Thu 3 Sep 2009
ARSON, INC. Lippert Pictures, 1949. Robert Lowery, Anne Gwynne, Edward Brophy, Marcia Mae Jones, Douglas Fowley, Maude Eburne, Byron Foulger. Director: William Berke.
If you recognize any of the names of the members of the cast above, you ought to make a fortune on any Quiz Show that focuses on the movie entertainment industry. If you were to gather that this was a low budget production, you’d be absolutely right. If more than a thousand dollars was spent in the making of this movie, I’d be surprised.
And of course I’m exaggerating, but not by much. This is the last movie I’ve watched in a DVD set of Forgotten Noir (Volume One), not that it’s noir, only a Bargain Basement crime movie in black-and-white made in the 1940s, and therefore…? It has to be noir.
Arson, Inc. begins as a semi-documentary about the fire-fighting business, then segues quickly into a story of an undercover member of the arson squad (Robert Lowrey) who’s on the trail of a gang whose specialty is burning down warehouses supposedly filled with furs.
Along the way he meets a schoolteacher (Anne Gwynne) who along with her canny old grandmother (Maude Eburne) moonlights as a babysitter. She also soon becomes his girl friend, and by “she,” I do not mean the grandmother.
Anne Gwynne is another in a long line of good-looking Hollywood actresses whose careers never got out of low, by which I mean B-movies like this one. A sizable role in House of Frankenstein (1944) may have been the height of her career.
Likewise goes for good-looking Robert Lowrey, whose career was longer than his co-star, including stints as Bill Gray, Indian Commissioner, in Cowboy G-Men and as a semi-regular as Buss Courtney in Pistols ‘n’ Petticoats, not that I’m telling you out of past experience, mind you. I’m only repeating what I’ve been told on IMDB.
And speaking of IMDB, those who’ve left comments there generally liked this movie one whole quantum leap more than I did.
Any crime movie in which the gangsters and goons at a gangsters and goons late-night party stand around and sing “Little Brown Jug” does not stand much of a chance of getting a high rating from me.
Don’t blame the actors and actresses, though. They’re all professionals, and to a man and woman, they all know what they’re doing. I tend not to blame the directors very much in movies like this either, as they had little control over the stories they were asked to film, and even less over the money they were allowed to spend. William Berke does a good job with what he has to work with.
September 4th, 2009 at 12:53 am
Lowery starred in the second Batman serial and did a good one called Mystery of the Riverboat with Lyle Talbot and Mantan Moreland. In later years he played Doris Day’s drunken abusive husband in The Ballad of Josie and the slimey governor after Maureen O’Hara’s money in McClintock.
Douglas Fowley, also in this one, was the gunslinging grandpa in the awful Pistols and Petticoats. Both men were staples in movies and TV in the fifties and early sixties, and Fowley a bit longer — usually as a bearded old coot of some sort.
September 4th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Robert Lowery also had the lead in another Columbia serial, THE MONSTER & THE APE, which is well worth forgetting, and he was the nominal “hero” of HOUSE OF HORRORS, though Rondo Hatton and Martin Kosleck were much more interesting. As a hero, he seemed entirely too bland, but as a bad guy, he was slightly less boring.
September 4th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
And what passes for “noir” in some of these sets should be reported to the authorities.
September 4th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
I already have, Dan.
September 5th, 2009 at 5:17 am
A shadow or two, some black and white footage, and a murder or other crime and someone is going to shout noir, as if every black and white crime film made was noir. This is a programmer, a minor crime film with a few points of interest, but hardy noir in any sense of the word.
This same series includes such programmers as David Harding Counterspy and Mr. District Attorney as “noir,” not that they aren’t films I want to see (those two based on the radio series), but they aren’t noir just because they are in black and white and someone dies. But then likely no one would buy a set of Low Budget Hollywood Crime Films From the Forties — well, save for Steve and me.
September 5th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Douglas Fowley was one of the few actors along with Walter Brennan and Jeanette Nolan willing to play a part without his false teeth.