The Chance of a Lifetime (1943)

Film Title: The Chance of a Lifetime
Released: October 26, 1943
Directed by: William Castle
Written by: Paul Yawitz based on the character created by Jack Boyle
Starring: Chester Morris, Richard Lane & Erik Rolf

Plot: Boston Blackie has to help a parolee when his old partners come looking for the money they stole four years earlier and one of them ends up dead.

IMDb: 6.3/10
My Score: 3/5

The sixth film in Columbia Pictures Boston Blackie series was also the first not to contain the main character's name in the title. The Chance of a Lifetime marks the feature-length directorial debut of B-movie legend William Castle and gathers the same cast of characters that we have grown to know and love over the previous five entries: Chester Morris as Blackie, Richard Lane as police Inspector Farraday, George E. Stone as Blackie's sidekick the Runt, Walter Sande as Farraday's assistant Detective Matthews and Lloyd Corrigan as the easily flustered millionaire Arthur Manleder. Cy Kendall also returns as pawnbroker Jumbo Madigan after appearing as a villain in the last film, After Midnight with Boston Blackie. This time around, the movie opens with Morris making a case to the Governor (Pierre Watkin) to parole a group of prisoners with skills needed in the war effort. Lane is on hand to rebut Morris' proposal but when even the prison warden backs Morris up, the motion is granted and the parolees are set to stay with Morris in his apartment. When he allows one of the men (Erik Rolf) to go see his wife and child on the first night out, Rolf's former partners come looking for the $60,000 they stole together, which Rolf has just recovered. When they tussle with a revolver, one of them ends up dead and the other (Douglas Fowley) runs off when Morris shows up. Knowing that no one would believe the death occurred in self-defense, Morris agrees to help Rolf out of the predicament but when Lane catches he and Stone with the body, Morris then spends the rest of the movie trying to prove his and Rolf's innocence. Full of the comedy, drama and action that the series is known for, The Chance of a Lifetime is another fine entry into the series. If watched back to back, I can see how the films would really start to get tiresome but due to the stand alone nature of each, if watched individually they don't wear out their welcome. Co-starring Jeanne Bates as Rolf's wife, it also has appearances by Sid Melton, who would later appear on the long running Danny Thomas sitcom Make Room for Daddy, and Ray Teal, best known as Sheriff Roy Coffee on the long running western series Bonanza. Rolf went on to appear in Disney's Song of the South a few years later with his real-life wife Ruth Warrick but he died he 1957 at the age of 45. Fowley is probably best remembered as movie director Roscoe Dexter in the classic Singin' in the Rain. Watch the opening sequence of The Chance of a Lifetime below or the whole movie here.