Mystery History - D.O.A. Released 65 Years Ago Today

It was April 30, 1950 when moviegoers got their first look at the classic noir film D.O.A. It's opening scene was one of the most original in motion picture history. An exhausted man walks into a police station to report a murder.

"Who was murdered?" the detective asks.

"I was," Frank Bigelow declares.

This begins the story, told in flashback, of Frank Bigelow. An accountant and notary public, he learns from a doctor that he's been poisoned with a slow acting chemical for which there is no andidote. He spends the next 24 hours trying to learn why he was poisoned. Along the way he runs into an assortment of crooks and killers as he seeks to learn who has murdered him.

Bigelow was played by Edmund O'Brien, a skilled actor who was a fixture in the 40s and 50s on film. He appeared in several crime dramas, including The Killers, White Heat and The Hitch-Hiker. His performance in D.O.A. got good reviews, with one critic commenting that Frank Bigelow was more engaged in his life during his frantic search for the truth than at anytime in his life. In adddition to the plot, the dark lighting and scenery lent the film its noir mood.

One of the movie's chase scenes gained part of it's realism from the fact that the film crew failed to get the necessary permits to shoot the scene. The bewildered crowd wasn't acting...they genuinely had no idea what was going on as Edmund O'Brien crashed through the streets.

The suspenseful soundtrack was written by Dimitri Tiomkin, who also produced the music for Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder and The Thing From Another World.

The film has fallen into the public domain, and can be readily accessed on several websites, including Youtube.

"I seldom get very far away from crime. I've found it pays . . . I tried non-crime films like Another Part of the Forest . . . good picture, good cast, but no good at the box office . . . But you just put a gun in your hands and run through the streets during cops and robbers and you're all set."

                                                                                         - Edmund O'Brien