Street Of Chance (1942) Might be the first Amnesia Noir

Directed by Jack Hively his only Film Noir. 

He started directing in 1939, then made a handful more films after this one and transitioned to TV. 

Witten by Garrett Fort (screenplay) and based on Cornell Woolrich's novel The Black Curtain. The Cinematography was by Theodor Sparkuhl (Beau Geste (1939), Music was by David Buttolph. 

The film stars  Burgess Meredith (Jigsaw 1949) as Frank Thompson / Dan Nearing, Claire Trevor (10 Classic Film Noir) as Ruth Dillon, Louise Platt as Virginia Thompson, Sheldon Leonard (Decoy 1946, Her Kind of Man 1946, Take One False Step (1949)) as Joe Marruci, Frieda Inescort (The Letter (1940) as Alma Diedrich, Jerome Cowan (7 Classic Noir) as Bill Diedrich, Adeline De Walt Reynolds as Grandma Diedrich, Arthur Loft as Sheriff Lew Stebbins. 

Burgess Meredith as Frank Thompson / Dan Nearing

Claire Trevor as Ruth Dillon

I also have just finished Cornel Woolrich's The Black Curtain and I've watched this one once before on a terrible multigeneration copy that looked like it was filmed underwater. This latest version, that you can find streaming, is a bit of an improvement enough to grab some caps, and I can do a side by side comparison between film and novel. Note that Street of Chance was all filmed on the Paramount backlot, so it's all an imaginary New York City so the geography isn't going to make much sense for New Yorkers,

The Story 

A City. Tillary Street. Most likely New York, though it's never mentioned in either film or novel. One semi solid clue is that a patrolman tells Frank Thompson, our protagonist, that there is a "el" three blocks over in one direction and in the other, at the end of the block, an East Side subway line. That subway can only be The Lexington Avenue / 4th Ave Line and the "el" the 3rd Avenue. There is no Tillary street in Manhattan, however there is a Tillary Street in Brooklyn and there are "el"s and subways near it, however nobody would designate any of those subways as an East Side line. East side West side is a localism only for Manhattan, similar to Uptown - Downtown.

So Frank is walking on Tillary Street (a name street and those are South of Houston street or SoHo. There is an opening shot of a street lamp with a Tillary and W22nd St a Hollywood backlot fantasy, but there is no such combo in either Manhattan or Brooklyn).  

He's on a sidewalk along a board safety wall behind which a tenement being demolished. It's got workers with jackhammers on scaffolding. They are breaking up a cornice and a larger than normal chunk breaks away and bounces off the scaffolding and careens over the board wall and hits the sidewalk just as Frank is walking under it. 

A small piece of cornice grazes Frank's head knocking him out. When he wakes up a police officer asks for his name and address Frank tells him, The cop explains to him what happened. An ambulance medic tells him he's lucky. Frank stands up and while dusting himself off finds a lump in his jacket pocket. He then reaches into that pocket and finds a gold plated cigarette case with the initials D.N. The newsboy that saw it all happen then hands Frank his hat. However inside the hat band are again the initials D.N. Frank tells the boy its not his, but the boy insists he saw it fall off his head. 

It's at this point, that Frank, confused and not recognizing where he is at all, asks the cop writing the incident down in his report where he is. The cop tells him 22nd & Tillary Street. WTF is he doing way downtown on Tillary Street.  He's lost and he asks how to get out of this neighborhood and back to North Rutherford Street where he lives, (which the cop mentions is way uptown) that's when the cop tells him about the nearby subway and el and also about the Green Line bus he can take. 

In The Black Curtain Tillary Street is described as just four blocks long that intersects with through streets at both it's terminals. This is important later in the novel. 

Frank takes the double decker bus to 14th Street & Rutherford (no such Manhattan Address) and gets off.  He walks a short to his brownstone apartment building and immediately sees a for rent sign in his first floor apartment window (in the novel there is also dust caking the window). He runs up the stoop and into the building. In the hall outside his apartment door Frank starts banging on the door and yelling for Virginia to let him in. 

