by Hal Erickson
synopsis
Marlene Dietrich was supposed to have starred in Universal's Sin Town, but the script was not to her liking. Dietrich was replaced by Constance Bennett in the role of a glamorous suspect in a small-town murder. Broderick Crawford and Leo Carrillo costar as a couple of con men who must solve the killing of a newspaper publisher lest they be convicted of the crime. At 75 minutes, the film moves too quickly to pause for such niceties as motivation and logic, but few in the audiences of 1942 complained. Sin Town's three-person writing staff included Richard Brooks, later the director of such "A" pictures as Elmer Gantry and In Cold Blood (though he never did write for Marlene Dietrich).
characteristics
- Small-town
- Boomtown
- Oil
- Swindle
- Opportunism
- Scam
- Con/scam
- Con-artist
- Con-game
- Opportunist
- Murder
- Frontier
- Amateur Sleuths
- Newspaper
- Publisher
