Illegal

A legendary Los Angeles prosecutor discovers that he also has a knack for defense in Lewis Allen’s Illegal, a straightforward legal noir that follows the slow-motion moral breakdown of a man overcome by guilt. Edward G. Robinson stars as Victor Scott, the wildly successful district attorney (he’s so fancy he has a car phone in 1955!) who ruthlessly prosecutes Edward Clary (DeForest Kelley) for murder, sending him to the electric chair despite Clary’s pleas for mercy; moments before the planned execution, however, Scott obtains definitive proof that Clary is innocent, but he’s unable to reach the executioner in time (this sequence is thrillingly shot, the prison lights dimming just as the phone rings). Disconsolate in his grief and shame, Scott resigns from the D.A. office and descends into a dissolute life until an arrest for drunken disorderliness lands him in front of a judge, where he makes a connection that will instigate a new professional chapter as defense attorney for some of the city’s shadiest characters. Nina Koch plays attorney Ellen Miles, Scott’s longtime associate with whom he has always had an intimate, protective relationship and whose own life will be put at risk because of Scott’s new dalliances with gangsters. Hugh Marlowe plays Ellen’s husband Ray Borden, whose work for the D.A.’s office may be compromised, and a young Jayne Mansfield plays Angel O’Hara, a gangster’s moll who will accidentally save at least one life before film’s end. The third cinematic adaptation of Frank J. Collins’ 1929 stage play, The Mouthpiece, the film’s use of noir visual style is restrained, the storytelling more direct and linear befitting the courtrooms where much of the action takes place.