Two-fisted director Phil Karlson made some of the roughest, toughest crime films of the forties and fifties, and stands among the finest directors of gritty, violent, realistic, noir cinema during his thirty-five year career.
Born in Chicago as Philip Karlstein, he moved to Loyola Marymount University in California in search of a law degree, and landed a job at Universal Pictures . He worked his way up from prop man to assistant director, and eventually to director at “Poverty Row” studios that cranked out cheapie movies like hamburgers during the dawn of the Hollywood sound era. His first film was a low-budget comedy for Monogram called A WAVE, A WAC, AND A MARINE. Released by Monogram, A WAVE, a WAC and a Marine was packaged by Biltmore Productions, a partnership consisting of Abbott and Costello’s agent Eddie Sherman and Lou Costello’s father Sebastian Cristillo. Though Elyse Knox, Sally Eilers and Ann Gillis head the cast, the film is a showcase for nightclub comedian Henny Youngman, here cast as a Hollywood agent. Sent out by his studio to sign up a pair of gorgeous Broadway stars (Ramsay Ames and Marjorie Woodworth) Henny signs the stars’ understudies (Knox and Gillis) by mistake. Fortunately, the “substitutes” are every bit as talented as the real stars, and as a result are contracted to appear in a big-budget film, cast as the aforementioned WAVE and WAC. Henny Youngman’s delivery was as sharp then as it is now, but he was undermined by substandard sound recording. More impressive was the first-time direction of former Universal production assistant Philip Karlstein, who went on to auteur fame as Phil Karlson (1944). Karlstein was finally a director.
After his first few films, he changed his name to Karlson and settled down at his new job, making hard-edged movies, quickly and cheaply. In 1945, he cranked out three films. The following year, he shot seven, most of which were crime pictures (including one Charlie Chan mystery and two Lamont Cranston “Shadow” adventures). For the rest of the forties, he did it all: crime flicks, comedies, romances, westerns, whatever.
1952 was a memorable year. He directed KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL, a brass-knuckle heist film starring John Payne as an ex-con who infiltrates an armored car gang and has to contend with Grade-A thugs like Preston Foster, Lee Van Cleef, Jack Elam and Neville Brand. This was the first of three collaborations between Payne and Karlson, and arguably the best. The picture was lensed by seasoned noir cinematographer George Diskant who had done superb work on a series of films noir including THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1949), PORT OF NEW YORK (1949), THE RACKET (1951), ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1952), THE NARROW MARGIN (1952), BEWARE, MY LOVELY (1952).
During that same year, Karlson directed SCANDAL SHEET. Based on the novel The Dark Page by revered noir directorSamuel Fuller- who himself was a newspaper reporter before his career in Hollywood. This film was made memorable by the great Broderick Crawford, who turned in an excellent portrayal of the tough, amoral, self-centered newspaper publisher. An ambitious editor accidentally kills his ex-wife, then finds his ace reporters investigating the story. Even though we know from the start who the murderer is, the progression of the plot, and especially Crawford’s gritty execution of the murderer role, kept the audience in suspense. Critic Dennis Schwartz called SCANDAL SHEET a “hard-hitting film noir thriller” and especially liked the cinematography. He wrote, “Burnett Guffey’s splashy black-and-white photography is filled with New York City atmosphere and the whirlwind energy buzzing around a press room.”
Next came Karlson’s key work, 99 RIVER STREET. John Payne stars as Ernie Driscoll, an ex-boxer turned taxi driver who spends a long, horrendous night of often absurd complications when his wife (the delicious Peggy Castle) leaves him for a smarmy jewelry thief. Film Critic Dave Kehr calls 99 RIVER STREET “an example of the kind of humble brilliance that often emerged from the American genre cinema.”99 RIVER STREETkeeps adding twists and turns to its plot until the viewer is not sure who’s who and what’s what. Of course, no self-respecting noir would be complete without the participation of some great character actors, including Brad Dexter, Frank Faylen, Peggy Castle, Jay Adler, Jack Lambert, Glenn Langan, Eddy Waller, Ian Wolfe, Peter Leeds and Gene Reynolds.
Ernie Driscoll is a noir hero you can’t help but root for; it’s like his world has caved in on him all at once, and even though he has some anger management issues – he’s a likeable, straight-arrow guy. This is a film, about grit, determination, integrity and retribution. A low-budget masterpiece, and one of the best film noirs of the Golden Age.
