Johnny One-Eye (1950)

Best movie ever!

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I like film noir--you know, told old gangster films from the 40s and 50s. This Damon Runyan story has almost all the earmarks of a good film noir movie...most. However, it also involves a cute kid and a schmaltzy storyline--something you'd NEVER find in a true example of noir.When the film begins, two hoods, Cory (Wayne Morris) and Martin (Pat O'Brien) chase down a guy who stole $50,000 from them. In the process of getting it back, they are forced to shoot the guy. Years pass and the two crooks have gone separate ways. Martin has an aura of respectability about him and Cory is still a hood--a hood with a girlfriend who has a kid, Elsie. When someone goes to the police with information about the killing which occurred at the beginning of the film, Cory decides to rat on his old friend and offers to testify against him to save his butt. Not surprisingly, Martin is furious and is out to kill Cory when he finds out he's being betrayed.All this sounds like perfect noir--a killing, betrayal and revenge. However, Elsie soon becomes involved in the case and the dopey kid thinks that Martin is Santa...yes, Santa. She tries to help him-- not only because of this but because her soon to be step-daddy is a sadist who beat her cute little dog. Even Martin isn't cold enough to do that and soon takes the pup under his care. What's next? Well, it ain't exactly kid-friendly and is interesting but the whole subplot involving the kid tended to take away the hard edge from this one--and I WANT a hard-edged story! All in all, not a bad film but also one that isn't exactly the best from the two stars. Without the kid and the dog, the story would have been a lot better.

Everybody was far past their prime when director Robert Florey made "Johnny One-Eye" with Pat O'Brien and Wayne Morris as former associates turned sworn enemies in "Wild Weed" writer Richard Landau's grim but purposeful adaptation of a Damon Runyon story. This gritty saga of ruthless criminals in New York City who rise to prominence before they topple as a consequence of their old crimes is razor sharp stuff. Meaning, this is not a happy, cheerful yarn about colorful characters with a sugar-coated finale. The eponymous character turns out to be a little doggie, and the story concerns two career criminals who corner a thief on a ferry and kill him after a brief shoot-out. Nobody saw them commit the crime and the body wound up at the bottom of the river. Martin Martin (Pat O'Brien of ") and Dane Cory (Wayne Morris) corner the nervous Dutchman on a foggy morning in the Big Apple who tried to steal $50-thousand from them. Dane watches as his partner Martin swaps lead with the Dutchman and guns him down. Years later when New York has grown too big for them, Dane spills his guts to a District Attorney with presidential aspirations. It seems that the authorities fished the Dutchman's body out of the river and enough evidence to indict Martin. Martin goes down to the theater where Dane watching a rehearsal of a show for his latest squeeze, Lily White (Dolores Moran), and they have a brief conversation. Another gunfight erupts with Dane escaping the slugs meant for him from Martin's revolver, while Martin catches a .38 in the shoulder and has to go into hiding. Earlier, Martin had been a big man. In a scene that it is difficult to believe that the censor allowed, Martin is judging a number of beauties who are in reality prostitutes that he has arranged from his high-flown dinner guests. Anyway, Martin holes up in an abandoned apartment where he meets the title character. Just to hammer home the villainy of Dane Corey, Florey and Landau have him disfigure a poor, harmless pooch. Dane doesn't like either the dog (he puts out one of its eyes off-screen while Lily's impressionable little girl, Elsie (Gayle Reed) watches. Florey doesn't pull any punches in this unsavory epic where our two protagonists eventually shoot it out. Donald Woods has a sturdy supporting role as a sympathetic vet who patches up Martin and informs him that Johnny One-Eye's days are numbered. Initially, I didn't care much for this drama, essentially because the Alpha DVD version is so pictorially dark, but it improved with a second viewing. Some of the symbolism may strike you as a mite heavy-handed but it is nevertheless effective. Lyle Talbot has a minor role as a representative of the District Attorney's office.

