The Woman on Pier 13 (1950) on Netflix
Shipping executive Brad Collins has just married Nan Lowry. On their honeymoon they meet Christine Norman, Brad's old flame. Vanning's Communist cell blackmails him into sabotaging union talks.
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- Netflix2.0/5
- IMDb6.1/101,614 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes20%
Trailer
Plot summary
Brad Collins once worked as a stevedore in New York and now is a vice president at a San Francisco shipping firm. He has just married Nan Lowry after a courtship of one week. On their honeymoon the couple meets Christine Norman, a woman Nan takes against at once; Christine was once involved with Brad. Vanning, who runs a Communist cell, wants Brad for his knowledge of both management and the docks. Vanning knows that Brad's real name is Frank Johnson and that he served the party as a strongarm man during the Depression. To force Brad's cooperation, Vanning threatens to expose that name and links him to a killing. Brad is told to resist union demands in a Bay Area labor dispute, while Christine is assigned to draw in Nan's young brother, Don Lowry.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Woman on Pier 13 (1950)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Howard Hughes offered the script to directors as a test of presumed communist leanings; director Joseph Losey called it a touchstone for establishing who was not a "red". Losey claimed 13 directors turned the film down, including himself, though the number has since been disputed.
- To make the film's anti-communist scenes credible, Howard Hughes and RKO contacted Luis J. Russel, an ex-FBI agent and HUAC investigator, to obtain genuine Communist Party cards as models for the prop cards used in a communist meeting scene.
- Merle Oberon was reportedly on salary as the film's female lead for several months before RKO announced Jane Greer would replace her, and Greer was quickly moved to a different production. Paul Lukas collected nearly $50,000 as the communist leader before RKO moved on from him in March 1949.
- RKO's early plans for the film included a prologue by communist informant Elizabeth Bentley, and the studio requested newsreel footage of J. Edgar Hoover, which the FBI denied for fear that "persons of communist sympathies" would undermine the film's intentions.
- The script passed through Art Cohn, James Edward Grant, Charles Grayson and Herman Mankiewicz yet was still considered incomplete, so RKO hired veteran screenwriter Robert Hardy Andrews to polish the final version, which carried much less political messaging and leaned toward traditional melodrama.
- Robert Ryan, a liberal and the only available contracted RKO actor, agreed to be cast in the film only out of fear for his career.
