I Married a Communist (film)
| The Woman on Pier 13 originally: I Married a Communist |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Robert Stevenson |
| Produced by | Jack J. Gross |
| Screenplay by |
Robert Hardy Andrews Charles Grayson |
| Story by | George W. George George F. Slavin |
| Starring |
Laraine Day Robert Ryan John Agar |
| Music by | Leigh Harline |
| Cinematography | Nicholas Musuraca |
| Edited by | Roland Gross |
| Distributed by | RKO Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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73 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Woman on Pier 13 is a 1949 American film noir drama directed by Robert Stevenson, and featuring Laraine Day, Robert Ryan and John Agar. It previewed in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1949 under the title I Married a Communist, but the name was changed prior to its 1950 release due to poor polling among those preview audiences.
Brad Collins (Ryan), a San Francisco shipping executive (real name Frank Johnson) who recently married Nan Lowry Collins (Laraine Day) after a brief courtship, was once involved with Communism in New York, while a stevedore during the Depression. Shortly after returning home following their honeymoon, the couple meet Christine Norman (Janis Carter), an old flame of Collins. Nan immediately dislikes her.
Collins becomes the target of a Communist cell and its leader, Vanning (Thomas Gomez), who orders an alleged FBI informer drowned after a brief interrogation. After threatening to reveal Collins' responsibility for a murder as well as his communist past, Vanning orders the executive to sabotage the shipping industry in the San Francisco Bay by resisting union demands in a labor dispute. He claims it is impossible to leave the Communist Party. Meanwhile Norman, bitter over Collins's earlier rejection, is ordered to become closer to his brother-in-law Don Lowry (Agar) by indoctrinating him with their Communist world view. Norman, though, genuinely falls in love with Lowry, with Vanning claiming that she is not meant to be so emotional.
A friend of Collins and former boyfriend of Nan, union leader Jim Travers (Richard Rober) cannot understand why Collins has become unreasonable to deal with. Travers is concerned about the possibility of the small number of communists in the union being able to take it over, and suspects Norman of being a communist, or at least a fellow traveler. He discusses this with Lowry, who is a new colleague. Lowry denies Norman's politics, apparently still free of communist ideology, or an awareness of where his, by now, future wife's friends are coming from politically. She confesses when confronted, but after Lowry rejects her she shows him a photograph of herself with Collins/Johnson and reveals his communist past. Vanning interrupts them. Angry with Christine for breaking orders, she was supposed to be in Seattle for another two days on her day job as a photographer, he tries to lean on Lowry because he is now able to expose the influence the party has regained over Collins.
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Wikipedia