Manhandled

The entertaining plot of Lewis R. Foster’s Manhandled winds through murder, burglary, fraud, and double crosses, its cast of characters developing a web of relationships like some sort of criminal tapestry. It all starts when Dan Duryea, playing, as might be expected, a shameless, devious, barely employed private detective named Karl Benson sees a get-rich-quick opportunity when his upstairs neighbor Merl Kramer (Dorothy Lamour) informs him about a stash of jewels owned by a patient of the psychiatrist for whom she works as a secretary. Despite occasionally lighthearted soundtrack music and an unnecessary comedic denouement, Manhandled offers plenty of suspense, most notably in the opening scene when a woman home alone is brutally beaten at her makeup table. Acclaimed cinematographer Ernest Laszlo keeps the camera work fairly safe but uses some interesting angles from outside windows and down hallways. Sterling Hayden plays Joe Cooper, an insurance claims investigator who begins to fall for Merl, and Art Smith, who’s best known for playing likeable authority figures in lots of noirs, portrays police lieutenant Bill Dawson. Duryea will play a jewel thief again a few years later in The Burglar (1957).