 Beaumont didn’t always play a homicidal, narcissistic maniac in his noir career. In two low-budget series he actually played a detective. Still, even in this role, he wasn’t exactly on the side of the angels. When PRC took over the Michael Shane series from Twentieth-Century Fox, Beaumont replaced Lloyd Nolan in the title role. Nolan’s Shayne, though nobody’s fool, was something of a lovable lug. Beaumont’s Shayne was much too acerbic to be lovable, much less a lug of any kind, tossing off such gems as, “C’mon, look at the girl. Don’t be afraid of waking her up. She’s dead.” He tackles two spoiled children of a recently murdered father by telling the girl to “shut up” her lip, shoving around the son, then turning back to the daughter and calling her a “spoiled, brainless brat.” Not exactly the reasoned chats with Wally or the Beaver in the study (Murder Is My Business, 1946).
This Mike Shayne certainly isn’t as lawless as the Steves, Kennys, and Scots in Beaumont’s psychotic repertoire, but he’s not exactly playing according to Hoyle when it comes to dealing with the law. His Shayne enlists his newspaperman pal to help him move the body of a murdered girl left in his apartment on a frame job so the police will find the body elsewhere and include him out of any pesky investigations (Murder Is My Business). This guy just doesn’t want to be bothered and certainly has no respect for the cops. For example he warns the lead detective to “back your monkeys off me,” then warns those monkeys, “Don’t stick you nose outside the door unless you want to get it shot off” (Larceny in Her Heart, 1946).
In Hugh Beaumont’s other PRC detective series, about the only thing Dennis O’Brien has in common with Ward Cleaver is that they both smoke a pipe. That said, Denny would rather snuggle up to a bottle of bourbon in a seedy bar with his souse helper, The Professor (more on him later). If Beaumont’s Mike Shayne was somewhat left of the law, this character barely peeks in as he passes its room. Even a seedy guy says to O’Brien, “Anybody’s a bum at the right price. I  hear yours is $200” (Roaring City, 1951). O’Brien confirms this assessment at the beginning of each of the three films in the series when he says while lounging in front of the run-down, two-room shack he shares with The Professor on Pier 23 (aka a “crummy layout,” Danger Zone, 1951), “[A]s long as I get paid, I can’t be responsible for the guys who hire me” (Roaring City).
O’Brien’s cases bear out his less than sterling self-appraisal as he repeatedly gets himself into hot water by agreeing to front a crooked manager’s bets against his own fighter; playing escort for a young woman under the pay of an unsavory lawyer he knows is up to no good; and taking money from a priest to help an escape convict elude capture after blowing Alcatraz, amongst other unsavory cases (Roaring City, Danger Zone, and Pier 23 (1951), respectively.
 Additionally, where Beaumont’s Shayne might have done some looking but was basically loyal to secretary/girlfriend Phyllis, O’Brien pretty much tom-catted his way through three films, containing two stories each. Eyeing some chicks in bullet-bras, he  comments, “Yes, sir, the town [San Francisco] has some good points” (Danger Zone). In every film, he’s sucking face with at least one gal per story – that’s at least six gals per series. His lips must be mighty tired of puckering! June would not approve. Watch out Gwen Rutherford!
Denny has two regulars in the film. There’s side man, The Professor, who as O’Brien puts it, “prefers glasses to classes,” and the former filled with bourbon, scotch, or whiskey. Then there’s Inspector  Breugger, his nemesis on the police force, who’s always suspecting O’Brien of murder – mostly because he’s always finding Denny unconscious in the near vicinity of a corpse –whom he never turns out to have killed. You’d think the inspector would have learned before he got through six stories in three films.
You’d also think Dennis would learn, too. Every time he turns his back – often while he’s smooching some deceptive dame – he gets cracked on the noggin and sent to la-la land, only to wake up next to a corpse and a freshly arriving Inspector Breugger. This photo is just a day in the life of O’Brien, Breugger, and the corpse du jour.
Now, our detective still isn’t a complete dope. He always gets his man – or dame, as the case may be. He even is quick with a quip. When Breugger asserts, “I got an idea,” Denny cracks, “Did it hurt?” Or there’s his cynical assessment of his part of San Francisco where “[a] set of morals won’t cause any more stir than Mother’s Day in an orphanage.” Beaumont gives us a private dick who may be on the seedy side, but his trenchant cynicism establishes that he knows he lives in a world that’s amoral to the core.
So, low-brow, psychotic, or somewhere in between, Hugh Beaumont is a champ at playing the noir anti-hero deeply engrained in the world he inhabits.
What noir performances by Beaumont would you add to this list?
– Images 1 & 2 of the Mike Shayne films from the Classic Flix dvd covers, copyright 2019, ClassicFlix.com
– Screen Shots from Danger Zone, Pier 23, and Roaring City from the Kit Parker Collection of Film Noir, vols. 7-9., Copyright VCI Entertainment, 2008. author’s Collection
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Sharon Healy-Yang 
