The Glass Key (Paramount) is the best melodrama since The Maltese Falcon (TIME, Oct. 20, 1941), also based on a Dashiell Hammett shocker. It also clears up any lingering doubts about the status of 29-year-old Alan Ladd. He is the livest thing to turn up in this sort of scarehead since James Cagney in The Public Enemy.
In The Glass Key, Ladd plays cold, frail, brainy dandy Ed Beaumont, who uses his wits and risks his life to help a friend out of a tight place. The friend is naive Politician Paul Madvig (Brian...
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