Wed 6 Aug 2014
DANE CLARK CONFIDENTIAL, PART 1: A Movie Review by Curt Evans: BLACKOUT (1954).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Movie stars & directors , Reviews[16] Comments
BLACKOUT. Hammer Films, UK, 1954. Lippert Pictures, US, 1954. Originally released in the UK as Murder by Proxy. Dane Clark, Belinda Lee, Betty Ann Davies, Eleanor Summerfield, Andrew Osborn. Based on the novel Gold Coast Nocturne by Helen Nielsen. Director: Terence Fisher.
Dane Clark (1912-1998) is one of those actors that you, if you are, as I am, in middle age, have almost assuredly seen on television earlier in your life, even if you don’t match the name with the face. I recall him playing an FBI agent in Season One of Angela Lansbury’s beloved mystery series, Murder She Wrote, the “Watson” in that episode to Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher. I don’t know why I remember this character, but I suppose I have to chalk it up to Clark’s acting skills, having seen some of his other genre film work of late. He’s good!
Dane Clark was known in the 1940s as the “B-list John Garfield,” but I don’t believe this appellation does him justice. (It’s a bit like when the great Ida Lupino is dismissed as the “poor man’s Bette Davis.”) Dane Clark was his own man. Both John Garfield (born Jacob Julius Garfinkle in 1913) and Dane Clark (born Bernard Zanville in 1912) were Jews from New York City, but Clark came of much more comfortable circumstances than Garfield, graduating from Cornell and getting a law degree before ending up in acting (after stints in boxing, baseball, construction, sales and sculptor’s modeling — he had found lawyers weren’t doing too well in the Depression either).
In 1941 Clark married the artist and sculptor Margot Yoder (a distant relative of my family) and the next year appeared in several films (uncredited): The Pride of the Yankees (“Fraternity Boy”); Wake Island (“Sparks”); and, most notably, Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key (“Henry Sloss”).
By the end of World War II Clark was getting bigger roles, including that of the Bohemian artist in the Bette Davis identical twins melodrama A Stolen Life (1946); the escaped convict who has a desperate romance with Ida Lupino in Deep Valley (1947); and, in the Oscar-nominated film Moonrise (1948), the tormented Danny Hawkins, who is in love with gorgeous Gail Russell and has, most inconveniently, killed her fiancee (played, very briefly, by Lloyd Brides). Today Moonrise pops up on lists of greatest noir films though regrettably it’s not available on DVD (you can see on it Amazon instant video, however).
If you look around, you should be able to find on DVD some of Clark’s work as a lead actor in late 1940s and 1950s crime films (when he really came into his own as an actor), including Without Honor (1949), Backfire (1950), Highly Dangerous (1950; screenplay by Eric Ambler), Gunman in the Streets (1950, with Simone Signoret), Never Trust a Gambler (1951), The Gambler and the Lady (1952), Blackout (1954; Murder by Proxy in UK), Paid to Kill (1954; Five Days in UK), Port of Hell (1954), The Toughest Man Alive (1955) and The Man Is Armed (1956).
I’ve recently seen several of the above films, the first being, for the purpose of this review, Blackout.
Blackout, as I have discussed on my own blog, is an English adaptation of Helen Nielsen’s Chicago-set hard-boiled crime novel, Gold Coast Nocturne (1951). Although transferring the setting from Chicago to London is slightly awkward, to be sure, overall I was really rather impressed with this film. It is quite faithful to the novel, even using some of the dialogue.
As the beleaguered hero, Casey Morrow, an American out to solve a murder he wakes up to discover he’s suspected of having committed, Dane Clark is excellent, as are the two lead women, Belinda Lee (sexy blonde heiress Phyllis Brunner) and Eleanor Summerfield (wisecracking artist Maggie Doone). A couple crucial supporting performances could have been stronger, but overall I would quite recommend this film.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Editorial Comment: This review first appeared in slightly different form on Curt’s own blog, The Passing Tramp.
August 6th, 2014 at 1:49 pm
Clark is outstanding in DEEP VALLEY, and HIGHLY DANGEROUS is a great light spy thriller. He probably should have made the transition to television in the late fifties when he was still playing leading roles, but he was still doing good work, mostly in England.
Ironically he is in a film with John Garfield in a fairly substantial role, DESTINATION TOKYO with Cary Grant in the lead (and based on a Steve Fisher novel). Garfield has better billing, but Clark has almost as much screen time.
He was usually a class edition to any television episode, though too often typecast. I always thought he would have made a great Donald Lam myself.
