Police Lieutenant Collier Bonnabel of the homicide department explains to camera that he only knows one way to solve a case: by applying pressure to all of the suspects, playing on their strengths and weaknesses, until one of them snaps under the tension. He then cites a murder case involving Warren Quimby.
In flashback, the bespectacled Quimby, night manager of the 24-hour Coast-to-Coast drugstore in Culver City, California, is married to Claire, who is unfaithful to him. After saving and making sacrifices, he's able to afford a nice house in the suburbs, but she's utterly unimpressed, refusing even to look inside the home. She eventually leaves him for the latest of her conquests, rich Barney Deager. Quimby goes to Deager's beachfront house to try to get his wife back, but she wants nothing to do with him. When Quimby persists, Deager beats him up.
He tells his sympathetic employee Freddie what happened. Freddie remarks that if it had been him, he would've killed the man. Deeply humiliated, Quimby takes Freddie's idea and constructs a new identity as cosmetics salesman Paul Sothern. He buys contact lenses and flashier clothes, and he rents an apartment in Westwood, Los Angeles. As he's moving into the new place, he meets his neighbor, beautiful, sweet Mary Chanler, whom he starts dating.
One night, Quimby, identifying himself as Paul Sothern, makes a phone call, leaving a message with Narco, Deager's servant, that he'll get Deager for some unspecified wrong. On a later night, he hitchhikes to Deager's place, grabs a barbecue spit and fork and then walks through the open patio door. He finds Deager asleep in a chair, but cannot go through with the killing. When he drops his weapon, Deager awakes. Quimby grabs the weapon and holds it to Deager's neck, explaining that he came to kill him, but suddenly realizes that Claire isn't worth it. Then, seeing that his wife is absent, he mocks Deager, guessing that Claire has said that she was going to the movies—the excuse she used while cheating on him. After Quimby leaves, Deager ponders his situation.
Claire later surprises Quimby by returning to him in their Culver City apartment. When he refuses to believe that she's come back out of love, she tells him that Deager has been murdered. Before Quimby has time to absorb the news, Bonnabel and his partner Lieutenant Gonsales arrive to question them. They know that Claire left the murder scene before they were called. She says that she only went to Deager's place as a day guest to swim regularly and that she and her husband had been Deager's friends for two or three years. Quimby is forced to play along to avoid suspicion. The police are looking for Paul Sothern, the prime suspect. Bonnabel takes Claire on a date, apparently attracted to her.
The police get a break when Mary goes to the Bureau of Missing Persons, concerned about Sothern's disappearance. She brings a photograph. After the photograph is blown up, Bonnabel realizes Sothern and Quimby are the same man. However, Deager was shot, and they don't have the gun. Bonnabel maneuvers Mary to Quimby's workplace to identify him, but she refuses to do so, and she states that her faith in Sothern is unshaken.
The police arrest Quimby. Under questioning, he tells them his story, but they find it hard to believe. The next morning, Bonnabel visits Claire and tells her that they had to release her husband owing to insufficient evidence. He also tells her that the enquiry has stalled and that a new team will examine the case. He also says that the gun is the vital clue that they need to convict Quimby. Claire retrieves the gun from its hiding place under a rock and plants it in Sothern's apartment. Quimby arrives, followed very shortly by the police. Claire claims that she was searching for the gun, and Bonnabel encourages her to continue. She "finds" the gun under a chair cushion, but then Bonnabel explains that all the furnishings had been replaced and that Claire has incriminated herself. Claire is resigned to her fate, and she defiantly leaves in the custody of Gonsales. Mary protests that nothing in the apartment has been changed; Bonnabel replies that it would've been too much work. Quimby and Mary are free to resume their relationship.
According to MGM records, the film earned $506,000 in the U.S. and Canada and $270,000 in other markets, resulting in a loss of $229,000.[1]
Walter Addiego, film critic at the San Francisco Examiner, wrote: "They aren't making 'em anymore like this 1949 melodrama by John Berry, and that's too bad...What sticks with you about the film is what a classic, prize-winning sap the Basehart character is, how pathetic and ill-considered are his dreams of domestic bliss, and how easily he's able to shift into a new and quite different identity. All in all, a good example of noirish post-war disillusionment — and it has Cyd Charisse and William Conrad to boot."[5]
References
^ abcThe Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study.
^Marilee Bradford, Producers' (Liner) Notes, North by Northwest, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Turner Classic Movies Music/EMI Records, CD 1995, p. 12.
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