Somewhere in the Night

Somewhere in the Night is a 1946 American film noir psychological thriller film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, written by Mankiewicz with Howard Dimsdale and Lee Strasberg from a short story by Marvin Borowsky, and starring John Hodiak and Nancy Guild. The supporting cast features Lloyd Nolan, Richard Conte, Josephine Hutchinson and Sheldon Leonard. Plot In the final weeks of World War II, a bandage-wrapped man awakens with amnesia in a U.S. military field hospital in Okinawa. Over the course of his long recovery, he learns that he is George W. Taylor, a marine who was severely wounded by an enemy grenade. Among Taylor's personal items is an unsigned letter that vehemently curses him for an unspecified wrong he committed against the writer. Mortified at the letter and the possibility that he is a bad person, Taylor resolves to hide his amnesia and uncover his original identity without anyone's help. Taylor begins his investigation in Los Angeles, his registered place of residence. He finds a note in an old briefcase of his advising him that an account had been opened in his name at a local bank by an apparent friend named Larry Cravat. In the course of Taylor's search for Cravat, he ends up in a nightclub called The Cellar. As Taylor asks around for anyone who might know Cravat, the bartender alerts two thugs about his inquiry. To evade the thugs, Taylor slips into the dressing room of singer Christy Smith, where he finds an old postcard directed to Christy from a woman named Mary announcing her impending marriage to Larry Cravat. He takes the postcard and leaves as Christy summons the nightclub's bouncer. Taylor later returns to The Cellar at the request of the bartender, who called claiming to have information about Larry Cravat, but it is a trap and he is seized by the thugs, who are henchmen of the gangster Anzelmo. Taylor is brutally interrogated to give up Cravat's whereabouts, and then dumped at the address on the postcard, Christy's apartment. Upon being revived by Christy's care, Taylor asks her about Mary, who he assumes is Cravat's wife. Christy relates that Cravat left Mary at the altar, and she subsequently died in a pedestrian accident. Taylor decides to confide in Christy about his amnesia.