Chicago Deadline (1949)

Alan Ladd is a reporter who finds a girl named Rosita (Donna Reed) in a cheap boarding house who had died of tuberculosis. He picks up her dairy, and begins investigating. He finds out very quickly that no one wants to talk about her - at all. One man takes a swing at him. Another (Gavin Muir) puts pressure on the editor of the paper. Finally Ladd finds her brother, and begins to get the real story. She had married, and her husband had died four years before. Their interview is interrupted by a call from a mobster, and Ladd rushes out to meet with him, but he is shot as Ladd gets there, and dies after telling Ladd that he loved Rosita. Little by little Ladd pieces together the story, despite getting beat up by thugs and shadowed by the police. When he heads down the stretch of the story, he is shot and hospitalized. He leaves the hospital and the mob is after him. With his last bullet he gets the head thug.

Donna Reed was totally mis-cast in this role.




Gavin Muir