Make Haste to Live

Make Haste to Live is directed by William A. Seiter and adapted to screenplay by Warren B. Duff from the novel written by Gordon and Mildred Gordon. It stars Dorothy McGuire, Stephen McNally, Mary Murphy and Edgar Buchanan. Music is by Elmer Bernstein and cinematography by John L. Russell.

A gangster is sentenced to prison for killing his wife, but she isn't dead, she's alive and well and raising her daughter in New Mexico. It's now 18 years later and he's out of the big house; and he wants revenge!

Elmer Bernstein's superb musical score opens up the picture and Russell uses film noir filters to photograph the gripping opening sequences. It's a handsome beginning, the promise of a film noir gem is palpable, sadly the entire middle hour is plodding in pacing and ridiculous in plotting. There's some neat touches, McNally is permanently angry and sinister, which makes for good fun, McGuire works hard to maintain interest, Buchanan's gruff sheriff steps outside of the norm and the odd scene, such as that involving a fairground, have noirish leanings. The finale as well is of high quality, but patience is tested throughout and there's the over riding feeling that the cast, Bernstein, Russell and the audience deserve a far better script. 5/10

Dorothy McGuire gives a strong performance in "Make Haste to Live" from 1954.

McGuire plays Crystal Benson, who runs the newspaper in a small Colorado town. She has a beau, Josh (John Howard) and a daughter Randy (Mary Murphy). When Randy reports that she met a man who said she reminded him of her mother, Crystal panics. She gets a gun from the sherriff's office, hands Randy's boyfriend $1000 to keep safe for her, and makes a recording explaining the situation to her daughter.

It turns out Crystal was married to a vicious criminal, Steve (Stephen McNally) who was accused of killing someone. Crystal, with the help of a good friend, Mary (a blond Carolyn Jones) escapes from him. Later on she finds out that Steve brought a woman home, and the house blew up. Police believed it was Crystal, and while cleared of the first murder, he went to prison for one he didn't commit.

Nineteen years have passed, and Steve has shown up, realizing Randy is his daughter. He befriends Randy, and Crystal passes him off as her brother. Meanwhile, she's desperate to escape again.

Someone posted on IMDb that panning a Dorothy McGuire movie is like applauding the person who killed Bambi's mother, but I must say, this is lousy. First of all, Steve meets Randy and she reminds him of her mother? In what universe?

Also you just want to throttle the McGuire character. Why not just tell everyone he's no good and have the sherriff and her boyfriend pressure him to get out of town? Or tell Randy the truth - so her father is a psychopath, that doesn't make her one.

Not only that, we're shown something in the beginning that we assume (wrongly) will play into the final denoument. It doesn't. That makes the whole thing contrived.

I saw Dorothy McGuire on stage in Night of the Iguana. A wonderful actress. Skip this.

I didn't really understand what the ex-con ex-husband "had" on the main character and what he was trying to do to her and her daughter. I did like the small Western town setting with the Indian Ruins excavation site and the idea of her attempting to escape via the chartered plane, the suspense and down-to-the-wire excitement. And the villain was a menacing character.

The plot for "Make Haste to Live" had promise...but ultimately the film made little sense and this annoyed me. It really could have been a good film.

Crystal Benson was married to a violent mobster, Steve (Stephen McNally). He slapped the snot out of her and she was naturally afraid of him. Ultimately, she escaped and the law thought that he'd killed her and disposed of the body. So, even without a corpse, he was convicted and spent 18 years in prison. Now, he's out...and looking to exact his revenge on her...now that he's found her.

While this sounds like a great plot, somehow the writing was not up to snuff. When Steve shows up in the small New Mexico town where she lives, she doesn't tell anyone who his is nor that he's threatening to kill her. Instead, inexplicably, he passes him off as her brother...and allows him to hang around her and her daughter....a young lady who doesn't know that her 'uncle' is actually her horrible father. Why doesn't Crystal tell EVERYONE he's out to kill her, he's a mobster AND why she ran?! This just doesn't make sense and the film became tedious...tedious because the solution to the problem seems simple yet the heroine seems inexplicably dim.

Make Haste to Live showed me once again what an inexhaustible source of good movies Classic Hollywood was. I've seen many but there's always another one and the treasure chest seems to have no bottom. This is a small film, in black and white but with a wider format than the traditional one. It was produced and directed for Republic Pictures by William Seiter based on a script by Warren Duff. It is a noir story, set in a small town in the State of New Mexico where life is peaceful and predictable. There, in the local newspaper works as an editor Crystal Benson (Dorothy McGuire) a supposed widow with her daughter Randy (Mary Murphy) of 18 years who is about to graduate from high school. But at night, she has nightmares, because the past is about to take its revenge. In reality Randy's father was a gang member named Steve (Steven McNally) who has just left prison after a long sentence for the supposed murder of his wife Zena. In reality, Zena has changed her name and is now Crystal, and when she ran away from her husband, she was pregnant and not thinking clearly. Her friend Rose (Carolyn Jones, the famous Morticia of the Addams Family) tried to explain Zena's situation but was not convincing and, faced with the doubt and the unidentified corpse that implicated Steve, the latter ended up being sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In the town, the sheriff is Edgar Buchanan, an actor who played countless supporting roles in westerns and other genres. And we also meet Crystal's long-suffering suitor, Josh, played by another efficient B-movie actor, John Howard, a former pilot during the Second World War and now a scholar of the labyrinthine dwellings built by the Indians who inhabited the region, the Pueblo tribe.

Things will get heated in this interesting thriller in which I will not fail to praise the exceptional performance of the two main characters, Dorothy McGuire and Stephen McNally. Every time they are together, and luckily it is a big part of the film, the level of tension and drama rises. She appears calm but is actually desperate and he is perversely threatening like a volcano about to erupt. It is worth seeing them act.