Universal-International’s mid-range noir has some good qualities even if it boils down to an uneven character study with a clever gimmick: how do news shutterbugs just happen to be on the scene for those sensational crime photos? It’s a decent first job of direction by Joseph Pevney, who would serve as a Universal house director for most of the ’50. The theme of rotten journalistic ethics precedes Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole by a year but can’t match Wilder’s sense of outrage — this go-getter’s ignominious rise is exciting, but more than a little far-fetched.
At the center of Shakedown is the handsome crook played by Howard Duff, who two years previous had excelled as another despicable heel in Jules Dassin’s terrific The Naked City. In the earlier part of the show Duff’s character behaves much like the unprincipled news video ghoul played by Jake Gyllenhaal in 2012’s Nightcrawler. Both men see the world as a crooked, rigged system, and set out to succeed without worrying about basic ethics. That attitude alone places the movie squarely in noir territory.
Stringer photographer Jack Early (Howard Duff) is desperate for a full-time newspaper job, enough to risk his life to get photos of a crime being committed. He then gets a great shot of a car accident, at the expense of the victim. He uses flattery to secure a picture of mobster Nick Palmer (Brian Donlevy), who normally refuses photos. Jack’s refusal to be a team player bothers photo editor David Glover (Bruce Bennett), who nevertheless hires him on the advice of the photo assistant Ellen Bennett (Peggy Dow). But Jack sees the job as a mere stepping-stone: he ingratiates himself with Nick Palmer, signalling that he’s open to shady ways to make money. On the newspaper’s time, Jack is soon using his camera to help Palmer put rival Harry Colton (Lawrence Tierney) behind bars.
Jack Early doesn’t know when to quit — landing the newspaper job isn’t enough. He pulls off a three-way profit scheme: taking money from Palmer, getting paid for a news photo, and using the same photo to extort money from Colton as well. Convinced that he won’t trip himself up, Early romances Ellen under false pretenses. She calls off her engagement to an out-of-town beau, while he uses her apartment to hide his blackmail evidence against the dangerous Colton. The egotistical, ambitious Jack also puts the moves on Palmer’s beautiful foreign-born wife Nita (Anne Vernon). Just when his photos are earning him major recognition, Early goes for an even bigger score — he’ll ‘just happen to be on the scene’ when Harry Colton’s mob assassinates Nick Palmer. Neither hood realizes that Jack is working for the other. He’ll have the newsphoto of the decade plus an open path to the affections of the widow, Nita.
Shakedown is one of those outrageous ‘comeuppance’ yarns where we get to enjoy a slick villain doing his evil deeds, followed by the fun of seeing him reap his just desserts. One of the screenwriters is Martin Goldsmith of Detour fame; the crazy events maintain just enough logic to sustain at least some credibility.
The show gets off on a bit of a wrong foot when Jack Early is shown to be so handsome that he turns female heads left and right. Duff is good-looking but having secretaries stumble into each other gawking at him is a bit much, especially so soon after he’s been worked over by some hoods on the dock. Cocky, short-fused, and unpleasantly pushy in both business and womanizing, Jack could have been inspired by the kind of film industry go-getters that prepossess relationships. His ‘friends’ don’t get a chance to feel betrayed: he’s taken what he wants and moved on before they know what hit them. Jack Early is as unscrupulous as the complete creep played by Zachary Scott in Edgar Ulmer’s Ruthless.
We may gripe that newspaper editor Glover ought to kick Jack to the curb at the first opportunity, but that’s not how it works in real life. Jack doesn’t care that his new boss gives him the benefit of the doubt. Bruce Bennett’s Glover is also interested in Ellen, and intuits that he can’t win her if it looks like he’s prejudiced against Jack. Glover offers Jack solid career guidance and constructive criticism, like “a scoop photo’s no good if the paper has no story to go with it.” Jack acts grateful only when he needs something and at all other times sulks in resentment. He succeeds because he’s perceived as both talented and lucky, when almost all of his photos are rigged, dishonest.
