cult film freak: VIRGINIA FIELD BARRING MARSHALL THOMPSON IN 'DIAL 1119'

Marshall Thompson and Virginia Field in DIAL 1119 Year: 1950 Rating: ***1/2

A kind of expository TIME OF YOUR LIFE barroom-of-eclectic-characters stage play combined with any hostage thriller, DIAL 1119 stars Marshall Thompson as a troubled young man who you can't insult or compliment without possibly getting shot and killed...

The tavern-dwellers include world-weary workaday bartender William Conrad; a stressed young married man waiting for a telephone call from his birthing wife; a cranky newspaperman; floozy Virginia Field, having perfectly aged from her 1930's heyday into an older yet still alluring hustler; and a creepy older businessman calling twenty-something beauty Andrea King his niece while trying to seduce her...

William Conrad and Virginia Field in DIAL 1119

There needed more interplay between characters... Field's cackling laughter after hearing King's pathetic puppy-crush only scratches the surface on two polar opposite lovelorn women (one needing, the other uncaring)... and by the time psych-ward escaped Thompson holds up the giant-television-screen bar, there's more time centered on the cop outside being talked into talking to the poor kid by former shrink Sam Levene, who always plays the smartest guy in the room...

But DIAL 1119 works because it's not as melodramatic as some of the tortured soul film noir/melodramas, feeling more like a short story cautionary-tale with added dialogue and enough tension to tensely guess until the ending: for both the characters and the audience.