The Prowler (1951)
(Joseph Losey, US 1951, 92 min., 35mm)
While awaiting appeal to the charges of contempt of Congress (for refusing to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee), Dalton Trumbo completed this assignment, writing a script from the existing story The Cost of Living. Drawing comparisons to Double Indemnity (1944), this bad-cop noir fits squarely in the postwar vein of men turned into killers then sent home and expected to fit easily back into society. Van Heflin plays Webb Garwood, a beat cop who is entranced by Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes), a housewife disturbed by a prowler. He pursues her, urging her to leave her absent husband. But when she refuses, Webb takes the situation (and the law) into his own hands. This was Losey’s most successful American film, critically and financially. Losey—who would be blacklisted himself not long after and retreat to Europe to continue making films—snuck the blacklisted Trumbo into this film, in an uncredited role as the voice of the absent husband.