This Gun for Hire

This Gun for Hire is a 1942 American film noir crime film directed by Frank Tuttle and starring Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar, and Alan Ladd. It is based on the 1936 novel A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene (published in America with the same title as the film). Plot In contemporary wartime San Francisco, chemist and blackmailer Albert Baker is killed by hitman Philip Raven, who recovers a stolen chemical formula. Raven is double-crossed by his employer, Willard Gates, who pays him with marked bills and reports them to the Los Angeles Police Department as stolen from his company, Nitro Chemical Corporation of Los Angeles. Raven learns of the setup and decides to get revenge. Police Detective Lieutenant Michael Crane, who is vacationing in San Francisco to visit his girlfriend, nightclub singer and stage magician Ellen Graham, is immediately assigned the case. He goes after Raven, but the assassin eludes him. Meanwhile, Gates hires Ellen to work in his Los Angeles nightclub after an audition wherein she sings and performs magic tricks. Then, she is taken to a clandestine meeting with Senator Burnett, where she learns that Gates and Nitro Chemical are under investigation as suspected traitors, and is recruited to spy on Gates. Unknown to each other, Gates and she board a train for Los Angeles, followed by Raven. By chance, Raven and Ellen sit next to each other. The next morning, Gates is alarmed when he sees them asleep with Raven's head on her shoulder. He wires ahead to alert the police, but Raven forces Ellen at gunpoint to help him elude them again. He is about to kill her, but is interrupted by workmen, allowing Ellen to flee. From Gates's club, she tries to contact Crane, but he has left San Francisco to return to Los Angeles. That evening, the suspicious Gates invites Ellen to his Hollywood mansion, where his chauffeur Tommy knocks her unconscious to set up a fake suicide. Tipped off by Ellen's friend at the club, Crane goes to the mansion looking for Ellen, but Gates has already left. Tommy tells Crane that Ellen has been gone for two hours. While Crane questions Tommy, and makes a phone call to Ellen's hotel, Raven arrives and hides outside, where he sees Tommy discard Ellen's purse, to keep Crane from spotting it. Raven realizes that Ellen is in danger. After Crane leaves, Raven knocks Tommy down a flight of stairs when the chauffeur denies Ellen is still there. Raven searches the house and rescues her.