Chicago newspaper reporter Ed Adams is in a boarding house when the body of beautiful tenant Rosita Jean d'Ur is found.

Of the fifty-four names listed in her diary Ed talks to hoodlum Solly Wellman, trust company vice-president G. G. Temple, and Belle Dorset, all of whom deny knowing Rosita.

Rosita's brother Tommy Ditman tells Ed his sister ran away aged seventeen from their home in Amarillo, Texas.

Their marriage went bad, Paul died in a car accident, and Rosita became lonely and bitter and had difficulty keeping a job.

Ed reports to the city editor, Gribbe, who writes a long column making Rosita's life and fate sound sensational and mysterious.

Interfering police detective Anstruder insists on accompanying Ed as he meets with invalid Hotspur Shaner, for whom Rosita worked as a housekeeper under an assumed name.

Ed takes Leona to a boxing match featuring the last names listed in Rosita's diary: fighter Bat Bennett and his manager, Jerry Cavanaugh.

However the success of Laura (1944) and The Big Clock (1948), which contained similar story elements to the novel, saw it put back into development as a vehicle for Alan Ladd.

"[16] Film critic Bosley Crowther dismissed suspension of disbelief in his review, "People who picture reporters as dashing young fellows, all named 'Scoop,' whose lives are just rounds of excitement in what such people call the 'newspaper game' will find the ideal of their illusion in the newshawk Alan Ladd plays in Paramount's Chicago Deadline ...

But for those other level-headed people whose knowledge of newspaper men—and, indeed, of life in general—is a little more sober and sane, this fancy will surely seem a mish-mosh of two-penny-fiction cliches, recklessly thrown together in an almost unfathomable plot.

Flashbacks and narrative descriptions will fascinate them no more than will Mr. Ladd's ridiculous posturing as a brilliant newspaper man-sleuth.

The film failed to make his cop character as inviting as Laura made Dana Andrews.

[18] The story was adapted for radio on Screen Director's Playhouse in 1950 with Alan Ladd reprising his role.