Based on a magazine story by Roy Huggins, this movie provided the round-about genesis of the TV series 77 Sunset Strip (1958) (also created by Huggins). In this movie, Franchot Tone plays LA detective Stuart Bailey, which is the same name of the detective played ten years later by Efrem Zimbalist Jr. in the 1958 movie Girl on the Run (1958), which, in turn, was spun off into the "Strip" TV series that same year. This movie was produced by Columbia Pictures, while subsequent movie and TV series were made by Warner Bros.
Columbia failed to renew the copyright, thus, the film fell into the public domain. This is why most copies (including the one shown on TCM) have the hallmarks of a duplicate 16mm print: dark with poor contrast, focus, and sound and suspicious fade-outs, as if it had been prepared for TV sales with commercial breaks built in.
Stuart Bailey's car is a 1947 Ford De Luxe coupe.
Bailey's office window looks out at the neon roof sign of The Broadway Hollywood department store at Hollywood & Vine. From his apartment window, the roof sign of the Knickerbocker Hotel on Ivar can be seen.
The stolen $40,000 would equate to over $490,000 in 2022.
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