711 Ocean Drive

Mal Granger repairs telephones in Los Angeles. He understands electronics, and a bookmaker offers him a job: build a set-up that uses the phone lines to get race results ahead of everyone else. The system works and the money comes in. When the bookmaker is killed, Granger takes the business over and grows fast. Then an organisation from the East Coast arrives and wants its share. Granger refuses. Between a killing, a woman and the police on his trail, he ends up running as far as the Hoover Dam. Joseph M. Newman directs the American film; a hundred and two minutes, with Edmond O'Brien as Granger and Joanne Dru as the woman. The finish was shot at the Hoover Dam. The producers said they had been threatened over the film's treatment of the gambling syndicates, a claim that was also used in the publicity at the time.