Tough Assignment (1949)

• Directed by William Beaudine
• Written by Miltan Luban
• Starring
  • Don Barry
  • Marjorie Steele
  • Steve Brodie
  • Marc Lawrence
  • Ben Welden
• Produced by Carl K. Hittleman
• Executive produced by Don Barry and Robert L. Lippert

There are three things in the opening minutes of Tough Assignment which may fill the viewer with foreboding:

1) The opening credits are all superimposed over footage of a couple driving their convertible against a rear-screen projection of traffic. Thrill to the sensible and lawful driving action!

2) The director is William Beaudine, aka William “One-Shot” Beaudine, a B-list workhorse in Hollywood who’s ethic was always to get the picture done on time and under budget, performance be damned. (There were always a lot of takers for that kind of dependability; Beaudine had over 350 directorial credits.)

3) The credits end with a grateful appreciation of the assistance and cooperation of the Bureau of Livestock Identification, which consistently does not win a place on the list of Top 10 Most Exciting Government Agencies.

“Nobody takes a picture of me in my Speedo! Nobody!”

Despite that, Tough Assignment is a fair little programmer which transplants Western movie cliches to the contemporary age of automobiles and post-war fedoras and homburgs.

The couple in the car are our stars, reporter Dan Reilly (Don Barry, a solid second-string performer in the John Agar mode) and his new wife, photographer Margie (Margie Steele). As they helpfully rehearse for us in their conversation when they pull over to the curb, they’ve been married for a month, and all that time they’ve eaten out; tonight, she’s going to make him his first home-cooked meal. And because she’s a photo nut, he’s charged to take a picture of her in the door of the butcher shop for their scrapbook. Just as he’s snapping the picture, three tough guys come out of the shop and are inadvertently caught in the shot.

When they enter they find the shopkeeper Schultz (Leander De Corvova) on the floor, with his wife (Edit Angold) nursing a gash on his forehead. The Schultzes refuse to say what it’s all about, but Dan’s and Margie’s investigative instincts are piqued, so they speed home to develop the film and see who they accidentally caught in the frame. Unfortunately, the three thugs have simply waited at the curb until the Reillys leave; they follow them home, burst in, slug Dan several times, and break into the locked kitchen-cum-darkroom to snatch the half-developed film. Gotta say, reporters were of sterner stuff back in the day; not only does Margie not panic — her reaction could best be described as “consternation” — but Dan never shows a bruise the next day, despite being hit squarely in the jaw several times in this and future fights.

Because a good photographer knows her place. Am I right?

Well, this looks like a story to the enterprising journalistic pair! On a hunch, Dan makes the rounds to a dozen butcher shops, and find a few similarly unwilling to talk. He also visits the Bureau of Livestock Investigation at the Department of Agriculture, where he is filled in on modern-day cattle rustling and bootleg beef — and yes, that’s the phrase they use, and even that alone would make the movie worthwhile just to hear it. He gets the go-ahead from his editor to pursue the story, and he’s off!

His first break comes when one of the other reticent butchers calls him back with one of those “can’t talk over the phone” setups. Dan meets him alone, and finds himself blindfolded by the same two thugs and taken to a nameless warehouse office, where the leader of the crime ring first offers to buy him off, and then has his boys pound some sense into him, so to speak. They deposit him back home, half-conscious.

But that doesn’t dissuade a stalwart reporter — and after some persuasion, it doesn’t dissuade his photographer wife. Together, they stake out Schultz’s butcher shop until the recognize a delivery truck driven by the same two thugs. They follow it out of town, where the thugs get out and hand the truck off to some ranchhand types, including — Aagh! Sid Melton! Comic relief ahoy! Some more stealthy shadowing (which means following a truck full of men engaged in criminal enterprise on deserted country roads in broad daylight) reveals to them the ranch where the contraband beef comes from. But how to get closer?

“You can’t see me! I’m invisible!”

(You have to wonder why the Bureau of Livestock Identification never got this far. I mean, less than eight hours of investigating has yielded the stockpile of rustled cattle.)

So Dan and Margie go undercover: Dressed in western wear, they approach the ranchhouse on foot with battered valises and claim to be itinerant laborers. At first they’re turned away, but when Margie plays up her cooking skills, the foreman (Fred Kohler Jr.) decides to give them a go, and after a trial meal, decide to keep the two of them on. (Understandable, as Sid Melton’s character had up until then handled the chuckwagon chores.) Dan’s duties mostly devolve to odd jobs — which, when they’re short a man for a midnight rustle, means that he quickly becomes involved in the world of twentieth-century cattle rustling…

What’s funny is that this middle section sets up a great dramatic premise, then refuses to do more than scratch the surface. Ranch hand Steve (Frank Richards) gets his lecherous eye on Margie, and tries to manhandle her in the kitchen until Dan lays him out — but the characters really don’t react much after that (aside from Steve being sore at Dan, naturally). There’s material for a dramatic conflict here Is Dan willing to risk his wife’s continued safety to dig deeper on the story? How does Margie feel about putting herself in harm’s way, and does she expect her new husband to eat least voice some concerns about her wellbeing? This is how the story would go if it were populated by human beings; unfortunately, where it matters most, the characters are merely plot automatons.

“Followed? Followed?? Naaaah…”

Despite that, Tough Assignment entertains well enough for what it is. The story moves along at a fair pace, the locations move from backlot to street locations to the great outdoors enough that it doesn’t feel confined, and while the cast isn’t superlative, they’re certainly professional. (Once they take on the itinerant worker guise, Margie suddenly bears a distinct resemblance to Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939), what with her pigtails and her country accent.)

What’s puzzling is the big setup without payoff in Margie’s cooking. Their first visit to Schultz’s, you recall, was on the occasion of what was to be the first home-cooked meal of their month-long marriage. Obviously, that doesn’t happen that night. The next night, she tries again, and before they can put a utensil to their mouths Dan gets a call from the butcher who sets him up, so there’s no home-cooked dinner that night. When they arrive undercover at the ranch house, Dan stumbles a bit when he vouches for how good a cook Margie is — after all, he’s never tasted it! And then… well, then she turns out to be a good cook, I guess. Despite that being her position at the ranchhouse, it’s never played up; there’s not even a quick, silent shot of Dan trying her food and reacting, for good or ill.

That’s not a necktie. He accidentally kept the napkin from lunch.

As it ends up, there’s gunplay and chases and the kind of running around that makes you appreciate the changes that cellphones have made to society. Dan and Margie manage to both report on and put down the notorious bootleg beef (snicker) racket. And while it’s not memorable cinema, it’s certainly more watchable than some of the other suspense programmers I’ve encountered of late.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 1
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Marc Lawrence (“Vince,” one of the thugs) played “Volnath” in the TNG episode The Vengeance Factor,” and “Mr. Zeemo” in the DS9 episode “Badda-Bing, Badda Bang”