SCENE OF THE CRIME

A lone cop, investigating a series of raids and murders on Los Angeles area bookie joints, is gunned down by a man with a twisted left hand and a dark splotch on his face. The cop is found with a thousand dollars cash on his body, an effort to frame the cop as being on the take. There are a handful of witnesses to the crime but none of them want to cooperate. It's up to veteran homicide detective Lt. Mike Conovan (Van Johnson) to investigate the murder because the dead cop was his former partner.

SCENE OF THE CRIME (1949) has some noir elements but being produced by MGM, it's not as down and dirty as noirs from other studios. Thus, it's more of a police procedural story with Conovan, Fred Piper (John McIntire) and C.C. Gordon (Tom Drake) the team of detectives out to solve the case. What's interesting is that the bookie joints that are the targets of the robbers and killers are all "outfit" joints, that is, run by organized crime on a large scale. The cops never go after the bigger fish in this film, they're content to find and capture the two-bit punks doing the robbing and killing.

The investigation leads Conovan to stripper Lili (Gloria DeHaven). They strike up an uneasy relationship with Conovan only wanting information while Lili longs for something more. This puts added strain and pressure on Conovan's marriage as his wife Gloria (the gorgeous Arlene Dahl), worries about Mike constantly and desperately wants him to leave the police force.

Conovan and his men eventually run down all of the various leads and find their men but the bad guys won't go peacefully. There's a nicely staged gun battle at the climax of the film in which the crooks meet their end in a hail of lead.

SCENE OF THE CRIME is a good little crime thriller. Van Johnson, eager to play against type, does a decent enough job but he's never quite entirely convincing as a hard boiled detective. His screen persona as a romantic comedy lead and song and dance man is just too well constructed to be overcome in one movie. He's just too nice a guy to ultimately pull this kind of material off consistently.

SCENE OF THE CRIME sports a great supporting cast including Leon Ames, Donald Woods, Norman Lloyd, Jerome Cowan and Tom Helmore. Kudos to director Roy Rowland, screenwriter Charles Schnee and cinematographer Paul Vogel, all of whom contribute to the films' effectiveness.

It's no masterpiece but SCENE OF THE CRIME stands as a durable crime/mystery film. Check it out.