Last week I relayed here the message I got from a 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air. Messages we receive can be alarming, or sometimes just informative, and in that case inspiring and maybe a little cryptic. I have recently seen another message from 1953, and this one isn’t alarming or cryptic, but is entertaining, if a bit dark. The message came in the form of the not-widely-known classic movie Crime Wave. This film should tickle the heart of any old car lover. It certainly did mine.
I’m a casual lover of classic movies, not a serious film buff. Those that really know the 40s/50s cop v. criminal genre, a.k.a. film noir, have probably heard of this movie, but I never had until I read a morbid but fascinating book called LAPD 1953 by James Ellroy. The book is commentary based on L.A. crime scene photos from that year, wherein he occasionally sings the praises of this movie as a valuable visual document of that world. I was intrigued enough to seek out the movie and I’m glad I did because whatever other virtues it has, it is a feast for car aficionados in a way few movies of the era are.
In this article I’ll show stills of the car characters from the movie, but I recommend actually watching it with a finger on the pause button because it is chock full of vehicles. I’ll try not to give too many spoilers for anyone who may see it in the future.
In my opinion, the cars keep the movie from being pedestrian (sorry!). The plot is pretty simple and not terribly original. The title was originally “The City Is Dark”, which I think was better, but got changed by the studio. The casting is pretty good, especially in the rogue’s gallery of ugly mugs that are the crooks. Lurking in the background there is a totally ripped Charles Bronson in one of his first Hollywood roles. Of course, the ex-con-trying-to-go-straight who gets caught up in trouble is implausibly handsome.
What really sets the movie apart is the direction by Andre De Toth. For a Hollywood studio movie of that period, the filming is amazing. At the time, lower-budget movies like this were almost always at least partially filmed in studios and backlots. In this movie, every outdoor scene is filmed on location in the real world (with a couple very small exceptions) and quite a few of the interior scenes are as well.
I love the choices of cars the producers made. In the opening scene, the bad guys arrive to hold up a gas station in a 1952 Ford Customline Country Sedan (presumably stolen). 1952 was first year Ford wagons were all steel. Country Squires adopted fake wood for the first time, but this mid-level model just uses two tone paint to great effect.
Also appearing in the opening scene is a police motorcycle, identified by someone else as a 1939 Harley-Davidson. I am not a motorcycle buff, so someone who is feel free to confirm that. Not surprisingly, the hold up does not go smoothly.
The police arrive in force in the aftermath to investigate, where we get a glimpse of lots of contemporary law enforcement vehicles. The city is dark, as all the nighttime scenes were clearly filmed at night, in contrast to the common practice of the time of filming in daylight with a dark lens.
The starring cop in the story arrives in a 1952 Mercury. Detective Simms is played by Sterling Hayden, who at 6’5″, looms over the rest of the movie. He is a toothpick-chewing prototype for Bud White (Russell Crowe in L.A. Confidential) with a disdain for nonsense and a love for short clown ties.
A dragnet ensues where we see more 1952 Ford Mainline LAPD black and white radio cars and a number of civilian vehicles.
One car examined by the police and let go is a 1936 Ford V8 Deluxe Station Wagon driven by a veterinarian who will be seen again in the movie, when he runs afoul of Charles Bronson. Not a good thing to do!
The action moves to LAPD police headquarters, which at the time was located inside City Hall, long the tallest building in LA. The scene of a 1947 Ford Deluxe arriving was shot in the actual location, as well as some (possibly all) of the interior scene.
The protagonist trying to stay a length ahead of the criminals drives a 1929 Ford Model A hot rod. The character is an airplane mechanic who we are probably meant to assume built the car himself, so he must be a good guy! When he drives off in this scene, the flathead V8 exhaust note is delicious. I don’t know if that was a natural recording of the car or dubbed in later, but it is perfect.
The car was well known in SoCal hotrodding circles and even appeared on the cover of Hot Rod! Apparently it was a real chick magnet.
His parole officer drives a 1941 Buick Super Estate Wagon, a car that should also be taken to signify that the owner is a good guy. Would a jerk drive a car like that? I was geeking out on the unexpected but delightful appearance of three wagons in the movie, two of them woodies.
The Buick is worth another photo. Looks like the background caught a 49-51 bathtub Nash!
Unfortunately for the car spotting, some of the narrative is necessarily filmed indoors. Even there, though, the artful direction of the movie comes through. Here, we know the police are coming because we see them from above, pulling up in their 52 Merc while the lovely Phyllis Kirk gets a closeup.
The climax of the movie involves a bank robbery. As the crooks get ready to meet up at the bank at the appointed time, we are given an extended scene of their stolen 1952 Lincoln Capri oozing through town. The Lincoln is luscious, as are many of the cars caught in the shots.
