In The Turning Point, crusading special prosecutor Johnny (Edmond O’Brien) returns to his home city to clean up the mob controlled by the local kingpin (Ed Begley, Sr.). He’s teamed up with his right-hand woman and fiancée Mandy (Alexis Smith), and wants to reunite with his boyhood buddy Jerry (William Holden), now a cynical reporter.
Johnny also wants to bring his dad Matt (Tom Tully), a veteran cop, into the investigation as well. What Jerry finds out about Matt turns out to be the most important, and most heartbreaking, element of the story.
Jerry also finds himself attracted to Mandy, and Holden and Smith smolder when they are alone together. This is not looking like the triumphant investigation that Johnny intended. It all builds to an ending that is grim even for film noir.
The action takes place in an array of post-war LA locales, including the famed Bunker Hill neighborhood and Olympic Auditorium. William Dieterle directed the Warren Duff screenplay. Dieterle began directing silent films in Germany and had directed the Charles Laughton The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Holden delivered the best performance of the leads, oozing the unease and ennui he showed the year before in Sunset Boulevard. The Turning Point features a deep cast of supporting regulars: Neville Brand, Ray Teal, Whit Bissell, Ted de Corsia and, most fun of all, Jay Adler as a shady street source of Jerry’s. The frightened witness Carmelina is played by Adele Longmire, the real-life wife of Arthur Franz, star of The Sniper.
The Turning Point was made in 1952, the year after the sensation of the Kefauver Hearings, televised Congressional hearings on organized crime. Platinum blonde in her feature film debut (and over a decade prior to her Morticia Addams), Carolyn Jones sends up the Virginia Hill appearance in those hearings. She’s hilarious (as was the real Virginia Hill).
The Turning Point is not available to stream, although the DVD is available for purchase. I watched it on Turner Classic Movies.
