TWELVE CROWDED HOURS

Journeyman director Lew Landers manages to cram TWELVE CROWDED HOURS into 64 minutes of running time in this 1939 crime drama. 

This is strictly a bottom of the bill programmer, the type of film churned out by the hundreds in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Richard Dix stars as a newspaper reporter out to bust the numbers racket run by George Costain (Cy Kendall, who makes a pretty fair crime kingpin). He's aided by dance hall instructor Paula Sanders (Lucille Ball) and cub reporter Red (John Arledge). 

The screenplay by Garrett Fort and Peter Ruric is overly complicated but Landers keeps things moving at a steady clip. There are a couple of nicely staged auto/truck crashes before the film ends with the break of day (a replay in reverse of the opening, fall-of-night sequence). 

Richard Dix is part tough guy, part comic actor wannabee. His saturnine countenance makes Dix look like the unholy love child of later actors George Reeves and Robert Vaughn (with a bit of  Rodney Dangerfield as that weird uncle that no one ever talks about, thrown in). He's not good looking by any stretch and not necessarily ugly, just unusual looking. 

The most interesting thing about TWELVE CROWDED HOURS by far is the fact that in 1939, Lucille Ball was a contract player for RKO. In the early 1950s, what was left of the studio was purchased by Lucy and her husband Desi Arnaz and renamed Desilu. Along with being a first rate comedienne, Lucy was a shrewd and astute business woman.