Predictably, that crime also fails to go off smoothly, despite the gang leader’s assurances that “I don’t miss.” Now the police pursue them in another 1952 Lincoln, this time a Cosmopolitan. Differentiating a 1952 Capri from a Cosmopolitan is harder than telling most sets of twins apart. Externally, rocker and windshield trim are the only differences I can find. Inside, it’s just upholstery (cloth vs. cloth/leather). Only $133 on a ~$3,200 car separated the models.
This is a little confusing, because the gang had earlier requisitioned without permission an identical Lincoln Cosmopolitan, but now the police are driving what looks like the same car (with different plates). When the police dispatchers were putting out an APB for that stolen car, the radio said it was a “gray Lincoln sedan, license in the fore column, 1-Sam-69417”. To the movie’s credit, they say it’s a “Lincoln” and not just a “gray sedan” the way most movies would have. Does anyone know what “license in the fore (or four) column” is?
Did cops ever used to drive Lincolns? You couldn’t have blamed them because Lincolns were some of the best performing cars available in the U.S. at the time. Just ask the drivers in the 1952-54 La Carrera Panamericana 2000 mile road race, where Lincoln took the top spots in the stock car class. Looks like another Nash photobombing!
I happen to own a copy of this 1954 ad with the road race car, it’s one of my favorites. Race on Domingo, sell on Monday.
Lincoln was all new for 1952, as were all Ford cars. In fact, the most common criticism of this generation of Lincolns is that they’re so conservatively styled, they look a lot like the Fords and Mercurys. Seeing movie police driving a Lincoln doesn’t look ridiculously implausible the way it would if they were driving a Cadillac.
Lincoln had a new engine, a 317.4 c.i. OHV V8 making 160hp. Lincoln was behind Cadillac and Chrysler in power for 1952, but if the police had happened to have the new 1953 model, as the 52 road race team did, the chase would have been over sooner as it got a significant bump in power to 205hp, giving it the second highest power rating in the market behind Caddy’s 210. GM supplied the four-speed Hydramatic transmission. What also helped the police to get their man was Lincoln’s new industry-first ball joint front suspension, contributing to its relatively good handling (grading on a massive early-50’s-American-sedan curve).
If the movie is let down slightly, it’s by most of the in-car scenes, which are studio-filmed with a process background typical of the time. Nothing’s perfect!
However, there were some POV in-car sequences filmed for the chase scene. If you watch this movie, I don’t want to get your expectations up on the chase. It’s not really a car chase in the post-Bullitt sense that we think of now. It’s more like two cars driving separately through traffic briskly. But it looks to have been filmed on active city streets and there is not any obviously sped up film, which was the usual technique for movie car chases at the time. Kudos there!
The chase ends at this prime Chinatown real estate in the penultimate scene of the movie. Two of the characters fall down an entire flight of stairs and it sure doesn’t look to me like any mats were used. Ouch!
So what was the message this movie sent to me? The explicit message from Detective Simms at the end was, “Next time call [the cops], but quick! The cops’ job is to protect the citizens.” I would perhaps rather say the message was don’t answer the phone in the middle of the night and definitely don’t tangle with Charles Bronson. But seriously, the real message from 1953 is the visual testimony of the movie itself, as much of a view as anything you will see in moving picture form of what the world looked like at that time. At least what it looked like in a small sliver of the world in the U.S.A., state of California, city of Los Angeles. It was uniquely shot in a documentary style that would become common in the late 60’s and 70’s, but was unusual then. Lots of other old movies give you glimpses filmed in the real world, but not often virtually the whole movie through the way this one does.
The poster might have been a tad sensationalistic. If you haven’t seen this movie and I’ve sold its virtues to you, hopefully you can catch it. It’s shown occasionally on Turner Classic movies and is sometimes available on cable on-demand. I bought the DVD, which was cheap and has a bonus audio commentary with author James Ellroy (he really likes this film). In the meantime, don’t take any curls off Cutie!
related reading:
Car Show Classic: 1954 Lincoln Capri – What A Road-Racing Luxury Car Should Be by Tom Klockau
A Condensed Illustrated History Of Lincoln Up To 1958 by PN
A note about years for the detail-oriented: Crime Wave was released in January 1954, but was filmed an unusually long time earlier in late November 1952. While neither is exactly 1953, the time frame matches up very well to that of the 1953 Chevrolet from last weeks’ article. The 1953 model year started well before the filming, so the Chevy could very well have been built already and the time periods match quite closely if not perfectly.
It’s actually surprising the Buick isn’t driven by a “bad guy” given that it’s the only GM car in an otherwise all-Ford show. That would sometimes happen with product placement.
