An overlooked gem from Dwan’s most obscure period – the three years he spent with Sol Wurtzel’s B unit at Fox in the mid30s – Fifteen Maiden Lane is one of the six films he made with Claire Trevor, an appealing brassy Brooklyn blonde whom the studio was grooming for stardom (which Trevor would ultimately achieve with an Academy Award nomination for Dead End in 1937). The title refers to the address of the now vanished downtown Manhattan building where New York’s diamond business was centered before 1950, a setting Dwan brings to life by keeping the action (and his camera) moving up and down between floors. Present in a dealer’s office when a suave jewel thief (Cesar Romero) swaps a phony for a precious jewel, Trevor impulsively plays along by allowing him to slip the booty in her purse, which allows Romero to get past the building’s chief security officer – a tough little detective (Lloyd Nolan), whose name, Walsh, is a likely reference to a certain old friend and colleague of the filmmaker. But this is only the first in a series of sly double-crosses, impersonations and unexpected reversals – all smoothly assembled by Dwan into a careening narrative that keeps the viewer delightfully off-balance. Trevor provides a perfect example of the strong-willed, autonomous heroines Dwan favored; one can imagine her proclaiming, as Shirley Temple does throughout Dwan’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938), “I’m very self-reliant”. With Paul Fix as a socialist agitator who receives an unexpected windfall.

Dave Kehr