SCENE OF THE CRIME. MGM, 1949. Van Johnson, Arlene Dahl, Gloria DeHaven, Tom Drake, Leon Ames, John McIntire, Donald Woods, Norman Lloyd, Jerome Cowan. Director: Roy Rowland.

   This was a belated attempt by MGM to jump on the Crime Noir bandwagon, but though the effort’s certainly there, the studio’s higher than usual production values seem to work in a conversely counterproductive fashion against any major success the film may have had.

   Van Johnson plays a homicide detective named Mike Conovan in this one, a guy who has to deal with two problems in his life at the same time. First of all, he has to solve the murder of a fellow policeman and a good friend who’s found murdered outside a bookie joint with over a thousand dollars in cash in his pocket.

   Secondly, he has a strikingly beautiful wife Gloria (Arlene Dahl) who loves him but who’s getting more and more fretful and worried about the danger he faces every day.

   The ringing of the telephone every night, calling Mike to duty, doesn’t help matters much, either.

   Surprisingly enough, she appears to be far less fazed when she learns that her husband is cozying up to a gangster’s glamorous girl friend named Lili (the equally glamorous Gloria DeHaven).

   If it weren’t for the fact that he keeps his wedding ring on, and that they keep their feet on the floor all the time, I think there’s more than a hint that something more serious could have been going on. (There wasn’t.)

   In another studio’s production, there may have been more sparks in that direction, just maybe. And yet, even without that particular scenario taking place, what remains is an early attempt at a Dragnet-styled documentary of an actual police investigation, but in unlike Dragnet fashion, one in which human and domestic touches are as much of Mike Conovan’s world as bringing justice into it is.

   There’s also an appreciable amount of violence in this film, certainly enough to make Gloria’s worries about him well-founded. There are also long stretches with no musical score in the background, a touch I always appreciate when I notice it, and I usually do.

   Arlene Dahl, as pointed out before, was exceptionally beautiful — but looking at her overall career, I am struck (and puzzled) as to how short it really was. Her movie career began in 1947 and was essential over by the mid-sixties.

   Absolutely perfect in her role was Gloria DeHaven, but after thinking it over, I don’t think that Van Johnson was quite up to his. Supposedly a tough cop torn between his job and his wife, he seems too bland, too youthful, and not yet having seen enough life to make us believe he had.

   Good, even very good, in other words, but far from exceptional.