Backfire

Plot

American soldier Bob Corey, seriously wounded at the end of World War II is a patient at an army hospital undergoing several surgical operations on his spine. He has fallen in love with his nurse, Julie Benson. Bob's military pal Steve Connolly arrives to discuss plans for the ranch in Scottsdale, Arizona that they plan to purchase and operate together. The two men pool their G.I. benefits, which total $40,000.

On Christmas Eve, as Bob lies semiconscious in bed, a woman with a Swedish accent appears and says that Steve has been in a horrible accident; his spine is shattered and he wants to die, but she has refused to help him commit suicide. The woman asks Bob what to do, and he advises her to do nothing to harm Steve, and just to wait. Bob slips into unconsciousness and the woman disappears.

After Bob is released from the hospital, he is questioned by police captain Garcia, who tells him that Steve is wanted for the murder of Solly Blayne, a gambler and racketeer. Bob denies that Steve would be involved in anything criminal. Bob rents the hotel room where Steve had been staying, where he encounters Sybil, the gossipy old hotel maid, who says that on the day of the murder, Blayne visited Conolly and demanded $40,000 that he was owed. She gives Bob a business card from a funeral home, which Bob visits, discovering that his friend Ben Arno owns the business. Arno relates that he had watched Steve boxing in the ring and that Steve was evasive when asked about boxing at his age.

Bob and Julie talk to Blayne's widow, who recalls the night when her husband was slain. She had phoned a doctor, who arrived too late to save Blayne. Bob returns to the hotel and dials a phone number listed in the hotel records that Steve had called. A woman named Myrna answers the phone and Bob pretends to be Steve. Myrna unintentionally reveals that Steve had a girlfriend named Lysa Radoff. Bob asks for Lysa's address and takes a cab there. Finding no one home, he enters after finding a key. When Lysa's roommate Bonnie Willis comes home, Bob pretends to be waiting for Lysa, and Bonnie tells him how Steve, working for gambler Lou Walsh, had met Lysa, Walsh's girlfriend and a call girl at his gambling establishment. One night, Bonnie, Steve and Lysa visited Walsh's high-stakes gambling den where Steve, unlike the other men, did not manhandle the girls, and he and Lysa fell in love. Blayne, who was also present, offered Steve a job as a highly paid assistant. Bob also learns that Lysa is the same woman who had visited him in the hospital. To avoid further conversation with Bonnie, Bob runs out of the house. Moments later, Bonnie is murdered by an unseen assailant who fires through her window.

Cast

Gordon MacRae as Bob Corey

Edmond O'Brien as Steve Connelly

Virginia Mayo as Julie Benson

Viveca Lindfors as Lysa Radoff

Dane Clark as Ben Arno

Ed Begley as Captain Garcia

Sheila MacRae (as Sheila Stephens) as Bonnie Willis

Mack Williams as Dr. Herbert Anstead

Leonard Strong as Lee Quong

Frances Robinson as Mrs. Blayne

Richard Rober as Solly Blayne

John Dehner as Blake, plainclothesman

Production notes

Script development

Around 1946 or 1947, Warner Bros. Pictures had purchased the rights to a Larry Marcus story titled Into the Night. The studio tried to interest Vincent Sherman to direct the film adaptation, but he felt that the story was "confused and pointless" and refused. By the spring of 1948, Sherman wanted to work on a simple picture and asked studio head Jack L. Warner if he could adapt John Patrick's play The Hasty Heart into a film. Warner refused and assigned Sherman to the Into the Night project.

Sherman met with producer Anthony Veiller, who admitted that the story needed work. Veiller hired aspiring writers Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, although they considered themselves comedy writers. As Goff and Roberts continued to craft a screenplay. Sherman voiced his reservations to the studio, but Warner promised a favor in exchange for directing the film,

The shooting title of the film was changed from Into the Night to Somewhere in the City.

Casting

Warner intended for the film to be a B movie for his contract actors. However, he had six actors who were "sitting around doing nothing but picking up their checks", so he assigned them to the film. Into the Night was Edmond O'Brien's first film for the studio. Lindfors refused at first to participate, upset with what she felt was its excessive violence. Placed on suspension by the studio and under contract for four films, she relented to continue to receive her pay ("I sold out," she later said). The studio was unhappy with her performance in Backfire and declined to continue her contract.

Sherman found Mayo to be nice and an extremely competent actress, but without much personal depth.

Principal filming occurred from late July to mid-October 1948. Interior and exterior hospital scenes were shot at Birmingham Veterans' Hospital (also known as Birmingham General Army Hospital) in Van Nuys, California. The hospital's nursing chief Monica Cahill and assistant chief of surgery Dr. Franklin Wilkins served as technical consultants for the film. Additional scenes were filmed in and around Los Angeles, including the Los Angeles City Hall, the Fremont Hotel and the Bunker Hill district, Olvera Street, Hollywood, Glendale and the Los Feliz neighborhood and Stone Canyon in the Bel Air neighborhood. The film mentions several of these locations by name in both the dialogue and the visual narrative.

Music

The film's soundtrack was composed by Daniele Amfitheatrof. The song that Viveca Lindfors sings in the nightclub is "Parlez-moi d'Amour," written by Jean Lenoir.

Warners was much more pleased with the efforts of Goff and Roberts, and gave them a five-year contract to write screenplays. They produced White Heat the following year. In return for directing Backfire, Jack Warner permitted Vincent Sherman to direct The Hasty Heart, which became a major hit for the studio.

Reception

Release

Although Backfire was completed in October 1948, it was not released until January 26, 1950, when the film opened at the Globe Theatre in New York. To take advantage of the previously released film White Heat's popularity, posters for Backfire prominently featured Mayo in a femme fatale pose (incongruous for her character in the film) and contained the tag line: "That 'White Heat' girl turns it on again!" The poster also divulged the surprise conclusion to the film by depicting Ben Arno strangling Lysa Lysa.

Critical response

In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "A very terse observation is all that 'Backfire' deserves, in view of the feeble detonation of this Warner mystery drama ... [I]t rambles from one small coincidence to another without style or suspense until finally it puts a listless finger upon fellow who did the deed. ... In this case, the title is descriptive of the effort expended by all. A short and sweet observation covers 'Backfire': It does!"

Film critic Mildred Martin of The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote: "All too aptly titled, 'Backfire' is a long. drawn-out murder mystery wh1ch is neither mysterious enough nor entertaining enough to warrant all the talent that has gone into its playing or direction."

Reviewer Eleanor Bell of The Cincinnati Post called the film "a lively little item" and wrote: "The picture has the advantage of suspense common to all well-staged manhunts, and it seemed to me the cast was working away with a will to make it credible. 'Backfire" is no world beater, but it is fairly solid entertainment, if four murders can be classed as entertaining."

Home media

The film was regularly screened on broadcast television in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, although most airings trimmed Mayo's part substantially. Warner Bros. released the film on DVD on July 13, 2010, in its Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 5.