Mon 30 Aug 2021
Archived Movie Review: NEW ORLEANS AFTER DARK (1958).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[9] Comments
NEW ORLEANS AFTER DARK. Allied Artists, 1958. Stacy Harris, Louis Sirgo, Ellen Moore. Director: John Sledge.
According to TV Guide, this sad imitation of Dragnet was based on a television series. It took some searching, but I finally discovered that Stacy Harris was also the lead on an obscure syndicated series called N.O.P.D. so that must be the one but that’s all I know about it.
This movie version concerns dope traffic coming into New Orleans, and two homicide detective who investigate when two showgirls who use the stuff are bumped off. The motive is not exactly clear, but apparently there is a chance they’ll talk if they’re arrested and forced to go without their regular supply.
Stacy Harris was a veteran radio star — in fact, he was the leading man on This Is Your FBI for most of its eight years on the air — and while his voice is about twice the size he actually is, he does a decent job, but everyone else in this movie acts as stiff as a board.
At best, this would be fifth-rate TV. How’d they ever come to make a whole movie of it?
August 30th, 2021 at 5:26 pm
When I wrote this review, research sources were very minimal, so if I sound puzzled about the genesis of this rather poor movie, I was.
A reviewer on the present day internet (IMDb) seems to have the answer, though:
“… this movie is essentially an entire episode of the short-lived TV series called N.O.P.D., the episode called ‘The Case Of The Missing Cigars’, with additional scenes and plot lines added to make up for the longer time frame.”
August 30th, 2021 at 7:10 pm
Harris was one of those faces that was on everythiing and seen everywhere that most of us could barely put a name to, but knew instantly at a mere glance.
Quite a few series got this fix-up treatment for the European market or recycled as “movies” for television.
August 30th, 2021 at 10:20 pm
‘This is Your FBI’ was one of the more lackluster OTRR serials, in my opinion. It would serve in a pinch, it was competent …but never a first-choice. Hard to imagine how a show could best Jack Webb’s ‘Dragnet’ for starched-collar, stentorian delivery, but that’s what they achieved with it.
August 31st, 2021 at 12:17 am
THIS IS YOUR FBI was no imitation. It came along four years before DRAGNET, and yet the latter is remembered, and the FBI show long forgotten.
August 31st, 2021 at 9:44 am
Not like Dragnet, perfectly all right, but it was the most influential show in early television, on a level with I Love Lucy, and did just fine during the radio days. Also successful in films and on television revival. Jack Webb was a superstar. On camera, and behind it.
August 31st, 2021 at 9:57 am
Stacy Harris was one of his generations most-frequently-seen “Oh, him!” actors – and not only due to his presence in Jack Webb Repertory.
While with Webb at Universal TV (late ’60s- early ’70s), Harris turned up on most of their cop and western shows; afterwards, he turned up in many other venues, including a short stop on a daytime soap (Return To Peyton Place), right up to his passing.
As to N.O.P.D., that was a very-low-budget deal, made mainly on location in New Orleans, using the facilities of WDSU-tv in that city.
It was a launching point for a floor director at that station, who was drafted to do scripts, act on camera occasionally, and serve as the show’s narrator: a young Edwin Nelson (who eventually became just plain Ed Nelson when he moved to Peyton Place – but that’s another story (which Nelson wrote an autobiography about …)).
August 31st, 2021 at 11:12 am
Guess what? I’ve found an episode of N.O.P.D. online. Now everyone can see what we here on the blog have been talking about:
August 31st, 2021 at 2:42 pm
Odd, but I now dimly recall having viewed at some point, re-runs of Efram Zimbalist Jr. and his FBI-based TV show, ‘The FBI’. Was that a Quinn-Martin production? It was ‘in color’.
I wasn’t aware that TIYFBI preceded ‘Dragnet’ on radio although once it’s stated aloud (above) it makes perfect sense. I admit it was a competent production but somehow just lacking in …verve. If Stacey was in harness each week then maybe he got assigned a different partner-character each week? No laughs, no personality quirks, no chemistry ever developed between this show’s characters, that I recall. No distinctive voices like Barton Yaroborough.
Sometimes, yes –that dry nuts-and-bolts delivery is refreshing. And it was also fun if the two agents bounced from one US city to another in the course of a single show.
Often, this was how the baddies were apprehended in the final thirty seconds: underestimating the vastness of FBI resources. Stacey would show up out of nowhere at the last minute. His character would figure out the vital clue to the racketeers, and then he’d get a high-priority government transport to foil the gang. They blithely assume he’s tied to a chair in a room where they left him days before.
The ‘lesson’ one takes away from all these programs is pretty good: don’t ever mess around with the FBI. Catching crooks is their career; they work at it every day.
August 31st, 2021 at 2:47 pm
Not as sharp as Dragnet, nor as likable, but about an average filmed television product for the early fifties. By 1955 they were much better, so this is behind the line. Too bad.