This film is entertaining but marred by a too archly clever script, lines that are delivered, (particularly by William Conrad), as if the speaker were narrating a documentary and scenes that are played at 45RPM instead of 33. The effect is to make the film play like an opera without the music, complete with a mixture of low comedy and high tragedy. An attempt to break the news about a loved one's death becomes an extended discourse on God and the Universe. (I have always found that people in a certain situation are not very interested in the philosophies of people who are not.) Someone makes a wisecrack about the newspaper business and Conrad launches into a sort of aria about the purpose of the news business. He also sings lines like "BBBooooyyy!" when he calls for a copy boy. We have a kid trapped in sewers, another hoping to be adopted by the hero, another dying in a plane crash, etc. etc. I also agree that the thought of David Nelson having been a sergeant in the Korean War when the actor was born in 1936 is absurd.
Still, no one can deny that the film is entertaining for all it's faults. It moves and has real dramatic punch. Jack Webb's performance is his best in the movies since "The Men", (1950), although he still lacks the presence and charisma of the movie star he surely wanted to be. This was almost his last attempt at it after "Dragnet (1954), Pete Kelly's Blues, (1955) and The D.I. (1957). He had one more attempt, "The Last Time I saw Archie" (1961), a service comedy with Robert Mitchum, (now there's a Movie Star!) which, like -30-, was a box office flop and ended Webb's ambitions in this regard. He them became a Warner Brother's executive and then returned to the medium where he really excelled, television.
