Nocturne

DIRECTED BY Edwin L. Marin WRITTEN BY Jonathan Latimer STARRING George Raft, Lynn Bari, Virginia Huston When Alfred Hitchcock protégé Joan Harrison landed at RKO in 1946, she pulled an abandoned script from deep in the archives to make her producing debut at the studio now revered as “The House of Noir.” Ace scenarist Jonathan Latimer does a bang-up job reeling out the mystery behind the murder of a prominent Hollywood songwriter. He also has fun upending star George Raft’s tough-guy persona, making his police detective a milk-drinking mama’s boy (“mama” being screen vet Mabel Paige in maybe her biggest role ever). Despite the less-than-inspired direction of Edwin L. Marin (Raft’s de rigueur director), Harrison assembled the studio’s top craftsmen for this hardboiled but humorous noir: cinematographer Harry J. Wild gets the most out of designer Robert Boyle’s sets and Leigh Harline contributes an evocative score. The film also marked the screen debut of actors Joe Pevney (Body and Soul, Thieves’ Highway ) and Virginia Huston (Out of the Past).