Crime Wave is a terrific example of a typical film-noir. It’s not Sterling Hayden’s best (that usually falls to The Asphalt Jungle or the similar The Killing, the latter directed by Stanley Kubrick) but it’s still quite good, particularly from a CC perspective.
In fact, the big, old, now-classic cars from the era are a staple of the genre and they’re great for lovers of both the cars and the movies themselves.
BTW, the idea of not identifying the cars in police radio transmissions is most vividly seen in the old Broderick Crawford tv show Highway Patrol. I don’t remember the logic of it, but I’m guessing they either didn’t want to have any kind of legal exposure or give any free publicity. It seems odd, but who knows?
Unfortunately, lately I’ve frequently been up at 4am when a local broadcast channel runs a couple of Highway Patrol episodes every weeknight. The Broderick Crawford character drives an unmarked two-door Buick or Oldsmobile while the the patrolmen drive same make liveried two-door cars but probably a lesser trim line. They really do a good job filming those GM cars rounding corners at high speeds and bounding over potholed dirt roads.
The show itself isn’t terrible. Every radio transmission, though, ends with 10-4.
IIRC, Crawford’s fast-paced, staccato delivery in Highway Patrol was due to his heavy drinking. He wanted to get filming of the episodes over as early in the day as possible so he could get back to his liquor.
But Crawford’s fast talking aside, yeah, the show is okay for the time.
I remember that a lot of police and detective shows in the ’50’s, ’60’s and ’70’s would not identify the make of the car in police radio transmissions. They would say something like ” be on the lookout for a blue 1956 sedan ” or something like that. Even as a kid I wondered if they couldn’t identify the make how could they tell the year? Also, how many blue ‘1956 sedans were out running around at any one time?
Made no sense to me.
My wife and I watch a lot of film noir, and the cars are one of the reasons for me. I’m a fan of the ’54 Nash, and the ’53 Mercury. There’s a mid 50’s movie where Vince Edwards complains that you can’t tell the Mercurys and Lincolns apart, from a distance, because “they look the same.”
The in-car scene is better than most. It’s clearly a Lincoln. Most used the same ’39 Chrysler for all in-car closeups.
I came into this movie late one time. I watched it to the end just because of the L.A. street scenes and the cars. I really enjoyed trying to recognize the 1950s L.A. from the late 60s-mid 70s L.A. I knew. The movie plot..ok, but the visuals…GR8!!! 🙂 DFO
Humphrey Bogart is usually considered the ‘king’ of film-noir actors, but Sterling Hayden would easily be in the top five, particularly considering how much longer he lived than Bogey. In fact, his small role in the legendary The Godfather might be considered the same character from Crime Wave in later years.
A famous role Hayden did ‘not’ get was that of Quint in Spielberg’s Jaws. He would have gotten the role that went, instead, to Robert Shaw if it weren’t for income tax problems that Spielberg could not figure out a way around.
That is interesting to hear about Jaws. Perhaps a happy accident, because I can’t imagine anyone more perfect for that role than Robert Shaw.
I will have to watch this movie! One thing I looked for in the pictures was the blackwall/whitewall ratio. I can understand police cars and utility vehicles not having whitewalls, but it is interesting to see what tires people actually had on their cars at the time.
When it came to replacing the whitewalls on my 56 Cadillac, there was no question in my mind that the new ones had to be whitewalls. I am really aware of them when driving though, careful not to damage them.
I love the cars, the era, the locale. If I ever finish my Time Machine, I’ll be tempted to go back and experience it all first-hand.
Interesting about the Lincoln and Mercury looking perhaps too much alike. IIRC, in the Lucy-Desi “The Long Trailer” movie of 1953, they’re pulling said trailer with a Mercury—but use a Lincoln in some of the steep mountain shots.
LA Confidential is a great movie. Pierce Padgett has some very nice cars in his garage including a beautiful Packard used in a number of scenes.
I give a lot of credit to Jack Webb for putting ‘Film Noir’ on the small screen, and creating reality T.V. in the process. That era of Lincolns were great cars, good styling and the Lincoln OHV V-8 was a better engine than the hoary old Ford Y-Block.
Long before Dragnet, Jack Webb had a radio show called ‘Pat Novak, Private Eye’ which was full of the snappy, clipped dialogue which became a staple of film-noir. It’s well worth seeking out for any fan of the genre.
My Dad had a ’52 Lincoln Cosmopolitan for a short time, and I worked in Downtown LA for several years in the early 1980s. I have maintained an affection for LA and love Film Noir, fortunately we have TCM, which has great movies for car spotting. I was just in LA last week, My Wife and I went to the new Academy Awards museum on the Westside. It’s just across the street from The Petersen car museum. I’ve been to the Petersen many times before, we spent seven hours at the Academy museum and still didn’t see everything, well worth the trip.
