The Blue Gardenia (1953)

Sally Ellis: I didn’t like Prebble when he was alive. But now that he’s been murdered,that always makes a man so romantic.

This certainly doesn’t measure up to Lang’s other noir for 1953, The Big Heat.  It’s not bad though.

Norah (Anne Baxter) works as a telephone operator and lives with a couple of her co-workers.  She is engaged to a fellow who is away fighting in Korea and plans to celebrate her birthday at home alone.  Then she gets a Dear Jane letter and falls to pieces.  Almost immediately the phone rings and it is Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr) trying to ask out one of her roommates.  Norah, who is now in no mood to be alone, stands in for the roommate who is out on a date.  Prebble doesn’t mind the switch and sets about getting Norah very drunk on cocktails at the Chinese restaurant he takes her too.  Then he takes her home to his bachelor pad.  She is so drunk she can barely stay conscious.

The next morning she wakes up back home with a terrible hangover.  That’s when she reads about Harry’s murder.  Every clue points directly to her.  She can’t remember a thing. She is so sure she will be apprehended that she decides to entrust her fate to a newspaper man (Richard Conte), who is out for an exclusive on the case.  With Ann Southern as one of the roommates.

This doesn’t have brilliant pacing and is fairly predictable.  It’s entirely watchable, though. Burr is great as always.  Evidently he was one of the nicest guys in Hollywood but during this period he was just brilliant at playing a creep (as here) or a very scary heavy.

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