You can tell this is a Hollywood set just by the enormous hallway. What a waste of potential rental space, no bonafide NYC apartment hallway would ever be that wide. 

Anyway the landlady come out and recognizes Thompson and asks him "what he is doing back here are you thinking of renting your old flat back, the last tenants just moved out a week ago?" WTF is going on here? Where is Virginia? She tells him her new address on Anderson Street. 

Anderson Street

In the novel, there is no landlady. Frank rings for the janitor and his wife comes up from the basement. She tells him where Virginia moved to. 

When Frank finally finds the new apartment he notices that on the door Mr, & Mrs Frank Thompson is lined through and  Virginia is listed with her maiden name, again WTF? 

He pushes the doorbell and Virginia answers the door. Virginia has to grab the door she is startled. Frank asks why and how did she move so fast after he left this morning for work. 

Louise Platt as Virginia Thompson

Virginia says this morning!, Frank. you left over a year and a half ago. Frank of course cannot believe it. He can't figure out what happened. We next see Frank in bed with Virginia sitting by him. She tells him that they read about this, it's called Amnesia. She says he probably got hit on the head just like he did today and forgot who he was. Frank asks her how she got by? Modeling, typing and did well. Made enough to put money in the bank. 

Then Frank asks about his job, didn't they call for him. Virginia told them that you had a nervous breakdown and went away to rest for a while. She tells Frank that she was embarrassed to say she didn't know where you went. (You'd think she would have gone to the cops, no?) Anyway she tells Frank that his job is still waiting for him as a result. (So I guess if she went to the cops the company would then know he disappeared and fill his position. Keeping it up in the air was better temporarily especially if he did come home. I guess you always got to figure people who lived during the depression didn't take chances where jobs were concerned and a happy wife would rationalize various reasons for his disappearance and keep up hope.) 

So Frank goes back to his job like he's never been gone. But one day he passes somebody getting a shoe shine that does a double take when he sees Frank and he follows Frank into his building. Frank gets on his elevator and the guy still staring at Frank comes running up to the closing doors. Frank is now concerned. 

Frank goes back to work

Noticed by a stranger

Frank gets on his elevator and the guy still staring at Frank comes running up to the closing doors. Frank is now concerned. 

At the end of the day he spots the man as he scrutinizes the buildings workforce come out of the building. In the film, Frank times his exit and crosses the street to when he's looking the other way and starts running towards the kiosk Subway entrance. Instead going down the stairway, he ducks around the side of the Kiosk and hails a cab and hops in. The stranger has to dodge traffic and gets slowed down. When he doesn't see Frank going down the stairway, he looks at the departing cab and seeing Frank in the back window begins to chase it. The cab stops for a red light. The man is at the door trying to open it. When he can't he takes out a gun and breaks a hole in the window, but the light changes and the cab speeds off.

Frank crosses the street through traffic

Frank ducks around the side of the subway kiosk

Stopped at the light the man catches up to the cab

The stranger pulls out a gun and tries to break the window with it

In the novel there is no cab. Frank runs into the subway kiosk and down the stairs. He goes through the turnstile and onto the platform as a train pulls in and the doors open. Frank hops on, and he sees his pursuer at the turnstile, but the doors start to close. The man is now on the platform but the train starts to pull out. In the novel the man chases after the subway car and breaks it's window. 

In the novel Frank knows that its only a matter of time, the guy will find out where he lives from the company where he works. The next morning he calls the office first thing in the morning to tell the office personnel if anyone asked for his address. The girl checks with personnel and she reads off the  Rutherford St. address. and tells him that no one has asked for it. He dodges a bullet because that's a dead end. Virginia hasn't been there for over a year and at least one other tenant that is not connected to him in any way was living there and its vacant now. So there is no way to track him.  

