**SPOILERS** Not one of the most popular of director Fritz Lang's works still the movie "The Blue Gardenia" does pack a wallop with it's out of the blue surprise ending and also has in it's cast, the only movie that they made together, both TV's Superman and Perry Mason: George Reeves and Raymond Burr.
A smooth and cunning operator when it comes to the ladies commercial artist Harry Prebble, Raymond Burr, has both been two-timing his fiancée Rose Miller, Ruth Storey, and playing the filed in trying to get wise cracking telephone operator Crystal Carpenter, Anne Sothern, into his bachelor pad, and later the sack, for an evening of fun and games. Harry finally gets Anne's phone number, second hand, and give her a call trying to make a date with her. What Harry doesn't know is that Anne shares her apartment with two other phone operators Norah Larkin, Anne Baxter, and Sally Ellis, Jeff Donnell.
Calling Anne at her place Harry instead gets a very distraught, her boyfriend in he US Army had just sent her a dear Jane letter, Norah who, with Harry thinking that she's Anne, agrees to go out with him for the evening at the "Blue Gardenia" nightclub. Not caring whom he's with, Anne or Norah or any other attractive young woman, Harry get Norah smashed on about a half dozen, enough to get a non-drunken sailor tipsy, Polynesian Pearl Divers and takes the barley able to stand on her feet Nora back to his pad for some wild and heavy action. It turns out that Harry got a lot more then he expected with the smashed Norah fighting off his, the guy is as big as one, grizzly bear-like advances with Harry ending up dead with his head being smashed in with a fireplace poker.
It's then that the film gets a bit confusing in that Norah, who doesn't remember a thing that happened, tries to cover up Harry's murder by unknowingly implicating herself in it. With a blue gardenia, given to Norah at the nightclub, found at the murder site it's dubbed by newspaper columnist Casey Mayo, Richard Conte, "The Blue Gardenia Murder Case". Working both on his own and with the top cop on the case Captain Sam Haynes, George Reeves, Mayo tries to play both ends against the middle. Mayo publicly tries to get Harry's killer, Norah Larkin, to turn herself into him, and get her exclusive story, and at the same time has Capt. Haynes, just by reading Mayo's columns, get the drop on Norah by having spies planted wherever Mayo goes knowing that he'll eventually run into her.
As you would expect the not too on the ball Mayo does get Norah to bite at his carrot and stick act, by providing her with the best defense lawyer that his newspaper can buy, who meets him in this bar where, without Mayo's knowledge, Capt. Haynes and his task force are waiting for her. The ending is a real blow-out that will have you rewinding your VCR or DVD player to find out what really happened to the late Harry Prebble during the time that Norah was, by being almost dead drunk, completely out of it.
Also in the cast beside the real life Mrs. Richard Conte, Ruth Storey, there's actor Robert Shayne as the police doctor or pathologist. Shayne later, in fact that very same year 1953, not only was to star in that unforgettable Ed Wood-like bad movie classic "The Neanderthal Man" but was also in the cast of the very popular TV show "The Adventures of Superman", with George Reeves playing "The Man of Steele", as police inspector Bill Henderson. And last but not least there's also in the movie Nat "King" Cole playing himself as the "Blue Gardenia's" pianist singing the films title song that just happens to be, not all that surprisingly, "Blue Gardenia".
A smooth and cunning operator when it comes to the ladies commercial artist Harry Prebble, Raymond Burr, has both been two-timing his fiancée Rose Miller, Ruth Storey, and playing the filed in trying to get wise cracking telephone operator Crystal Carpenter, Anne Sothern, into his bachelor pad, and later the sack, for an evening of fun and games. Harry finally gets Anne's phone number, second hand, and give her a call trying to make a date with her. What Harry doesn't know is that Anne shares her apartment with two other phone operators Norah Larkin, Anne Baxter, and Sally Ellis, Jeff Donnell.
Calling Anne at her place Harry instead gets a very distraught, her boyfriend in he US Army had just sent her a dear Jane letter, Norah who, with Harry thinking that she's Anne, agrees to go out with him for the evening at the "Blue Gardenia" nightclub. Not caring whom he's with, Anne or Norah or any other attractive young woman, Harry get Norah smashed on about a half dozen, enough to get a non-drunken sailor tipsy, Polynesian Pearl Divers and takes the barley able to stand on her feet Nora back to his pad for some wild and heavy action. It turns out that Harry got a lot more then he expected with the smashed Norah fighting off his, the guy is as big as one, grizzly bear-like advances with Harry ending up dead with his head being smashed in with a fireplace poker.
It's then that the film gets a bit confusing in that Norah, who doesn't remember a thing that happened, tries to cover up Harry's murder by unknowingly implicating herself in it. With a blue gardenia, given to Norah at the nightclub, found at the murder site it's dubbed by newspaper columnist Casey Mayo, Richard Conte, "The Blue Gardenia Murder Case". Working both on his own and with the top cop on the case Captain Sam Haynes, George Reeves, Mayo tries to play both ends against the middle. Mayo publicly tries to get Harry's killer, Norah Larkin, to turn herself into him, and get her exclusive story, and at the same time has Capt. Haynes, just by reading Mayo's columns, get the drop on Norah by having spies planted wherever Mayo goes knowing that he'll eventually run into her.
As you would expect the not too on the ball Mayo does get Norah to bite at his carrot and stick act, by providing her with the best defense lawyer that his newspaper can buy, who meets him in this bar where, without Mayo's knowledge, Capt. Haynes and his task force are waiting for her. The ending is a real blow-out that will have you rewinding your VCR or DVD player to find out what really happened to the late Harry Prebble during the time that Norah was, by being almost dead drunk, completely out of it.
Also in the cast beside the real life Mrs. Richard Conte, Ruth Storey, there's actor Robert Shayne as the police doctor or pathologist. Shayne later, in fact that very same year 1953, not only was to star in that unforgettable Ed Wood-like bad movie classic "The Neanderthal Man" but was also in the cast of the very popular TV show "The Adventures of Superman", with George Reeves playing "The Man of Steele", as police inspector Bill Henderson. And last but not least there's also in the movie Nat "King" Cole playing himself as the "Blue Gardenia's" pianist singing the films title song that just happens to be, not all that surprisingly, "Blue Gardenia".