The brightest personality on view is Peggy Dow, a real talent with a dreamy smile. As pointed out by audio commentator Jason A. Ney, the show has several moments where we pause to watch Ellen Bennett as thoughts and emotions flow transparently across her face. Ellen can’t hide the fact that she’s attracted to Jack. A heel’s heel, Jack assumes every woman is his for the taking if he just says the right lies in the right order.
Yes, the absolute heels in real life do seem to possess a radar that locates people they can manipulate. The positive-minded Ellen is convinced that everyone is basically good inside; she confuses Jack’s bad behavior as evidence of a diamond in the rough. With a minimum of manners and a lot of smooth talk Jack keeps Ellen on his string for quite a while.
The screenplay makes good symbolic use of a photo of Ellen’s long-distance boyfriend to express the truth of the Jack-Ellen relationship. She is the one to knock it off a table, indicating her preference for Jack. We worry that Jack’s later use of the photo will put Ellen in harm’s way.
Back in 1950 people could still believe in the concept of ‘photographic proof,’ that ‘seeing is believing.’ But unscrupulous photo journalists had been around forever. Editor Glover ought to be highly suspicious of some of Jack’s pictures as being setups, faked inside jobs. They culminate in the assassination photo, a scam so blatant even The Warren Commission couldn’t cover it up.
On the other hand, average movie depictions of technical details with photography and cameras were never very realistic. There’s the laughably impossible photo blow-up in the James Stewart noir Call Northside 777, and of course the ridiculous depiction of automatic surveillance cameras, which in older movies often panned and tracked to follow people. They often edited themselves with different angles.
The show relies on Jack Early being so brash and nervy that even experienced hoods like Nick Palmer and Harry Colton can’t see through his double-crosses. Should we believe that Jack could simultaneously bamboozle two gangsters, two intelligent women, and a big city newspaper? Stranger things have happened.
The show is set in San Francisco but may only have a few shots with Howard Duff actually filmed on location, plus some good rear-projection of a car chase. Director Pevney sets up several sequences that make Shakedown seem more of an ‘A’ attraction. He stages the assassination scene in one impressive shot. With the help of the optical department, the one angle combines an exploding bomb and a photographer knocked down by the blast, in silhouette. It’s strong stuff, for 1950 at least.
Pevney’s best sequence may be when Jack chases a car that crashes into San Francisco Bay. First on the scene, Jack sees the driver stuck inside the car as it begins to sink. Instead of going for aid, he coaches the victim to pose for a better photo. Such cynical shenanigans hadn’t been seen since the pre-Code days, in shows like The Front Page and Picture Snatcher.
Jack’s ‘shakedown’ showdowns with Colton are also well staged — Lawrence Tierney’s hoodlum is scary yet we believe that Jack has the upper hand. Tierney and Brian Donlevy seem a little old-school to be operating in 1950 San Francisco. Harry Colton’s lame heists would be quickly solved, and Nick Palmer would have cleaned up his act and moved into politics years before. Colton even runs his racket out of the back of a bowling alley. But the attitude and delivery of both actors is a definite plus. Both were on the career downgrade but perform well.
There’s also something not quite right about the chemistry between Jack and Nita, the gangster’s wife with a marked fondness for expensive pearls. We can’t read much into actress Anne Vernon’s beautiful smile: the movie doesn’t make up its mind whether Nita is sincerely in love with her husband Nick, or just using him as she later uses Jack. Ms. Vernon had a sizable run of leading roles in France but this seems to be her one isolated Hollywood picture. Yet she’ll be familiar to fans of musicals — fifteen years later she plays Catherine Deneuve’s mother in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
Will Jack Early’s sins catch up with him? Ellen eventually wises up and will no longer run when he calls . . . maybe. Jack’s comeuppance happens at a party where both Nita and Harry Colton fly out of control; Pevney’s efficient staging wraps things up in just a few seconds’ time.
But the filmmakers thought to give Jack’s tale the resonance of a moral fable. When all is lost he still musters the presence of mind to play the clever shutterbug just once more. His final ‘autobiographical’ scoop photo reminds us of the last photographic act of the obsessed Mark Lewis in Peeping Tom, a criminal who literally uses a camera as a weapon. But Jack has never seen photography as anything but a tool for his crooked schemes — his final act seems an act of hollow egotism, to have the last laugh on everybody.
