EDMOND O'BRIEN RACES THROUGH THE CLASSIC FILM NOIR 'D.O.A.'

Title: D.O.A. Year: 1959 Director: Rudolph Maté Stars: Edmond O'Brien Rating: ****

For one of the most literally deadly-serious film noirs ever made, when accountant Edmond O'Brien goes from his L. A. office to a San Francisco hotel for a vacation, there are cheesy wolf-whistles added whenever a beautiful woman walks by, starting at the lobby and then upstairs where a salesman convention rages — but for O'Brien's Frank Bigelow the good times don't roll very long...

Although the rudimentary suarez is like a short film all its own, which is what distinguishes D. O. A. since it's really three pictures in one: the first peaking at a noisy jazz club where O'Brien's distracted by gorgeous and rich, blonde jazz-freak Virginia Lee while a hooded mystery man puts something in his drink, causing O'Brien to wake up feeling even worse than the hangover he'd have anyway...

Edmond O'Brien and Virginia Lee in D.O.A.

Then after quickly finding out by blunt doctors he has only hours to live, the second act is perhaps the most flawed: which actually seems deliberate since both the audience and our frantic hero are equally in the convoluted dark, which includes the usual noir shadows through the city night....

And more dames are added since, when not on the phone with secretary Pamela Britton, the good girl who really loves him, he deals with rotten fatales ranging from Beverly Garland to Laurette Luez to Lynn Baggett, all possibly connected to the woodwork criminals that poisoned him in the first place...

Death stalks Edmond O'Brien in D.O.A.

So when the final act morphs into a mainstream action flick, with Frank being chased around town, from shady warehouse interiors to a public drugstore by gun-toting psycho Neville Brand (working for bigwig Luther Adler), it's somewhat of a relief since now, finally, we finally know where he's going, what he's doing and what needs to be done...

Particularly thanks to the long corridor intro (ala frame story) of O'Brien telling the cops he's looking for the man who murdered him — in a morbid yet jazzy classic that roars into one ear and out the other.

Noir Opening Credits for D.O.A. 

Edmond O'Brien in D.O.A. 

Lynn Baggett in D.O.A. with Edmond O'Brien

Beverly Garland in D.O.A.

Laurette Luez in D.O.A. with Edmond O'Brien

Laurette Luez in D.O.A. with Edmond O'Brien

Laurette Luez in D.O.A. with Edmond O'Brien

Laurette Luez in D.O.A.

Noir Shadows from D.O.A. with Edmond O'Brien

Neville Brand in D.O.A. with Edmond O'Brien

Neville Brand in D.O.A. with Edmond O'Brien

Laurette Luez in D.O.A. with Luther Adler

Good girl Pamela Britton in D.O.A. with Edmond O'Brien

Virginia Lee in D.O.A. with Edmond O'Brien

Virginia Lee in D.O.A. with Edmond O'Brien

Virginia Lee in D.O.A.

Virginia Lee in D.O.A.

Virginia Lee in D.O.A.

Virginia Lee in Parole Inc.

Virginia Lee in Parole Inc.

Virginia Lee in Parole Inc.

Virginia Lee in The Black Widow as Virginia Lindley

Edmond O'Brien and Virginia Lee in D.O.A.

Edmond O'Brien and Virginia Lee in D.O.A.

Edmond O'Brien and Virginia Lee in D.O.A.

Cameo Hugh O'Brian jazzing out in D.O.A. 

Van Streeter in D.O.A.

Ray Laurie in D.O.A.

Cake Witchard  in D.O.A.

Cay Forester and Edmond O'Brien in D.O.A.

 Edmond O'Brien in D.O.A.

Edmond O'Brien in D.O.A.

Edmond O'Brien and Cay Forester in D.O.A. with Jess Kirkpatrick