Let's face it. Raymond Burr was never a romantic lead, and for most of his movie career prior to going onto the little box in your living room, he played villains of all kinds. As Burr himself once said (reflecting both on the characters he played and their girth), him and William Conrad were always the ones called in the 1950's to play "the heavy". With the exception of the Americanized version of "Godzilla", I can't ever recall him playing the good guy. Even when he was on the right side of the law (like in "A Place in the Sun"), he was never really likable on film, even when he was the D.A. prosecuting Montgomery Clift for murder. But there he was just doing his job, and here, he's doing his best to take advantage of drunken birthday girl Anne Baxter, giving one of her most vulnerable and frightened portrayals as the young lady who thought that she had accidentally killed Burr in a fit of fear. "The Blue Gardenia" is a song heard throughout the film, sung onscreen by a young Nat King Cole as only he could. It's the name of the nightclub too where Burr takes Baxter on a date, a perfect gentlemen it seems, but plying her with alcohol then bringing her back to his apartment for an alleged party that only includes the two of them. The mood is frightening, and being seen now is the epitome of a "me too" moment where a seemingly nice guy is not so nice, the amoral artist who wants what he wants when he wants it and without regards to the feelings of the lovely lady he's with. As Baxter's roommates, co-workers and confidantes, both Ann Sothern and Jeff Donnell deliver excellent performances, with Donnell quite amusing as a mystery fanatic who becomes obsessed with the case of Burr's murder, unaware that Baxter may be the culprit! Then, there's Richard Conte as a hard nosed journalist, determined to uncover the real killer's identity, and placing an add in the newspaper with the promise of protecting whoever is guilty, aware that they were obviously on the verge of being raped or worse. The scenes leading up to Baxter's meeting with him are quite intense, and the cat and mouse game between homicide detective George Reeves and Conte are well written as well. The only issue I had was the sudden twist at the end which reminded me of Truman Capote's complaint about one of the detectives in the Neil Simon comedy "Murder By Death" who always added in information, clues and other characters towards the end, making it impossible for the audience to guess "who done it". Other than that, this is a truly intriguing film noir that had me riveted from start to finish.

It's not a bad murder mystery, with a growing romance between Anne Baxter, who is thought to be the secretive "Blue Gardenia" murderess, and Richard Conte as the ambitious reporter who wants to find her and get her story before anyone else. Some reliable support by Ann Sothern, Richard Erdman, and Jeff Donnell. The direction is by Fritz Lang, who has done better. The score should have been by Miklos Rozsa, if this were a just world, instead of Raoul Kraushaar. Nat "King" Cole renders the title song and Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" is ripped off shamefully, including the notorious Tristan chord, the first step to the nightmarish twelve-tone music. Ewww.The victim of the murderess is Raymond Burr, here a smooth lady's man who gets a bereaved Ann Baxter drunk on Polynesian Pearl Divers and then tries to, how you say, "take advantage of her." She struggles with him. She throws up her arms and screams. A mirror breaks into pieces that fall on the floor. Lang was always fond of using mirrors and clocks in his films. The only anomaly here is that Burr gets his head bashed in with a poker instead of being stabbed repeatedly with pair of scissors or, if one were handy, an ice pick.The villainess is not Ann Baxter, of course. You can't believe for a moment that the grand-daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright would murder somebody. Nope. It's a pinched-face lady clerk in a record story, who has been impregnated by lady's man Burr and is now being blown off. She wields that weapon with real power, too. Pokers should never be left in a house with women. The pregnancy isn't mentioned. This is 1953. You have to fill in certain gaps in the dialog. The murderess gets about two full minutes of screen time.The two leads don't have that much range. Ann Baxter is always breathless and usually masking some sort of emotion, regardless of the part. Richard Conte is Richard Conte, stiffly masculine, which is fine in a movie that calls for such traits, especially when the part puts him in a vulnerable position where masculinity isn't going to count for much. I'm thinking mostly of the massage that a wounded Conte gets from the mammoth Hope Emerson, who could break one of Conte's long bones with a single twist, in "Cry of the City." It's worth seeing, weaknesses in the plot notwithstanding.

