L'indésirable monsieur Donovan

Shortly before Christmas the most hated citizen in a small town dies by gunshot wound, declared by the law to be a suicide. Into town comes insurance investigator Sam Donovan (Dennis O'Keefe) to investigate the death and see if all loose ends are tied up since the deceased has a 20K life insurance policy - about 200K in today's money. Nothing could be less conclusive than this investigation. When Sam goes to talk to the town sheriff and ask about the weapon, the sheriff (William Bendix) says it is missing. When Sam asks about the bullets that killed him, the sheriff says the coroner left them in the deceased since it was obvious what killed him and how he died. Only when Sam threatens to get a court order does the sheriff produce the bullets.

In other words, if the sheriff was trying to deflect suspicion of this being anything but a suicide his obvious lies and stonewalling has had the expected opposite effect. In fact everybody in town is stonewalling Sam. Thinking this could be murder, Sam continues to dig, and continues to get furtive glances and obvious lies from everybody in the town. It also turns out that the deceased was just plain mean and everybody from the sheriff on down had a motive to kill him. Meanwhile Sam is having a serious romance with the daughter of the town banker who also had a motive to kill the insured.

What are the odd devices in this film? The hated deceased/insured guy is never seen. He is dead before the film begins and we never see him in flashback. There is another character who turns out to be important to the plot who is never seen - the town doctor who was out of town but has a heart attack shortly after returning who is talked about in the most glowing of terms by everybody. Again - never seen in live action or flashback.

So we have a death that may be murder against the backdrop of a small town Christmas post-war, the descriptions by the townspeople of two dead people who seem to have had opposite personalities but whom we never see for ourselves, and all of the townspeople acting like pod people when it comes to stonewalling the investigation, including the sheriff who is so obvious that he creates doubt rather than eliminates it. And why does the insurance company let their guy even try to prove it is murder when they will have to pay out double if it is? A reason is given, but I don't buy it, not even from corporations sixty years ago.

Watch this one if you can. It certainly will keep you interested and guessing.

I am no insurance expert, but I thought that in cases where someone killed themselves that their beneficiaries did not receive anything. So why would an insurance investigator, Sam Donovan (Dennis O'Keefe), investigate this in the first place? And, why would he try to prove it was a murder? I think this is a HUGE problem with the plot of "Cover Up"...unless I am mistaken.

The story begins with Donovan arriving in town to do his investigation. Surprisingly, most everyone in town either avoids him or lies--and Sam is very tired of it. To make things worse, the Sheriff seems ambivalent when Sam's investigation shows that the man was murdered.

If you can ignore the inconsistency of an insurance investigator trying to make his company pay out the biggest claim instead of the smallest, it is an interesting film. Not a great film but interesting and worth seeing despite its flaws.

By the way, I wish the film had used a ballistics expert to consult, as the film made a couple mistakes I noticed. First, Sam fires a gun (to get a ballistics comparison of the bullet) and IMMEDIATELY picks up the slug with his bare hands. It would be super-hot--and you'd either want to wait a moment or use gloves. Second, one piece of evidence that Sam has that convinces him the dead guy was murdered was that the killer was left-handed. Well, I am a right hander in everything...but I shoot left. This is not too uncommon, actually, as you often shoot based on your dominant eye not your dominant hand.

Another nice discovery for me: a pretty good thriller which, though not exactly a film noir, features two staples of the genre – Dennis O'Keefe and William Bendix – in top form. Their rapport throughout is quite delightful and this, along with the equally refreshing charms of leading lady Barbara Britton and the distinct Christmas flavor of its small-town setting, creates an overall mood of warmth not easily found in murder mysteries! The plot (whose insurance-investigation angle clearly derives from Billy Wilder's DOUBLE INDENMITY [1944]) provides a good amount of tension – and red herrings – along the way, while the final revelation (bearing an unexpected moral emphasis) concludes the film on a satisfying note.

An insurance investigator (Dennis O'Keefe) arrives in a small town right at Christmas time to find out about an apparent suicide that his company may have to pay out for. He's met an attractive inhabitant (Barbara Britton) on the train ride into town. The person who O'Keefe's character is supposed to believe killed himself turns out to have been very unpopular. The evidence of his death points not to suicide but to murder, though everyone in the town from the bus driver to the sheriff (William Bendix) seem totally unfazed about what has happened. This could have been a lot more exciting if the townspeople had gone farther in trying to stop the investigation. They are all so nice and yet this guy is dead, and not by his own hand. So, ergo, it would seem that they are, in fact, not so nice after all, and that this town is covering up murder, though the film seems to be telling us that that is OK, that the dead guy somehow had it coming and that the spirit of Christmas overrides the evil of his murder. Nonetheless, a few parts stand out for being bizarre, most especially the one played by Doro Merande as Hilda, the housekeeper for Barbara Britton and her family, who in one scene is outside setting fire to the dad's fur coat and later tells everyone that it was an accident. All in all, though this is a strange movie, which is a good point, it seems shackled and prohibited from reaching its true realization.

A good, economical little b movie, with a wonderful female lead , Britton, who is stunning and a straight faced male lead, O Keefe. Enough red herrings to keep one amused, as long as you are not looking for a classic.