Karlson continued cranking out pulp movies throughout the fifties: TIGHT SPOT with Ginger Rogers and Brian Keith; HELL’S ISLAND; a tepid noirish melodrama that unravels scene by scene like a cheap suit; 5 AGAINST THE HOUSE, a disappointing
heist film – generally unwatchable except for the presence of scrumptous Kim Novak; THE BROTHERS RICO, with Richard Conte. The Rico brothers are mobsters in the employ of syndicate head Sid Kubick. Richard Conte plays the one Rico brother who has forsaken crime. But the other Ricos (James Darren and Paul Picerni) haven’t yet seen the light, Conte gets word that his brothers have been marked for murder, and tries to warn them. Perhaps his best of this period was THE PHENIX CITY STORY, a seedy, real-life story about corruption in the notorious town of Phenix City, Alabama.
In the 1960s he directed KID GALAHAD (1962) with Elvis Presley and two Matt Helm spy films starring Dean Martin- THE SILENCERS (1966) and THE WRECKING CREW (1969). He finally struck gold, in 1973, with WALKING TALL, a hillbilly neo-noir about a redneck lawman (Joe Don Baker) in the most corrupt county in Tennessee. It was a major domestic and international hit that also made him a fortune, due to the fact that he owned a large percentage of it.
Ex-boxer Ernie Driscoll (John Payne) could have been a contendah—in his final bout, he was seconds away from becoming the champ—but those glory days are behind him now; he’s been banned from fighting, and also suffers from an injured optic nerve that could result in permanent blindness if he ever thinks about setting foot in the ring again. He now drives a hack for a living, and is married to Pauline (Peggie Castle), a woman working in a florist shop and who married Ernie thinking he would be her ticket to riding the Gravy Train Express. Needless to say she isn’t about to let him live that down.
What Ernie doesn’t know, however, is that Pauline—fair-weather bitch that she is—is involved with another man, a scumbag criminal named Victor Rawlins (Brad Dexter) who used Pauline to obtain a cachet of diamonds ($50,000) from a wealthy—and now quite dead—“Dutchman.” Ernie discovers Pauline’s infidelity when he runs into the two of them outside her shop, and becomes enraged to the point where…well, let’s just say he’s not ready to work and play well with others. After blowing off to both his dispatcher pal Stan Hogan (Frank Faylen) and actress Linda James (Evelyn Keyes), Ernie arranges a “time out” for himself while he thinks over what course of action to take.
Rawlins had a deal with a criminal mastermind answering to “Christopher” (Jay Adler) to fence the diamonds, but Christopher backs out of the deal when he learns that Pauline is involved—Christopher, it would seem, doesn’t “get involved in deals with women.” Rawlins is determined to get the $50,000—and the method he uses to obtain the fee soon entangles both Ernie and Linda in a not-so-easily-escaped-from web.
99 River Street (1953) is a first-rate film noir from the stables of director Phil Karlson, and I was sorry to see it didn’t make the cut to be viewed a few Fridays back when TCM offered up a mini-tribute to the man responsible for cranking out some grade-A noir. Based on a story by George Zuckerman, the screenplay (by Robert Smith, with uncredited contributions from both Karlson and star John Payne takes a few twists and turns that at first glance seem unnecessary (there’s a great sequence that involves Keyes’ character that will definitely have you wondering “Where the hell is this going?”) but on hindsight are integral to the film’s plot. Payne, who you may remember as the leading man in many of 20th Century-Fox’s musicals in the 1940s (Tin Pan Alley [1940], Sun Valley Serenade [1941])—not to mention the wily attorney who helps Kris Kringle beat an insanity rap in Miracle on 34th Street (1947)—took a career path similar to that of Dick Powell’s beginning in the 1950s and recast himself as a tough guy in westerns and noirs. He was a real favorite of director Karlson’s; the two men first teamed up in 1952 for Kansas City Confidential and after making Street, reunited for Hell’s Island in 1955. Of the three films, I think Confidential is the best—though Street contains Payne’s strongest characterization; at first glance, you barely recognize him since he’s watching old footage of his last bout and his face has been lacerated into a bloody pulp. Ernie Driscoll is a noir hero you can’t help but root for; it’s like his world has caved in on him all at once - and even though he has some anger management issues (well, he is an ex-boxer—you can’t expect him to be a creampuff) he’s a likeable, straight-arrow guy. (Payne’s tough-guy standing would later serve him well in the underrated oater Silver Lode[1954] and The Boss [1956]; he would later achieve some cathode ray tube success as the star of The Restless Gun [1957-59], a TV Western based on the James Stewart radio western The Six Shooter [1953-54].)
