Roaring City (1951) User Reviews

Double Jackpot for Ward Cleaver

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 11 July 2011]

Hugh Beaumont who made an indelible impression on all kids as the world's greatest dad as Ward Cleaver on television will shock the fans of Leave It To Beaver when they see him play laconic private eye Dennis O'Brien, living on the San Francisco wharf with his research man Edward Brophy in Roaring City. Definitely not the Hugh we're used to.

You know he's got the dialog and the patter down straight, but as a detective he falls into the Miles Archer rather than the Sam Spade category. In this film which involves Beaumont in two separate stories in both cases he does a job which looks really suspicious from the start. In the first he lays down some bets for a fight manager against his own fighter under an alias. He looks real good for the homicides of both the manager and the fighter to detective Richard Travis.

The second one is even worse, he's asked to pose as the husband of one of a pair of women in a rendezvous and the real husband comes up dead with an unconscious Beaumont with the stiff in a trash dumpster. I mean this guy's radar is really on the fritz.

Still it's not a bad premise for a television show which it was for a brief time and it proves that Hugh Beaumont could be something other than the All American Dad.

That's Radio Static Making That Roaring

[boblipton · 6/10 · 10 December 2021]

Hugh Beaumont is an unlicensed private investigator. He gets involved in a couple of murders, almost pulled in by police inspector Richard Travis, and investigates by getting his head pounded in and with the aid of alchoholic Eddie Brophy in this brisk film noir from Lippert.

It's based on a couple of scripts from radio's Pat Novak For Hire, a local show that starred Jack Webb at the beginning of its career before it went national briefly with another performer in the lead role. There's a lot of exposition, fancy metaphors, and a voice over by Beaumont explaining what's going on.

On the plus side, the copy was one of the few good prints of a movie shot by Jack Greenhalgh, and is quite lovely. It shows why he was for a long time, the youngest member of the American Society of Cinematographers. Despite the script not being opened up particularly for the movies, it has some striking images.

Hugh Beaumont For Hire

[skallisjr · 5/10 · 8 December 2008]

As noted elsewhere, this film bears a strong resemblance to the Old-Time Radio program, PAT NOVAK FOR HIRE. The setup is virtually identical. The protagonist (calling him a hero is a tad generous) has a shop on a pier in San Francisco, is 'for hire" for any odd job that he feels comfortable with, legal or otherwise. As with the radio show, he has an intelligent, though alcoholic, helper who can do leg offstage to get him the data he needs to put the pieces of a caper together. Also like the radio show, he gets knocked out a lot.

The radio show had a lot of colorful similes, verging toward purple prose, that's diminished in the films, but then, Dennis O'Brien is no Pat Novak. (Only Jack Webb could deliver the lines the way they would work.) But, like Novak, O'Brien has a nemesis on the police force, an inspector (Hellman for Novak, Briger for City). The inspector in the film is played by Richard Travis; in the radio show, it was played by Raymond Burr.

That aside, the stories were structured like the radio show. Most of the women were, well, far from innocent victims or bystanders. This is clearly evident in both stories.

One thing in the first story that is bemusing. Toward the end of the story, Inspector Bruger becomes convinced about the guilt of the villain, gawking the heat off O'Brien. He holds the guy at gun point as O'Brien decides to call it a day. Exiting the apartment, O'Brien casually walks between Bruger and his prisoner, right through the line of fire! But nobody reacts. Criminals must have been a lot more cooperative in those days! The film is abstaining, but nothing special. A pale echo of PAT NOVAK FOR HIRE to that show's fans, though.

Odd Format that Doesn't Work

[dougdoepke · 3 March 2015]

As a PI, Beaumont's (O'Brien) got all the macho moves and snappy rejoinders down pat. In fact, dialog may be the programmer's chief asset. The movie's really two separate half-hour stories in a single one-hour package, but don't bother with the plots. They're too complex for brief run-times, and really just an excuse to move the cast around cheap apartment sets. I'm just sorry we don't see more of atmospheric San Francisco where the shenanigans ostensibly occur. I could also have used more of the stately blonde (Valerie) instead of guys in trench coats threatening one another. Seems like O'Brien's main purpose is to get slugged and then wake up amid dead bodies. Nothing special or unusual here, except for Ward Cleaver making a pretty darn good tough guy. Trouble is the blended half-hours are more unwieldy than satisfying.

