Night Editor started life as a popular radio show supposedly telling stories inspired by listeners’ letters. This 1946 movie spin-off, based on the episode titled Inside Story, was meant to be the first of a series. But that never came to be, and so we have only this as a suggestion of what might have been.
Tales from the deep memories of old newspaper hands is the big idea. And after some scene-setting in the offices of the New York Star, where the night editor and other unfortunates working the graveyard shift play cards, drink coffee and smoke cigarettes, director Henry Levin’s film starts properly.
It tells the story of Tony Cochrane (William Gargan), a cop and decent family man who’s having a thing with dangerous dame Jill Merrill (Janis Carter). The classic femme fatale the poor sap who can’t resist her, “You’re worse than blood poisoning,” he tells her early on, while trying to dump her. Instead he ends up kissing her. He can’t get enough.
The trouble starts when they’re out together at some secluded lovers spot and witness a murder. Tony catches a glimpse of the murderer’s face but, compromised, cannot do anything about it. Later, when his fellow cops arrest an innocent vagrant for the murder, Tony knows it’s the wrong man. Terrible pangs of conscience start to plague him. What’s he going to do?
The action shifts periodically back to the newsroom, where, with journalists’ gallows humour, the card players discuss the case and wise old hack Crane Stewart (Charles D Brown) glosses the story – “Tony came from the wrong side of the tracks and had to fight his way up. Maybe that’s why he was always fighting. Fighting himself and fighting her.”
And then we’re back to Tony and his conscience and the strange dynamic of the Tony/Jill relationship. She’s the sort who wants to be treated mean by a man and doesn’t respect Tony because he won’t abuse her, one way or another. But the balance of power shifts when Tony starts behaving towards her as a cop would – tough questions and little pity.
There’s all sorts wrong with this story, chiefly the timeline. One minute the vagrant is arrested, the next he’s been tried, found guilty and is heading for the electric chair. It suits the plot, this truncation, but it stretches credulity, particularly as Levin has done nothing in directing terms to suggest time has passed.
On the other hand, there’s good, hard-boiled dialogue and snappy comebacks as actors trade lines like ping-pong players. The story of Tony and Jill is set some years back in the past, supposedly in the 1930s, the era when characters in movies spoke like they were all on benzedrine. So it fits the bill, even though no one in the costume department seems to have been informed that this isn’t movie set in the present day.
And there’s Janis Carter as Jill, a Grade A film noir bad girl, whose complete disregard for any notion of morality is emphasised when she eventually swaps out Tony for… I cannot say, but it’s good.
William Gargan is also very good. He brings Tony to life – a weak fool when it comes to women, but a good cop who’s got a neat way of almost cutting people off when questioning them, as if he knows already what they’re going to say.
Down the cast list a bit is Jeff (birth name Jean) Donnell, who plays Tony’s long-suffering wife and is the antithesis of Jill. Also, Paul E Burns, as Ole Strom, Tony’s cop colleague, possibly Swedish, who is the decent cop who, unlike Tony, isn’t compromised. Bit of symmetry there in both those roles.
All done in 68 minutes, because this is a B movie. Like the better B movies, it’s got a good strong plot and a simple central premise. How the hell is Tony going to get himself out of this one?
Night Editor (as part of Bad Girls of Film Noir Volume 2) – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
