Crime Wave (1954 film)

Crime Wave
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	André De Toth
Produced by	Bryan Foy
Written by	Bernard Gordon Crane Wilbur Richard Wormser
Starring	Sterling Hayden Gene Nelson Phyllis Kirk
Music by	David Buttolph
Cinematography	Bert Glennon
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	January 12, 1954 (1954-01-12)
Running time	73 minutes
Language	English

Crime Wave (also known as The City is Dark) is a 1954 film noir, directed by André De Toth. It was adapted from a short story which originally appeared in The Saturday Evening Post - Criminal Mark by John and Ward Hawkins.

Plot

'Doc' Penny (Ted de Corsia) and his gang rob a gasoline station and in the process a police officer is killed and one of the gang members is wounded. The wounded thug imposes himself on Steve Lacey (Gene Nelson), an ex-con trying to start a new life, and demands he call a disreputable doctor for help. The doctor arrives, but too late. The gang member is dead. After his death, Lacey calls his parole officer who involves a hard-nosed cop, Detective Lieutenant Sims (Sterling Hayden), who doesn't think he can reform.

Later, the remaining gang members show up at Lacey's apartment. Fearing for his wife's (Phyllis Kirk) safety, he decides to let the men stay. Subsequently, Penny forces Lacey to rob a bank with them, but Lacey alerts the police (by planting a note in his medicine cabinet) who staff the entire bank with police officers and ambush the robbers. In the end, most of the gang is killed, but Lacey and his wife are safe.

Main cast

• Sterling Hayden as Detective Lieutenant Sims
• Gene Nelson as Steve Lacey
• Phyllis Kirk as Ellen Lacey
• Ted de Corsia as 'Doc' Penny
• Charles Bronson as Ben Hastings (credited as Charles Buchinsky onscreen)
• Timothy Carey as Johnny Haslett

Production notes

Location shooting at downtown Los Angeles' Wall Street in Crime Wave.

• Much of the film was shot on location in Los Angeles and in nearby Burbank and Glendale. At least one 1952 location, Sawyer's Pet Hospital at the corner of San Fernando Road and Alma Street in Glendale, is still standing and still a pet hospital, albeit with a different name. Several locations seen onscreen, like the Bank of America on the southwest corner of Brand Boulevard and Broadway in Glendale (where the film's big robbery attempt takes place), as well as the distinctive dental building across Brand Boulevard, have been torn down and replaced. The final chase scene from the bank in Glendale to Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles, though edited, follows the actual route, including Brand Boulevard and the Glendale Boulevard fork on the Hyperion Viaduct, until Steve Lacey reaches the house (possibly on Maple Street, just east of Los Angeles Street in the Chinatown district) where the crazed Johnny Haslett is holding Lacey's wife. The gas station in the film's opening scene was on Wall Street just south of East 3rd Street, near Boyd Street, but has since been demolished. Other specific downtown Los Angeles locations include Los Angeles Union Station and the L.A. City Hall Building (including interiors of the Homicide Bureau). The final scene, where Lt. Sims sends Steve and Ellen home, was shot on the 200 block of North Main Street, with Sterling Hayden leaning against the side of the City Hall Building.
• This film's cinematography may have influenced Robert Aldrich to shoot Kiss Me Deadly on location all over L.A. in 1954.^{[citation needed]} It certainly had an effect on Stanley Kubrick, who hired Hayden, Carey and de Corsia for The Killing and used locations to capture the same realism.^{[citation needed]}
• Shooting completed December 3, 1952, but the film was not released until 1954.^[1]
• Besides The City is Dark, another working title for this film was Don't Cry Baby.

External links

• Crime Wave at the Internet Movie Database

Glendale On Film: Crime Wave at Tropico Station: The Glendale Blog

References

1. ^ Blake Lucas, Crime Wave, in Silver, A., Ward, Elizabeth (1992), 67, Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, The Overlook Press, Woodstock, New York ISBN 0-87951-479-5