NIGHT EDITOR (1946)

By Gary Deane

Director Henry Levin never met a film genre that he didn’t like or — perhaps more accurately — that didn’t like him. Though taking his craft seriously, Levin was a genial extrovert who shunned anything that smacked of self-importance. For him, a successful movie was a good story well-told, period. Over nearly four decades, Levin cheerfully marshaled a winning parade of popcorn projects which included westerns, adventure stories, musicals, comedies, family dramas, crime pictures, spy thrillers, and, nearer the end of his career, action flicks.

Night Editor, a tightly-wound little crime chiller released in 1946, was one of Levin’s earliest assignments and clearly demonstrates the brisk, yet personable directorial style that would mark his work until the end. Though the low-budget Columbia programmer was never intended by the studio to have a long working life, Night Editor to this day has refused to turn in its gun and badge.

The movie was based on a weekly radio series in which a newspaper editor would give the listening audience the inside on some tawdry crime tale. Its story, as recounted to a young reporter who’s foolishly been boozing it up, dogging it at work, and neglecting his family, is cautionary. The film, unwinding in flashback, focuses on Tony Cochrane (William Gargan), a dour, charmless cop and faithless husband. This time, Cochrane’s got it bad for a high-class society babe, Jill Merrill (Janice Carter), who also happens to be hitched.

One night, while working themselves into a sweat in a lovers’ lane, the two watch in shock as a woman is beaten to death with a tire iron. Cochrane instinctively moves to go after the killer but Merrill holds him back. As a result, the detective fails to pursue the culprit or report the murder. Not a good situation, but one which only gets worse after the body is found and Cochrane finds himself assigned to the case. The detective now has to work hard to cover his tracks, both figuratively and for real. Those of his car, found at the crime scene, are a key part of the evidence. 

Little by little, the cover-up starts to fall apart — that is, until a man whom the detective knows for certain not to be the killer is arrested and ultimately sentenced to death. Though Cochrane feels remorse, it's clear that events still take a back seat to his lust for Jill Merrill.

What's not so clear in Night Editor is why the likes of Merrill would bother with a lumpen character like Cochrane, unless he’s maybe got a python in his pants. The glamourpuss does seem to have a thing for sex — though of what kind we are not sure. In one of the film’s most notorious scenes, she lifts off like a rocket, shouting, "I want to see the body!" Rattled by Merrill’s frenzied voyeurism, Cochrane decides to get out of there as fast as he can. Though obsessed with Merrill, he’s now beginning to understand what she’s about. He later tries to ditch her in an exchange that’s as ripe as pulp noir ever gets:

Him: “You’re no good for me. We both add up to zero. I’m sick of the whole crazy mess. I’m sick of playing games. You’re worse than blood poisoning. You’re a rotten—rick through and through. Like something that’s served at the Ritz that’s been laying out in the sun too long.”

Her: “To hear you talk you’d think I was crawling after you. I don’t need you and I can buy and sell you. That’s right, Tony. You’re not my kind. But your little tootsie-wootsie loves her great big stupid peasant.”

You get the picture.

Another thing that’s not clear — at least to today’s audiences — is why Janis Carter, a strikingly beautiful, vivacious, and multi-talented actress, never had a bigger career. Though Carter featured in thirty-odd films, she never came close to achieving lasting stardom. If it were not for her appearances in several minor crime dramas including Framed (1947), I Love Trouble (1948), The Missing Juror (1944), The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) as well as in several titles of The Whistler series, Carter, sadly, would be all but forgotten.

Carter’s recognition problem is the result of her bifurcated screen persona. On one hand, she was the personification of the 1940s calendar pin-ups à la Edward Runci or T.N. Thompson — an alluring mix of movie star beauty, sophistication, and girl-next-door high spirits and playfulness. By rights, Carter would have at least found sure footing in comedies and musicals (her background had been in opera and theater). However, the actress also could play it aloof, willful, and calculating — perhaps too easily and too well. Carter's career path took her down some of B-noir’s seediest side streets to places where she joyously acted out her inner bad girl. If conventional stardom eluded her, certainly lasting status as one of film noir's most exuberant and deadliest femme fatales has not.

Night Editor also wastes no time thanks to Levin's fast-ball direction and the supple camerawork of Burnett Guffey. The latter was one of film noir’s most emotionally attuned stylists, working on In a Lonely Place (1950), Nightfall (1956), The Brothers Rico (1957), Scandal Street (1952), Tightspot (1955), The Harder They Fall (1956), Knock on Any Door (1949), The Reckless Moment (1949), Human Desire (1954), and The Sniper (1952).

Night Editor was first intended as a pilot for a series of like films with stories being told by veteran police-beat reporters. Though the series never happened, Night Editor did, and on its own terms. Without it, and so many other B-titles with similarly deranged impulses, classic film noir would hardly be as compelling and, frankly, not nearly such an unruly joy to watch.