Frank knows that he'll have to find another job. Meanwhile instead of going to work he hangs out in a park all day trying to figure out what to do. It all starts to go Noirsville when Virginia gets his check from work from the janitor's wife who dropped it by for her and she see's that it has their old address. Virginia then calls Franks office and corrects the records.

In the film it's all sped up when Frank is at home that night and finishes dinner he gets a call from the office, A secretary working late took a call from someone saying he was an old friend asking for Mr. Thompson's phone number and she gave it to him. Frank is worried but he does not say anything to Virginia. They go to bed (Hollywood separate beds BS after a year and a half of separation. Thanks MPPC.)

That night, Frank awakens and gets out of bed and goes to the shaded window that looks down upon the street. He pulls up the shade and there is the guy who was chasing him along with two other men. 

They see that Frank is on to them so two run into the building while the third goes around back to cover the fire escape. Frank wakes up Virginia tells her to get her coat and shoes on and grab her purse. 

Frank blocks the door with a dresser and padded chair and they both slip out on the fire escape. They go up to the roof and across the rooftops. 

Up the fire escape

They find an open roof door, go down the stairs to street level and walk down to the corner near an all night café. An empty cab is out front. Frank puts Virginia in a cab. The cab driver comes running out of café to get his fare. Frank tells her to go to her mothers. He explains to her that he doesn't want her involved and that he'll get in touch with her when its all over. Then he goes down to where it all began. Tillary Street.

Everything in the film is streamlined. In the novel when Frank Goes back to Tillary Street his hope is that he will run into somebody that knows him, He gets a cheep 50 cents by the week room. Starts on one end of Tillary and walks down the street and back every day and goes into all the bars, lunch counters, candy stores, various 2nd hand businesses, etc,.etc. 

Woolrich gives us a nice description of typical tenement blocks with the resident flops all up on the second floors. This section takes up weeks of time and over half of the novel. Frank pawns the cigarette case for eating money and finds out in the process that he has pawned it before. He asks the Pawnbroker if he could see his previous ticket (because it should have a name and address) the pretext is that he doesn't think the broker is offering him the same as the last time. He finds out that the D,N, stands for Dan Nearing, but the address he gave the pawnbroker was an empty lot. He gets a job washing dishes for more eating and rent money. He finally gets a break when a fire breaks out at a house on one of the middle transecting streets. He follows the gawkers and while he is watching the action he hears someone shout out "Dan!" He looks up to where the voice came from but there is only a lit open window. 

A woman puts her hand on his shoulder and asks him what he is doing standing out in the open. Frank / Dan has know idea who she is. Apparently they are intimate with each other and she wants to move into his flop. (which she does in the novel. This of course would never have passed the code.) Hence the reason for the speed up in the film to all these events happening in one day and night. 

Pawnshop

In the film (rather than finding out his name from the pawnbroker), Frank doesn't find out his name is Dan until after the woman calls out "Dan!" from the window.

Frank goes into a bar for a drink. He asks the barkeep for his usual. The Barkeep looks at him funny, so that didn't work the guy doesn't know him. The sound of firetrucks out in the street gets everyone out of the bar to watch. Frank is on the side walk with everyone else when he hears the woman yell out Dan!

Dan!

She can't believe he's standing out in the open

She sends him up to her apartment and tells him she'll watch to see if anybody noticed him.  What apartment, Luckily the woman left her door open. Frank goes in. While he's waiting there Frank / Dan spots a photo of himself & the woman both on the observation deck of the Sunset Limited. They are both dressed in western clothes, Framk is wearing a sombrero. (Subtext here is that they traveled "together" to Arizona, California, or Nevada, take your pick).  

When she comes into the apartment, she tells him she'll make dinner. When she goes into the kitchen, Frank / Dan looks in her purse and finds out her name is Ruth Dillon from a railroad ticket. 

