I Love Trouble is The Rockford Files, or a dry run at it, give or take. If you don’t know what The Rockford Files is, that means you’re not ancient, so well done you. It’s the TV show where James Garner played a dog-eared detective raising a wounded eyebrow as he got beaten up week after week.
Roy Huggins wrote both. I Love Trouble was his screen debut, an adaptation of his own novel, The Double Take, which S Sylvan Simon directs with half an eye on the drawing-room whodunits of yore. Huggins also wrote 77 Sunset Strip, The Fugitive and Maverick (also starring Garner) – so was something of a TV colossus in later decades.
Here, instead of Garner’s Jim Rockford, it’s Franchot Tone, vaguely doing Humphrey Bogart, as the cynical, world-weary private detective, Stuart Bailey (unheroic name). Hired by a politician to track down his wayward wife, Bailey is soon on the trail of the former dancer (which we assume is a euphemism) who once upon a time went by a different name.
Norma, or Jane, or Janie, is this film’s Maguffin, because what Huggins really wants to do is put Bailey into one noirish situation after another, as he meets with a string of chisellers, schlemiels, grifters and tarts, coming out best in most situations (which wasn’t always the case with Jim Rockford), using charm and quips and an air of slight disinterest to lull the people he meets into a false sense of superiority. It works.
In plot and ambience it is all a touch Farewell, My Lovely, but it’s a warmly appreciative take, with a good role for Tone, who has a round voice designed for radio and a face ditto. His slight blankness as a screen presence works in his favour here, as he increasingly becomes the average guy out of his depth.
There are, as so often in film noir, two women. Janet Blair plays Norma, or whatever her name is. She’s the focus of Bailey’s inquiries and just what you want in a bad girl – tits sticking out nearly as much as her cheekbones, the sense of danger. Then there’s Glenda Farrell as Bailey’s secretary Hazel. She’s smart and really a right hand man more than a Girl Friday, but also useful in terms of getting the plot out. Farrell plays her as intrigued by her boss rather than infatuated. When Huggins did The Rockford Files, the Hazel role was taken by an answering machine. The machines will replace us all.
The lighting, by Charles Lawton Jr, says noir but the score by George Duning is light and larky, exaggerating developments.
That’s the tone of the whole thing, noirish superficially but really too charming and easy-going for a hard-boiled thriller. It also ends in the noirish equivalent of a drawing room, where a lot of yap reveals who exactly did what and when.
For lovers of Art Deco styling, there’s a fair bit of it – rounded fonts and ocean-liner style is common, and director Simon has an interest in everyday LA – like beach shacks selling food and a general slight flakiness. Again, that’s The Rockford Files.
Fans of Raymond Burr get the chance to hear him mumble a handful of lines in yet another of his “fat heavy” (his words) roles. Working mostly in radio, his big film break would come in Rear Window six years on, followed by his big TV break in Perry Mason two years after that.
The film ends on a wink, which is the whole thing boiled down to a word. It’s very enjoyable if not particularly special in most respects. A duvet day watch.
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
