This stripped-down 67-minute film is a great little crime noir that features some amazing noir photography and outstanding performances from Charles McGraw and William Talman.
Talman is a criminal mastermind out to make a fortune by quickly robbing an armored car. McGraw plays an obsessed cop out to get Talman after he guns down his long-time partner. The two are so good in the film that the other actors in it barely register. The only other notable performance is Douglas Fowley playing a pencil-thin mustached thug who still lusts after his sexy wife that dumped him. (Fowley is not unlike the zoot-suit wearing wolf in that old Warner Bros cartoon whistling at Lauren Bacall.)
The film, unlike the real-life crime it's based on, takes place in Los Angeles. Dave Purvis (Talman) calls the cops every day at the same time reporting a hold up at old Wrigley Field (the one in LA, not Chicago). Every time the prowlers get to the park, Purvis checks his stopwatch and notes the time. He's trying to time out how long it will take the cops to get to the park as part of a plan to rob an armored car (making its last stop there, loaded with cash).
Once he's satisfied with the plan, he recruits his gang. Unlike Terry Leather in The Bank Job, Purvis thinks of himself as a criminal mastermind. He's never been arrested: as he boasts, he's never even had a parking ticket. He keeps no written evidence on any of his plans. He cuts the labels off his suits and doesn't let his fellow criminals write anything down. He wants nothing to be traced back to him after the crime.
He invites his criminal recruits (led by Fowley) to his hotel room. They're easily impressed by the map of the Wrigley Field neighborhood concealed in his window shade. The three men go along with the scheme once they find out that Purvis is involved. Apparently he pulled off a similar heist before, and has quite a reputation among his peers. Little do they realize Purvis is not much smarter than they are. He had no plan once the crime goes sour and his decisions afterwards are all questionable.
Steve Brodie (famous for being beaten up twice by Elvis Presley) and Gene Evans are the other criminals. However, these familiar faces to fans of 40s and 50s film don't make much of an impression here. Blonde bombshell Adele Jergens plays Benny McBride's (Fowley) wife known by her professional dancing name Yvonne LeDoux. She's shacking up with Purvis--but Benny has no idea.
The heist doesn't go as planned. Lieutenant Cordell of the LAPD (McGraw) and his partner are in the neighborhood right when the crime is broadcast on police radios. They arrive to the surprise of Purvis, who shoots Cordell's partner--James Flavin, whom movie buffs will remember as the second mate on the ship that captured King Kong (1933).
After shooting the cop, the four criminals jump in a car in front of Wrigley filed and try to take it on the lam. McBride is shot in the gut but the four still manage to elude cops at road blocks on the lookout for them. Eventually they head for a shack near an oilfield where they'll eventually jump in a boat and make their final getaway. The injured McBride throws a monkey wrench into their plans.
Purvis's gang begins to unravel as distrust and paranoia begins to build. Benny, who knows he's going to die if he doesn't see a doctor, is killed by Purvis after he demands his share of the loot to get medical care. His body and the get-away car are dumped. Purvis quickly gets to work eliminating the other crooks. Gang member Al Mapes (Brodie) gets away and looks up Yvonne at the Burly Q where she works at as a means to find Purvis and get his money taken from him but is trapped. Purvis gets away again.
During an exciting finale, Talman ends up getting killed on the Metropolitan Airport tarmac after kissing the blades of an arriving airplane. The robbery money is blown all over the runway--not unlike the ending of The Killing. McGraw goes to the hospital to visit his second partner--who was also put into harm's way and shot by Purvis. Luckily, this partner survives and they can share a laugh together as the movie comes to its end.
Talman began his screen career as a cold-blooded killer in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949). After Armored Car Robbery, Talman would play several menacing characters in noir including City That Never Sleeps (1953), and the prison-escape films Big House USA and Crashout (both 1955). He's striking screen presence--bulging, lizard-like eyes and high forehead--made him a natural playing heavies. Talman's best role in noir, I think, is the Ida Lupino-directed The Hitch-Hiker (1953) playing killer Emmett Myers. His greatest success, however, would be pairing up with another noted noir villain Raymond Burr in TV's Perry Mason. Talman played district attorney Hamilton Burger, who would battle but ultimately lose every week to Mason for nine seasons.
Alan K. Rode and Eddie Muller have both had much to say about Charles McGraw over the years. In his McGraw biography, Rode summarizes McGraw's character in Armored Car Robbery:
As “Lieutenant Cordell” of L.A.P.D. Robbery-Homicide, Charles McGraw was John Law personified. McGraw, decked out in classic Robbery-Homicide mufti of belted raincoat and pulled-down fedora, is relentless in pursuit of the holdup gang who killed his partner. No punches are pulled as he closes ground on the elusive Talman while inhaling reheated squad room java and snapping off terse Earl Felton dialogue.
Eddie Muller famously notes that McGraw is the only actor who actually looks like an armored car. Muller praise his performance as well and notes that McGraw “took taciturn to tight-lipped extremes.”
Rode also provided details about the battles with the Production Code Adminstration that the film faced. Here are some excerpts from that back-and-forth between RKO Pictures and the Breen Office:
The initially submitted script for Armored Car Robbery raised some moralistic hackles at the Breen office which were retrospectively typical.
Breen urged RKO to ensure that Adele Jergens’ breasts remained appropriately hidden during the burlesque numbers in the film. Any hint that Jergens’ character was a loose woman, i.e. stripper, must be either “eliminated or downplayed” in accordance with the Code.
Breen was also appalled that the audience might conclude that the Jergens character, Yvonne Le Doux was actually having extramarital sex with Bill Talman’s amoral gangster in a motel room. Breen demanded that some of the minimally suggestive dialogue between the two actors during the hotel room sequences be revised to reflect a more exculpatory relationship.
Earl Fenton made some cosmetic changes to the script to allay Breen’s concerns before filming began and the finished product was stamped with the MPAA seal and released.
Director Richard O. Fleischer (son of Popeye creator Max Fleischer) did an excellent job with the compact film. Some consider this to be Fleisher's best work during his years at RKO.
That said, if you watch the film expecting to find realistic criminal crime-solving techniques of the late 1940s--forget about it. The way the LAPD tracks down the money is highly unlikely. Despite this, the movie succeeds because of the heightened emotion and attitude put into it by McGraw, Talman and director Fleischer. Veteran lensman Guy Roe also provides the film with a vivid visual edge, including several evocative night scenes.
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