Scene of the Crime is a 1949 American police procedural directed by Roy Rowland, starring Van Johnson, and featuring Gloria DeHaven, Arlene Dahl, and Tom Drake.

[3] The film's screenplay, by Charles Schnee, is based on a non-fiction article by John Bartlow Martin, "Smashing the Bookie Gang Marauders".

"[5]Lieutenant Mike Conovan (Van Johnson), a LAPD homicide detective, investigates when Ed Monigan, an older member of his precinct (and former partner), is murdered.

Out to dispel a theory that Monigan was secretly in cahoots with bookmakers, Conovan begins to track down a pair of downstate guns for hire ("lobos", Spanish, for “wolves”).

The trail leads to a cabaret singer, Lili (Gloria DeHaven), whose ex-boyfriend Turk Kingby (Richard Benedict) has apparently pulled off a series of robberies of gamblers with his partner Lafe Douque (William Haade).

Once Dore Schary returned to MGM in 1948 from his stint at RKO Pictures, to replace Louis B. Mayer as head of production, the studio began to make darker, more realistic films.

[6][4] Although Scene of the Crime made a small profit, primarily because of its low production cost, Van Johnson would never make another film noir.

It was Schary's decision to cast her as Lili, a cabaret singer who appears at first to have a heart of gold, but turns out to be a gangster's moll playing up to Johnson.

[2] In his July 29, 1949 review for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther reassures his readers: “Leave it to Mr. Johnson and to Scriptwriter Charlie Schnee; sixty or seventy minutes later, the gunman is caught and the case solved.

Not only does he nuzzle and coo most sublimely with his wife, who is played with considerable temptation by a new cutie, name of Arlene Dahl, but he also pitches plenty to a stream-lined night-club job from whom he would wring certain secrets of a purely professional sort.

It portrayed the hard-working policemen in a sympathetic light and showed how they are often misunderstood by the public and betrayed at times by reporters who are eager to grab the headlines and run with them even though they don't have all the facts.