Overrated

Just perfect...

Awesome Movie

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

"Hi, Dolly!", a copy boy screams to the new advice column editor after he is demoted from managing editor. In this remake of the 1934 film "Hi, Nellie!", it is Wayne Morris who gets the insulting nickname. Several years later, June Allyson would change the "Hi" to "Hello" when she greeted a gossip columnist in "The Opposite Sex". So don't confuse these two Dolly's with everybody's favorite matchmaker in a play and musical that featured an explanation point at the end of its title.Morris is supported by Janis Paige as a fellow advice columnist, Alan Hale Sr. as his boss, and Bruce Bennett, James Mitchell and Barbara Bates as the villains. The ever recognizable Charles Lane has a major small role as a nasty landlord that Morris encounters while investigating the murder which gets him demoted. Paige is great in her last film under her Warners contract (before she found Broadway fame in the original "Pajama Game") playing a down-to-earth girl who is less glamorous or earthy than her usual characters. And yes, that is "All My Children's" Palmer Cortlandt as the slimy gangster, even though James Mitchell's voice is not as recognizable as his face is.This is a typical Warner Brothers crime thriller with comic elements. An out of place barber shop quartet number has a nice payoff even if it seems 30 years too late.

***SPOILERS*** After police protected witness Villman, Jack Wise, was gunned down in his safe house by a phony letter carrier who was actually paid hit-man Eddie Marklin, Eddie Foster, newspaper reporter Dave Joslin,Wayne Morris, started putting the heat on the person whom he felt was responsible for Villman's murder big time mobster Matthew J. Keever, Bruce Bennett.Joslin's obsession in getting Keever indited for the Villman murder got so out of hand that his boss on the newspaper "The Star Chronicle" J.B Grennell, Alan Hale, fearing a libel suite from Keever had him yanked off his beat as a crime reported. Grennell then had Joslin demoted to answering the mail of mostly women with boyfriend and men problems on the newspaper's Dear Abby like column using the pen name of Dolly Trent. It's there that Joslin gets into trouble with his girlfriend on the paper Kit Williams, Janis Paige, whom he or his boss J.B Grennell bumped off the column to make room for him.It's when one of the readers Billie Martin, Lila Leeds, of Joslin's Dear Abby column came to visit him at his office about him not answering her letters, three of them, that Joslin got his big break in putting Keever behind bars! It was both Billie and her boyfriend Carl Schrader, James Holden, who were at the Keever's run bar "Horseshoe Harry's" the night before Villman was iced! Carl who was so boozed up that an outraged Billie left him cold after he spilled a drink on her. After passing out drunk Carl found himself in a rooming house the next morning without knowing how he got there! It was something that was going on at "Horseshoe Harry's" that whoever who slipped Carl a "Mickey" didn't want him to know or remember! And it was the waitress, Phillys Coates, who snapped the photo of a very drunk Carl with Macklin the background being paid off by Keever to, later that morning, knock off Villman that can break the Villman murder case wide open and thus put Keever and his hoods behind bars for committing it! Re-make of the Paul Muni 1934 crime/comedy "Hi Nellie" with a very old-looking, he was only 34 at the time, and overweight, he looked like he was wearing a size 55 pants, as well as impeccably dressed Wayne Morris.

I do not know if this would be considered a classic, but it is a nice little film starring Wayne Morris, who by the late 1940's was not seen in too many starring roles in Hollywood. Morris gives a good performance as a newspaper man trying to expose criminal kingpin Bruce Bennett as a murderer. Good pacing, simple script with some fine witty dialogue. I saw this movie during a cold and blustery snowstorm. This is the kind of film that used to grace our late late movies. I sure could use more of this kind of entertainment on tv in the wee hours of morning instead of so many infomercials. Check this one out if it is ever on. It's worth a watch.MM

A police detective bungles a stakeout, resulting in the murder of a key witness against a crime boss (Bruce Bennett). Against the advice of his skittish publisher, a managing editor (blond bruiser Wayne Morris) launches a hard-hitting campaign against police incompetence. When Bennett, escorted by mouthpiece and torpedo, rattles his sabres, the publisher puts Morris on the Bewildered Hearts column as punishment. And lo and behold, that's where the case gets solved.A problem brought by a lovelorn gal, about an incident involving her drunken boyfriend in a mob-owned nightclub, raises red flags. Morris and his sob-sister girlfriend (Janis Paige) start pursuing the story, despite kicks in the shins, threats from guns and almost being run down by a careening black sedan. It turns out that a snapshot taken by the club's roving photographer conceals incriminating evidence....The House Across the Street stays a fairly generic crime programmer, even down to its attempts at comic and romantic relief. Luckily, the story stays reasonably tight, centering on why and where the boyfriend vanished that dimly remembered night. Its biggest puzzle is its title: The House Across the Street refers to the residence being staked out at the movie's beginning; it's no more than the wick that kindles the plot.