Drive a Crooked Road. 1954. USA. Directed by Richard Quine. Screenplay by Blake Edwards and Richard Quine, from a story by James Benson Nablo. With Mickey Rooney, Dianne Foster, Kevin McCarthy, Jack Kelly. 83 min.
Mickey Rooney, aging out of the teenage roles that made him a star at MGM, went to Columbia for what may be his finest dramatic performance. His Eddie Shannon is a mechanic and amateur race car driver whose small physical stature and social awkwardness have left him isolated and vulnerable to manipulation. When a sophisticated woman (Dianne Foster) begins showing interest in him, Eddie fails to see that he's being set up for a bank robbery scheme by a ruthless gang. The film exemplifies director Richard Quine's sophisticated visual sensibility, developed through his decade-plus association with Columbia, where he progressed from actor to director under the mentorship of studio chief Harry Cohn.
Cinematographer Charles Lawton Jr., another Columbia stalwart, captures Los Angeles locations with stark precision, creating a noir atmosphere that feels both expansive in its use of the California coast and claustrophobic in its sense of Eddie's entrapment. For Quine and his co-writer, Blake Edwards, Drive a Crooked Road was in important step in their careers -- a debt to Rooney that Edwards repaid a decade later by casting the down-and-out performer in Breakfast at Tiffany's.