LOAN SHARK. Encore Productions/Lippert, 1952. George Raft, Dorothy Hart, Paul Stewart, John Hoyt, Helen Westcott, Margia Dean, Larry Dobkin. Director: Seymour Friedman.

LOAN SHARK

   Loan shark racketeering must have been big business in 1952 to have warranted the production of an entire movie devoted to it and warning the American citizenry of its evil perniciousness.

   Filmed on location in part in a tire plant, the film occasionally has the feel of a documentary feature, and then in others (but not enough) as a film noir.

   Such as the opening scene, with a frightened, hunched up blue collar type of guy trying to make a getaway from the gang of hoodlums he’s in too deep with. With the rain coming down at night, the sidewalks glistening in the street lights, fear exuding from every inch of the man’s being – this is it, the real thing, you think.

   And once in while the promise of this prelude is kept, but not often enough to warrant a recommendation from me. Other reviewers have been more positive, but George Raft’s monotone approach to acting has never appealed to me, and at 57 he’s far too old to be romancing Dolores Hart, who was just over half his age at the time.

   Raft plays Joe Gargen, recently released from prison. When his sister’s husband is killed by the lone shark syndicate, Gargen is convinced to work undercover not only to obtain proof that they did, but to nab the guy at the top as well.

LOAN SHARK

   Dolores Hart, whose first appearance on this movie is bound to make the jaws of the male half of the audience drop in awe. One barely remembers what a cleverly cantilevered bra can do for a woman’s figure, but in the 1950s, geniuses walked on this planet.

   Alas, this was the last movie she ever made. She appeared in a few television shows over the next two years, and that was it. The end of her show business career, a loss to movie viewers I’m still mourning today. (She went on to work for the Red Cross and the United Nations.)

   She’s Ann Nelson in this movie, the downstairs neighbor to Gargen’s sister, and one simply cannot fathom her interest in him. Vice versa, yes. Just out of prison, he forcibly takes a kiss the same evening he meets her. She angrily pushes him away, but are they still friends the next day? Yes,and no matter how long I think about it, I still don’t get it.

   But as for the bad guys, now we’re talking. Paul Stewart, John Hoyt and Larry Dobkin are perfectly cast, oozing evil from their very pores. They’re names you should remember if you watch many crime films like this from the 50s and 60s.

LOAN SHARK

   Margia Dean didn’t have a movie career that anyone remembers, but as Ivy, a good-looking waitress in a joint across from the tire factory, she can take a pass with the best of them, with plenty of repartee to go with it. It wasn’t a big part, but she made the most of it.