I Was Framed

The Unsung and Almost Forgotten Director D. Ross Lederman's Career Spanned Four Decades and is Awash in B's Filled with Mind Numbing Transitions while Compiling Sometimes Drastic Dramatic Changes in Tone and Presentation that Make You Pay Attention.

In this One for Example, the First Act is Film-Noir, Completely Night Time, Shadows Lurking Everywhere and Sinister, Creepy Villains About. But when the Framed Man Escapes from Prison, a Reporter who was Exposing Corruption at the Highest Level, with His Pregnant Wife Along, Ends Up in a Small Town "A Democratic Town", the Feel of the Film Snaps into a Drama of Socialism where Payment for Health Care is Not Expected, and is Happily Included with a Place to Live and a Job.

It is this Type of Jarring Juxtaposition that is Trademark Lederman. The Middle Act is Complete with a "Charmer" Child that Sings and Hangs About with a Negro Servant Given Many Lines and is a Good Friend to the Tantalizing Tot. Another Lederman Rule Shattering Flourish.

Then in the Third Act Things Tense Up Again for Another Foray into Crime and Punishment when a Blackmailer Shows Up and Not Only Demands Money, but Wants the Wife to be More "Friendly". The Director Again with a Scene that Bends Hollywood Tradition.

Sure the Ending is Abrupt and the Film is Not Wholly Realized and is Not as Successfully Rendered as Some of the Director's Other Entertaining and Hard-Hitting Quickies, but has Enough Against the Grain Goofiness to be Worth a Watch and Overall Lederman Showing Why His Movies are Not Quite the Same as His Hack Contemporaries.

This COULD have been a nice tight - if poorly acted - little Grade B/C film noir piece if someone had had the brains not to devote a solid 20-30 minutes to Patty Hale, whose poetry/song/supposed-light-comedy stints brought me to the point of nausea. This entire film looks to be nothing more than a vehicle for her. How very very sad.

I also found it unexpectedly funny re: the wife having her baby, although she was slim as a green bean in all her immediate before birth shots. I can only guess that it may have had something to do with the censors at that time.

But still - nothing ruins this little flick more than little Patty Hale.

Forgettable crime drama with hero newspaperman framed for manslaughter (he really did not do it). Wise con tempts him to join an escape from County Jail but during execution, the confederate gets left behind and our hero actually steals a car. Our hero has obviously watched cowboy movies because he outwits the cops by pulling into a side road and watching the trailing patrol car go by.

In meantime hero encounters the nicest folks in View Point - `The City with the democratic point of view, pop. 44,176.' His wife gives birth, they stay as a guest of the town doctor (for five years), and our hero becomes the editor of the View Point News. The confederate escapes from jail, gets off a freight train, sees the hero and blackmails wife. Smart doctor suspects something, gets the con's fingerprints and the cops come in to save the day.

Wow, all in 61 minutes! Despite the breakneck speed of the story, there is time to listen to child actress Patti Hale sing and recite multiple lines of poetry. How did she learn all those lines? And why does the final scene need to have the 5-year old daughter in the room while the police discuss her father's past?

Obvious underlying themes of crime does not pay is worth at least one line of dialog. Another theme is that you can't teach an old dog new tricks - our hero gets framed initially because he is going after a politico and he repeats the behavior later in View Point.

According to IMDb, "I Was Framed" is a remake of the 1939 John Garfield films "Dust Be My Destiny". However, if you read the summary of the Garfield film, it pretty has nothing to do with "I Was Framed". I also saw the Garfield film and although a bit of the plot is the same, I cannot see that one is a remake of the other at all. However, for the life of me, I KNOW that "I Was Framed" is a remake (or some film is a remake of it), as I recognized so much of the film--especially the scene where the reporter is set up for a drunk driving arrest. I KNOW I've seen it...but what film?! If you know, let me know--I just know is it NOT "Dust Be My Destiny".

The film is about a reporter who doggedly pursues criminals who are high officials. However, these folks are very powerful and very dangerous and Ken (Tod Andrews) is bound to get the worst of it. Yet he continues his one-man crusade until eventually the mob IS able to get him out of the way by framing him for a crime and getting him sent to jail. He makes his escape midway through the movie--and at this point the film fizzles. Instead of quickly working to prove his innocence, most of the rest of the film is a dull account of he and his wife hiding from the law...only to find out in the end that the cops caught the real criminal behind the drunk driving setup some time ago--but they couldn't find Ken to tell him until then! Huh?!

The bottom line is that the film has some very good elements and is slick--since it's a B-movie from Warner Brothers. But it also is unsatisfying and the plot seems to meander--like it needs to be rewritten. Worth skipping but not terrible either.

As someone mentioned, this is supposedly a remake of Dust Be My Destiny which starred John Garfield. I don't know, since I haven't seen Dust, but if Warner Brothers remade The Maltese Falcon twice (actually the famous Maltese Falcon was the third film), they could certainly have remade Dust Be My Destiny. They remade just about everything else.

Tod Andrews, who had a prolific TV career later, plays Ken Marshall, a reporter who discovers political corruption. If it comes out, it will ruin one candidate's campaign for governor.

Ken is rendered unconscious, with booze poured all over him, and then placed in the driver's seat of a car that's sent down the highway. After an accident kills three people, Ken goes to prison. He is able to escape, however, winds up in another town, and builds a new life for himself, even getting a reporter job under another name. Then one day, an old cellmate shows up and blackmails him.

This is an okay film with the big star being Regis Toomey. Someone mentioned that the wife didn't look pregnant up to the moment she gave birth. Back then, all a woman did was faint, and you were supposed to know she was pregnant. I think the censors didn't allow pregnancy to be shown, because if you look at movies like The Great Lie, the pregnant person never looked pregnant. As Lucille Ball said, "Today you can not only see that a woman is pregnant, but how she got that way."