Paramount Dials Up A Crime Commission

Organized Thuggery Reaches The Turning Point (1952)

Another one spun off the Kefauver investigations, his stand-in here an incorruptible Edmond O' Brien, whose assist, if reluctant, is new-image hatched Bill Holden, no longer Smiling Jim and fit to cynic's armor after Sunset Boulevard. If ever an actor needed change, it was Holden; he'd really blossom as lone man who'd question 50's assumptions, except he'd not do it in method-excess terms of Brando and imitators. Holden holds up for his characters being in the mainstream but not of it. Here's he's still adjusting to the new fit, being reluctant warrior against organized crime and ultimate martyr to law/order's cause. As with most crime ring breakups, solution comes with getting rid of a baddest apple, in this case Ed Begley, embodiment of all vice in unnamed "Midwest" city where O'Brien and team crusades. Paramount's Barney Balaban was bullish over Paramount's schedule for 1952-53 which included The Turning Point in addition to high-hopes The Stooge, Come Back, Little Sheba, and Thunder In The East, all interestingly in black-and-white as wider industry committed more to color (ten Para pics for latter-half 1952 release would be in color, five in B/W).

The Turning Point was economical ($874K negative cost) for shooting amidst seedy environs of LA's Bunker Hill district, collapsing blocks dressed ideally to host bleak setting of noir. As The Turning Point was more about real-world struggle against crime, there was less of noir abstraction, but Paramount couldn't have built with ten million the evocative backgrounds Bunker Hill supplied for nothing. As record of a city's underbelly that would soon vanish, The Turning Point was/is priceless (check out a fine recent book on Bunker Hill by Jim Dawson). Speaking of LA and outreach to same, Paramount had decided to widen first-run openings beyond downtown and Hollywood venues that had till then been exclusive zone for newest product. Expansion to Greater LA, including Pasadena and Inglewood suburbs, was prompted by heavier ad placement in newspapers being circulated in these and other areas that till then had to wait for movies. Wider first-runs allowed Paramount "to get more impact from its ... ad coin outlay," said Variety.