Evelyn Keyes is a wonderful partner for Payne’s hard-luck Driscoll; as Linda James she steals a lot of the scenes in this film (her antics in the waterfront bar whose locale is the film’s title are fantastic) with just a small dash of humor. You just know the two of them will end up together before the closing credits roll because she proves to be the most loyal of Ernie’s friends, “staying in his corner” even at great risk to her life. Towards the end of the movie, she volunteers to coax Rollins out of the bar he’s holed up in by trying to seduce him, and gets a little batting cage practice by seductively dancing with one of the dive’s patrons (Dick Rich). Their tango is going well until the man’s better half (TDOY fave Claire Carleton!) returns from her trip to the powder room, prompting this nice exchange:
LINDA: Girlfriend?
MAN (gulping hard): Wife.
LINDA: Goodbye now…
And of course, no self-respecting noir would be complete without the participation of some great character actors, including Dexter, Faylen, Castle, Adler, Jack Lambert, Glenn Langan, Eddy Waller, Ian Wolfe, Peter Leeds and Gene Reynolds. (You’ll also spot OTR vet/Baldwin sister Helen Kleeb as the secretary in the theatre scene.) Sadly, 99 River Street is not available on DVD (a major crime in itself) but can be viewed—with limited commercial interruption—here at Hulu (it’s also available at Fancast); a generous doff of the TDOY derby to Raquelle at Out of the Past ~ A Classic Film Blog for the heads-up.VISIT: THRILLING DAYS OF YESTERYEAR Blogspot
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Born in Chicago as Philip Karlstein, he moved to Loyola Marymount University in California in search of a law degree, and landed a job at Universal Pictures . He worked his way up from prop man to assistant director, and eventually to director at “Poverty Row” studios that cranked out cheapie movies like hamburgers during the dawn of the Hollywood sound era. His first film was a low-budget comedy for Monogram called A WAVE, A WAC, AND A MARINE. Released by Monogram, A WAVE, a WAC and a Marine was packaged by Biltmore Productions, a partnership consisting of Abbott and Costello’s agent Eddie Sherman and Lou Costello’s father Sebastian Cristillo. Though Elyse Knox, Sally Eilers and Ann Gillis head the cast, the film is a showcase for nightclub comedian Henny Youngman, here cast as a Hollywood agent. Sent out by his studio to sign up a pair of gorgeous Broadway stars (Ramsay Ames and Marjorie Woodworth) Henny signs the stars’ understudies (Knox and Gillis) by mistake.
Fortunately, the “substitutes” are every bit as talented as the real stars, and as a result are contracted to appear in a big-budget film, cast as the aforementioned WAVE and WAC. Henny Youngman’s delivery was as sharp then as it is now, but he was undermined by substandard sound recording. More impressive was the first-time direction of former Universal production assistant Philip Karlstein, who went on to auteur fame as Phil Karlson (1944). Karlstein was finally a director.
Based on the novel The Dark Page by revered noir director Samuel Fuller - who himself was a newspaper reporter before his career in Hollywood. This film was made memorable by the great Broderick Crawford, who turned in an excellent portrayal of the tough, amoral, self-centered newspaper publisher. An ambitious editor accidentally kills his ex-wife, then finds his ace reporters investigating the story. Even though we know from the start who the murderer is, the progression of the plot, and especially Crawford’s gritty execution of the murderer role, kept the audience in suspense. Critic Dennis Schwartz called SCANDAL SHEET a “hard-hitting film noir thriller” and especially liked the cinematography. He wrote, “Burnett Guffey’s splashy black-and-white photography is filled with New York City atmosphere and the whirlwind energy buzzing around a press room.”
Next came Karlson’s key work, 99 RIVER STREET. John Payne stars as Ernie Driscoll, an ex-boxer turned taxi driver who spends a long, horrendous night of often absurd complications when his wife (the delicious Peggy Castle) leaves him for a smarmy jewelry thief. Film Critic Dave Kehr calls 99 RIVER STREET “an example of the kind of humble brilliance that often emerged from the American genre cinema.” 99 RIVER STREET keeps adding twists and turns to its plot until the viewer is not sure who’s who and what’s what. 
Of course, no self-respecting noir would be complete without the participation of some great character actors, including Brad Dexter, Frank Faylen, Peggy Castle, Jay Adler, Jack Lambert, Glenn Langan, Eddy Waller, Ian Wolfe, Peter Leeds and Gene Reynolds.
Ernie Driscoll is a noir hero you can’t help but root for; it’s like his world has caved in on him all at once - and even though he has some anger management issues (well, he is an ex-boxer—you can’t expect him to be a creampuff) he’s a likeable, straight-arrow guy. (Payne’s tough-guy standing would later serve him well in the underrated oater Silver Lode[1954] and The Boss [1956]; he would later achieve some cathode ray tube success as the star of The Restless Gun [1957-59], a TV Western based on the James Stewart radio western The Six Shooter [1953-54].)
