711 Ocean Drive

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.

Yes, I was heavily rooting for O'Brien to prevail in this flick. The cops seemed to get too much out of the smallest bits of info in taking him down.

The crappy preach at the ending, and the inevitability that O'Brien wold be foiled spoiled it somewhat. And it was much too long to get to the predictable conclusion.

But Dorothy Patrick as Trudy was a nice plus! O'Brien's aide, "Chippie" was good as his reliable 2nd man. Constant visible Cash profits from vigorish helped the realism.

Also enjoy the gambling lingo. This is year 2013 and I believe 'past posting' is still prevalent today!

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.

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.

After seeing this movie, you may not look at a telephone repairman the same way again. Actually the result seems closer to the Cagney films of the thirties than to the noirs of the forties. For phone lineman Eddie O'Brien, it's a success story, as opportunity, know-how, and drive propel him to the top of the bookie racket. Fortunately the always energetic O'Brien makes the transition from working stiff to bookie king-pin both dynamic and believable. Then too, we meet some interesting people along the way, including smoothie Otto Kruger doing his best imitation of a smiling cobra, even as young marrieds Joanne Dru and Don Porter practice their 1950's version of open marriage. And in a usual thankless part, moon-faced Barry Kelley who bull-dozes everyone within reach through eyes so pinched, they're barely more than razor slits. Still, it's unheralded bit actors like him that really make movies like this work.

Director Joe Newman keeps things moving nicely, even the colorless scenes featuring the forces of law and order don't bog down the pacing. There're also some good location shots in and around LA, with an exhausting climax up and down the the stairwells of Boulder Dam as the giant turbines hum in the background. (I wonder how they get ordinary people who probably just happened to be at the dam that day, to be so natural with a movie camera and crew staring them in the face. Somehow they do.) My favorite part is setting up the "past-posting" scheme, showing how every technical innovation presents a criminal mastermind with a twisted opportunity. All in all, 7-11 may not be a jack-pot dice roll, but it is a decent thriller, entertaining if not exactly memorable.