Word: ladd
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Chicago Deadline (Paramount) is a lagging, maudlin movie with a tricky plot that never quite gets untangled. A sentimental reporter (Alan Ladd) who finds a pretty corpse in a cheap hotel is moved to track down the people in her fat address book and find out how she came to her sordid end. After Reporter Ladd finally "winds up the case," there are at least two unexplained murders and a heroine whose life story is still pretty much of a mystery. The journalistic technique constantly threatens to make the movie a good study of sleazy big-city life...
...Twist is not what recommends "Chicago Deadline." Neither is Alan Ladd, nor, for that matter, Donna Reed, both of whom are starred in the film. What the picture does offer is a good plot with plenty of suspense, and, in due course, lots of action...
...Alan Ladd plays a reporter who happens to be in a boarding house when a beautiful young woman is discovered dead there. He is struck by her beauty, and makes off with her address book before the usual cluck D. A. arrives. Using the address book, Ladd sniffs around trying to find something about the girl's family, friends, and past. In the course of this snooping, he bumps into a goodly number of unsavory characters, as well as a couple who are mildly savory...
...Chicago Deadline" has flashbacks galore, in which we see the girl, played by Miss Reed, as Life strikes her one blow after another. She gets mixed up with gangsters and a corrupt bank president, until she finally meets her untimely end in the fly-blown rooming house where reporter Ladd first sees...
June Havoc is surprisingly good as the dead girl's showgirl friend; Alan Ladd and Donna Reed are unsurprisingly mediocre, but no one would go to the movies to see them, anyhow. "Chicago Deadline" is not the sort of picture you'd go out of your way to see; but once inside, you won't walk out, either...