My Favorite Brunette (1947)

A baby photographer gets mistaken for a private eye and gets involved in international intrigue dealing with post-war uranium mines.

A story of the type much beloved by Hitchcock, except adapted as a comedy vehicle for early Bob Hope, when he was still something of an action hero.

Sure, he says he is cowardly, and he is pretty dumb at one point, basically giving up the game to the bad guys, but ultimately proves himself despite all of this.

The details themselves, though fairly recognizable and standard for a Noir, don’t really make a lot of sense: There’s a mysterious brunette (Dorothy Lamour) who’s not necessarily on the level, and later gets sent to a mental sanitarium; a wheelchair bound uncle who has been replaced by a double; a coded map of some sort in dire need of decoding (why kill the guy who can decipher it?); a group of bad guys which includes Peter Lorre as a murderous thug and Lon Chaney (who is very funny) recreating his Lenny character from Of Mice And Men (1939), and even gets promised a rabbit at one point.

A loose end with a replaced negative of evidence is taken care of without explaining how it came to be. Not that it needed to be, but it doesn’t really make sense. Hitchcock would have been a bit more careful with the details of the plot, even if by the end they do not really matter.

The movie starts in a very Noirish manner with Hope framed for murder, on death row, waiting for the governor’s call, and narrating to reporters how it is he ended in such a tight spot.

There is also a reference to The Lost Weekend’s (1945) hidden bottle of booze (and didn’t I just reference its bat hallucination in my writeup of The Green Man?)

Lamour may have been a bombshell but she has very odd facial features.

Good use of the San Francisco Chinatown location.

Cameo appearances by film noir regular Alan Ladd and Hope partner Bing Crosby.