Storia d'un detective

So this is the film version of the radio series by Dashiell Hammett called The Fat Man - obviously a whimsical referencing of his more famous novel, film and TV series The Thin Man. But this is more than just a gimmick. The corpulent gentleman in question is the masterly J. Scott Smart, whose excess poundage adds much to his screen presence as an unusually charismatic private investigator (with gourmet tastes and a mighty appetite), to whom the rest of the cast really don't measure up. Except for the quite unknown Rock Hudson, in his first major role as Roy, an ex-convict whose teeth play a significant part in the story (and not just because of his famous sunny smile). He speaks his lines convincingly, and we can already see what the production teams meant when they said "the camera loved him". Photogenic wasn't the word.

Otherwise the film is showing both its age and its B-film budget. The dialogue is generally weak, and the continuity not too sharp. We can't always keep up with who's who in the zoo. The dental assistant gives her scream of alarm long before she could possibly have worked out that her boss has been defenestrated. And the over-long sequence of the payroll robbery leaves us unsure whether this was before or after Roy's jail sentence. (You can overdo flashbacks). Also the puritan lobby will wince at Smart's habit of calling every woman 'sweetheart', as well as one brief glimpse of blackface theatre-comedy. Still the ending, which we can't reveal, reminds us of the myriad sub-plots that can emerge when a circus comes to town.