***SPOILERS*** Based on an obscure Damon Runyon short-story the movie "Johnny One-Eye" is about an on the lamb wanted killer who was turned in to the D.A by his partner in order to save his own neck by coping a plea in a murder rap.We get to see Dutch gunned down on the Statan Island Ferry by Martin Martin, Pat O'Brien, who pulled a gun on him after dropping $50,000.00 in cash that he ripped off from both Martin and his partner Dane Cory, Wayne Morris. It's now some five years later and Martin now a successful businessman is told by this arrogant sleaze-ball Ambose, Lawrence Cregar, who got a spy in the D.A's office that Cory is making a deal in fingering Martin in the Dutch murder.Martin like a complete fool goes to see Cory, whom he knows is untrustworthy, who's now in the theater business and ends up getting shot by one of his men Cute Freddy, Harry Bronson,who ends up getting killed by Martin in the crossfire. Badly injured Martin despite having his picture on every newspapers as well as on the TV news walks from the midtown Theater District to Greenwich Village, about two miles, without anyone, man woman or cop, recognizing him as well as offering the badly injured Martin any medical attention.Hiding in this abandoned building Martin is discovered by Elsie, Gayle Reed, and her cute but badly inured dog, the poor mutt is blinded in one eye, Skippy. It just happens that Elsie's mother Lily White, Dolores Moran, is one of Cory's discoveries in the theater whom he promised to make a star. Befriending Elsie and her mutt Skippy Martin calls him Johnny One-Eye and tells the very young, she's about four years old, and impressionable Elsie that he's actually Santa Clause in disguise, Martin doesn't have a white beard and a Santa Clause outfit, from a wanted photo of himself that Elsie shows him in a local newspaper.The movie has Martin later find out about Cory's involvement with Elsie's mom as well as his mistreatment of both Lily Elsie as well as Johnny-One-Eye, or Skippy, whom the despicable hoodlum blinded by kicking the pooch in the face. Martin in trying to get Johnny One-Eye help or find him a home goes to this Greenwich Village veterinarian, Donald Woods, who tells him that the best thing he could do for very sick Johnny One-Eye is put the dog to sleep. It's later when Woods repairs Martin's chest wound that he goes to see Ambrose about having a meeting with Cory offering him $15,000.00 in finding out Cory's whereabouts so that he can pay him a visit and pay him back for what he did to him.True to form Ambrose double-crosses Martin by setting him up to be turned over to Cory, for $25,000.00. It's then that Ambrose's henchman a member of the D.A's staff and possibly Ambrose gay lover Francis, Lyle Talbot,gets cold feet in being afraid of losing his job, he was told by the lying Ambrose that Martin was to be turned over to the police. Where there's another shoot-out with both Francis getting cold cocked by Martin and Ambose ending up shot dead by an outraged Francis.Finding out that Cory is living across the street from where he's hiding out in the abandoned building, what a small world, Martin has him alerted by Elsie where he is that leads to the final shoot-out with both himself and Cory ending up dead. With what little life he still has left to him as he's dying from a bullet wound Martin tells one of the cops, who later came on the scene, to buy Elsie a new dog, Johnny One-Eye didn't have long to go by then, and make her think that the dog is her beloved pet Skippy or as Martin called him Johnny One-Eye.

Despite the film's original storyline, director Robert Florey, who was well past his prime when this low-budget programmer was made, does injustice to a very original Damon Runyon's plot idea. An innocent but plucky young girl naively believes that a criminal fugitive (Pat O'Brien) who's hiding out in a deserted building in her neighborhood, is really Santa Claus. She keeps his presence secret and does her best to help him. Florey fills the story with bathos and saccharine sentimentality involving the title character, the girl's little dog, and the film ultimately becomes mired in its own mawkishness.More than a decade later Bryan Forbes would direct a critically-acclaimed film based on a similar premise. In 1961's WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, youngster Hayley Mills mistakenly believes fugitive wife-murderer Alan Bates, who is hiding out from the authorities in the barn on her father's isolated British farm, to be Jesus Christ. The tact and taste with which Forbes handles the material is a paradigm of understatement and restraint. Although Mary Hayley Bell's (mother of Hayley} narrative was lauded at the time for its great originality, the plot premise appears cribbed from this unpretentious Damon Runyon B-film programmer.