Somewhere in the Night (1946) Amnesia Noir

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (House of Strangers, No Way Out).

Written by Howard Dimsdale and Joseph L. Mankiewicz from a story by Marvin Borowsky adapted by W. Somerset Maugham and Lee Strasberg. Cinematography was by Norbert Brodine (The House on 92nd Street, Boomerang, Road House, Kiss Of Death, Thieves Highway), Music by David Buttolph.

The film stars John Hodiak (The Arnelo Affair, Desert Fury, The Bribe, A Lady Without a Passport, The People Against O'Hara, and The Sellout) as George W. Taylor, Nancy Guild (The Brasher Doubloon) as Christy Smith, Lloyd Nolan (The House on 92nd Street, Lady In The lake, The Street With No Name, A Hatful Of Rain) as Police Lt. Donald Kendall, Richard Conte (vet of at least 13 Classic Noir including The Big Combo) as Mel Phillips, with Josephine Hutchinson (Ruby Gentry) as Elizabeth Conroy, Fritz Kortner (The Brasher Doubloon) as Anzelmo aka Dr. Oracle, Margo Woode (Hell Bound) as Phyllis, Sheldon Leonard (Street Of Chance., Decoy, The Gangster) as Sam, Lou Nova as Hubert, Whit Bissel (Raw Deal, He Walked By Night, Side Street) as bartender.

John Hodiak as George W. Taylor

Nancy Guild as Christy Smith

Richard Conte as Mel Phillips

Lloyd Nolan lt., as Police Lt. Donald Kendall

Fritz Kortner as Anzelmo aka Dr. Oracle

Margo Woode as Phyllis

Sheldon Leonard as Sam

Jeff Corey as bank clerk

Henry Morgan as Elite Baths manager

Whit Bissel as bartender

Housley Stevenson as Michael Conroy

This is not the first amnesia movie, I Love You Again (1940) with William Powell and Myrna Loy is another that I can think of. Somewhere In The Night  though, is one of the first of the "amnesia" noir.

 The very first amnesia noir is I believe 1942's Street Of Chance. But Street Of Chance dealt with the protagonist coming out of his amnesia and trying to figure out what he's been doing for the last three years.  Somewhere In The Night on the other hand, deals with the protagonist under amnesia, trying to figure out who he is. The Crooked Way, The Clay Pigeon, Crack Up!, and Transitional Noir Mister Buddwing are some other Noir that use the amnesia trope, even Deadline At Dawn touches on lost memory, there are more. 

The Story

George Taylor wakes up in a marine field hospital with amnesia. He got hit with a grenade explosion. He took hits to his left arm, face, and head. He doesn't know who he is. His head is completely bandaged, his jaw is wired shut. He can't talk. He drinks with a straw. Everyone is calling him George. He finds a wallet in the draw of his bedside table with the name George Taylor inside. That is who he must be. He also finds a claim check money and a bitter letter from a woman he jilted. 

At the Camp Pendleton Naval Hospital, he gets cagey with questions asked of him. He doesn't let on that he has amnesia because he wants to get out and jump start a new life. He doesn't like the guy the woman wrote about in the letter. He wants to do better.

Do you want your sea bag sent to the Martin Hotel?

When he is going through his discharge, a clerk tells George that they located his sea bag and does he want it sent to his old civilian address?, the Martin hotel in L.A. Ok, now he knows where he lived. In L.A. he enters the hotel asks the clerk if they ever had his friend, a George Taylor registered. 

The clerk checks back three years and finds no George Taylor. George gets a room and the clerk is perplexed when he signs it George Taylor. He walks down to nearby Union Station and checks the baggage claim. George Taylor checked a leather briefcase three years ago. He pays off the charge and takes the briefcase into a men's shower room. 

In a shower stall he uses a clothes hook to rip open the briefcase he has no key. Inside are an automatic pistol in a shoulder holster and an envelope. The letter with "Elite Baths" stationary is addressed to George. 

Its informing him that his good friend Larry Cravat deposited 5,000 dollars in an account under his name at the Gibney Street branch of the 2nd National Bank. The letter will identify him to the bank.  It's signed by Larry and it tells George to come and look him up when he gets out. 

George puts the pistol back in the bag sticks it in a coin locker and throws away the key. He gets a new set of duds and heads to the Bank. 

At the bank he hands the letter to a teller, who looks up the name in an account index. When he gets to Taylor, he stops and excuses himself for a moment.

George watches as he goes to speak with a manager. When he gets back he tells George that there's some questions they want to ask him. George getting paranoid splits, telling the teller that it will have to be another time.

