Color Him Ambitious :)

 Hello Everyone, 

In the 1961 feature film A Fever In the Blood, Jack Kelly plays an ambitious district attorney named "Dan Callahan":

Detail from original vintage B&W A Fever In the Blood promo portrait
of Jack Kelly from the La Bartista Kellection. Hand-tinted by La Bartista 

using photo editing software.

Although JK's character isn't mentioned by name in the contemporaneous newspaper review below, the author does provide a cynical but accurate analysis of A Fever In the Blood. In fact, the title of the review sums up the plot pretty well: "All's Fair in Politics and Murder". 

The review begins, "If the men in a movie called A Fever in the Blood had as much blood in them as they have fever, this might be a useful study of professional politicians who have little aptitude for their work."

It continues, "The title of this movie...implies that politics is a disease. But like many films that deal with disease, this one suffers from the symptoms which it seeks to diagnose. Its real conviction is that politics is a fascinating fight for power, that the details of this fight are dramatic and important, that honesty is a doubtful asset which sometimes wins on a fluke, and that 90 minutes in a theater are well-spent if they reveal which one of a group of tricksters finally becomes governor of an unfortunate anonymous state.

"Almost everyone in the movie wants to become governor...In one courtroom scene, during a murder trial, the presiding judge [Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.] is a candidate for governor; the district attorney [JK] is a rival candidate; one of the witnesses [Herbert Marshall] is an ex-governor who is a force in the election; and in the judge's chambers next door is another candidate [Don Ameche] who is waiting for a recess so that he can offer the judge a bribe...Justice fights with politics for the camera's attention and it is hard to say which is more unattractive as presented here. This is a movie divided against itself, as they say in politics. The question becomes whodunnit instead of whowunnit."

The reviewer has several objections to how the trial is depicted, describing it as "bizarre" and noting that "the judge fails to disqualify himself from sitting on the case even though the prosecuting attorney is a close personal duck-hunting friend, and even though their lives are all snarled up in political maneuverings."

He also pinpoints one of the major faults of A Fever In the Blood: "Its style of storytelling seems to be adapted from television. The action always has an indoors and confined feeling, and the shots are tight, close-in, and hurried, as though they must move out of the way of the next commercial...The movie needs more elbow room, and it needs to take a deep breath."

Well, A Fever In the Blood is still worth watching, even if only to see JK.

The original vintage B&W A Fever In the Blood promo portrait 

of Jack Kelly from the La Bartista Kellection from which the color detail above was created.

 Please stay tuned for more about JK in the next TDS. :)