Warners Lowering Boom On B's

Crime By Night (1944) Plays Like a Miles Archer Mystery

Warners released nineteen features in 1944, of which three were B's. The reason for cutback was company emphasis on longer runs for A product, it being not unusual for urban spots to hold these a month or more to packed attendance. The wartime boom had most to do with that; thanks to rationing of food and goods, what was left to occupy home-fronters but movies? Crime By Night might be subtitled The Further Adventures Of Miles Archer, for here is The Maltese Falcon's Jerome Cowan again as a private dick on murder's trail. Cowan was capable and might have been groomed as a breezier Bogart based on previous Find The Blackmailer and this, but it was the women who'd foretell stardom ahead. Jane Wyman, Eleanor Parker, and Faye Emerson graduated soon to A's, and in fact, had done so by Crime's delayed release (note Wyman's elevated billing on the one-sheet). The pic was shot eighteen months earlier, but held so war subjects could play off. Light (budget) mystery was carryover staple from 30's mayhem with cocktails that characterized Thin Men, Philo Vance, other series sleuths, but harder edge of noir detecting would assert with Murder, My Sweet, released a few months after Crime By Night and changing forever the thriller landscape.