I WANT TO LIVE!

Sailor Brett Halsey with good-time gal Susan Hayward

I WANT TO LIVE! (1958). Director: Robert Wise.

Barbara Graham (Susan Hayward), a prostitute and petty criminal, falls into bad company and finds herself arrested for the murder of a 61- year-old woman who supposedly kept cash in her house. One of Barbara's alleged confederates (James Philbrook) turns state's evidence and his testimony helps to convict her. Then it's on to death row ...  I Want to Live! was conceived as a heavily fictionalized anti-death penalty film, so it greatly stacks the deck in favor of Graham's innocence (not that the film suggests she should be executed if she were guilty), suppressing certain details and intimating it's only her reputation and background and her once being very nasty to a witness that have sealed her fate. Graham also makes the mistake of trying to bribe a fake witness who turns out to be a cop. Graham supposedly had a sexual affair with a fellow inmate, Rita (Marion Marshall), and while this is played down, it is pretty clear that Rita has a hankering for Barbara, whom she later betrays. As for Hayward, she comes off as much too well-bred to be a completely convincing "B" girl, so she substitutes toughness and crudity and on that level is quite effective, winning an Oscar (as did Robert Wise, whose direction is on the money). Of the supporting cast, there is notable work from Virginia Vincent as Barbara's lovely friend, Peg; Wesley Lau [Perry Mason] as Barbara's husband, Henry, who can't remember if she was home with him that certain night or not; Gage Clarke as the defense attorney, Tibrow; and Peter Breck as Peter Miranda, who claims he will set up an alibi for Barbara if she pays him but turns out to be a cop. Others in the cast include Brett Halsey [Return of the Fly], Lou Krugman, Theodore Bikel, Simon Oakland, and Joe De Santis [A Cold Wind in August].

The murder of Mabel Monahan is never depicted (in the fifties it would have been considered in poor taste anyway) and the woman herself is given short shrift. We never see any relatives she may have had, and the prosecutors are never developed as characters. In the long run it doesn't matter if Graham pistol whipped and suffocated her victim -- just the fact she was there and participated (if we are to believe this is true) makes her guilty in the eyes of the law. Apparently the prosecutors had very good reasons to think Graham was guilty that had nothing to do with her "morals."  The execution scene is very well-handled but it tries to extract pity for Graham without ever doing the same for her alleged victim, who died horribly in a terror that was probably worse than Graham's.

Verdict: Take with a grain of salt, but well-done for what it is. **1/2 out of 4.

GUNN

GUNN (1967). Director: Blake Edwards. Screenplay by Edwards and William Peter Blatty.

"My theory is that the human race is just a temporary experiment on the earth, and the experiment is failing" -- Lt. Jacoby

The TV series Peter Gunn had been off the air for seven years -- it ran three seasons from 1958 - 1960 -- when this big-screen adaptation played in theaters. Craig Stevens [Where the Sidewalk Ends] was forty-nine when he reprised the character in spite of the fact that private eyes in the movies were quickly being replaced by super-spies like James Bond. [The poster art for the movie tried to make it seem like an 007-type adventure, which it isn't.] The supporting players on the TV show were replaced in the movie, with Laura Devon filling in for Lola Albright as singer/sometime girlfriend, Edie; Ed Asner substituting for Herschel Bernardi as Lt. Jacoby; and -- of all people -- Wagnerian opera diva Helen Traubel taking over from Hope Emerson and Minerva Urekal as Mother, who owns the nightclub where Edie sings and Peter kibitzes. Gunn, despite being in color with slightly more elaborate production values, plays like an extra-long episode of the series. When a mobster named Scarlatti is murdered, the chief suspect is another criminal character named Fusco (Albert Paulsen). A shady lady named Daisy Jane (Marion Marshall) hires Peter to prove that Fusco was the killer. Along the way there are a couple more dead bodies for Gunn to trip over. To make the whole thing more contemporary, Mother's nightspot is turned into a rock club (after it is, once again, blown up, as it was at least once in the series), and one of the characters turns out to be a transvestite/transsexual a la Mickey Spillane [see the Mike Hammer novel, Vengeance is Mine.] There are a couple of twists and a fairly vicious final fight scene. Stevens plays Gunn in the same [one] note as before, and the other actors are fine, with Jean Carson making an impression as a flippant waitress in a diner.

Verdict: Perhaps this "gunn" was fired once too often. **.