William Powell, in old Hollywood parlance, could carry a movie. He’s asked to do just that in Take One False Step, which premiered today in 1949, and is a find-the-real-killer flick in which the police slowly close in on him as he tries to save his own skin. It all starts on a San Francisco business trip when he runs into wartime flame Shelley Winters, hangs out with her one evening, then she turns up murdered the next morning. The two have generated a trail of inconvenient witnesses from the previous night, and Powell left behind a scarf that police consider a crucial piece of evidence.
As required by the form, Powell amateurs his way from scrape to scrape, somehow managing to gather clues, avoid the cops, receive assistance from two girls Friday played by Marsha Hunt and Dorothy Hart, and handle an interesting twist involving a dog, which we won’t give away. On the whole, Take One False Step is solid entertainment, well carried by the stalwart Powell. There wasn’t much he couldn’t do on a movie screen, and this, particularly, is right in his wheelhouse. “How did I ever get into this, anyway?” he muses. “I was just minding my own business.” That, Mr. Powell, is the entire point.
