Inside Detroit

Director Fred F. Sears had a run of sleazy, low-budget, down-and-dirty noirs in the 1950’s, most including a city in the title (The Miami Story, 1954; Chicago Syndicate, 1955), none of them a masterwork, but most of them perfectly satisfying by noir standards. What makes Inside Detroit extra sleazy is the unsettling casting of Pat O’Brien as a crass, adulterous gangster and murderer; he had established an all-American Hollywood persona by playing, for example, priests (Angels With Dirty Faces, 1938) and coaches (Knute Rockne, All-American, 1940), and even his couple of earlier noir roles — Crack-Up (1946), Riffraff (1947) — had him playing the moral protagonist. Here he plays Gus Linden, a gangster just released from prison who is more determined than ever to seize control of the United Auto Workers union through any means necessary, including a dramatic bomb explosion at a local union hall in the film’s opening scene. Not only is Linden a killer, but he’s a despicable husband to his meek wife (“Marriage is a piece of paper. Forget it.”) on whom he’s been cheating for years with shady mistress Joni (Tina Carver), and a reprehensible role model for his daughter Barbara (Margaret Field) and son Gregg (Mark Damon) who commences an affair with his own father’s mistress. The film’s protagonist, however, is Blair Vickers (Dennis O’Keefe), head of the local union whose brother was killed in the earlier blast and who once dated Barbara, who is still in denial of her father’s crimes. Supported by police chief Ben Macauley (Ken Christy) and inspector Max Harkness (Larry Blake), Vickers is on a mission to send Linden back to prison for good. Sears attempts semi-documentary style with an opening prologue which presents Detroit as “a fabulous city of untold wealth” and occasional, if unnecessary, voice-over intrusions.