The Underworld Story is a 1950 American film noir

Film noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...

starring Dan Duryea

Dan Duryea

Dan Duryea was an American actor, known for roles in film, stage and television.-Early life:Born and raised in White Plains, New York, Duryea graduated from White Plains Senior High School in 1924 and Cornell University in 1928. While at Cornell, Duryea was elected into the Sphinx Head Society...

, Herbert Marshall

Herbert Marshall

Herbert Marshall , born Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall, was an English actor.His parents were Percy F. Marshall and Ethel May Turner. He graduated from St. Mary's College in Old Harlow, Essex and worked for a time as an accounting clerk...

, and Gale Storm

Gale Storm

Gale Storm was an American actress and singer who starred in two popular television programs of the 1950s, My Little Margie and The Gale Storm Show.-Early life:...

. Howard Da Silva

Howard Da Silva

Howard Da Silva was an American actor.-Early life:He was born Howard Silverblatt in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Benjamin and Bertha Silverblatt. His parents were both Yiddish speaking Jews born in Russia. He had a job as a steelworker before beginning his acting career on the stage...

 plays the loud-mouthed gangster Carl Durham, one of his last roles before becoming blacklisted

Hollywood blacklist

The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the mid-twentieth-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or...

.

The newspaperman played by Duryea is similar in tone (a reporter that does anything for publicity for himself regardless of ethics) to Kirk Douglas

Kirk Douglas

Kirk Douglas is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past , Champion , Ace in the Hole , The Bad and the Beautiful , Lust for Life , Paths of Glory , Gunfight at the O.K...

 in Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...

's Ace in the Hole

Ace in the Hole (1951 film)

Ace in the Hole is a 1951 American drama film starring Kirk Douglas as a cynical, disgraced reporter who stops at nothing to try to regain a job on a major newspaper....

(1951). This B-movie

B-movie

A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....

 was shot in black and white by director Cy Endfield

Cy Endfield

Cyril Raker Endfield was an American screenwriter, film director, theatre director, author, magician and inventor, based in Britain from 1953.- Biography :...

 and cinematographer Stanley Cortez

Stanley Cortez

Stanley Cortez, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer. He worked on over seventy films, including Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons , Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter , Nunnally Johnson's The Three Faces of Eve , and Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor and The...

.

Newspaper reporter Mike Reese (Duryea) loses his job at a big paper he finds that no one else will hire him. Reese borrows money from and gangster and buys half the interest in a small-town newspaper, The Lakewood Gazette, in the town of Lakeville. The newspaper is owned by Catherine Harris (Storm), who immediately has differences with Reese on how the paper should operate. Reese, trying to use the paper as a step up, latches onto a murder of a woman who happens to be the daughter-in-law of a newspaper magnate. Reese turns the story into a media circus and soon his reporting is back in the spotlight again.

Cast

• Dan Duryea
  Dan Duryea
  Dan Duryea was an American actor, known for roles in film, stage and television.-Early life:Born and raised in White Plains, New York, Duryea graduated from White Plains Senior High School in 1924 and Cornell University in 1928. While at Cornell, Duryea was elected into the Sphinx Head Society...
  
   as Mike Reese
• Herbert Marshall
  Herbert Marshall
  Herbert Marshall , born Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall, was an English actor.His parents were Percy F. Marshall and Ethel May Turner. He graduated from St. Mary's College in Old Harlow, Essex and worked for a time as an accounting clerk...
  
   as E.J. Stanton
• Gale Storm
  Gale Storm
  Gale Storm was an American actress and singer who starred in two popular television programs of the 1950s, My Little Margie and The Gale Storm Show.-Early life:...
  
   as Catherine Harris
• Howard Da Silva
  Howard Da Silva
  Howard Da Silva was an American actor.-Early life:He was born Howard Silverblatt in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Benjamin and Bertha Silverblatt. His parents were both Yiddish speaking Jews born in Russia. He had a job as a steelworker before beginning his acting career on the stage...
  
  as Carl Durham