Johnny Gunman (1957)

Johnny Gunman (USA, 1957) 67 min B&W DIR-SCR: Art Ford. PROD: Will Kohler. DOP: Walter Holcomb. CAST: Martin E. Brooks, Ann Donaldson, Johnny Seven, Woodrow Parfrey, Carrie Raddisson, Bernard Fine. (Vinegar Syndrome)

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Martin E. Brooks, best known to our generation as Rudy in TV’s The Six Million Dollar Man and its spinoff The Bionic Woman, has a rare feature-film leading man credit as “Johnny G.”, one of the two underlings of mobster Lou Caddy who are left in charge of his territory while their head honcho is sent up the river for a stretch. 

Johnny Gunman is another long-unseen title released by Vinegar Syndrome available in a sparkling, crisp transfer (paired on a DVD with another rarity, Mamie Van Doren’s The Candidate). One is initially tempted to give this the same plaudits accorded other independently-produced late-period films noir (Blast of Silence; Angels Flight), as it starts out promisingly enough, with a female venturing out to a Greenwich Village street festival to commemorate her last night in New York, before the frustrated, budding author travels back home by bus the following morning. 

For collectors of New York-lensed films in the 1950s and 60s, this movie is essential for its authentic glimpses of nightlife exteriors, circa 1957, but sadly, it spends most of its sixty-seven minutes indoors. Walter Holcomb’s photography is excellent, but has little of interest to film, as the actors lifelessly emote in small, sparsely-decorated rooms, recalling the stiff theatricality of 1930s Willis Kent exploitation pictures. This is one of those movies where a woman drops her purse while fleeing a room, and miraculously has it back in the next scene, running down the street.

In an “everyday woman” characterization befitting Phyllis Thaxter, Kim Hunter or Betsy Blair, Ann Donaldson is wooden as our female protagonist, referred to as “Coffee”, who wanders into a bohemian cafe, and is courted by three men on this final night in the big city. After being taken out on the town by Johnny G., she next liaises with a so-called author who is really a pervert, and finally with a nice old eccentric artist who shows her a collection of baby doll heads, before running back to Johnny at the crack of dawn. This is the sole directorial effort of TV and radio host Art Ford, who also wrote this meretricious release from the fledgling Tudor Pictures.

For a film barely clocking past an hour, it has far too many subplots, which suggest relentless attempts at padding the narrative just to make it feature-length: Bernard Fine (who would later play the crime boss in Ray Dennis Steckler’s bargain-basement private-eye flick, Body Fever) has a needless sequence as a photographer who is hired to take a picture of the elusive Johnny G, and ungodly minutes of tired bedroom talk occur between Johnny’s rival Allie (Johnny Seven) and his squeeze Mimi (the fetching Carrie Raddisson), while the movie limps along to the poorly choreographed climactic street fight between Johnny and Allie.