One of a kind

[AlsExGal · 7/10 · 11 December 2021]

This poverty row noir starring Hugh Beaumont as Dennis O'Brien, San Francisco boat salesman and traveler through the back alleys of life, is hilarious. There wasn't enough money to give it atmosphere nor any big names. It distinguishes itself in three areas - a cast now known or remembered for things not noir, how it is actually two independent storylines glued together, and that concentrated noir dialogue that sounds like something out of the satire "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid".

I wonder if this wasn't supposed to be some kind of TV pilot, because it is divided into two thirty minute tales in which the main character, O'Brien, agrees to do something for money for some shadowy or unknown character, gets double crossed, and then has to solve what happened or take the fall. A police detective, inspector Bruger, who seems to know him always shows up to accuse him of murder. So we have a protagonist who makes bad decisions and a police detective who always draws wrong conclusions. I can see why the networks thought this might not work out in the long term.

Of course, most people know Hugh Beaumont as TV dad Ward Cleaver in Leave It To Beaver, and I have to think that gig worked out better than had he played O'Brien in a TV series knock off of this film. O'Brien's roommate and partner is "the professor" played by an out of place Ed Brophy. Brophy was an assistant director who became, after sound came in, a supporting player portraying various barely literate lugs and thugs. Here he is portraying a somewhat alcoholic intellectual who talks of Shakespeare. If you know him from any of his earlier film roles, it is a sight to be seen.

Finally, let me get to that dialogue. Absolutely do not play a drinking game every time you hear a line of over done noir dialogue that sounds like satire rather than the way actual people - hard boiled or not - would ever talk. You'll be dead in twenty minutes.

Recommended for the fun of it all.

Decent programmer that was probably originally going to be a TV series...Acting by actresses is amateurish...gangsterish dialogue is actually ludicrous.

[mmipyle · 4/10 · 17 June 2021]

"Roaring City" (1951) was the second of three "Dennis O'Brien" mystery films starring Hugh Beaumont. Actually, each of the three has two parts, each a half-hour segment episode that somewhat obviously was supposed to be part of a planned television series which didn't materialize. They're all actually pretty decent little shows, though the dialogue is such that Dashiell Hammett would have had to use a sledgehammer to cut the radio-style gangsterese down to size. In this "feature", as in all of them, Ed Brophy is a drunken partner - a live-in - an ex-professor whose own dialogue is basically nothing but ten dollar gibberish to say anything. It's the humor of these pieces, and it's okay, but that's about it; and Richard Travis is a cop who constantly tries to pin the murders that ubiquitously occur on O'Brien, but in the end has to admit defeat and be "glad" O'Brien helped him - I guess. Joan Valerie, Wanda McKay, and Rebel Randall fill out the female bills in the two episodes which occur here. Bad girls, all of them. Valerie and McKay give rather poor performances. Randall is better. Anthony Warde, Greg McClure, William Tannen, Abner Biberman, and a couple of others are all complicit in being bad. Mediocre stuff, but easy to watch anyway. Directed by William Berke.

I wasn't overwhelmed

[blanche-2 · 5/10 · 10 June 2020]

Hugh "Leave it to Beaver" Beaumont stars in "Roaring City," from 1951. The film also features Edward Brophy and Richard Travis.

This was apparently one of three feature films that combined two half-hour stories, which answers the question as to why these stories weren't connected. Denny O'Brien (Beaumont) is man with a ship he rents, but he also does odd jobs. He rooms with an alcoholic ex-professor (Brophy) who does some work for him.

The first story concerns a fixed fight that O'Brien is hired to bet on; in the other one, he is hired to pretend to be a woman's husband. These jobs are not without problems. In the fight story, it doesn't go the way it was supposed to; in the other -- well, it's not as straightforward as it first seemed.

Denny usually winds up unconscious or beaten and in hot water with a police inspector. Hugh Beaumont does a good job in the role - he's natural and charming.

I'm not exactly the audience for these low-budget Bs, but I appreciate that they have their place in the noir canon.

?????

[sibleybridges · 3/10 · 10 December 2021]

A jack of all trades "yes" man takes a job making shady bets on a boxing match. When things go wrong and a man is murdered, he must solve the crime before a detective pins the crime on him.

This movie made very little sense. It makes less sense that the man is constantly discovered all over the city with incriminating evidence (usually a dead body) after being knocked unconscious and each time the detective just lets him go on "solving" the mystery. This happens over and over. It's ridiculous.

I think this is vying for the title of dumbest noir ever made.

Watched on YouTube.

