I Love Trouble

While film noir has earned a reputation for having complicated plots, most noirs wouldn’t objectively fit that description. This skewed perception most likely stems from the fact that some of the earliest noirs to gain international attention featured private detectives (The Maltese Falcon, 1941; Murder, My Sweet, 1944; The Big Sleep, 1946), based on popular detective fiction in which a sleuth tracked clues and connections on a meandering trail before the case was solved. This same sleuthing element pushes the limits of comprehensibility in S. Sylvan Simon’s I Love Trouble, adapted by Roy Huggins from his own novel, in which private detective Stuart Bailey (Franchot Tone) is hired by wealthy politician Ralph Johnston (Tom Powers) to investigate the background of his much younger wife who has been receiving letters threatening exposure of a past secret, which would damage Johnston’s career if it got out. Aided by his clever secretary Hazel Bixby (a fantastic Glenda Farrell), Bailey begins by inquiring at the wife’s high school alma mater, where his charms lead to a dancehall (perhaps a cleaned up brothel) where she worked for shady owner Keller (Steven Geray), then a seaside diner owned by Buster Buffin (Sid Tomack), and then a long lost sister named Norma Shannon (Janet Blair) whose identity seems questionable (“All my instincts tell me there’s something phony about you,” he says), while navigating twists, turns, murders, and attempts on his own life before the truth is discovered. Bailey’s written and played as a ladies’ man with an arsenal of witty dialogue, which, combined with Duning’s often perky score, gives the film a lighter gauze than other noirs of the period (and the fabulous Janis Carter playing a Hispanic woman is a perverse joy to watch.) Side note: Director Simon would suffer a fatal heart attack a couple years later at the young age of 41.