May Wynn, a truly beautiful actress who I haven't seen on screen in forever (she retired in 1960!) is the reason to watch this segment, as she gets Chuck to help out after her boyfriend (and a guy Chuck new back in high school) is murdered by fellow mobsters.
She takes our hero to a mansion, apparently in New Jersey, where top national mafioso are holding a big meet, and of course Chuck automatically snaps into action to take photos surreptitiously of the bosses together.
He gives the pictures to Wynn, and gets beat up by goons guarding the place, with Wynn using them as leverage to get her boyfriend's killer turned over to her. It's a hard-boiled crime episode that fits Chuck to a T, and Wynn is most convincing as one tough babe.
The mobsters give Chuck an ultimatum -he has one day to get back the pictures to them, or else, and Wynn is uncooperative -she insists on finding the killer, even if it puts Chuck in jeopardy.
David Harmon's script has several very fine twists, with all the characters' behavior, including even Chuck's, called into question as befits a film noir story. Especially satisfying is the moral of the story as stated by cop Robert Cornthwaite, that keeping one's word is vital, but it must take into account who one gave one's word to (i.e., not to gangsters). That's the same overall theme Peckinpah used in his classic "The Wild Bunch" a decade later, as articulated by Ernest Borgnine to star Wiliam Holden.
She takes our hero to a mansion, apparently in New Jersey, where top national mafioso are holding a big meet, and of course Chuck automatically snaps into action to take photos surreptitiously of the bosses together.
He gives the pictures to Wynn, and gets beat up by goons guarding the place, with Wynn using them as leverage to get her boyfriend's killer turned over to her. It's a hard-boiled crime episode that fits Chuck to a T, and Wynn is most convincing as one tough babe.
The mobsters give Chuck an ultimatum -he has one day to get back the pictures to them, or else, and Wynn is uncooperative -she insists on finding the killer, even if it puts Chuck in jeopardy.
David Harmon's script has several very fine twists, with all the characters' behavior, including even Chuck's, called into question as befits a film noir story. Especially satisfying is the moral of the story as stated by cop Robert Cornthwaite, that keeping one's word is vital, but it must take into account who one gave one's word to (i.e., not to gangsters). That's the same overall theme Peckinpah used in his classic "The Wild Bunch" a decade later, as articulated by Ernest Borgnine to star Wiliam Holden.
