Night Editor

Jill and Tony in the car

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 … Read more

The Blue Gardenia

Norah on the phone

A young woman whose soldier boyfriend has just dumped her goes out for a drink with a known “wolf”. Drunk and vulnerable, she then heads back to his place, where, he tells her, there’s a party going down, only to discover that the party consists of just her and him. The next morning the very handsy Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr) is dead, beaten to death with a poker. Did sweet Norah (Anne Baxter) do it? Of course she didn’t – we know how these things go. But for the rest of this underwhelming thriller’s 85-minute running time we watch and wait for energetic journalist Casey Mayo and lacklustre cop Sam Haynes to arrive … Read more