The Clay Pigeon

The Clay Pigeon
The Clay Pigeon
	RKO Radio Pictures
Release date	February 14, 1949 (US);
Running time	63 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Clay Pigeon is a 1949 American film noir directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Carl Foreman, based on a true story. The drama features Bill Williams and Barbara Hale, a real-life husband and wife.^[2]

Plot

Jim Fletcher (Williams), a former inmate in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, awakes from a coma at a Naval hospital, and is then informed that he has been accused of murder. As Fletcher is uncertain of his guilt, he escapes from the hospital to search for his best friend, another ex-POW.

Cast

Bill Williams as Jim Fletcher
Barbara Hale as Martha Gregory
Richard Quine as Ted Niles
Richard Loo as Ken Tokoyama aka The Weasel
Frank Fenton as Lt. Cmdr. Prentice
Frank Wilcox as Navy Hospital Doctor
Marya Marco as Helen Minoto
Robert Bray as Gunsel Blake
Martha Hyer as Miss Harwick, Wheeler's Receptionist
Harold Landon as Blind Veteran
James Craven as John Wheeler

Depiction of Japanese Americans

Although the movie shows Jim's

442d Regimental Combat Team of the U.S. Army. It is accompanied by the certificate for his Distinguished Service Cross, awarded for "Extraordinary Heroism".^[3]

Film noir specialist Eddie Muller speculates this is the first time the highly decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team, composed mostly of Japanese Americans, was acknowledged in a movie, and states that this was not simply the studio's formulaic trope of balancing something negative with a positive, but rather screenwriter Carl Foreman's personal progressive outlook.^[3]

Reception

Critical response

Time Out film reviews wrote of the film, "Directed by Fleischer with tight, spare energy, although the implausible script and bland leading performances (with Hale as the dead friend's wife, initially hostile but soon losing her heart) make it much inferior to The Narrow Margin.^[4]

References

^ "The Clay Pigeon: Detail View". American Film Institute. Retrieved May 13, 2014.
^ The Clay Pigeon at the American Film Institute Catalog.
^ ^a ^b Muller, Eddie. "Noir Alley: The Clay Pigeon (outro) 20180527". Noir Alley. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
^ Time Out Archived 2011-06-07 at the Wayback Machine. Film reviews, 2008. Last accessed: February 16, 2008.

External links

The Clay Pigeon at the American Film Institute Catalog
The Clay Pigeon at
IMDb

The Clay Pigeon at AllMovie
The Clay Pigeon at the TCM Movie Database
The Clay Pigeon film clip on
YouTube

[1] "The Clay Pigeon: Detail View". American Film Institute. Retrieved May 13, 2014.

[2] The Clay Pigeon at the American Film Institute Catalog.

[Muller-3] Muller, Eddie. "Noir Alley: The Clay Pigeon (outro) 20180527". Noir Alley. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 7 April 2022.

[4] Time Out Archived 2011-06-07 at the Wayback Machine. Film reviews, 2008. Last accessed: February 16, 2008.

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