I went to the Petersen once in the 90’s, I’d love to get back there and check out the Academy museum, too. Sounds really cool! Unfortunately, I don’t see myself going to southern CA soon.
Bill Kramer, Director and President of the new Academy Museum, is the son of Glenn Kramer, who used to comment here and is former director of the Lincoln and Continental Owner’s Club.
It is great to have both museums close together. I hope they do something collaborative in the future as watching cars in movies (and TV) is one of my favorite activities. I agree with JPC that watching noir films on TCM Noir Alley with Eddie Muller is a special treat. I only wish he knew and cared about cars as some of the films featured have contained some really interesting ones over the past year or two but he never comments on them. I’ve enjoyed all of the Nash police cars used in films set in LA.
The Vault in the basement of the Petersen is a constantly changing panorama of cars, and worth visiting again and again. A natural site for a CC meet-up once things get back to normal.
Another noir fan here, and I have seen this one. I wasn’t sure but the screen shots reminded me. Lincolns were not that often seen in these movies, and I remember enjoying this one for just that reason (among the usual ones).
TCM has a feature they call Noir Alley every Saturday night, we DVR them and watch regularly. Last weekend was a 1958 film called “The Lineup”. It featured what the host claimed was the best car chase on film until Bullitt came along a decade later, also in San Francisco. The bad guys in the 57 Belvedere sedan gave it a good shot but in the end, crime did not pay.
I was a little skeptical after watching the chase scene in The Lineup because some of it IIRC was not done on location but staged with the cops in a stationary car and film running behind them. But I concede that overall it was well done for a tight budget film at that time and the ending with the bad guys screeching to a halt at the precipice of an incomplete section of the Embarcadero Freeway under construction was pretty cool. Ironic that the future of this freeway, disruptive to the city and ultimately demolished, would be as bleak as that of the bad guys.
Thanks for the recommendation! I was pleased to see that this film is available as a (legal) download:
https://archive.org/details/crime-wave-1954
Good resource, thanks.
Wow-this is film noir overload! The photography is great and Andre de Toth also directed House of Wax. I’ve got to check this movie out-thanks Paul!
I had nothing to do with it; thank Jon, who posted this.
That gray sure looks black to me.
I’ve long thought there’s a business opportunity for someone to make a picture book or software to help witnesses identify cars more exactly. It’s very frustrating watching cop shows as a carspotter.
The Lincolns are confusing. The crooks stole two Lincolns during the movie, but we don’t see the thefts, they are just mentioned. They first steal a gray Cosmopolitan, then later a black Capri. Toward the end of the movie, the cops are driving a gray Cosmopolitan that looks just like the earlier stolen one, but the license plates are clearly different.
I already have, but it’s only for my own use so far.
265,500 brogue and ad images of every possible
brand and model over the last 110 years, right up to 2022.
“…Does anyone know what “license in the fore (or four) column” is?”
Police in many departments were issued a “hot sheet” at beginning of shift, listing the reported stolen vehicles. They were organized in columns by number; the “four column” would include CHK 467, 4G59612, 440126, 413JSD, etc.
“…Every radio transmission, though, ends with 10-4.”
That is because “10-4” is an acknowledgement that the radio transmission was copied and understood.
Cool! I was beginning to think no one knew. I like it when movies do authentic radio procedures.
Thanx for the heads up ! .
I too enjoy watching older movies and remember the 60’s & 70’s before cable took over T.V. and every town had a station that broadcast old movies late at night or on weekends…
I have a file of movies to find, this goes into it .
-Nate
The cars are great but so is the background of Los Angeles in the 50s. To me Los Angeles is a new city compared to old cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and so forth. It really started to grow during and after WWII but hadn’t yet boomed big time yet. When I moved there in 1966, and left Maryland, many asked why go there. So seeing the background I already recognize that a fair amount of it was still there when I arrived. Cool to see the now old L.A. just before smog overtook the skylines.
@TBM3FAN :
I’ve seen movies from 1937 that show dense smog in down town Los Angles .
When first I arrived here in the Summer of 1969 it was still mostly the old city, that’s all gone now and the worse for it .
-Nate
Love discovering film noir / period films shot on location.
Another one worth perusing is ‘The Lineup’ from 1958, shot in San Francisco, featuring predominantly Chrysler products. A much better print has recently appeared on YouTube.
Also “The Laughing Policeman” with Walter Mathau in….1967 (?) shot in San Fransisco ., load of old vehicles everywhere .
-Nate
Every so often,I’ll be surprised by dialogue in an older movie,such as The Big Sleep. Bogart asking the Head Bad Guy if he doesn’t have someone tailing him “in a gray Plymouth coupe”,and the DA informing Marlowe that “there’s a big Packard washing around in the surf off Lido Pier”.