Word: killer
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...their company." In this cozy setup, John M. ("Cockeye") Dunn was a big man. He didn't belong to Joe Ryan's union but he ate at Joe's dinners, and his Greenwich Village mob ran the Chelsea District piers. Everybody knew Johnny Dunn was a killer, but nobody could pin it on him. During the war some small brass in the Army even tried to get him out of stir (he was doing time for coercion) because his services as a transportation expert were much in demand. Furious Fiorello La Guardia put a stop to that...
Since Ladd is a company policeman in the days when roadbeds were rough and railroading rougher, Preston winds up on the villains' or losing side. There are some handsomely photographed train wrecks, but except for Frank Faylen's lynx-eyed portrait of a killer, Whispering Smith is a conventional western in every detail. Its only novelty: Actor Ladd, familiar as a sleekly tough urban type, carrying two guns and looking pretty uncomfortable as they flap around his chaps...
Director Zinneman first builds strong sympathy for Heflin as a prosperous, affectionate husband and father who works hard in postwar days to get housing for his fellow veterans. Then he takes a closer look at Ryan, the would-be killer. The picture's real shocker is that the audience has little choice between hunter and hunted. The edge, if any, belongs to the hunter. Plainly, Veteran Heflin can never live down the one fateful, irretrievable act that even stands between him and his wife (Janet Leigh). But Ryan has a chance to make a life for himself if only...
...Dark Past (Columbia) is a study of a vicious young killer (William Holden) who is as afraid of his own twisted dreams as he is of the law. When he escapes from prison and holes up with his pals in the weekend cottage of a shrewd psychiatrist (Lee J. Cobb), he finally learns from the doctor-too late-that an Oedipus complex has helped to give him a killer's warped personality...
...Jake Bird, a 46-year-old convicted Negro ax murderer, learned that his lawyer, J. W. Selden of Tacoma, Wash., had died. Selden was the fifth man connected with Bird's trial to die in the eleven months since the killer had predicted: "All the guys who had anything to do with this case are going before I do." Like all the others involved-the judge, an undersheriff, a police lieutenant and the clerk of court-Selden died of a heart attack...