Noir Nook: YouTube Bs – Highway Dragnet (1954)

Noir Nook: YouTube Bs – Highway trawl (1954)

YouTube is a treasure trove for film noir classics – you can find treasures such as free on it Scarlet Road (1945), The strange love of Martha Ivers (1946), House of Strangers (1949), Kansas City confidential (1952) and many other major studio releases from this period.

However, as I scrolled through the seemingly endless range of noir on YouTube, I noticed that there are far more obscure ‘B’ images than features that most noir fans are familiar with. I usually give these films a “go by” (like Joe Gillis Twilight Boulevard would say) but lately my curiosity has gotten the upper hand. It can’t all be clinker, I thought. So I decided to find out.

This month’s Noir Nook is the first in a series of “YouTube Bs” – low-budget, little-known features from the film noir era that are well worth your time. My opening feature is Highway trawl (1954) with Richard Conte, Joan Bennett and Wanda Hendrix.

The film, released by Allied Artists, opens at night in Las Vegas – it’s fascinating to see all the old casinos (at least for me – I LOVE Vegas), most of which are no longer open. The camera takes us into one of them where we see Jim Henry (Conte), a recently discharged Marine, lose a few coins in a slot machine and then sit at the bar next to a rather drunk blonde. Her name is Terry Smith and she is an ex-fashion model – her picture is on the bar wall and Jim makes the mistake of telling her how beautiful she was “back then”. Terry is offended and a fairly public brouhaha ensues that ends when Terry plants a big, wet one on Jim and we fade away. To. Black.

Next we see Jim hitchhiking the highway the next morning when he is caught at gunpoint by the local police. It turns out that Terry was murdered – strangled with some sort of belt – and Jim is hooked for the murder. He loudly protests his innocence, but Lt. Las Vegas Police Department Joe White Eagle (Reed Hadley) doesn’t believe him. Especially when he finds a gun in Jim’s suitcase and a torn and bloody shirt, Jim’s bracelet under the dead woman’s body and an alibi that doesn’t come open. The lieutenant and his men prepare to arrest Jim, but Jim doesn’t have it, and in one of the coolest moves I’ve seen in a long time, he kicks the lieutenant in the face, removes the guns from the men. and escapes in a police car.

When Jim spies on two women on the freeway with a stalled car, he finds a place to take off his naval uniform and get rid of his ID, then joins the women to offer his help. Once the car is fixed, Jim ends up behind the wheel of the car and helps the women – professional photographer Mrs. Cummings (Bennett) and her model Susan Wilton (Hendrix) – drive to their next job. This prepares the rest of the movie as Jim tries to evade the police hunt and we (and the women) try to find out if he’s guilty or innocent.

I have to admit that when I saw the cast of this film I had pretty high hopes – Richard Conte is one of my favorite noir actors, and Joan Bennett is always a welcome sight. And I was not disappointed. It was no Double compensationbut it piqued my interest from the very first scene, and director Nathan Juran kept things going at a steady pace. There’s no dull moment in this 71-minute feature, although there were a number of unintentionally humorous moments that were meant to add tension but always came with some sort of misdirection or a moment of time. But that also adds to the bizarre charm of the film for me.

Grab some popcorn, turn on YouTube, and see what you think. And in the meantime, enjoy a few little bits about the cast and crew of the film:

• The director was Nathan Juran. You may never have heard of him, but you have certainly heard of two films he directed in 1958: Attack of the 50-foot woman and The 7th journey from Sindbad. He also won an Oscar for Art Direction for How green was my valley (1941).
• House Peters, Jr. (whom I first noticed because of its unusual name) played a small role as a state patrol officer. Peters’ main claim to fame is that he served as the face and body of Mr. Clean in the commercials for the Procter and Gamble cleansing product.
• Lt. White Eagle (I suppose he should be an Indian?) Was played by Reed Hadley. If you don’t realize that his face is unknown, his voice may be known – he has served as the narrator for numerous noirs and other films, including The house on 92nd Street (1945), T-men (1947), He went at night (1948), and Canon city (1948).
• Terry Smith was played by Mary Beth Hughes, the star of one of my favorites Mystery Science Theater 3000 Episodes, I blame my parents (1944), as well as one of my favorite obscure noirs, The great Flamarion (1945). Hughes quit acting in the early 1960s and worked as a receptionist in a plastic surgeon’s office. In later years she also worked as a telephone seller and opened her own beauty salon.
• Iris Adrian, who specialized in such roles, played a small role as a cheeky waitress. You can also see her in films like the lead actor Barbara Stanwyck Lady of Burlesque (1943) and Go west (1940) with the Marx Brothers, as well as numerous Disney films later in her career, including That damn cat! (1965), The love beetle (1968), The Shaggy DA (1976) and Crazy Friday (1976). She died in 1994 at the age of 82 from injuries sustained in an earthquake in Northridge, California.
• The film was co-produced and based on a story by Roger Corman, who made a name for himself as a producer of more than 500 films. As of this writing, he’s still working on a new set to be released later this year.
• You may know Wanda Hendrix from her prominent role in 1947 Noir Ride the pink horse. She was married to war hero forest star Audie Murphy, but the union was short-lived and was reportedly plagued by Murphy’s combat-related paranoia and violence. Hendrix left Murphy in less than a year and later married the actor’s brother Robert Stack. She died of double pneumonia at the age of 52.
• Two actors who enjoyed their respective heydays a decade earlier starred in small roles – Frank Jenks and Murray Alper. Jenks is best remembered for his role as a quick-talking reporter His girl Friday (1940) and Alper are in classics like The Maltese falcon (1941), saboteur (1942), and They were expendable (1945).

When you get the chance to watch Highway trawl, I hope you will come back and share your thoughts. And stay tuned for more YouTube Bs!

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– Karen Burroughs Hannsberry for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Karen’s Noir Nook articles here.

Karen Burroughs Hannsberry is the author of the Shadows and Satin blog, which focuses on films and performers from the Film Noir and Pre-Code era, and the Editor-in-Chief of The dark side, a bimonthly newsletter all about film noir. Karen is also the author of two books on film noir – Femme Noir: The Bad Girls of the Film and Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir. You can follow Karen on Twitter below @TheDarkPages.
If you want to learn more about Karen’s books, you can read more about them here on Amazon: