townsend, Milton M. Raison and Bert C. Brown's Southside 1-1000 (1950), with Don DeFore, Andrea King, George Tobias, Morris Ankrum and Robert Osterloh

By David in TN
friday, october 24, 2025 at 4:52:00 p.m. edt

TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Boris Ingster's Southside 1-1000 (1950), with Don DeFore, Andrea King, George Tobias, Morris Ankrum and Robert Osterloh.

Film Noir Guide: “T-man DeFore goes undercover to break up a counterfeiting ring led by King and her underlings (Tobias and Osterloh). Ankrum plays the gang's master engraver, 'a model prisoner whose mainstay is his bible,' who works on counterfeit plates in his San Quentin cell and smuggles them out with an unwitting minister.

“The overly long (but wonderfully camp) prologue takes the viewer from World War I to the Korean War, before finally making the point that the American dollar is our most important product and that 'a counterfeiter is more than a criminal--he's a saboteur.

“The title refers to the telephone number of the Secret Service ('the watchdogs of the American dollar'). Despite the hokey narration, Southside is surprisingly entertaining, thanks in large part to a first-rate performance by King as the icy femme fatale who makes the deadly mistake of falling for a good-looking fed."

N.S.: Andrea King, who usually went as a blonde, played the dark-haired femme fatale in the 1947 Robert Montgomery--as director and star--masterpiece, Ride the Pink Horse. What I just learned was that King and Pink Horse's stunning, heart-breaking (in the picture and in real life) heroine, Wanda Hendrix, both had green eyes. Since the picture was in black and white, you didn't see anyone's eye color.

“The first time Gagan meets Hugo’s moll, Marjorie (Andrea King), he searches her bag for a gun. She responds, 'You must lead a very interesting life.' The intrigued female promptly seeks to seduce him.

“Gagin is acting rich, because he’s got his service separation pay, and he expects to be coming into a small fortune any day now. In a way, he’s smart, and in another way, he’s a fool. Smart: Later, when Marjorie offers a new blackmail scheme to soak Hugo for much more than $30,000, Gagin refuses, saying 'Nobody stays up nights trying to help me.' But he’s dumb because Hugo is surrounded by killers at his beck and call, including Marjorie, while Gagin is flying solo.”