Waterfront

Dennis Morgan's first starring movie at Warner Brothers is a typical fast-paced Warners B movie. It has a young cast on the rise and if the idea seems to be to make Morgan into their B version of Jimmy Cagney, the company soon realized their mistake. Morgan can't say "ain't" without it sounding phony; just as Cagney never dropped his streets-of-New-York accent, Morgan always sounded like he had just come from an elocution lesson.

In this one, Morgan is a dockworker whose Irish temper keeps him in trouble all the time, despite the love of Gloria Dixon and the supervision of Aldrich Bowker, the local priest. If the story is told a bit too often by newspaper headline, it was a common device in the Warner Bs. It's no world beater, but the familiar faces from Warner's stock company and occasional flashes of interesting camera work by James van Trees will keep fans of the B movies interested.