OK, here's a post where I bring up a minor Alabama connection. Why? Because they're fun! I've done this sort of thing before, such as the piece on the 1960 film Ocean's 11 in which two such connections pop up.
I watch most of the Noir Alley films hosted by Eddie Muller on TCM, and this reference appeared recently in The Argyle Secrets released in 1948. The film is about the search for an album containing information on the Nazi sympathizer backgrounds of some prominent Americans. There are more crazy plot twists than contained even in such classics as The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep. Muller noted that writer-director Cy Enfield may have intended his film to be both an example and a send-up of the genre.
So what's the Alabama connection, you ask?
That involves Evelyn Court, the character played by Barbara Billingsley. Early in the film our ostensible hero, journalist Harry Mitchell [William Gargan] has an encounter with Court and knocks her out with a right hook so he can search the office where she works. Later, one of the villains, Panama Archie, tells Mitchell he has talked with Court. "Nice girl. Alabama born," are his immortal words.
And there you are!
Enfield wrote the original version of the story for the Suspense radio series which first aired it as "The Argyle Album" on September 4, 1947. You can watch this film on YouTube. The original radio version is also on YouTube.
Several actors in The Argyle Secrets later created memorable characters on television. Billingsley played the mother June Cleaver on Leave It To Beaver from 1957 until 1963. The femme fatale was played by Marjorie Lord, who starred as the wife and mother on The Danny Thomas Show [1956-1964]. One of the bad guys was played by John Banner, [1910-1973] who had more than 40 film and over 70 TV appearances but is best known as Sergeant Schultz in the World War II TV comedy series Hogan's Heroes.
Jack Reitzen as Panama Archie and William Gargan in the scene where Panama mentions a nice Alabama girl.
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