The Ruth conveniently mentions his last name Nearing in conversation, now he knows his last name. Frank / Dan snoops around further and finds newspaper clippings with headlines about Dan Nearing wanted for the Diedrich killing in New Jericho and that the police are grilling the maid Ruth Dillon about Nearing's whereabouts. 

In the novel, Woolrich drags the tension out excruciatingly longer Frank / Dan has to deal with talking to the stranger woman having no idea who she is while trying not to give himself away. He eventually finds out that her name is Ruth Dillon in a similar way that the film depicts. Ruth was visiting at her sisters when she spotted Dan watching the fire. We find out that Dan and Ruth both worked for the Diedrich Family upstate. But Dan is now wanted for the stabbing murder of Harry Diedrich, and the man that has been after him is police Detective Joe Marruci. 

<possible spoilers>

At this point film and novel change drastically. A major character of the Diedrich family switches genders from a paralyzed Grandpa to  paralyzed Granny Diedrich, The screenwriters add a Femme Fatale when there wasn't one in the novel, the two people (who plotted the murder) are transformed into simply two sleazy money grubbers, and where events take three to four days in the book the film again compresses time and accelerates events.

<end spoilers>

In the film, Frank / Dan after finding out he's wanted for murder wants to go back to New Jericho to clear himself. The reason he fled in the first place was because Ruth told him that the Diedrich's Alma and Bill were telling the authorities that they heard Henry Diedrich and Dan arguing before the killing. Ruth was fixing drinks right in the next room and heard nothing. 

In the novel its the same Frank / Dan and Ruth go back to New Jericho to the Dietrich's estate and Ruth hides Frank / Dan in abandoned dilapidated caretakers house on the estate where he can hang out and figure out how he can clear himself. In the film that is changed to a greenhouse. 

In both film and novel Frank / Dan figures out how to communicate with the paraplegic by eye blinks and in that manner discovers the truth, but things go Noirsville when Alma discovers that Frank / Dan is on the estate and that Ruth is hiding him. 

Noirsville

Frieda Inescort as Alma Diedrich

Jerome Cowan center as Bill Diedrich

 Sheldon Leonard as Joe Marucci

Adeline De Walt Reynolds as Grandma Diedrich

It's been mentioned that this was the first Film Noir that dealt with the Amnesia trope. It was used in  Srewball Comedy I Love You Again (1940) and also in Random Harvest (1942).The Amnesia trope was used again in Noirs The Crooked Way, The Clay Pigeon, Somewhere in the Night, and probably others. 

Burgess Meredith pretty much carries the load in Street Of Chance. Claire Trevor and Sheldon Leonard (his part in the novel is actually very secondary) do as good as they can with the time squeezed plot. Frieda Inescort is effective as Alma Diderich the snooty and manipulative wife of the murder victim, who is having an affair with his brother played by Jerome Cowan as the wormy Bill Diedrich. Worth a look a 6.5 and, with a restoration maybe a 7/10.

In the novel the last third of the book deals with not only Frank / Dan revelations from the paralyzed grandpa Diedrich but Woolrich also throws in for good measure: 

• The elaborate use of a ray of sunlight that heats up the open breech shotgun enough to detonate the shell that blows off a chloroformed (by Alma and Bill Diedrich) Henry Diedrich's head. The  shotgun that had Frank / Dan's fingerprints on it. 
• An insane Diedrich daughter who also lives at the estate as a pseudo Mcguffin. 
• The lure and capture of Ruth and Frank / Dan by Alma and Bill and then their fiendish plot to make it look like Dan guns down Ruth and then Bill will shoot intruder Frank / Dan dead.
• Grandpa's sacrificial suicide which he accomplishes by setting his own mattress and in turn the estate mansion on fire trying to save Ruth and Frank /Dan.
• The convenient death of Ruth from smoke inhalation saving the prospect of having to have Frank / Dan deal with two women he's slept with.