''Walk a Crooked Mile'' is a 1948 American

anti-communist Anti-communism is Political movement, political and Ideology, ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, w ...

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

crime film Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detection. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine ...

, directed by Gordon Douglas, starring Dennis O'Keefe and Louis Hayward.

Plot

Soon after solid leads come to light about a Communist spy ring infiltrating the Lakeview Laboratory of Nuclear Physics, a southern California atomic research center, Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Dan O'Hara (Dennis O'Keefe) teams up with Scotland Yard detective Philip Grayson (Louis Hayward) to hunt down the perpetrators responsible for the leak, and at least one of the scientists at the nuclear lab is suspected to be involved in the clandestine, espionage operation.

Cast

* Louis Hayward as Philip 'Scotty' Grayson * Dennis O'Keefe as Daniel F. O'Hara *

Louise Allbritton Louise Allbritton (July 3, 1920 – February 16, 1979) was an American film and stage actress born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Her name was sometimes seen as Louise Albritton. She played in such films as ''Pittsburgh'' (1942), '' Who Done It?'' ...

as Dr. Toni Neva *

Carl Esmond Carl Esmond (born Karl Simon; June 14, 1902– December 4, 2004) was an Austrian-born American film and stage actor, born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Although his age was given as 33 in the passenger list when he arrived in the USA in January 19 ...

as Dr. Ritter von Stolb * Onslow Stevens as Igor Braun *

Raymond Burr Raymond William Stacy Burr (May 21, 1917September 12, 1993) was a Canadian actor known for his lengthy Hollywood film career and his title roles in television dramas ''Perry Mason'' and '' Ironside''. Burr's early acting career included roles ...

as Krebs * Art Baker as Dr. Frederick Townsend * Lowell Gilmore as Dr. William Forrest * Philip Van Zandt as Anton Radchek * Charles Evans as Dr. Homer Allen * Frank Ferguson as Carl Bemish * Reed Hadley as Narrator

Production

The film was one of the first

movies, and was made specifically to exploit the new anti-communist sentiment in the country after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Producer Edward Smalls hoped to repeat the success he recently had with the films noir '' T-Men'' and ''Raw Deal''. It was director Gordon Douglas' first major production; he had been making

B movie A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature ...

s for

MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...

. The original title was ''Face of Treason'', which was changed to ''FBI vs Scotland Yard''.

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...

director

J. Edgar Hoover John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation ...

requested it be renamed again, to ''FBI Meets Scotland Yard'', but Small eschewed any collaboration with the agency, as he had discovered how controlling Hoover was when the FBI was involved in a cinematic project. Hoover was involved with a big hit, 1945's ''

The House on 92nd Street ''The House on 92nd Street'' is a 1945 black-and-white American spy film directed by Henry Hathaway. The movie, shot mostly in New York City, was released shortly after the end of World War II. ''The House on 92nd Street'' was made with the full c ...

'', a movie about the FBI's pursuit and conquest of domestic

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

that showcased the agency's methods and skills. By 1948, the

House Un-American Activities Committee The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...

hearings about

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

influence on the country were underway, and the FBI wanted a movie about this hot new topic, but Small refused to let Hoover co-produce the movie. Small also refused to grant the FBI power to approve the screenplay, so Hoover insisted all traces of the agency be removed from the film. Small refused once again; he held that fictional treatment of a public agency was legitimate. The only concession Small made was regarding the title, consequently ''The New York Times'' published a letter from Hoover disavowing any connection to the film and stating that he had not sanctioned it. Exteriors are mostly from

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

but the film starts with exteriors from Brand Boulevard,

Glendale, California Glendale is a city in the San Fernando Valley and Verdugo Mountains regions of Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, California, United States. At the 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. Census the population was 196,543, up from ...

Reception

When the film was released, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' film critic, Bosley Crowther, while giving the film mixed review, wrote well of the screenplay, "No use to speak of the action or the acting. It's strictly routine. But the plot is deliberately sensational." The staff at '' Variety'' gave the film a favorable review, writing, "Action swings to San Francisco and back to the southland, punching hard all the time under the knowledgeable direction of Gordon Douglas. On-the-site filming of locales adds authenticity. George Bruce has loaded his script with nifty twists that add air of reality to the meller doings in the Bertram Millhauser story. Dialog is good and situations believably developed, even the highly contrived melodramatic finale. Documentary flavor is forwarded by Reed Hadley's credible narration chore." ''Variety''
film review. September 2, 1949. Last accessed: February 27, 2011.

References

External links

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Walk A Crooked Mile 1948 films 1940s thriller films American anti-communist propaganda films American thriller films American spy films 1940s English-language films American black-and-white films Cold War spy films Film noir Columbia Pictures films Films shot in San Francisco Films produced by Edward Small 1948 drama films Films scored by Paul Sawtell Films directed by Gordon Douglas 1940s American films