Word: ladd
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Glass Key (Veronica Lake, Brian Donlevy, Alan Ladd; TIME...
...Glass Key" is one of the best pictures of the year and Alan Ladd is the whole show. Brian Donlevy and Veronica Lake turn in adequate performances, the plot is interesting if improbable, but Hollywood's best find in years makes the picture. Ladd isn't as tough as he was in "This Gun For Hire." He kicks and bruises where he once shot and killed. Occasional smiles and leers light up his former ominous dead-pan. But these little human touches only accent a character more sinister than Bogart at his best...
...Ladd rates all the encores for acting, but in the screen story he plays second fiddle to Brian Donlevy. Donlevy, who is appropriately cast as an unscrupulous politician, is engaged in a vicious struggle for political control of an already corrupt city. Ladd, his number one trouble-shooter, sees plenty of trouble when Veronica Lake gets Donlevy to give her father political support in return for her smiles and wiles, but it takes him the whole picture to straighten things out. And in the end, with a little help from Veronica, he acts perfectly normal. The guy, who in "This...
...Glass Key, Ladd plays cold, frail, brainy dandy Ed Beaumont, who uses his wits and risks his life to help a friend out of a tight place. The friend is naive Politician Paul Madvig (Brian Donlevy). The plot revolves about the doings of 1) Veronica Lake-with-her-hair-up, who is playing Madvig for a sucker but has a glad eye for Friend Beaumont; 2) her father, a corrupt politician, Madvig's candidate for governor; 3) her playboy brother, who gets murdered; 4) a gelid gambling boss (Joseph Calleia) who tries to pin the murder on Madvig...
...those who can take it, The Glass Key is a hard, fast, frightening hour, with a few soft spots. Veronica Lake's special talents give inappropriate energy to a somewhat vapid role. Alan Ladd is really the whole picture. With expert writing, direction and a very solid cast working to dilute him, Ladd makes Beaumont come close to the character that Hammett had in mind-an admirable, minor-league Machiavelli...