Armored Car Robbery

An uncredited Gene Evans, Steve Brodie and William Tallman

Richard Fleischer's Armored Car Robbery is an average noir from 1950. A taut, terse (67 minutes) black and white B picture, the film details a heist and the bringing to justice of its culprits. Fleischer ably animates the nuts and bolts of the story, but the screenplay is a strictly by the numbers affair that features little in the way of interesting characters. The film focuses on both the lawmen and the miscreants. The lead detective is played by Charles McGraw who, though he never achieved A lead status, carved out a solid career as a supporting player. His Lieutenant Cordell is a gruff hard case who has to endure the loss of a longtime partner and break in his successor. McGraw's performance is as lean and unyielding as Fleischer's direction. They would reunite for 1952's The Narrow Margin, a signature film for both of them. McGraw also performed ably for Anthony Mann during the early years of noir.

Dave Purvis, the villainous mastermind of the heist, is played by William Tallman who is best known for playing the hapless Hamilton Burger, the D.A. who was bested each week by Raymond Burr on television's Perry Mason. Tallman, whose life story is quite a tale, specialized in playing troubled heavies on the big screen and the OC Purvis is right in his wheelhouse. Besides planning the perfect crime, Purvis is also betraying his ostensible business partner (an appropriately bleary Douglas Fowley) by making time with his wife, an exotic dancer named Yvonne LeDoux. This skirt is filled out by Adele Jergens who reminded me of a tall Virginia Mayo. Jergens left the film business for domesticity in 1956, but not before leaving behind an impressive filmography. She played a gaggle of molls and provides the requisite sass and sulfur for her character. Her striptease scenes are ridiculously tame, even the burlesque theater's crowd doesn't look seedy enough.

Charles McGraw and Adele Jergens

Besides its above average cast, what distinguishes Armored Car Robbery is its location shooting, then in vogue. The home of the minor league LA Angels, Wrigley Field, (since demolished) is the site of the robbery. We see a field of oil derricks, City Hall, and lots of Los Angeles' streets. It's not always well integrated with the studio footage. The LA harbor dock scenes are especially shoddy. The documentary mode of the film is also in evidence in the scenes depicting the communication and forensics prowess of the LAPD. The script of this flick is extremely conformist in extolling the pre-Miranda interrogation and surveillance methods of the police. There is no hope for law-breakers like Purvis in the cosmos of this film, making it, ultimately, a pro forma exercise.