August 6th, 2014 at 2:33 pm
Dane Clark was in/on television as early as 1952. In 1954 he starred in Bold Venture, which had been a radio series with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, playing off the characters they created in To Have and Have Not. Two years later Clark, along with George Brent and Mercedes McCambridge did the interesting hour long series Wire Service. Neither, successful As for Ida Lupino being called by herself as ‘the poor man’s Bette Davis” that was while they were both still at Warners, and it was so as a quick glance at their respective resume’s will confirm. After that time, 1946, she was no longer playing Davis parts. For that matter, neither was Davis.
August 6th, 2014 at 2:54 pm
Thanks Barry, I forgot about BOLD VENTURE entirely and didn’t know about WIRE SERVICE. I still think despite the good films seeing it through on television might have been a better choice than making films in England and Europe that weren’t seen here in many case until the sixties.
Very few American actors survived the trek overseas to return to American film as the stars they once were. The ones that did tended to be English or European in general or such big names that the setback was only temporary.
I know there are exceptions to that and some really good movies, but far fewer than the majority whose careers kept going downhill.
Where possible television was probably the better choice in the long run.
August 6th, 2014 at 3:01 pm
David,
Your observation regarding American stars trekking overseas is a good one They did that because nothing was on the table in Hollywood or New York. These Hammer-Lippert co-productions, in fact any Lippert Production, took talent of the recent past and utilized whatever good will remained — and then disposed of that good will in a series of films that were poorly received, almost all — but not quite, and kept the local British pipeline running with passé Americans and the EADY Plan. So, whether it’s Dane Clark, George Brent, Louis Hayward, Zachary Scott, Wayne Morris or John Ireland, they all came up empty but for the payday.
August 6th, 2014 at 3:06 pm
Clark starred on television in 1952 in a series called Justice. It was based on the Legal Aid Association’s files. I also enjoyed him in the film Action in the North Atlantic which stared Bogart.
August 6th, 2014 at 3:12 pm
JUSTICE is a new one on me, which is kind of surprising, since IMDb says it was on for three years.
As for BOLD VENTURE, Michael Shonk reviewed the series a couple of years ago on this blog. Here’s the link:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=15364
August 6th, 2014 at 3:23 pm
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the link. I had forgotten that Clark played Lt. Tragg in the New Adventures of Perry Mason.
August 6th, 2014 at 3:53 pm
I’ve looked over Dane Clark’s television credits and wish more of those series were available for viewing, looks like some good stuff. I’ve been enjoying viewing the films of his that are available, however.
August 6th, 2014 at 4:29 pm
A little follow up on Dane Clark:
Justice was his first series, 1954. Wire Service his second and Bold Venture at the end of t he decade.
August 6th, 2014 at 5:25 pm
Clark was hyped briefly as “the new Humphrey Bogart” at Warners. There’s a story that during the making of ACTION IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC, Bogie and co-star Raymond Massey convinced him that the studio heads were going to change his name to Jose O’Toole and bill him as “The Irish-South American Sensation!”
August 6th, 2014 at 5:25 pm
By the way, GUNMAN IN THE STREETS is a damfine film.
August 6th, 2014 at 6:33 pm
Dan,
Yes about Gunman In The Streets. No American theatrical release. Too bad.
August 6th, 2014 at 7:01 pm
“Clark was hyped briefly as “the new Humphrey Bogart†at Warners.”
He reminds me more of Bogart than Garfield. Yeah I hope to be reviewing Gunman soon too. Simone Signoret!
August 6th, 2014 at 7:53 pm
In the mid-1940s, Clark starred in a short film, “I Won’t Play,” that won an Academy Award. I first saw it on TCM. It’s quite good, and Janis Paige is in it, too.
Just found out it’s also on YouTube. It’s worth a look if you’re interested in Dane Clark.
February 18th, 2020 at 7:32 pm
I’m trying to verify a memory I have of a TV series in the late 1950s or early 60s in which Dane Clark, I think, was something like a private detective. There was a female character he called “Sailor” and she had short blond hair and wore a top with a sailor collar. She was a barmaid/waitress in a whisky joint that was a hangout for Clark’s character. I can’t remember the name of the show.
Does anyone remember that show?
February 18th, 2020 at 10:17 pm
Linda. You remember quite a bit about that series very well. The show was BOLD VENTURE, and starred Dane Clark as Slate Shannon and Joan Marshall as Sailor Duval (39 episodes, 1958-59). Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall played the two of them on radio.
Here’s a link to an article by Michael Shonk about the series, posted here earlier on this blog:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=15364