The Glass Key (1942)

The Glass Key (1942)

starring Brian Donlevy, Veronica Lake, Alan Ladd, William Bendix

directed by Stuart Heisler

85 minutes

Paul Madvig (Brian Donlevy) falls hard for Janet Henry (Veronica Lake). He supports her father's run for governor. Things get complicated when her brother turns up dead. Complicating things is the fact that he had a gambling problem and had been hanging around with Opal, Madvig's sister.

Paul quickly becomes the prime suspect. Ed Beaumont (Alan Ladd), Paul's righthand man does what he can to try and figure out what really happened. Paul doesn't make things easy for them by not playing nice with Nick Varna, the mob boss who owns one of the newspapers in town.

Ed takes a meeting with Varna, after he has a public falling out with Paul, but when Ed isn't willing to play nice Varna sicks Jeff (William Bendix) on him. Varna wants Ed to dish all the dirt about Paul. Ed declines despite his very public spat with Paul.

Thoughts

This is the second of four films that paired Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. I watched their first pairing, This Gun for Hire (1942), in 2023.

I kept comparing this movie to Miller's Crossing (1991) which is in part based on it or the book upon which it is based. I think this might have hampered my ability to enjoy this film for what it is, rather than what it isn't.

I watched the 1935 version of The Glass Key in 2023. This movie and the previous incarnation are based on a novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett.

There are a lot of twists and turns as the story progresses. There might be a few too many. The performances by the lead characters are good but with one exception I didn't think they were great.

I like this movie. It kept me guessing but it isn't great although it does have some great moments. William Bendix is disturbingly scary as Jeff. I think that Donlevy and Ladd were better in the two lead roles rather than Edward Arnold and George Raft in the 1935 film. Ladd and Lake have a few nice moments together but they are probably on screen together for less than a quarter of the movie.