Main Cast: Charles McGraw, Adele Jergens, William Talman, Douglas Fowley, Steve Brodie
Release Year: 1950
Country: US
Run Time: 68 minutes
Plot
Some auteur critics feel that director Richard O. Fleischer did his best work while laboring in the "B" mills of RKO Radio. Fleischer's minimalist noir exercise Armored Car Robbery stars William Talman as the chief crook and Charles McGraw as the detective dogging his trail. A shade smarter than his gang underlings, Talman manages to elude capture, and even travels freely about in the company of his flashy lady friend Adele Jergens. But McGraw's persistence eventually pays off. Don McGuire, later a prolific TV producer/director, provides a welcome touch of comic relief as McGraw's rookie-cop assistant. A powerful (and slightly gruesome) climax caps this low-budget gem. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Touching on both the film noir style of the 1940s and the "just the facts, ma'am" approach popular in the early television era, and incorporating both shadowy alleys and bright, almost flat sunlit street scenes, Richard Fleischer's plebeian, no-nonsense Armored Car Robbery remains the quintessential low-budget heist melodrama. Starring tight-lipped Charles McGraw as the tough, unyielding police detective, the potboiler also benefited from a downright vicious performance by an unredeemable William Talman as the brains behind the ill-fated caper, as well as the presence of luscious B-movie icon Adele Jergens as one of those hardboiled dames seemingly born to destroy gullible dime-store gangsters like Benny McBride (Douglas Fowley). "What is a dame like her doing with a two-bit mug like Benny?" McGraw's junior colleague Don McGuire asks at one point. Filmed at Los Angeles' Wrigley Field and amid the spooky oil derrick landscape of Long Beach, CA, Armored Car Robbery is almost shocking in its in-your-face violence with a climax that is downright gruesome. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
Ralph Berger - Art Director, Albert S. D'Agostino - Art Director, Richard Fleischer - Director, Desmond Marquette - Editor, Constantin Bakaleinikoff - Musical Direction/Supervision, Mel Burns - Makeup, Mel Berns - Makeup, Guy Roe - Cinematographer, Herman Schlom - Producer, James Altwies - Set Designer, Darrell Silvera - Set Designer, Clem Portman - Sound/Sound Designer, Frank Sarver - Sound/Sound Designer, Robert Angus - Screen Story, Gerald Drayson Adams - Screenwriter, Earl Felton - Screenwriter, Robert Leeds - Short Story Author
Armored Car Robbery is one of the first of the heist movies, a sub-genre of the crime film. Fleisher would later go on to big budget films, but he may be best remembered for this and The Narrow Margin from his time working for RKO Radio Pictures.
The film tells the story of a well-planned robbery of an armored car when it stops at a sports stadium. Yet, the heist goes awry, and a tough Los Angeles cop named Cordell (Charles McGraw) is in hot pursuit.
Mastermind Dave Purvis (William Talman) is crook who plans a scheme to rob an armored car on its last pickup of the day. He recruits Benny McBride to his gang of thieves.
Benny needs money because Yvonne (Adele Jergens) his striptease wife is stepping out on him. The man she was two-timing Benny with was Purvis himself.
The robbery itself, at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, starts off as planned then goes badly when a passing patrol car interrupts the heist. Purvis shoots and kills one of the cops as they make their getaway. Lt. Jim Cordell (Charles McGraw), the dead cop's partner, takes it upon himself to bring in his partner's killer and throws himself into the case with a new rookie partner.
Meanwhile, Purvis's gang begins to unravel as distrust and paranoia begins to build. Benny, wounded by police, is later killed by Purvis as he demands his share to get medical care. Gang member Al Mapes (Steve Brodie) gets away and looks up Yvonne at the Burly Q where she works at as a means to find Purvis but is trapped. The police ultimately corner Purvis and Yvonne as they plan a getaway at the Los Angeles airport.
The staff at Variety magazine gave the film a mixed review, calling it an okay film, and wrote, "RKO has concocted an okay cops-and-robbers melodrama ...[and] McGraw, Don McGuire and James Flavin, as cops, do very well. Talman and his cohorts put plenty of color into their heavy assignments. Adele Jergens attracts as a stripteaser and Talman's romantic interest."[2]
Time Out Film Guide review lauded the film and called the it "a model of its time." They wrote, "Almost documentary in its account of the heist that goes wrong and the police procedures that are set in motion, making excellent use of LA locations, it relies on superb high contrast lighting to meld reality into the characteristic noir look."[3]
Noir analysis
According to American studies and film professor, Bob Porfirio, Armored Car Robbery possesses the "film noir visual style" of the many RKO crime and suspense films of the early 1950s, such as: high-contrast photography integrating studio and location shooting, expressionistic lighting, deep focus, and haunting music (by Roy Webb).[4]
Film critic Roger Fristoe, believes director Richard Fleischer pushed the boundaries of the Motion Picture Production Code. One edict was that "Methods of crime shall not be explicitly presented or detailed in a manner calculated to...inspire imitation." Armored Car Robbery, however, had a blunt title, explicit violence and a detailed account of the planning and execution of the crime. As such, even though the criminals are caught, Armored Car Robbery tested the waters and helped set the stage for other film noirs and heist films like: The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and The Killing (1956) which shares some similarities.[5]
^Time Out film guide, review, 2008. Last accessed: January 26, 2008.
^Silver, Alain, and Elizabeth Ward, eds. Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, film noir analysis by Bob Porfiero, page 13, 3rd edition, 1992. Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press. ISBN 0-87951-479-5.
