After appearing in support of such Hollywood leading men as Errol Flynn, John Wayne, John Garfield, and Glenn Ford, Gig Young was allowed to take the lead in the RKO Radio Pictures' crime drama Hunt the Man Down (1950) - but the star attraction remains the evocative cinematography of Nicholas Musuraca and the streets of Los Angeles themselves. Young plays an idealistic defense attorney (the film's working title was Public Defender) committed to clearing a fugitive from justice (James Anderson, later the bigot Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird [1962]) from a standing charge of murder and compelled to sift through a backlog of past testimony. Among the original witness are Gerald Mohr (radio's Philip Marlow), Willard Parker (The Earth Dies Screaming [1964]), John Kellogg (Gorilla at Large [1954]), and blonde bombshell Cleo Moore (Hold Back Tomorrow [1955]) while helpers and hindrances to the cause include Harry Shannon (Citizen Kane [1942]) as Young's one-armed right hand man and "Man of 1,000 Voices" Paul Frees, as a racketeer. Hollywood trade papers had announced Richard Fleischer as the film's director but when Hunt the Man Down had its premiere in December 1950, the production was signed by George Archainbaud, on hiatus from helming episodes of The Lone Ranger.

By Richard Harland Smith