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The Sound of Fury
Movie poster (aka title)
Directed by	Cy Endfield
Written by	Joe Pagano
Starring	Frank Lovejoy Kathleen Ryan
Release date(s)	1950
Running time	85 min.
Country	U.S.A.
Language	English

The Sound of Fury (also known as Try and Get Me) is a 1950 black-and-white film noir directed by Cy Endfield, starring Frank Lovejoy and Kathleen Ryan. The film is based on Joe Pagano's novel The Condemned, who also wrote the screenplay.

The film is based on factual events that occurred in 1933, when two men were arrested in San Jose, California, for kidnapping and murdering a man, Brooke Hart. The suspects confessed and were lynched by a mob of locals. The Fritz Lang-directed 1936 film Fury was about the same incident.

Plot summary

Howard Tyler (Frank Lovejoy) is a family man, living in California, who can't seem to get by financially. He meets up with a small-time, but charismatic, hood Jerry Slocum (Lloyd Bridges). Soon, Slocum convinces Tyler into participating in gas station robberies to get by. Later, they kidnap a wealthy man in hopes of getting a huge ransom. Things go wrong when the man is murdered by Slocum then thrown in a lake. Tyler reaches his limit emotionally, and he begins drinking heavily. He meets a lonely woman and confesses the crime while drunk. The woman flees and goes to the police.

When the two kidnappers are arrested, a local journalist (Richard Carlson) writes a series of hate-filled articles about the two prisoners which eventually lead to a brutal lynching.

Critical reaction

Bosley Crowther, in a review of the film in the May 7, 1951 New York Times writes, "Although Mr. Endfield has directed the violent climatic scenes with a great deal of sharp visualization of mass hysteria and heat, conveying a grim impression of the nastiness of a mob, he has filmed the rest of the picture in a conventional melodramatic style. Neither the script nor the numerous performances are of a distinctive quality."^[1]

A Panorama of American Film Noir 1941-1953 written by Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton notes, "The prison assault remains one of the most brutal sequences in postwar American cinema."^[2]

Main cast

• Frank Lovejoy as Howard Tyler
• Kathleen Ryan as Judy Tyler
• Richard Carlson as Gil Stanton
• Lloyd Bridges as Jerry Slocum
• Katherine Locke as Hazel Weatherwax
• Adele Jergens as Velma
• Art Smith as Editor Hal Clendenning

Notes

1. ^ New York Times 1951 review
2. ^ A Panorama of American Film Noir 1941-1953. 1955. ISBN 087286412x.  

External links

• The Sound of Fury at the Internet Movie Database
• Try and Get Me at Allmovie