D.O.A. (1950)
Director – Rudolph Maté
The Plot
It's night. A man walks into the Los Angeles police headquarters. He wants to report a murder in San Francisco the night before. When he's asked who was murdered, he says, "I was." It's flashback time and we watch as Frank is exposed to a deadly poison. With a few hours to live he tries to track down his murderer.
Film Notes
Better Dead Than Dread
Accountant Frank Bigelow is bored by his job, his fiancé, and just about everything about post-war American life. But once he's slipped a glowing mickey of deadly poison, Frank's world becomes action packed and full of dark meaning.
What Makes it Work
An ordinary guy suddenly in the Heart of Darkness. The plot is something that would have interested Hitchcock, though he would have steered it into pure suspense. Director Rudolph Maté takes a different turn using the film noir style to make a movie that still crackles with jagged black and white hysteria after 50 years.
And then there's the jazz. Early in the film Frank hangs in a music club for some wild jivin' jazz that is not just background. It's Frank's inner red hot wild world just before his reality takes its own crazy be-bop turn on the American bandstand of greed and violence. And how many times has an accountant been the hero of a film?
Frantic in Frisco
Aside from D.O.A. being a genuinely classic crime film, it affords extra pleasure for Alameda TV viewers as it has some great location shots of mid-20th century San Francisco. The sights do tend to whip by, however, as Edmund O'Brien frantically chases down clues and his mortality through the streets, alleys and waterfronts of the City by the Bay.
A Regular Guy – With Premium Acting Talent
Acting workhorse Edmund O'Brien was not a Hollywood pretty boy. He might be considered part of a lineage that could take you from Spencer Tracy to Gene Hackman. O'Brien began on the stage and acted in Orson Welles' Julius Caesar as a modern Marc Antony.
His many film noir appearances include the Hall of Fame dark trio of The Killers, White Heat and The Web. His TV crime career included the seldom seen Johnny Midnight (1960) where he played a Broadway actor turned private eye. This series would make a great DVD package with John Cassavetes' Johnny Staccato (1959), about a jazz musician turned private eye.
Black and White and Stylish All Over
Cinematographer on two of director Carl Dreyer's masterpieces - La Passion de Jeanne D'Arc and Vampyr, Rudolph Maté emigrated to America, like so many other European artists, in the mid-1930s. His Hollywood cinematographer scorecard includes such winning efforts as Stella Dallas, Foreign Correspondent, Pride of the Yankees and Gilda. In the late 1940s he took on the director's chair, working with much smaller budgets, producing such varied films as When Worlds Collide and Black Shield of Falworth.
In D.O.A., Maté put his artsy camera skills to good use, creating a stark stylish look that pushes beyond the standard production settings and schedules he was given to work with, and into true film noir vision.
Radiant Trivia
- Edmund O'Brien won an Oscar® for Best Supporting Actor for The Barefoot Contessa (1954).
- D.O.A. bad guy Luther Adler was a member of a famed Yiddish theater family. His sister Stella was the famed acting teacher of Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, Warren Beatty, and Harvey Keitel.
- And in trivial roles look for Jerry Paris (the next door neighbor in the Dick Van Dyke Show),
B movie queen Beverly Garland, and Hugh O'Brien (Wyatt Earp) as a jazz fan.
-- Ed Schneider
Cast & Production Credits
| Edmond O'Brien | Frank Bigelow |
| Pamela Britton | Paula Gibson |
| Luther Adler | Majak |
| Beverly Garland | Miss Foster |
| Lynne Baggett | Mrs. Philips |
| William Ching | Holliday |
| Henry Hart | Stanley Philips |
| Neville Brand | Chester |
| Jess Kirkpatrick | Sam Haskell |
| Cay Forrester | Sue |
| Virginia Lindley | Jeanie |
| Michael Ross | Dave |
| Carolyn Hughes | Kitty |
| Jerry Paris | Bell Hop |
| Frank Gerstle | Dr. MacDonald |
| Lawrence Dobkin | Dr. Schaefer |
| Laurette Luez | Marla Rakubian |
| Produced by United Artists | |
| Rudolph Maté; | Director |
| Leo C. Popkin | Producer |
| Clarence Greene | Screenwriter / Screen Story |
| Russell Rouse | Screenwriter / Screen Story |
| Ernest Laszlo | Cinematographer |
| Dimitri Tiomkin | Composer |
| Arthur H. Nadel | Editor |
| Duncan Cramer | Art Director |
| Joseph H. Nadel | Associate Producer |
| Harry M. Popkin | Executive Producer |
| Al Orenbach | Set Designer |
| Maria P. Donovan | Costume Designer |
| Mac Dalgleish | Sound/Sound Designer |
| Ben Winkler | Sound/Sound Designer |
| Irving Berns | Makeup |
