Vive le Fat Man! – The Fat Man (1951)
The Fat Man (1951)
Released in 1951, The Fat Man (1951) is a Classic Film Noir detective mystery based on the popular radio series created by Dashiell Hammett. J. Scott Smart reprises his radio role as private detective Brad Runyan, a large, food-loving investigator whose relaxed personality hides a remarkably sharp mind. What begins with the suspicious death of a dentist gradually leads Runyan (J. Scott Smart) into a complicated story involving stolen money, missing dental records, gangsters, and even a circus. It is a strange little Noir, but certainly not a boring one.
For me, this movie always brings to mind the great Film Noir actor William Conrad and his later television role of “Jake and the Fatman” 1987–1992, where the Fatman had a young assistant to handle running and chasing.
Ratings
The film currently holds an okay 6.2 on IMDb. Rotten Tomatoes has no Tomatometer score and no Popcornmeter score. I currently have it slotted at 532 in the ALL FILM NOIRS PROJECT. This is certainly not an essential Film Noir. However, its unusual detective, Dashiell Hammett connection, and wonderfully eccentric collection of characters make it considerably more interesting than its obscurity might suggest.
Director and Major Stars
Director William Castle would eventually become famous for horror films and outrageous theatrical gimmicks, but before that he spent years directing mysteries, crime pictures, and low-budget thrillers. His Noir-related work includes When Strangers Marry (1944), The Whistler (1944), Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949), Undertow (1949), today’s film The Fat Man (1951), and The Houston Story (1956). The Fat Man (1951) is not among his greatest films, and Castle himself later dismissed it as a minor potboiler. Still, it demonstrates the efficient, economical filmmaking that characterized much of his early career.
J. Scott Smart stars as private detective Brad Runyan, reprising the role he had made famous on radio and making his motion-picture debut in the process. Julie London plays Pat Boyd, bringing an early dose of Noir glamour several years before The Great Man (1956) and her later fame as a singer. Rock Hudson, still several years away from becoming one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, plays Roy Clark, the mysterious missing man at the center of the investigation. Jayne Meadows plays dental nurse Jane Adams, while John Russell appears as Gene Gordon. The most unusual casting belongs to legendary Ringling Brothers clown Emmett Kelly, who makes his film debut as circus clown Ed Deets.
The Story
Dentist Henry Bromley (Robert Roark) is drugged and thrown from a hotel window, but his death is initially ruled a suicide. His nurse, Jane Adams (Jayne Meadows), believes he was murdered and approaches private detective Brad Runyan (J. Scott Smart) for help. Runyan discovers that dental X-rays belonging to a missing patient named Roy Clark (Rock Hudson) disappeared at the same time, and the trail eventually leads to Pat Boyd (Julie London), Clark’s former wife. As Runyan digs into Clark’s past, he uncovers a half-million-dollar robbery and a connection to former cellmate Ed Deets (Emmett Kelly). The investigation ultimately leads Runyan into the circus, where the mystery of the missing money and the murders finally come together.
Why This Film Matters
The Fat Man (1951) is important to Film Noir primarily because of its connection to Dashiell Hammett, one of the foundational writers of American hard-boiled crime fiction. Hammett’s work gave us The Maltese Falcon (1941) and provided much of the literary DNA from which American Film Noir developed. Brad Runyan (J. Scott Smart) originated in “The Fat Man” radio series, which ran from 1946 through 1951, with Smart playing the detective on radio before bringing him to the screen.
Runyan (J. Scott Smart) is also an unusual Noir detective. He is not another Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. He enjoys expensive food, approaches people with an easygoing sense of humor, and hardly looks like the traditional hard-boiled private eye. But underneath that genial exterior is an intelligent investigator who follows small inconsistencies until they lead him toward the truth.
The mystery itself is wonderfully Noir. A supposedly suicidal dentist, missing dental X-rays, a vanished ex-convict, stolen money, gangsters, murder, and false identities gradually connect into a much larger criminal conspiracy. Dental records become especially important because they provide a way to establish identity at a time before DNA samples, when criminals could disappear much more easily by simply changing their names.
The structure is also unusual. Much of the investigation is revealed through flashbacks as Runyan (J. Scott Smart) interviews people connected to Roy Clark (Rock Hudson). Each witness adds another piece to the story, slowly reconstructing Clark’s past and explaining why someone desperately wants his dental records destroyed.
Then there is the circus.
Ed Deets (Emmett Kelly) gives The Fat Man (1951) one of the stranger villains in Classic Film Noir. Kelly was already famous for his sad-faced clown character Weary Willie, but here the familiar image of the melancholy circus clown becomes something much darker. The final confrontation in the circus ring gives this otherwise modest detective picture an unexpectedly memorable conclusion.
The movie also provides an interesting early glimpse of Rock Hudson. Roy Clark (Rock Hudson) is not the confident romantic leading man audiences would soon know. He is instead a troubled figure whose criminal history and disappearance drive much of the mystery.
But The Fat Man (1951) does have limitations. The production is modest, the complicated flashback structure can occasionally make the story harder to follow than it needs to be, and William Castle was not particularly fond of the finished film himself. This is not The Killers (1946), Sunset Blvd. (1950), or Touch of Evil (1958).
Still, there is something appealing about its odd combination of a hard-boiled detective story, radio mystery, police procedural, gangster film, and circus Noir. Sometimes being unusual is enough to make a forgotten Noir worth rediscovering.
Noir Significance
The Fat Man (1951) is significant to Film Noir because it preserves on film an unusual branch of the hard-boiled detective tradition that flourished on American radio, with shows such as “The Falcon” radio series which aired from 1943 until 1954, The Whistler radio mystery which aired from 1942 until 1955, and “The Shadow,” debuting in 1930 on the radio program “Detective Story Hour.” The Shadow continued from 1937 to 1954 on “The Shadow Radio Show.”
Of course, there are film versions of all of these radio characters.
The film is also important for its connection to Dashiell Hammett, private detective protagonist, murder investigation, criminal conspiracy, stolen fortune, and morally compromised characters firmly connect it to the Noir tradition. It is certainly not an essential masterpiece, and I don’t have it anywhere near the top tier. But J. Scott Smart‘s unconventional detective, an early appearance by Rock Hudson, and Emmett Kelly‘s remarkably strange turn as a murderous circus clown make The Fat Man (1951) an interesting curiosity for serious Film Noir fans.
The ALL FILM NOIRS PROJECT
The Fat Man (1951) is one of approximately 1,200 films included in the ALL FILM NOIRS PROJECT, an ongoing effort to identify, preserve, and celebrate every significant Pre-Noir, Classic Film Noir, and Neo-Noir. Films like this are one of the reasons the project exists. The acknowledged masterpieces are easy to find. The real adventure begins when we reach the forgotten films, unusual experiments, and strange little Noirs that have largely disappeared from popular memory.
Subscribe and follow the ALL FILM NOIRS PROJECT as we work through the database. Some films will be celebrated masterpieces, others will be forgotten gems, and a few may leave us wondering how they ever made the list, as we journey through every entry in the database, one Noir at a time.