Ann Baxter, never a star of the first rank, chiefly remembered for the film "All About Eve," here inaugurates her second tier status with this pedestrian role of woman in distress. Baxter plays Norah Larkin, a young naive woman, who is a romantic and overly sentimental. For Norah this is a combination of character traits that lead to the kind of complications found in dime store novels. Lurid, dime store detective pulps, the gorier the better, happen to be the passionate obsession of one of her room mates, Sally, a gawky, dim bulb played by the confusingly named actress, Jeff Donnell. Ann Sothern is the wisecracking, motherly presence, Crystal, the practical one of the trio, which doesn't stand for much in this storyline. All three share a one room LA apartment living dormitory style and when not working as switchboard operators for the telephone company, are occupied with men, dating and keeping their "honor" intact. Trouble ahead!After all this is 1953, and the world is divided among vulnerable females and predatory males on the make. Men carry little black address books with the phone numbers of hot, compliant babes, their attributes annotated by coded symbols. Hubba! Hubba! "If women killed every man who got fresh with them," Crystal wisely quips, "there'd be no men left in the world!" That's the set-up, so ladies, watch out. Trouble ahead!In comes one Harry Prebble, an artist known for drawing calendar girls, a profession which gives him convenient and abundant access to women. He's the guy whose main agenda in life is to seduce as many women as possible, females who in the end are disposable after use. Raymond Burr, TV's "Perry Mason," plays the physically large, ungainly, lumbering Prebble. As a seducer of women he's no suave, subtle operator. Only the most unworldly, and gullible would fall for his dating routine, one basically primed to get his date blind drunk, if not giddy, on exotic cocktails called Polynesian Pearl Divers. He's a deceiver all right. Trouble ahead!Another male not exactly on the up-and-up is Casey Mayo, portrayed by Richard Conte, a newspaper reporter always hungry for the big scoop, the hot copy. He's no genius either as he tries to be the first to catch a murderer at large, his main assets being a dogged stubbornness and determination that won't quit. George Reeves, TV's original "Superman," is Haynes the homicide detective with whom Mayo maintains an uneasy though companionable alliance. Richard Erdman is news photographer, Al, who serves as Mayo's devoted mascot, following him around relentlessly, hoping one day that some of Mayo's mojo with women will somehow rub off on him and that maybe, just maybe, he can get some of those phone numbers in Mayo's little black book. And so, this is a prime example of a B movie trying to pretend that it is a crime drama and not a soap opera and failing to convince the audience that it is anything but a second rate and mildly entertaining potboiler. The highlight of the movie may well be the legendary Nat King Cole sitting at the piano, his velvet voice providing his rendition of the movie's insipid, schmaltzy theme song, "Blue Gardenia."

This one is a good example of the difference in appearance that emerged in the 1950's Film-Noir. The decade was finally starting to show the growth of the Post War economy and shine, so were the Movies, even the Noirs and it was the beginning of the end for the Genre.The look was not the only thing that started to "lighten up", the Characters were becoming less cynical, more perky, and frankly more boring. This can be exemplified by the Roommates here that are so spunky and aloof that they seem to glide and float through this Mystery/Thriller. Low brow Blues and Jazz was replaced with the nonthreatening Pop softness of Nat King Cole.The Director does use some inspiring shadowy scenes here, in the middle, during the most effective part of the Film as the Murder ensues and the aftermath is a Noirish blur. Notice how after the event the frame is bathed in partial darkness and things swirl and twist in a convincing confusion. But it doesn't last too long.Most of the Movie is so breezy, light, and kind of syrupy that the Film's Noir is noticeably absent and what is left is straightforward Melodrama with a TV look. Not a bad Film just to pedestrian to be anything more than an above average Entertainment that is as inoffensive and fluffy as it is predictable.