He heads to Elite Baths. He asks the attendant there about Laray Cravat, he tells him that he should ask at The Cellar a café /nightclub around the corner. He explains that lots of drunks come to sweat it out and that they might know Cravat. As soon as George walks out the door the Elite Baths manager suspiciously dials a phone number.

At The Cellar nightclub, George starts asking questions about Larry Cravat. He hits the hat check girl, the maitre'd, the bartender. The bartender, tells him no, but that he'll ask around. 

George watches him move down to two men who look like bouncers. He speaks with them then puts a bowl of bar snacks in front of George. George watches as the two men start coming towards him. 

He panics and just as the lights dim and the band starts up walks into a crowd of dancers on the floor. From there he goes into a darkened hallway at the back of the nightclub he tries  to open locked doors and finally opens one into a dressing room. 

There, George meets Christy Smith who is touching up her makeup. 

Christy Smith: You forgot to knock.

George Taylor: I can explain if you'll let me.

Christy Smith: Out.

George Taylor: [Backing towards the door] Not right now.

Christy Smith: Suppose I yell the roof off.

George Taylor: Then I'll stop you.

Christy Smith: I'd bet you'd try at that. You know, I can't make up my mind if this is some kind of a pitch or you are a nut. But if this is your idea of a pitch then I know you're a nut. 

George Taylor: Who owns this place?

Christy Smith: Who wants to know?

George Taylor: I do.

Christy Smith: This and a half dozen other spots are owned by a very nice guy named Mel Phillips. he keeps me working. [taking out a cigarette] You got a light?

George Taylor: He must keep a lot of people working.

Christy Smith: Sure busboys, waiters, captains, cooks...

George Taylor: And characters who sit around on barstools waiting for me. 

Christy Smith: Is that supposed to make sense?

George Taylor: What do you think.., 

George shakes out the match and walks over  towards the ash tray on the table. Christy ducks around and opens the door. 

Christy Smith: In about two minutes, a bouncer is coming back in here with no sense of humor. He's a foot bigger than you in all directions. That's what I think. 

She leaves. George wedges the chair under the door knob, and is about to let up the shade on the window to go out that way when he stops. He goes over to the dressing table to shut off the lights and sees a note on the back of a picture. 

The note is signed Mrs. Larry Cravat. This girl knows her. George takes the picture and leaves a matchbook from the Martin Hotel in its place. He then shuts out the dressing lights opens the window and goes back to the hotel. 

George contemplating the evenings events is jugging the key to his door in his hand in the hall. Just outside his rooms door a woman's compact slides like a hockey puck onto one of his shoes. 

It belongs to a Déclassé hooker named Phyllis who likes to inject French phrases into her soliciting M.O. 

George bends down to pick up the compact and Phyllis steps to next to him, Her fur piece dangles by his face. He gets back up and hands it to her.

Phyllis: Thank you. How terribly gauche of me. 

George Taylor: Not at all.

Phyllis: Do you happen to know when Larry will be back?

George Taylor: Larry who?

Phyllis: Thompson. Larry Thompson. He's my uncle he lives just down the hall.

Phyllis explains that she doesn't want to wait in the public hallway with no place to sit down to wait for Larry. 

George Taylor: There's a place for you to sit down in my room.

Phyllis: How nice of you to suggest it.

Phyllis walks in and over to a dresser with a mirror and checks her teeth then touches her hair. Then sits down on a chair and crosses her legs.

Phyllis: This is rather exciting. Unconventional to say the least.

George Taylor: Haven't you got a French word for it?

Phyllis: Should we just abandon convention and introduce ourselves? My name is Phyllis.

George Taylor: Phyllis what?

Phyllis looks down at her purse and fishes out a cigarette not answering. 

George Taylor: Oh I suppose it's one of those things, rich high class family wouldn't want her family to know their daughter waited around crummy hotel rooms

Phyllis: Well, that's, putting it a little crudely. [she hands George a book of matches implying that he light her cigarette]

George Taylor: Not too rich and high class. [George strikes a match and Lights her cigarette] A compact that costs three bucks tops, a torn hem on your skirt, a matchbook that says you eat at a cheap cafeteria and you weren't waiting for anybody but me. Unless you can see through a door tou should have thought of that when I closed it. So what goes?

Phyllis: You know there's been a terrible shortage of men. 

George Taylor: Yes we heard across the Pacific, this war must have been murder on you women, we used to cry our eyes out about it. 

Phyllis: So when I heard there was a man in 316...

George Taylor: You though I might know where Larry was. 

Phyllis: Yea

George Taylor: Only there isn't any Larry its just a name you made up to start me talking.

