She was a lovely thing, standing beside a low-cut Packard convertible, the dim-light from the entrance-way softening the hardness about her mouth. She was wearing a cornflower blue dress under a nice set of furs -- the furrier probably closed the sale and then retired. The hair was somebody's eight-hour day, and it was as theatrical as a glob of greasepaint. But I liked it. And there was nothing synthetic about the deep golden glow of her skin. I thought I could smell her all the way over to the steps. From there she smelled nice. She smiled and said, "Do you like me?"
--Roy Huggins, The Double Take (1946). Black Curtain Press
I was hoping that S.Sylvan Simon's film of the Roy Huggins's The Double Take, called I Love Trouble, would make more sense than the confusing plot of the Chandleresque novel. This was not to be, probably because Huggins wrote the screenplay and director Simon made little effort to clarify the plot of private detective Stuart Bailey's attempts to check out the background of Ralph Johnston's (Tom Powers) wife. Stuart Bailey, played by a world-weary Franchot Tone, is surrounded by women -- Janet Blair, Janis Carter, Adele Jerrgins, Lynn Merrick -- who look rather alike in their forties haistyles and dresses; only his feisty secretary Glenda Farrell stands out. Simon's use of locations in Venice and Santa Monica, California effectively portray an atmosphere of isolation and menace, especially Buster Buffin's Buffet, on the shore, where Bailey is the only customer and clam chowder the only thing on the menu.
I Love Trouble is filled with good girls and bad girls, good guys and bad guys (including John Ireland and Raymond Burr, in his fourth film), double-crosses and betrayals, fistfights and gunfights, car chases and shadowing on foot, energetically directed by Simon and concluding with a somewhat unsatisfactory "happy" ending, the bane of B movies in their attempts to be film noirs.
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