Fri 23 Mar 2018
APOLOGY FOR MURDER. Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), 1945. Ann Savage, Hugh Beaumont, Russell Hicks, Charles D. Brown. Director: Sam Newfield.
Hugh Beaumont plays Kenny Blake, a brash young reporter, in this film, and yes, I know, that’s redundant. All young reporters in the movies have to be brash. If they are allowed to get older on the job, they either become cynical or, once in a while, even more devoted to real journalism and the truth. Especially if the latter will sell newspapers.
Blake’s editor is the latter, which is why I bring it up, but I’m getting ahead of myself. While Blake is interviewing one of the wealthier men in town, brashly of course, he is taken by the older man’s much younger wife (Ann Savage). Realizing that her husband is getting tired of her and is about to dump divorce her and leave her nothing, she picks up on Blake’s attraction to her.
It seems as though she has a plan, and Blake is just the fellow who can help her with it. Should I go on? Have you heard this one before?
Would it help if I told you that the working title for this film was Single Indemnity until Paramount Pictures got wind of it and told them to cut it out? In Blake’s editor’s eagerness to pull off the scoop of the year, he does not realize until almost too late that he is nurturing a viper in his bosom. So to speak.
Unfortunately as a leading man in this kind of film, Hugh Beaumont is rather bland, with very little personality of his own, the kind that shows up on the screen. Ann Savage’s next film was to be Detour, and while she definitely doesn’t have the kind of presence in this film she was to have in that one, you can definitely see why they might have thought of her when they were casting the part.
March 23rd, 2018 at 8:15 am
Beaumont had a busy time at Monogram & PRC (later Eagle-Lion) in those days, including a stint as Michael Shayne at PRC.
March 23rd, 2018 at 8:55 am
PRC wasn’t exactly Eagle-Lion, which was essentially a creation of J. Arthur Rank, and therefore a studio however small, with deep pockets, but rather absorbed into the newer enterprise, which itself a few years later was consumed by United Artists.
March 23rd, 2018 at 9:13 am
Eddie Muller’s book DARK CITY DAMES: THE WICKED WOMEN OF FILM NOIR recounts the professional and personal lives of Ann Savage, Jane Greer, Audrey Totter, Marie Windsor, Coleen Gray and Evelyn Keyes. For the most part, Muller lets the women tell their own stories. That of Ann Savage is particularly poignant.
March 23rd, 2018 at 3:52 pm
I had no idea Hugh Beaumont ever played a villain. Was floored to read in this review that he played a killer. However, maybe this was like casting low key nice guy Fred MacMurray against type as a killer in DOUBLE INDEMNITY.
What would June and the Beaver say?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie or TV show directed by the hugely prolific Sam Newfield.
March 23rd, 2018 at 4:48 pm
I can’t tell from the titles of the movies that Hugh Beaumont was in before he became Ward Cleaver, but I think you may be right, Mike. I doubt that he was a villain in many of them.
And he made an awful lot of movies in the 40s and early 50s — which is not to be confused with saying a lot of awful movies, though I’m sure some of them were.
I think in this case, though, any comparison with his role and that of Fred MacMurray in DOUBLE INDEMNITY was purely intentional.
March 23rd, 2018 at 5:28 pm
Hugh Beaumont made a good impression in the excellent film noir thriller RAILROADED! (Anthony Mann). He plays a nice guy cop, and is convincingly believable. He is likely a deliberate contrast to all the noir-ish darkness around him.
March 23rd, 2018 at 7:18 pm
Beaumont was usually a second string good guy though he played lead in a few films, or at least hero, John Ireland dominates RAILROADED for instance.
In most find he played the straight laced guy who is sometimes a bit of a stiff, as in NIGHT PASSAGE.
The comparison to MacMurray ignores the fact Fred had charisma and terrific timing that allowed him to play attractive rather than wan heels. I can see a director hoping to make a low budget MacMurray out of Beaumont and understand why it didn’t work.
Sadly ripoffs like this almost always show their roots. I’m guessing Russell Hicks was no Edward G. Robinson either.