***SPOILERS*** Originally offered to Humphrey Bogart who turned it down for the part of private eye Philip Marlow in the overly plotted and almost impossible to follow "The Big Snooze" no one could have done a better acting job portraying con artist Nick Blake as the ruggedly handsome as well as sensitive John Garfield; who was also some 15 years younger then Bogart. Nick who just came back from the war in Europe finds that his 50 G's he left with his girlfriend Toni Blackburn, Faye Emerson, was gone due to bad investments on Toni's part. It's now Toni's boyfriend grease ball Chet King, Robert Shayne, who runs the New York City night club that Nick controlled before he was drafter into the US Army.
Using a little friendly persuasion, like threatening to brake his skull, Nick gets his 50's G's back and heads west with his friend Al Doyle, George Tobias, for greener and sunnier pastures in far off, from NYC, California. It's there that Nick plans to practice his craft in romancing and then conning elderly widows and end up taking them for a ride together with their deceased husbands money.
It's when Nick set his sight on young & pretty recently widowed Gladys Halvorsen, Geraldine Fitzgerald, that he starts to get second thoughts about ripping her off of her's dead husbands 2 million dollars that he left to her.This doesn't go well with Nick's fellow con man Doc Ganson,George Coulouris, who never like Nick in the first place and resented Nick getting 75% of the take: Gladys' two million! What soon happens in that Nick falls in love with Gladys and decides to back out of the con and buy off Doc and his boys , from out of his own pocket, with the money that he promised them. This causes Doc to do things, like he alway likes to, his own way by kidnapping Gladys and holding her hostage until she get's Nick to pay Doc and his boys off with her, and well as his, money.
***SPOILERS*** The great John Garfield was never better as Nick Blake a man with both fists of stone as well as a heart of gold which almost ends up costing his as well as Galdys' lives. with the help of Al and old friend and con artist Pop Granson, Walter Brennan, Nick goes all out to rescue Gladys. That soon ends up with a wild shootout at Doc's hideout with both Doc and Pop getting gunned down in the crossfire. As for the surviving Nick he finally saw the light and went legit and now together with Gladys put his life of crime behind him.
P.S Check out Richard Erdman as the bellboy at the hotel that Gladys was staying at who's surprisingly, now, almost 70 years after the movie was made, is still around with us! Erdman was later to play the role of US POW Huffy the guy in charge of the German POW camp "Stalag 17" in the Academy Award winning film of the same name.
Using a little friendly persuasion, like threatening to brake his skull, Nick gets his 50's G's back and heads west with his friend Al Doyle, George Tobias, for greener and sunnier pastures in far off, from NYC, California. It's there that Nick plans to practice his craft in romancing and then conning elderly widows and end up taking them for a ride together with their deceased husbands money.
It's when Nick set his sight on young & pretty recently widowed Gladys Halvorsen, Geraldine Fitzgerald, that he starts to get second thoughts about ripping her off of her's dead husbands 2 million dollars that he left to her.This doesn't go well with Nick's fellow con man Doc Ganson,George Coulouris, who never like Nick in the first place and resented Nick getting 75% of the take: Gladys' two million! What soon happens in that Nick falls in love with Gladys and decides to back out of the con and buy off Doc and his boys , from out of his own pocket, with the money that he promised them. This causes Doc to do things, like he alway likes to, his own way by kidnapping Gladys and holding her hostage until she get's Nick to pay Doc and his boys off with her, and well as his, money.
***SPOILERS*** The great John Garfield was never better as Nick Blake a man with both fists of stone as well as a heart of gold which almost ends up costing his as well as Galdys' lives. with the help of Al and old friend and con artist Pop Granson, Walter Brennan, Nick goes all out to rescue Gladys. That soon ends up with a wild shootout at Doc's hideout with both Doc and Pop getting gunned down in the crossfire. As for the surviving Nick he finally saw the light and went legit and now together with Gladys put his life of crime behind him.
P.S Check out Richard Erdman as the bellboy at the hotel that Gladys was staying at who's surprisingly, now, almost 70 years after the movie was made, is still around with us! Erdman was later to play the role of US POW Huffy the guy in charge of the German POW camp "Stalag 17" in the Academy Award winning film of the same name.