Dangerous Crossing
Directed by Joseph M. Newman
Written by Leo Townsend from a radio play by John Dixon Carr
1953/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box] This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last. — Oscar Wilde[/box]
This is basically The Lady Vanishes with a sex change on the high seas. Sadly, Joseph M. Newman is no Alfred Hitchcock. Not terrible though.
Ruth Stanton Bowman (Jeanne Crain) boards an ocean liner with her husband of a few hours for their honeymoon cruise to Europe. They get settled in their cabin and then her husband asks her to wait in the bar while he sees the purser about something. This is the last she sees of him. After awhile she starts looking for him only to discover no one will admit to seeing him board and the cabin they were in is now bare, the contents now being in another room.
After investigation fails to turn up any evidence of a husband, the captain assigns the ship’s doctor Paul Manning (Michael Rennie) to look after the now hysterical woman. The search continues as Ruth begins to believe that her husband is on the boat and in terrible danger.
This movie is basically on one note throughout. Fortunately, it is only 75 minutes long and the production values and acting are pretty good. A lot of the sets were left over from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Trailer
I’ve never seen this, but I’ve gotten kind of curious about Jeanne Crain over the last few years, so I’ll keep my eyes open to see if this plays on TCM.
About two years ago, I watched the last half of Pinky on TCM and I really enjoyed it. I’ve been wanting to see the whole thing. She pops up every once in a while. I thought she was really good in A Letter to Three Wives (but that’s just an all-around great movie). And I saw Leave Her to Heaven a week or so back and she did a pretty good job, but you’d scarcely notice because that’s Gene Tierney’s movie.
That reminds me: I think she’s in People Will Talk which is on Netflix Streaming and I’ve been meaning to watch it.
I highly recommend People Will Talk. I went into it thinking it might be terrible based on the plot outline but I really enjoyed it. Interesting that it made it past the Code! If you can overlook the horrible miscasting, I think Pinky might be Crain’s best performance.