Gerard Dennis is a suave, controlling character. He supports himself by filching jewels in ingenious ways from their owners, often women whom he inveigles into his clutches by seducing them. Although he primarily relies on conniving and trickery, he also employs violence when necessary to escape apprehension by the law.
He executes a series of amazingly clever seductions, heists and escapes from the police. However, one of his conquests, whom he had married, helps the police catch him. He is sentenced to prison for 25 years.
Cleo Moore as Vivacious Blonde at Airport (uncredited)
Production
The film is based on the real-life case of Gerard Dennis, known as a "society thief" after a string of jewel robberies netting a total of more than $600,000 in his native Montreal, Hollywood and Westchester County, New York, where he was sentenced to at least 18 years in prison in July 1949. Dennis was a career criminal who had been previously convicted of breaking and entering, possessing burglary tools and the attempted murder of a baby.[2] From prison, Dennis granted permission for his story to be told on film.[1]
Reception
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Howard Thompson called The Great Jewel Robber a "spasmodically sincere attempt to show how crime didn't pay" and wrote: "[T]he picture has some dogmatic finger-wagging, but on the whole it's little more than a routine, backhanded glorification of a Raffles-Casanova."[1]
References
1 2 3 Thompson, Howard (1950-08-04). "The Screen in Review: Story of Raffles at the Palace". The New York Times. p.13.
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