Laird Cregar's performances in motion pictures were small in number (a bit over twenty films), but large in ability to hold audience attention and in sheer artistry. Whether Jack The Ripper, George Bone, Clive Oxford, Willard Gates, Sir Henry Morgan, or whoever, Cregar dominates his films, and usually each performance is unique in itself.
He is usually considered a movie villain. It's true that violence plays a heavy part in his films, but his "Lodger" is driven mad by sorrow at the loss of his talented brother due to a prostitute; his Gates is in over his head, due to the demands of his evil boss (Tully Marshall) and the target of his actions (a deadly Alan Ladd); his Bone is suffering from a mental disease, but trying to compose the concerto that will give him immortality. In short, most of his villains have something in their background that makes them pitiful if frightening. Occasionally he plays a run-of-the-mill lowlife. In BLOOD AND SAND, his bullfighting critic "Curo" (which means a Bull's rectum) is a self-important parasite on bullfighters like J. Carroll Naish and Tyrone Power, whom he builds up, lives off of, and then throws aside when they no longer make large salaries.
But in his catalog of roles, possibly his most frightening one is his New York City master police inspector Ed Cornell. Not in fancy clothes or make-up, Cornell is mostly fierce attention and an ever-parked fedora hat on his head. He is the perfect realization of ability, brains, and retribution. For Ed Cornell misuses his badge to destroy promoter Frankie Christopher (Victor Mature). In playing the ultimately dangerous cop, Cregar actually played the scariest villain in his career (even more frightening in his way than "the Lodger" or Bone).
Vicki Lynn (Carole Landis) was a promising model whose career was being pushed by Christopher. Mature plays Christopher realistically - a friendly but pushy type who is a wire puller through his contacts, like actor Robin Ray (Alan Mowbray) and Larry Evans (Allyn Joslyn). Christopher hoped to get Lynn into acting and a fancier career. But she is found murdered. Circumstances are not settled in any direction, but when Cornell enters the case, and starts examining Christopher, he starts making veiled insinuations about the latter's actions and motives and activities on the night of the murder - insinuations that suggest a remarkably subtle detective intelligence - but also an inexplicable hostility. It soon becomes evident that Cornell is not simply trying to solve a murder. He is trying to definitely prove Christopher is guilty - or is he trying to frame Christopher?
Ed Cornell is Cregar's model (unwittingly and unintentionally) for Orson Welles' later Hank Quinlan. Both men are incredibly adept at their work, but both become incredibly corrupt at it. Quinlan's corruption carries on too long and too far. Cornell's, as we learn, is concentrated on this case - but it goes far enough to establish his own evil as memorable.
Being Cregar he varies his menace towards Mature with some lighter moments. Please note the intellectual story about the rare butterflies that he mentions when talking to his superior about laying a trap. He does show a human side eventually as well. But it is the evil that he does that dominates in this film, making it one of the first great film noir of the 1940s.
He is usually considered a movie villain. It's true that violence plays a heavy part in his films, but his "Lodger" is driven mad by sorrow at the loss of his talented brother due to a prostitute; his Gates is in over his head, due to the demands of his evil boss (Tully Marshall) and the target of his actions (a deadly Alan Ladd); his Bone is suffering from a mental disease, but trying to compose the concerto that will give him immortality. In short, most of his villains have something in their background that makes them pitiful if frightening. Occasionally he plays a run-of-the-mill lowlife. In BLOOD AND SAND, his bullfighting critic "Curo" (which means a Bull's rectum) is a self-important parasite on bullfighters like J. Carroll Naish and Tyrone Power, whom he builds up, lives off of, and then throws aside when they no longer make large salaries.
But in his catalog of roles, possibly his most frightening one is his New York City master police inspector Ed Cornell. Not in fancy clothes or make-up, Cornell is mostly fierce attention and an ever-parked fedora hat on his head. He is the perfect realization of ability, brains, and retribution. For Ed Cornell misuses his badge to destroy promoter Frankie Christopher (Victor Mature). In playing the ultimately dangerous cop, Cregar actually played the scariest villain in his career (even more frightening in his way than "the Lodger" or Bone).
Vicki Lynn (Carole Landis) was a promising model whose career was being pushed by Christopher. Mature plays Christopher realistically - a friendly but pushy type who is a wire puller through his contacts, like actor Robin Ray (Alan Mowbray) and Larry Evans (Allyn Joslyn). Christopher hoped to get Lynn into acting and a fancier career. But she is found murdered. Circumstances are not settled in any direction, but when Cornell enters the case, and starts examining Christopher, he starts making veiled insinuations about the latter's actions and motives and activities on the night of the murder - insinuations that suggest a remarkably subtle detective intelligence - but also an inexplicable hostility. It soon becomes evident that Cornell is not simply trying to solve a murder. He is trying to definitely prove Christopher is guilty - or is he trying to frame Christopher?
Ed Cornell is Cregar's model (unwittingly and unintentionally) for Orson Welles' later Hank Quinlan. Both men are incredibly adept at their work, but both become incredibly corrupt at it. Quinlan's corruption carries on too long and too far. Cornell's, as we learn, is concentrated on this case - but it goes far enough to establish his own evil as memorable.
Being Cregar he varies his menace towards Mature with some lighter moments. Please note the intellectual story about the rare butterflies that he mentions when talking to his superior about laying a trap. He does show a human side eventually as well. But it is the evil that he does that dominates in this film, making it one of the first great film noir of the 1940s.