Hugh Beaumont as detective Denny O'Brien--two stories, one film

[django-1 · 8/10 · 26 January 2005]

Hugh Beaumont, who previous had played Michael Shayne for a series of detective movies at PRC in the 1946-47 season (entertaining films, but having little to do with the Shayne character as depicted in the Brett Halliday novels), put the trench-coat back on for a series of three hour-long feature films as detective Denny O'Brien, released in short succession through Lippert Pictures in 1951. One interesting element about these films is that each consists of two half-hour-long stories, almost as if one is watching back-to-back episodes of a television show. Another interesting element is that the films seem to have borrowed a number of elements from the radio show PAT NOVAK FOR HIRE, starring Jack Webb. Not only is O'Brien a man who rents a ship at the pier and does odd jobs, not only does each film start with monologues very similar to those of Webb, not only does O'Brien have a drunken ex-college-professor sidekick who does some legwork for him, but one of the three films has a plot line lifted directly from a Novak episode! (Perhaps other plots of these movies are lifted from Novak episodes I haven't heard) In any event, these three films are all enjoyable outings with Beaumont radiating the same kind of charm he always did, yet still being convincing as a tough PI spouting hard-boiled dialogue. This particular film has two stories: one of a fixed fight that O'Brien is hired to bet on, and the other where O'Brien is hired to pose as a woman's husband for an evening. Like the PAT NOVAK series, someone hires the detective to do something, he winds up getting beaten up or knocked out, and he wakes up with a dead body, and a police inspector who doesn't like him trying to pin the murder on the detective. That's the formula, and I like it. As often happens with Lippert films, there is a fine b-movie supporting cast, and there is no time wasted on non-essential items. I've owned this film for about 15 years, and I have no doubt watched it five times in those years. Beaumont fans will NOT be disappointed. The other two Denny O'Brien films are DANGER ZONE and PIER 23, both of which I also recommend to detective film fans who do not mind bargain-basement productions in the PRC/Lippert vein. These are directed by the ever-reliable William Berke.

It Doesn't Get Much Worse - Roaring City

[arthur_tafero · 2/10 · 14 November 2023]

You would have to be roaring drunk to watch this turkey; I am pretty sure the writer and director of this film got roaring drunk when they wrote and directed it as well. Hugh Beaumont (Beaver's dad in Leave it to Beaver) was lucky to any additional work after this fiasco. Fortunately, he went on to a decent career in TV. The dialogue is so blase, and the action? Sequences are so phony, that one has to look away at times during the film in order to convince yourself this is just not a bad high school play.

There are no production values, and the acting is absolutely atrocious, especially from everyone else in the cast. Some of the actors sound as if they are reading their lines off of a prompter. Don't watch, you might fall asleep.

Who cares that the plot is confusing--watch this one!!

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 20 November 2010]

Yes, I meant what I said in the summary. Despite a confusing plot and perhaps one too many twists, this is a dandy low-budget example of film noir. One of the biggest reasons to watch it is to see Hugh Beaumont playing such a jaded and noir character. This guy is as far from the Ward Clever character that Beaumont played on "Leave It To Beaver" as you can get!! In fact, his dialog is so snappy and he is so different that I strongly advise you to watch! Sure, I know that Beaumont actually played in a lot of cop films and on TV in roles as crooks, prosecutors and policemen--but this one is so much grittier and amoral than anything I'd seen. Another big reason to watch is because it's not just Beaumont--ALL the people talk with some of the darkest and snappiest dialog imaginable--it's like a textbook example of the genre. Along the same lines, the action is amazingly gritty. I've never seen another film with so many 'dames' getting slapped around!! While this may sound offensive, it really adds to the realism and the women in this film, like the men, are vipers. Finally, a reason I loved it probably won't matter to the average noir viewer, but I loved seeing Eddie Brophy playing such an atypical character. Brophy almost always played low-brow sorts--most often dumb thugs. Here, however, he plays so much against type it made me laugh. Here, he's called 'the Professor' and talks like a Harvard lecturer!! And, he doesn't come off as dumb at all--and sounds quite convincing. Oh, and if you think you recognize his voice, he played Timothy in Disney's "Dumbo".

As I said above, the plot seemed incidental. It all begins with Beaumont playing a private detective who will do almost anything for a buck. A crook wants him to place some bets in his name--as a boxing match has been fixed (boxing not on the level--say is ain't so!). But, when the losing boxer WINS, things start spiraling out of control and Beaumont finds himself suspected of the murder. There is LOTS more to it than that and who is responsible and why is dandy....but the road there is full of a bazillion twists and turns. Relax is my advice...and just enjoy the ride. This is a wonderful example of a low-budget noir film that manages to be better than many of the bigger studio efforts! See it.