Taylor takes on the title role, that of veteran police officer Kelvaney, who is not above taking pay-offs from underworld gang leader Beaumonte (Raft). When Taylor's kid brother Eddie (Steve Forrest), an idealistic rookie cop, runs afoul of Beaumonte and is murdered, it becomes clear that the rogue cop and the gangster are on a collision course that only one of them will survive. Leigh, at the peak of her beauty, plays Eddie's girlfriend, a nightclub singer named Karen. Another fetching blonde, Anne Francis, takes the role of Raft's mistress.
Rogue Cop, adapted from the novel by William P. McGivern, has similarities to The Big Heat (1953), based on another story by the same author and released a year earlier. In both cases, a cop (Glenn Ford in the latter film) is led to crack down on a corrupt organization after the murder of a loved one.
Taylor's role allowed the former romantic leading man to have a rougher, more darkly compelling edge than his former studio boss, Louis B. Mayer, would likely have permitted. Taylor's 25-year tenure at MGM, which began in 1934, would be the second longest of any performer in the company's history -- topped only by Lewis Stone, who was associated with the studio for 29 years.
Rogue Cop was Leigh's last film with MGM, winding up an eight-year period in which she played mostly ingenues. "As I walked out that big iron gate for the last time," she wrote in her autobiography, "the flood of memories brought a flood of tears... And I was certain of one glorious gift: A constellation of events had placed me in Hollywood, at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in the twilight of the Golden Years."
Producer: Nicholas Nayfack
Director: Roy Rowland
Screenplay: Sydney Boehm, from novel by William P. McGivern
Cinematography: John F. Seitz
Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Hans Peters
Original Music: Jeff Alexander
Editing: James E. Newcom
Costume Design: Helen Rose
Principal Cast: Robert Taylor (Det. Sgt. Christopher Kelvaney), Janet Leigh (Karen Stephanson), George Raft (Dan Beaumonte), Steve Forrest (Eddie Kelvaney), Anne Francis (Nancy Corlane), Robert Ellenstein (Det. Sidney Y. Myers).
BW-93m. Closed captioning.
by Roger Fristoe
