Gambling seems to be ubiquitous nowadays, and I wonder if I am the only person alarmed by that. If the road to Hell may be paved with good intentions, then I’m pretty sure the road to financial ruin is somehow paved with unlimited online sports betting. You have people losing their homes from betting on such otherwise unobserved events as table tennis matches where there are no physical spectators. It is hard to believe there was a time not so long ago when very few forms of gambling were legal, and even those were only in select regions. Even state lotteries were slow to be adopted until well into the 1970’s.
Things were so restrictive in 1950 that, while horse track betting may have been legal in some places, even transmitting those results were a gray area legally. That is the world in which 711 Ocean Drive is set, a solid noir starring Edmond O’Brien as a…telephone repairman who…creates an electronic system to…transmit race results to bookies faster…thus insinuating himself into the world of mobsters. I have even seen this film twice and I still can’t believe that is a thing.
Not just that but, supposedly, the mob were so concerned about this picture that they tried to stop its production. Frankly, that feels like promotional puffery, but what do I know. I’m still baffled that we somehow have gone from it being illegal to telegraph race results to our present situation where people heatedly bet large sums on the result of two old guys playing ping pong in a former Soviet Block country.
O’Brien started out as a decent, always quick to help a co-worker, such as the $20 he loans a guy with a sick kid. The other guy says O’Brien should wait until the end of the week to see if it is really needed, but the man insists, saying he is unlikely to have that bill then.
That’s because he is always making bets and, like many today losing their savings through the online incarnation of the vice, he is a continually loser. His bookie, the very affable Sammy White, even tries to dissuade the man from digging himself in deeper, or at least place wagers that are more likely to win.
It is through the bookie he makes the acquaintance of Barry Kelley’s manager of a covert betting parlor. O’Brien senses an opportunity to make some real money by applying his technical expertise towards the creation of a faster communication system between the tracks and outlets such as this.
Prior to this, Dorothy Patrick would be in the stands at the track signaling to somebody watching through binoculars from a distance. Security at the track notices her and gives her the boot. That seem moot to me, given O’Brien’s process is about to make that kind of thing redundant. In addition to that work she does for Kelley, she is the boss’s girl. O’Brien goes to hit on her in a club, but strikes out, despite this interesting line: “We’re organizing a game of hopscotch tonight and wondered if you might join our team.”
His chances with her will improve when he becomes he replaces Kelly after that man is gunned down in his office by a customer who can’t pay his debts. But now O’Brien has to worry about the National Wire Service organization, a mob enterprise ran like a corporation, all the way down to homicides being ordered in the driest manner possible in board meetings helmed by Otto Kruger. This man orders Don Porter to go to L.A. to discuss a merger.
Kruger suggests the man take wife Joanne Dru along with him, and it is obvious she is meant as enticement and it is equally obvious Porter is not happy with this. We will soon see her cutting down yet another man who has mistaken her for being single: “You’re going to get a great big shock when my husband shows up. He’s an even bigger rat than you are.” And, guess what, Porter most certainly is a giant rat.
Dru definitely works her magic on O’Brien, though she is all femme fatale cynicism: “I’m the prize you win if you throw the ring over the right peg.” I’m not sure why he falls for her over Patrick, as the other woman has a lot more personality. And yet, he will arrange for a hit on her husband, prompting this terrifying statement from Kruger, all the more menacing because of how dispassionately he delivers the line: “If the police can’t find out who killed [Porter], we will. And when we do, there will be another funeral.” I’m guessing that, among the cretins in Kruger’s organization, it will be the bespeckled Bert Freed who will be the one to snuff out Porter’s killer.
All around O’Brien, various webs are tightening around him, and many of those were his own doing. In addition to Kruger and his lackeys, there’s creepy Robert Osterloh as the assassin hired by O’Brien now turned blackmailer. There’s also the feds, who laughably call themselves The Gangster Squad, which sounds more like a parody of this genre, ala Police Squad!
Like many similar films made by Columbia Pictures around this time, sets are used more than locations, still there is some great footage of parts of L.A. not normally seen on the scene. I consider such footage to be a historical document, even if nobody realized at the time the importance of capturing such locales on film.
711 Ocean Drive never rises to the level of top-tier noir, though it hits many of the right notes. It is a fairly unique premise, and many of the cast are perfect for noir. My favorite element of any such film is snappy repartee. This doesn’t have a great deal of it, but it has one particularly memorable zinger, all the more so because it could be used in nearly every noir I have seen, that being O’Brian telling Dru: “Time wounds all heels.” And, for somebody like O’Brien, this is one heel who indeed has a karmic retribution coming his way.
Dir: Joseph M. Newman
Starring Edmund O’Brien, Joanne Dru, Otto Kruger, Barry Kelley, Dorothy Patrick
Watched as part of the Powerhouse/Indicator UK (region B) blu-ray box set Columbia Noir #2