Johnny Eager

An exceptional noir melodrama from the earliest phase of the cycle, Mervyn LeRoy’s Johnny Eager stars Robert Taylor in the title role as an ex-con teetering between perception and reality, arrogance and desperation. Eager’s parole officer Verne (Henry O’Neill) sees him as a humble taxi driver, completely unaware that he’s also running an illegal gambling syndicate. When Eager falls in love with beautiful sociologist Lisbeth Bard (Lana Turner), he’s surprised to learn that she’s the stepdaughter of District Attorney John Benson Farrell (Edward Arnold) who sent Eager to jail years earlier and is now blocking his efforts to open a lucrative dog track. Demonstrating his moral ambivalence and caddish instincts, Eager decides to use Lisbeth as a pawn to get her father off his back, architecting an elaborate spectacle to frame Lisbeth as a “murderer,” which sends her into a deep depression but gives Eager a little leverage with her dad. In an astonishingly explicit depiction of gay adoration for 1941, Van Heflin plays Jeff Hartnett, Eager’s closest friend and longtime admirer who drinks himself into oblivion while dreaming of a day when they can run away together to the Rocky Mountains. The film becomes darker and grittier in the second half, LeRoy turning studio sets into dangerous intersections and narrow bridges where cars roll off the edge and crash in front of an oncoming train. Deftly weaving noir danger with the themes of friendship and romance, Johnny Eager becomes more riveting with each scene, building to an emotionally moving conclusion.