Crime by Night (1944)

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Blistering performances.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Sam (Jerome Cowan) and Robbie (Jane Wyman) are called upon to solve a murder. We meet a cast of characters................and Sam solves it.It's a bland detective murder mystery with some guy that looks like William Powell in the lead role. It's complicated and although Cowan and Wyman are likable, there is never any tension or drama in the story. The best part of the film comes when Jane Wyman and Faye Emerson (who plays Ann) come face to face. This happens at the end of the film and it's the only memorably entertaining part of the film. Cowan calls Wyman "Candy Lamb" throughout the film, and whilst this is funny at the beginning, it becomes irritating as he endlessly repeats it. This is a story that is immediately forgettable like many others and it's only worth it for Jane Wyman's performance.....and she's hardly in it!

Private Eye Sam Campbell is hired by the estranged husband of a woman whose father he's accused of killing. With a few good plot twists, he uncovers the real murderer and the reason behind that and two other subsequent killings.Don't pass up an opportunity to see character actor Jerome Cowan for once in the lead. His most noted role in film was also a detective as Sam Spade's luckless partner Miles Archer in the Maltese Falcon. In that film he was a lady's man whose hormones got him killed. Here he's quite the ladies man as well, but his mind as it turns out is on business first.Cowan's main squeeze in this film is Jane Wyman. She played a lot of molls before she got real roles of substance later in the decade, culminating with that Oscar for Johnny Belinda. It's interesting to see her in these roles sometimes though.Of the supporting cast the biggest kudos go to Cy Kendall who was the hapless sheriff. It's a running truism in Hollywood that in these detective stories, the police always get shown up by the private eye. Sometimes the cops are smart, but the private eye is smarter and sometimes they're downright dumb. It's the latter here.This film is an enjoyable product from Warner's B film unit.

Crime By Night is a film that I discovered on TCM a couple of years ago. Although Jane Wyman receives top billing, Jerome Cowan (the ill fated Miles Archer from The Maltese Falcon) carries the film. As another poster commented, the film has some great dialogue. In addition to his interplay with Jane Wyman's character (Robbie, aka Candy Lamb), I really enjoyed Cowan's (private eye Sam Campbell) scenes with Cy Kendall. Kendall plays the sheriff, who's a bit on the shady side. I especially like the scene when the sheriff leaves Sam alone in the sheriff's office to ostensibly get a drinking glass and what happens immediately after that. Also funny was Sam's revenge later in the film towards the sheriff regarding the drinking glass incident. All in all, an excellent B film...check it out if you can.

For a fifteen year period between the late 1930's and the early 1950's, Jerome Cowan played supporting roles to a number of big name stars in a variety of movies. Here he gets a chance to be the lead in this snappy little B picture, playing a detective on vacation. He was notable for playing wisecracking sidekicks, and in Crime By Night he plays a wisecracking detective. His sidekick is Jane Wyman who is actually listed as the lead here, but she plays second fiddle as Cowan's "candy lamb." Faye Emerson is on hand in a supporting role, and Eleanor Parker has a small role in one of her early films. The pace is fast with snappy dialog written by Daniel Mainwaring, who a few years later became famous for the quintessential film noir: Out Of The Past, which was based on his novel Build My Gallows High. **1/2 of 4 stars.