La regina dei tagliaborse

Although film noir was very popular in the 1950s in Hollywood, I wouldn't exactly consider "I Was a Shoplifter" to be an example of the genre. It's more a police procedural film...and a darned good one. It's also well worth seeing in order to see two future stars in smaller parts before they became famous, Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson. Of the two, Curtis' role was far larger and meatier...though VERY different from his later roles. He plays Pepe, a guy who is a pusillanimous jerk who loves to stab folks!

The film begins with two shoplifters being picked up by a department store. One (Mona Freeman) is the daughter of a judge...and she seems like a kleptomaniac who has no idea why she's doing it. The other seems like a real hard case...a career criminal who has been stealing for years (Scott Brady). But in reality, he's a detective working a case where they are trying to round up a ring of professional shoplifters as well as determine how and to whom they are selling their haul. Of course, there are lots of possible problems, a few fistfights and a dandy and tense finale.

The film is very well written, never dull and well acted. I noticed some reviewers really disliked this film...but I thought it was excellent from start to finish.

Mona Freeman is the daughter of a judge. She's caught shoplifting, and is made to sign a confession by store detective Larry Keating, in return for not prosecuting... this time. It's standard procedure. What's not standard procedure is she's contacted by a gang of shoplifters who have access to that confession, and who say they will destroy it if she does a few jobs for them.

It's one of those Universal programmers that they produced by the hundreds, played for a few years, and then were forgotten. It's competently directed by Charles Lamont, competently shot by Irving Glasberg, and competent played by the cast. Andrea King is catlike as the manager of the gang, even though it's quite clear from the set-up and a well- focused shot who actually is in charge. Tony Curtis plays a Mexican-American hood in a good-sized role, Rock Hudson a store detective in a blink-and-you'll-miss-him role. Scott Brady and Charles Drake fill out the top of the credit card, and it's another decent time-waster.

The 25 year old Tony Curtis went on to act alongside Rock Hudson and James Stewart in films like 'Winchester 73' and 'I Was A Shoplifter' in 1950. Although this film was dull, Curtis was part of a stock of actors whose close friends included Hudson and Stewart.

Principal roles in I Was A Shoplifter fell to Scott Brady (Lawrence Tierney's brother), the evergreen Mona Freeman, Andrea King and the young `Anthony' Curtis. Smaller, almost invisible parts go to Charles McGraw, Peggie Castle and Rock Hudson. That's not a dream cast, but all had done and would do better work in far better vehicles than this dead-serious and deadly dull documentary-style look at `boosters' – organized shoplifters.

Mousy librarian and prominent judge's daughter Freeman saunters through a big department store absently filling her pockets with trinkets, like a magpie flying off with anything that glitters. She's spotted, hauled into the manager's office and forced to sign a confession. Also caught in this retail dragnet is Brady, a professional booster as opposed to Freeman, who's written off as a `klepto' – a basically harmless nuisance.

But later Freeman has visitors. The first is hard case King, who has a photocopy of Freeman's confession and blackmails her into joining the her nest of boosters; the second is Brady, who works undercover on a police task force trying to crack the ring. He falls for her, as does, more brutally, Curtis, one of King's torpedoes. The `action,' such as it is, moves south to San Diego then crosses the border to Tijuana for an (almost) final reckoning.

Laughably, the shoplifting syndicate operates on a level of ruthlessness and secrecy on a par with the Nazis in The House on 92nd Street, the heroin smugglers in To The Ends of the Earth, or the Communists in The Woman On Pier 13. But I Was A Shoplifter has been picked clean of wit, style and suspense; it stands as a grim example of a particular post-war posture of humorless self-importance, passing itself off as entertainment.

How about, "I became a Hollywood has been in five films or less."

Andrea King and Scott Brady were up and coming stars after World War II. By 1950, Brady was on the booze and it showed. No more A features for him. I don't think Hollywood knew what to do with Andrea King. She ended up on Dragnet 1969 in a turban.

Mona Freeman did nothing but play put upon whiners. When she is listed among the cast you know it is going to be a Stinker.

You are never clear about how their racket is run and you stop caring.

Look out for small roles by Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson during their Universal International starlet days paying their dues on the casting chair.