711 Ocean Drive

Enjoyed this great 1950 film starring Edmond O'Brien, ( Mal Granger) who plays the role of a telephone repair man with great skills in communications and all kinds of ability to set up telephone lines anywhere he so desires. Mal gets tired of his old routine job and meets up with his bookie who places his bets on the race track and offers him a very profitable job with the big time gambling bosses. Mal gets very powerful with all the bookies and begins to disturb the big shot bosses from other states and that is when Carl Stephens, (Otto Kruger) decides he is going to cut in on Mal Granger's business. Mal joins up with Carl Stephens and then gets himself involved with a married woman named Gail Mason, (Joanne Dru) and they fall madly in love with each other. There is many twists and turns in this film and you have some fantastic scenes all around Hoover Dam with non stop entertainment right to the very end. Enjoy.

This film stars Edmund O'Brien as a scheming and brilliant mobster--a far cry from the good guy roles in Film Noir films such as DOA and WHITE HEAT. It seems that although at the beginning of the film he's a simple worker for the phone company, he is an expert with electronics and phone lines, so he's able to help a small California mob grow until it controlled the entire state's bookmaking operation. Not content to be just a bit player, he works his way up to the top of this mob until the "big boys" back East recognize his worth and they want a piece of the action. At first, things work out well for O'Brien and he becomes very rich with this new arrangement. However, over time, this relationship sours. Eventually, O'Brien's greed and feelings of invulnerability take their toll--leading to a stirring finale at Hoover Dam.

As expected, O'Brien did an excellent job and he was one terrific actor--particularly in his gangster films. O'Brien's love interest is Joanne Dru, who plays a screwed up lady who wants to see O'Brien go straight but does nothing to actually change him and also does a lot to excuse his excesses. The national syndicate is headed by veteran actor Otto Kruger, who does a nice job playing the "sophisticated and cultured" thug. Oddly, Howard St. John plays the honest and determined police detective bent on stopping O'Brien--since in most films St. John plays heavies or weak-willed jerks.

Overall, it was a very engaging and original Noir film. In particular, the electronics angle was very, very high-tech for 1950 and still was intriguing today. Also, while this film isn't so violent or full of colorful Noir lingo, it does have enough to satisfy fans of the genre. Overall, it's a very good film but a far cry from the greatness and excitement of the better examples of Noir due to its occasionally heavy-handed "crime does not pay" message. As for me, I prefer my Noir a bit more on the cold side.

A better than routine, if not exceptional, noir crime drama, with O'Brien excellent in the lead, and good casting throughout. Opening and closing textural comments convey the sense that this is more of a sensational expose of syndicate control of horse-race betting (a major West coast institution if there ever was one), produced "under threat". That remains to be seen. What is undeniable is that a well-paced tale of one man's ambition is engagingly portrayed. Of particular interest are the wonderful filming locations in the L.A. area -- rich streetscapes--full of marvelous period detail, "Modern" architecture as seen in circular drive-ins, open plan houses, groovy bars ands nightclubs, and some flavor of Palm Springs weekending. With the evolution of O'Brien's character from a telephone repairman into a major crime so well reflected in the improvements in his dress, along with the sartorial variety among the leads, one gets a nice sense of personal style in this period. Worth a look.

711 Ocean Drive finds Edmond O'Brien as just a working stiff, toiling away at a job for the telephone company and getting a bit behind in with his bookie. Fortunately the bookie, Sammy White, is an understanding guy and recognizes talent when he sees it. He takes him to wire service operator Barry Kelley who controls the illegal gambling in Southern California and Kelley puts O'Brien to work, modernizing the business.

That's the beginning of O'Brien's rise in the gambling rackets. He's talented, but his reach exceeded his grasp, especially when he started reaching for Joanne Dru while she was still married to racketeer Don Porter.

There's a lot of similarity between O'Brien and Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra. They're both talented, at the top of their respective trades. We only see Bogart at the downfall of his career. Still that climax which takes place at Hoover Dam was definitely inspired by High Sierra.

Besides those already mentioned look for good performances by Howard St. John as the honest cop on O'Brien's trail, Bert Freed as the syndicate's number one hit man, and Otto Kruger the very smooth syndicate boss who never gets his hands dirty with the details.

711 Ocean Drive is a very nice noir film, made at the height of Edmond O'Brien's career as a B picture leading man.

The address of Edmond O'Brien's posh Malibu digs -- 711 Ocean Drive -- lends the title to this semidocumentary noir about bookmaking. Unfortunately the movie is bookended by sermons instructing viewers on their civic responsibilities: the two bucks you put on a horse go straight to graft and murder! In between, it's not bad. O'Brien, always better supporting than, as here, in the lead, is a money-grubbing telephone technician who brings his electronic expertise to the illegal-betting circuit. The profits his innovations generate oil his swift climb up the syndicate ladder; his ruthlessness greases his slide down. Along the way, the movie casually includes what may be the first Hollywood episode of severe wife-battering, perpetrated on Joanne Dru. At the end, O'Brien's grasping ambitions are dwarfed by the enormity of Boulder Dam, and viewers are left with a sense of his brief notoriety being but a single cog in a vast, unstoppable crime machine. It's a dated message in a time when, increasingly, gambling with the government's blessing has become the new civic responsibility.