Somewhere in the Night (film)

In the final weeks of World War II, a bandage-wrapped man awakens with amnesia in a U.S. military field hospital in Okinawa. Over the course of his long recovery, he learns that he is George W. Taylor, a marine who was severely wounded by an enemy grenade. Among Taylor's personal items is an unsigned letter that vehemently curses him for an unspecified wrong he committed against the writer. Mortified at the letter and the possibility that he is a bad person, Taylor resolves to hide his amnesia and uncover his original identity without anyone's help.

Taylor begins his investigation in Los Angeles, his registered place of residence. He finds a note in an old briefcase of his advising him that an account had been opened in his name at a local bank by an apparent friend named Larry Cravat. In the course of Taylor's search for Cravat, he ends up in a nightclub called The Cellar. As Taylor asks around for anyone who might know Cravat, the bartender alerts two thugs about his inquiry. To evade the thugs, Taylor slips into the dressing room of singer Christy Smith, where he finds an old postcard directed to Christy from a woman named Mary announcing her impending marriage to Larry Cravat. He takes the postcard and leaves as Christy summons the nightclub's bouncer.

Taylor later returns to The Cellar at the request of the bartender, who called claiming to have information about Larry Cravat, but it is a trap and he is seized by the thugs, who are henchmen of the gangster Anzelmo. Taylor is brutally interrogated to give up Cravat's whereabouts, and then dumped at the address on the postcard, Christy's apartment. Upon being revived by Christy's care, Taylor asks her about Mary, who he assumes is Cravat's wife. Christy relates that Cravat left Mary at the altar, and she subsequently died in a pedestrian accident. Taylor decides to confide in Christy about his amnesia.

Christy introduces Taylor to Mel Phillips, the genial proprietor of The Cellar, who in turn arranges a meeting with LAPD Lieutenant Donald Kendall to shed some light on the mysterious Larry Cravat. Taylor uses the alias Tom Carter during the meeting to protect himself. Kendall reveals that years ago, a Nazi official who planned to defect sent his nest egg of $2 million in cash to America for safekeeping, but was executed before he could make his escape from Germany. The money, which was in $1,000 bills that could not be spent or exchanged without attracting government attention, changed hands many times until it was brought to Los Angeles in December 1942. Cravat, a private detective at the time, is alleged to have stolen the money and murdered its carrier before vanishing. As he leaves, Kendall notes that the police want to question George Taylor, since his recent activities have stirred up the Cravat case.

A message signed "L.C." is found on Christy's car, which eventually leads Taylor to Terminal Dock and the office of the fortune teller Dr. Oracle, who Taylor recognizes as Anzelmo. Explaining that he is also hunting for Cravat to obtain the $2 million, Anzelmo divulges that the money's original carrier was a man named Steele, and Steele's murder took place at Terminal Dock. The crime was witnessed by a dockworker named Michael Conroy, who saw an unidentified third man in the area with Cravat and Steele. Anzelmo accuses Taylor of being the third man, and warns him that if he does not help him contact Cravat, he will use his detailed knowledge of Steele's murder to frame Taylor as the killer. Taylor tracks Michael Conroy to Lambeth Sanatorium, narrowly avoiding being hit by a speeding truck in the process, only to find Michael dying of a recent stab wound. In his last moments, Michael shares that after the Steele murder, he found a suitcase that had been left behind and hid it under Terminal Dock; Michael dies before he can name the suitcase's owner and Steele's killer.

Lt. Kendall visits Christy's apartment in search of Taylor, having determined that her friend "Tom Carter" was Taylor by planting the "L.C." note as bait, and warns that he is now wanted for the murder of Michael Conroy. Once Kendall is gone, Taylor and Christy head to Terminal Dock to retrieve the suitcase. They find the $2 million intact, as well as clothing with tailor labels bearing the names Larry Cravat and "W. George, tailor". Taylor realizes he is Larry Cravat, and that after the Steele murder, he must have taken on a new identity and then enlisted in the U.S. Marines to hide. He shows the unsigned letter to Christy, who verifies that it was written by Mary after Cravat abandoned her. Taylor and Christy then come under fire from an unseen assailant and hide in a soup kitchen. Taylor has the soup kitchen's manager take the suitcase to Lt. Kendall.

Taylor and Christy are forcibly brought before Anzelmo, who demands his meeting with Cravat, but Phillips arrives with a gun and helps Taylor and Christy escape with him to The Cellar. It dawns on Taylor that Phillips is Steele's murderer. Phillips confirms this and clarifies what happened in 1942. Steele had struck a deal with Phillips to launder the Nazi money, but Cravat got wind of the exchange, passed himself off as Phillips, and took the money from Steele. Phillips arrived to find Steele empty-handed and shot him, believing he had been cheated, but then noticed Cravat running away and deduced that Cravat had the money. Phillips was also behind Michael Conroy's murder, the truck that almost hit Taylor, and the gunman at the dock. As Phillips threatens to kill Christy, Taylor offers to show him where the Nazi money is stashed and leads him to the soup kitchen. Once there, Lt. Kendall appears and shoots Phillips to disarm him; upon receiving the suitcase earlier, Kendall had placed the soup kitchen under police surveillance. Phillips is hospitalized and makes a full confession to the police, and Anzelmo's crew is rounded up. Taylor and Christy set out to start a new life together.

Hodiak and Guild

• John Hodiak as George W. Taylor
• Nancy Guild as Christy Smith
• Lloyd Nolan as Police Lt. Donald Kendall
• Richard Conte as Mel Phillips
• Josephine Hutchinson as Elizabeth Conroy
• Fritz Kortner as Anzelmo, aka Dr. Oracle
• Margo Woode as Phyllis
• Sheldon Leonard as Sam
• Lou Nova as Hubert
• Whit Bissel as John the bartender (uncredited)
• Harry Morgan as bathhouse keeper (uncredited)

20th Century Fox purchased Marvin Borowsky's original, unpublished story "The Lonely Journey" and his accompanying screenplay in December 1944 for $11,000. Somewhere in the Night was Nancy Guild's first film. Production Dates: 21 Nov 1945–24 Jan 1946.[2]

A radio version of the film, starring John Hodiak and Lynn Bari, was broadcast on Lux Radio Theatre on March 3, 1947.

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When the film was first released, film critic Bosley Crowther gave the film a negative review, writing "Lloyd Nolan, Richard Conte, Josephine Hutchinson and several others are competent as varied pawns. Their performances are interesting; it's only too bad that they have such turbid and inconclusive things to do. After a while, the mad confusion of the story inspires a complete apathy."[3]

More recently, film critic Dennis Schwartz praised the film, writing "A dark moody noir tale about a marine who gets blown up by a grenade in the South Pacific during a skirmish in WW-II and survives, only to become an amnesia victim...Mankiewicz does a nice job of creating the dark noir mood. The film is spiced up with comedy, excellent performances, plenty of suspense, plus a tense voice-over by John Ireland, and it manages to keep the pot boiling with a quintessential amnesiac story."[4]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Somewhere in the Night (film).

• Somewhere in the Night at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Somewhere in the Night at IMDb
• Somewhere in the Night at AllMovie
• Somewhere in the Night at the TCM Movie Database
• Somewhere in the Night at Rotten Tomatoes
• Somewhere in the Night information site and DVD review at DVD Beaver (includes images)
• Somewhere in the Night film trailer on YouTube