I suppose that at bottom Private Hell 36 (1954) is Ida Lupino’s film. Don Siegel directed it, but Lupino starred in and co-wrote it—originally for the screen, hooray!—with Collier Young. She plays a bar singer who falls for a now admirable, now dirty cop (Steve Cochran) intent on making his distressed partner (Howard Duff) dirty as well.
The movie is right up Siegel’s alley, with hard-nosed conflict, unobtrusive mystery, human interest, and a car chase. The cast is estimable: what Lupino and Cochran do cannot be improved on.
I am inspired to add, too, that there is nothing feminist about the Collier-Lupino script. The bar singer, Lillie, is not a “liberated woman” but simply an adult: she talks like an adult, likes to be with other adults, and is never to be patronized. That she isn’t at the center of the cops-and-crime story here doesn’t alter the evidence that Lupino and Siegel were meant to be together.
Private Hell 36 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