Phyllis: Oh just this and that, quell que chose, maybe I just thought you ought to know about me and I ought to know more about you [gets up and touches Georges cheek while kissing him on the lips]. 

George Taylor: Did you have fun?

Phyllis: I've had more fun drinking a Bromo seltzer. 

Noir Hooker Phyllis and the Noirsville interpretation of the subtext (photo gallery)

Phyllis's compact as "hockey puck" pick up M.O. aka the hockey puck fuck. 

Phyllis sticking her bush... -y tailed "fur" piece right in George's face.

My "uncle" Larry isn't back in his apartment yet.... May I come in and sit down? Interpretation: I can squeeze another trick in with you big boy.  

Phyllis checking her teeth in the mirror for any stray pubes

I like long cylindrical things in my mouth, get it?

If you light my fire I'll light yours....

Check this out.

Just as Phyllis walks out the phone rings. It's the barkeep at The Cellar. He tells George he has info on Cravat. Tells him to meet him at the club. George taxis there and goes down the stair to the door, but the door is locked and the club is empty. As he is about to come back up a big goon named Hubert appears at the top railing and tells George that somebody wants to see him. 

Back on the sidewalk a black sedan sits waiting at the curb. Inside is Anzelmo, a fortune teller, who arranged the meeting. He tells George that he had the bartender call him. He asks George what he knows about Larry Cravat. George tells Anzelmo that he's just looking for him. Anzelmo doesn't believe him. When George refuses to get in the car. Hubert knocks him out and throws him in the car. 

Later George comes to in Anzelmo's kitchen after being hit with a rubber hose numerous times. Anzelmo tells Hubert to dump him somewhere. Then suggests the address he got off the photo in Christy's dressing room.

Once George gets dumped at Christy's house, she takes pity on him, and George explains that he's got to tell someone and so he goes and tells Christy all he knows. About his waking up with amnesia in the military field hospital in the Pacific. Christy calls her good friend Mel Phillips the owner of The Cellar, to come over and help. 

Phillips arranges a meeting the next day at a Chinese restaurant between George Taylor and Police Lt. Donald Kendall. Kendall fills George, Christy, and Mel in on Larry Cravat. The police were looking for him three years ago and think he was killed.

Kendall: When Cravat faded out so did two million dollars. It was all over town at the time. Didn't you here about it Mel?

Mel: I don't even know anybody who can count that high.

Kendall: That pal of yours that got killed, he didn't happen to leave two million dollars laying around.

George Taylor: Sure lots of us saved that out of out sixty a month.

I'm not impressed I make that much in tips on Monday night. May I Ask one tiny question, who was Larry Cravat?

Kendall: He was a private eye came out to L.A. about five years ago, from the East. He got a license, painted his name on the window, and put his name on the desk. Then for two years he investigated, husbands who played golf when it rained, wives who didn't come back from the public library till midnight, but he paid his rent on time, and then, somebody dropped two million clams in his lap...

It's a long story don't ask for details but here's most of it. It started over in Germany when one of the Nazi hotshots saw the writing on the wall. He sent the two million over here, but before he could get here, he was knocked off by one of the fellow members of the lodge. And here was this big chunk of doe floating around in this country, like a pair of dice at a fireman's ball. It moved from East to West, each time it moved it left a stiff behind it with outstretched arms. The boys play rough for that kind of lettuce, somehow it got to Los Angeles, and somehow Cravat got mixed up in it. I don't know much more than that, except that when Cravat blew so did the jackpot. 

It starts to go Noirsville when, after Kendall splits, Mel makes the offer to help George find Cravat for a shot at the money.

Noirsville

Lots of twists and turns in this entertaining film, and some great catty lines between the women: 

Phyllis: And who is the character with the hair, [to Taylor] 

George Taylor: This is a Miss Smith.

Phyllis: Oh I get it 

Christy: [to Phyllis] If its around I'm sure you'll get it.

Phyllis: Oh we're having repartee are we?

A Great Noir and an early Noir, stylistic, some location shots of what looks like The Sunshine Apartments (or it's equivalent it's actually 512 W. 2nd Street) on Bunker Hill, Union Station, and a harbor sequence that looks quite real, but most of the rest looks like backlot and studio sets. A couple of dead giveaways, there's always empty streets without much traffic or parked cars, and whenever you see the interiors of what are supposed to be flea bag residence hotels or ghetto apartment houses the hallways are enormous. Tell me, what rat trap slum lord is going to waste all the space when they could cram in another shotgun flop? 

The cast does a great job making it all believable. 8/10