Cinema Revisited: Armored Car Robbery

Armored Car Robbery

Directed by Richard Fleischer. Cast: Charles McGraw, Adele Jergens, William Talman, Anne Nagel. Douglas Fowley, Don McGuire, Gene Evans, Don Haggerty. Released June 7, 1950. 67 minutes

Tight, streamlined RKO feature with all the attractive B movie trappings, “Armored Car Robbery” is one of the most well done and entertaining movies of its kind.

A group of criminals carefully plans the title heist at Wrigley Field (in L.A., not Chicago), which is where the armored car is making its last pickup of the day. The group is led by Dave Purvis, who is currently seeing one of his gang’s wife on the side. The robbery is botched by an arriving police car that was unexpected, and, in a shootout, a cop is killed. The cop’s partner, Lt. Cordell, teams up with a rookie officer and is determined to find the killers and bring them to justice.

Of course the camaraderie among the criminals begins to unravel rather quickly and that becomes the focal point of the narrative. The police lieutenant having to deal with a rookie cop as his new partner is tangential, but works well within this context. It could have inspired similar themes used by Clint Eastwood more than once in his Dirty Harry series.

Director Richard Fleischer places the camera in a manner that enhances each frame, and his choice of shot composition effectively sustains the narrative. The opening scene with the bleak close up of William Talman, the medium shot of the cops arriving, and all of this supported by the noise of a baseball announcer sets the portent to a very capably directed B level noir. Fleischer’s career was all over the map, with such diverse projects as “Doctor Doolittle,” “Tora Tora Tora,” and “Soylent Green” among his credits. However, he floundered in his later years with flops like Neil Diamond’s version of “The Jazz Singer,” and his penultimate film “Million Dollar Mystery” (Fleischer’s forte was decidedly not comedy).

Charles McGraw was a versatile actor with good range, but he fared best in hard boiled roles like Lt. Cordell here. William Talman, best remembered as Hamilton Berger on TV”s “Perry Mason,” registers nicely in the offbeat role of head criminal Purvis. Adele Jergens attractively anchors the narrative with her role as the two-timing woman.

The documentary style structure recalls Raoul Walsh’s “White Heat,” a prototype gangster noir that was released a year earlier. The heavily contrasted visuals in “Armored Car Robbery” are most impressive during the night scenes, where well-lit faces are bathed in darkness.

“Armored Car Robbery” was pretty much dismissed as a competent B movie when initially released, but has grown in stature over the years as a significant noir effort from a strong period for the movie sub-genre.

Trivia: This was Anne Nagel's final film appearance