711 Ocean Drive

Joseph H. Newman’s 711 Ocean Drive is a tale of technology and greed. In fact, with today’s breakthrough digital innovations and unprecedented Silicon Valley wealth creation, one could claim the film is more relevant to 21st century sensibilities than most noirs. The set-up: an ordinary telephone company worker named Mal Granger (Edmond O’Brien) with specialized technical expertise (“relay amplifiers,” anyone?) is persuaded by colleague Chippie Evans (Sammy White) to meet some contacts in the bookmaking racket who are looking for new talent to expand their business (“You got something up there worth a million bucks”). It turns out the racket is a natural fit for Granger’s talents, so he advances quickly, his newfound confidence quickly morphing into greed and lust for power. When the big boss is murdered, Granger takes over the business and merges with the national syndicate. When the next big boss is murdered, he takes over again. The higher he rises, the more intensely he’s wanted (and eventually hunted down) by police Lieutenant Pete Wright (Howard St. John). Of course, the same technology that opened the doors to power for Granger will also come back to bite him (phone recordings will bring him down). Joanne Dru plays Gail Mason, the abused wife of a crime boss who misguidedly sees Granger as her chance at real love. Director Newman does a nice job with pacing, character development, and action scenes (assassinations, clampdowns), but the film isn’t particularly interesting visually by noir standards; the extended chase inside Boulder (Hoover) Dam has the dramatic potential of the famous tunnel sequence in The Third Man (1949) but Newman and Planer shoot it fairly straightforwardly (to be fair, their options may have been limited by the U.S. Dept. of the Interior). The filmmakers claimed to have been threatened by mob higher-ups during production (“Filmed under police protection!” read the film poster), but this has not been verified. A note of symbolism on the weaponization of technology: watch for a thug beating a man to death with a telephone during the syndicate takeover montage.