Korea vet and aspiring drummer Mickey Rooney ('Quicksand') gets driven off the road by suave racketeer James Craig ('While The City Sleeps'). To compensate, Craig gives Rooney a job in his bookmaker's room. When the police bust in to the business, Rooney manages to escape and hitches a ride with Sally Forrest ('Mystery Street'), who works at a nightclub owned by William Demarest ('Night Has A Thousand Eyes'). Rooney pays the nightclub a visit and before he knows it, he's switched jobs from the bookie room to the drum kit and has fallen hard for Forrest. Forrest wants a movie career however, so Rooney introduces her to Craig, who has some contacts. But Craig isn't interested in helping Forrest, he just sees another pretty girl to add to his list of conquests. When Rooney confronts Craig about this things quickly fall apart, leading to Craig getting killed, and Forrest nearly dead, and Rooney as the prime suspect...Told in flashback, the movie starts with the discovery of Forrest barely alive on her apartment floor, and during the investigation, the discovery of Craig's body and a gun. Rooney is brought in for interrogation, and he tells his side of the story in flashback. It all sounds like pure noir, until you see the movie, which is also in many ways a musical. Artists and musicians like Louis Armstrong, Vic Damone and Jack Teagarden are given plenty of time to play their music and sing their songs, as a large part of the movie plays out in nightclubs. In fact, one of the songs (sung by hatcheck girl Kay Brown) got the movie an Oscar nomination. Thankfully, unlike some noirs where musical interludes slow down the story, it works rather well here. And seeing Rooney and Forrest showing off their drumming and dancing skills respectively was way more fun than I expected, impressive stuff.But a noir it still is, trust me. People use people and through the flashback structure, there is always tension under the surface as (part of) the outcome is already known to the viewer. And it has a bleak, downbeat, even ironic, ending that firmly establishes this as a noir. Performances are great across the board, helped by the well- written characters and dialogue. The main negative is that the directing by Laszlo Kardos ('The Tijuana Story') and cinematography by Robert Surtees ('Act Of Violence') is good but not very noir or imaginative. Still, that's only a minor quibble, this movie impressed me with its successful blending of noir and musical, the performances and the story. Recommended! 8/10

The Strip marked Mickey Rooney's return to MGM after he had left in 1948 and the property was considerably down from what he was used to. Still The Strip is a nifty little noir film from MGM's B Picture unit that managed to earn itself one Academy Award nomination.In The Strip Mickey finds himself a returning Korean War veteran who wants to get back into civilian life and he meets up with gangster James Craig, a rather smooth individual who 'sells insurance'. Mickey works for him in some non-violent occupations and Craig actually lets him leave to pursue his real dream of being a drummer. But Mickey finds himself falling big time for Craig's girlfriend Sally Forrest and that's where his problems begin.The film is structured like Mildred Pierce with Mickey hauled into police headquarters because one of the cast has been found murdered and another hanging on for dear life. He relates his story to detective Tom Powers and we see the tale unfold.The Strip is also a nice look at the jazz club life in Los Angeles of that period. Where Rooney winds up working is William Demarest's jazz club on Sunset Boulevard better known as The Strip. The film also gives us an exhibition of one of Mickey Rooney's many talents, that of a drummer. He shows that if he pursued and concentrated on that he could have been another Buddy Rich or Gene Krupa. And the chance to jam with such people as Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden must have been what sold the Mick on doing this film.Guest starring in The Strip are singers Vic Damone and Monica Lewis, but the best thing about The Strip is the song A Kiss To Build A Dream On. That was the last song written by the celebrated Tin Pan Alley duo of Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar. It was an unfinished theme because Kalmar had died a few years earlier. To finish the lyric Ruby called on none other than Oscar Hammerstein, II and the combined talents of those three people earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song for 1951. It lost however to In The Cool Cool Cool Of The Evening, Bing Crosby and Jane Wyman's hit from Here Comes The Groom. Louis Armstrong made a big hit record of it back in that day, you could hear it on jukeboxes for years.I'm sure it was of some satisfaction to Rooney that he made a small B film so much better with his incredible talent for his former home studio. That and a wonderful song attached to The Strip make it fine entertainment still.

"The Strip" contains a number of seemingly incongruous components which theoretically probably shouldn't be able to work together successfully. The fact that they do is ultimately what makes this film so interesting and entertaining.Stan Maxton (Mickey Rooney) is a character who makes numerous bad decisions, experiences consistently bad luck, gets falsely accused of two suspected murders, gets betrayed and beaten up and is finally devastated by the outcome of the story which leaves him feeling heartbroken and in a state of total despair. The fact that this grim tale is interspersed with some exhilarating dancing, upbeat jazz numbers and the romantic Oscar nominated song "A Kiss To Build A Dream On" is only surpassed in strangeness by the fact that Stan is normally such a chirpy, bright and breezy guy.The movie's film noir credentials are clear from the typical opening shot of Sunset Strip, the voice over narration, the femme fatale, the neon lights and the very nature of the story. Additionally, there are also numerous doubles involved (e.g. two homicides, two car accidents when Stan is driving, two accidents caused by passengers, two girls romantically linked with Stan, the femme fatale's involvement with two men and two women involved with one of Stan's employers etc.).The time taken out for the performances of the full songs, the drum solos and the dancing could reasonably be expected to be a problem and to interrupt the pace of the action in this type of movie. The fact that it doesn't is one of the strengths of this low budget offering and the presence of such great talents as Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, Jack Teagarden and Vic Damone is another.Mickey Rooney is very energetic and especially impressive in the drumming sequences. The supporting performances by William Demarest, James Craig, Sally Forest and Kay Brown are also very good and contribute a great deal to the success of the film. Any doubts which the audience holds about the appropriateness of the musical content is effectively dispelled at the end when it becomes evident that if Stan is to find some form of salvation, it will almost certainly be achieved through his involvement with music.

Mickey Rooney isn't convincing in the role of a nice guy who falls in with a bad crowd. His acting is OK. He just doesn't look the part. Sally Forrest has been better elsewhere.The plot, told primarily in flashback, is routine: Honest boy in dishonest profession falls for cold, ambitious girl. Murder is involved. The whole nine yards. One has to like jazz to enjoy this. And was Vic Damone, for whom the plot stops while he delivers a number, considered jazz? On the other hand, the main song, originally delivered in a bizarre duet between Rooney and William Demarest, is a great one. "A Song To Build A Dream ON": Such a gem deserved a better setting.