Dr. Broadway

This rapid-fire, Runyonesque crime story marks the auspicious directorial debut of Anthony Mann, later to enter movie history for several noirs (especially those made in collaboration with cinematographer John Alton), some superior westerns, and his uncredited work on Spartacus (where he was replaced, according to many to the movie's detriment, by Stanley Kubrick). Even this early, and working from a light-crime formula, Mann shows his innovative style. He cuts the sentiment and slapstick down to the barest minimum, keeps every scene to a point, and favors ellipsis over literalism (photographed by Theodor Sparkuhl, the movie has a rich look, too).

On the ledge of a hotel overhanging Times Square, a `nut sundae' (Jean Phillips, nearing the end of her brief candle of a career) keeps ranting to the crowds and rescue workers gathered below. When physician to the stars and drifters of the Rialto, Dr. Broadway (Macdonald Carey), saves her, it turns out to be a paid publicity stunt on the part of the starving girl, who ends up being Carey's secretary and gal Friday.

The bad news for Carey is that a mobster (Eduardo Ciannelli) he helped put away (by saving his life then informing the police) is looking for him. And finds him, but instead of exacting the expected revenge, asks him to locate his daughter and give her $100-grand. But when Ciannelli is found murdered in Carey's office, suspicion falls on the Doc. And somebody else is after the money....

Mann casts the movie with a big roster of character actors playing police, gangsters and Carey's mob of `colorful' mugs (particularly memorable are Ciannelli and, as his rival, fronting as an affable men's clothier, J. Carrol Naish). It's been suggested that Dr. Broadway may have been the opening salvo of a series of programmers. Since it didn't take off, it may have been owing to the competent but uncharismatic Carey, or to Phillip's too-close-for-comfort impersonation of Ginger Rogers. At any rate, it's a blessing that Mann didn't get bogged down in a string of programmers that wouldn't have allowed him to take the startling turns his career would later take. But it would have been a fun string of programmers.