Noir Alley: Eddie Muller on The Clay Pigeon (1949)

Clay Pigeon, The (1949) -- (Movie Clip) Only Man In The Navy

As TCM’s Eddie Muller has noted, just about all viewers would have known that Bill Williams (as Jim, the partial-amnesiac hospital-escapee and suspected traitor sailor) and Barbara Hale (as Martha), who meet here, were husband and wife off screen; good thing and well-played by director Richard Fleischer, in The Clay Pigeon, 1949.

Clay Pigeon, The (1949) -- (Movie Clip) A Shock Of Some Sort

The two goons, motives unknown, have just run fugitive amnesiac sailor Jim (Bill Williams) and Martha (Barbara Hale), his hostage, and the widow of the fellow POW who’s death he’s suspected of causing, off the road, and ensuing events incline her to reconsider his story, in The Clay Pigeon, 1949.

Clay Pigeon, The (1949) -- (Movie Clip) They Should've Let Him Die

That’s the old Long Beach Naval Hospital at East 7th St. and Bellflower (site of the VA Hospital now), as we meet Bill Williams as hospitalized Seaman Jim Fletcher, Harold Landon a blind comrade, Ann Doran the nurse and Frank Wilcox the doctor, opening The Clay Pigeon, 1949, from director Richard Fleischer and writer Carl Foreman.