Karl Benson
Created by L.S. Goldsmith

Dan Duryea plays gum-popping KARL BENSON, a crooked ex-cop reduced to doing repo jobs, divorce frame-ups and assorted other sordid sidelines in Lewis foster's flawed but entertaining 1949 noir, Manhandled.

The flick does have its moments -- Duryea is, as always, compelling to watch, as yet another malicious, bullying villian (with trademark bowtie) and the producers were no doubt hoping to take advantage of Duryea's on-screen rep for slapping women around.

I mean, come on. Manhandled? Could they have been a bit more blatant? (Actually, they could -- the actual tagline boasts of a " 'Lady Killer' who knew how to 'handle' women!")

The low-budget flick also boasts an impressive cast -- Duryea co-stars with Dorothy Lamour, Sterling Hayden, and Irene Hervey, but the head-scratching plot and the so-so direction detract from its potential.

But even with its flaws, it's a fun film to watch. Don't let the cute little bowtie fool ya -- Karl's a scuzzy op not above a little blackmail, see? So when his downstairs neighbour Merle Kramer (Dorothy Lamour) tells him about a wealthy patient at the pscyhiatrist office where she works who's been having recurring nightmares about beating his wife to death -- the wife who, it turns out, WAS beaten to death -- Karl smells a big payoff. Especially when it turns out several valuable jewels that belonged to the wife are also missing.

But there's more -- it turns out the cops and an insurance investigator Joe Cooper (Sterling Hayden) is sniffing around Merle -- something to do with her own shady past,. And Merle's boss, Dr. Redman, is somehow involved in the murder as well. And so, around and around and around they go, with the morally greasy Karl, visions of hot jewels dancing like sugar plums in his head, willing to do almost anything to make the big killing, be it punching Merl around, tossing her off a rooftop, or grinding the good doctor against a wall with his car.

By the way, just for the record, in real life Duryea was supposedly a pussycat.

UNDER OATH

• "With Dan Duryea in the main role of Karl Benson, a crooked private eye, Manhandled might have been a true classic in that series of thrillers dealing with the degraded cop or investigator. As it is, due to the extremely convoluted plot and slack direction, the film lacks suspense, and it never develops the true potential of its characters and locales. However, the opening dream sequence and the scene in which Benson crushes Redman with his car is quite evocative of the noir style and rates a middle of the road place in that genre with two and three quarters stars,"
  -- Bob Porfirio, Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style

SHORT STORY

• "The Man Who Stole A Dream" by L.S. Goldsmith

FILM

• MANHANDLED
  (1949, Paramount Pictures)
  97 minutes
  Black & white
  Tagline: The story of a smiling "Lady Killer" who knew how to "handle" women!
  Based on the short story "The Man Who Stole A Dream" by L.S. Goldsmith
  Screenplay by Whitman Chambers and Lewis R. Foster
  Directed by Lewis R. Foster
  Starring Dorothy Lamour as Merl Kramer
  and Dan Duryea as KARL BENSON
  Also starring Sterling Hayden, Irene Hervey, Philip Reed, Harold Vermilyea, Alan Napier, Art Smith, Irving Bacon, James Edwards
  Produced by William H. Pine and William C. Thomas
  Original Music by Darrell Calker
  Cinematography by Ernest Laszlo

RELATED LINKS

• These Eyes Keep Themselves in Trouble
  Bad, bad eyes...

Report submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.