Customer Reviews

Deadline at Dawn [VHS]

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Deadline at Dawn is a tight mystery thriller about the last seven hours of a Sailor's shore leave. The sailor is slipped a "Mickey Finn," and awakes to find the gal he was out with during the evening, dead on the floor. Believing he has killed her, is persuaded by a Cab driver, played by Paul Lucus, and Dancer, played by Susan Hayward, to find the real killer. Clifford Odett's wrote the script for this RKO gem.

"Deadline at Dawn" is a murder drama made in 1946, at the peak of the classic noir cycle, but it's more a straightforward murder mystery than film noir. Alex Winkley (Bill Williams) is an ingenuous sailor on leave in New York when he discovers that he has a wad of money in his possession that isn't his. He thinks he must have taken it from a woman he met earlier that night, Edna Bartelli (Lola Lane), as compensation for fixing a radio. But, in a drunken haze, he took all her money. With only 4 hours left before he has to catch a bus to Norfolk, Alex asks a cynical dance hall girl named June Goth (Susan Hayward) to help him return it. Feeling that's he's a helpless lad on his own, June agrees, but they find Edna has been strangled to death in her apartment. Alex fears he will be accused of murder, so he and June set out to solve the crime before morning.

Clifford Odets wrote this screenplay from a novel by Cornell Woolrich (as William Irish). It's populated with Woolrich's signature working class characters and oddballs, like the admirer from the dance hall who stalks June, a man whose pet is on death's door after swallowing a chicken bone, and a blind piano player. But critics have pointed out that Odets' dialogue is too highbrow for these characters. Indeed, it's funny to hear Susan Hayward's odd studio accent trying to talk like a struggling dancehall girl who apparently had a prep school education. At least that's what it sounds like. But June is a great 1940s helper heroine: tough, smart, independent, resourceful. She's older than Alex, and he's so unworldly that June calls him "son" at first. Though she' s often in a foul mood, June steals the show. She and the large supporting cast make "Deadline at Dawn" an enjoyable mystery.