Starring Alan Ladd, Donna Reed, June Havoc, Irene Hervey, Arthur
Kennedy
Directed by Lewis Allen

Print: black/white
Runtime: 86 min.
Genre: film-noir
Print Quality: B

On Chicago's South Side reporter Ed Ames finds the body of a dead girl.
Her address book leads to a host of names of men frightened by her
death but claiming never to have known her. Ames comes to know quite a
lot, dangerously so.

Chicago Deadline is a story of a newspaper reporter who finds a murdered girl and tries to find the cause behind the murder as well as the murderer. The movie starts with Ed Adams chasing a runaway girl in a cheap hotel. He persuades the girl to return to her home and her worried mother. The girl who occupies the room next door is found dead. Adams gets an address book from the girl’s purse as he wants to know why she died. Soon, the police and the coroner are at the scene of crime and the diagnosis is given as a hemorrhage caused by TB. There is no foul play indicated at all. It does seem to be a natural death. Adams then tries to call up the persons listed in the address book. The list includes up to 54 people. He picks a name at random with the help of his sidekick and calls them all. The leads indicate nothing until a person with the initials G.G.T. is rung up. His sidekick, Pig states that this could probably be a big shot definitely. Soon, he finds out some details about the murdered girl called Rosita. She was presumably married to an artist and goes to New York with him. Soon, her husband ends up dying in an auto accident.

After his death, she goes to Chicago and meets some unsavory people and ends up getting mixed up with them. The storyline becomes very confused as there are a whole lot of characters. Some key characters are not seen and the things they do is very complex as well. There are some unexplained scenes in the movie, but it does show good footage of Chicago from the beginning as well as the elevated train platform to the cab chase also. Finally, the end result is that Rosita along with the characters that she comes in contact with end up dead. The title of the movie Chicago Deadline is very misleading as well. There is no connection between the number of dead bodies that end up through the course of the movie and the title of the movie Chicago Deadline. The victim, Rosita appears only in flashbacks throughout the movie. The movie was released in 1949 and was also remade for television as Fame is the Name of the Game as well in 1966. When Adams, the reporter tries to find the truth behind her suicide the leads turn out to be a host of characters frightened by her death but claim that they have never known her.

The movie has a running time of 87 minutes and it is known to be a classic movie. The movie was photographed in black and white and directed by Lewis Allen. The cast of characters were played by the following actors given below:

• Alan Ladd……Ed Adams
• Donna Reed……Rosita Jean d’Ur
• June Havoc……Leona
• Irene Hervey……Belle Dorset
• Arthur Kennedy……Tommy Ditman
• Berry Kroeger……Solly Wellman
• Harold Vermilyea……Anstruder
• Shepperd Strudwick……Blacky Franchot
• Dave Willock……Pig
• Gavin Muir……G.G.Temple
• John Beal……Paul Jean d’Ur
• Tom Powers……Howard