The Hoodlum (1951) Lawrence Tierney, Allene Roberts

Vincent Lubeck (Lawrence Tierney) is an habitual criminal from childhood, who has recently been released from prison on parole. He would not have gotten out had it not been for the pleas of his elderly mother. He gets a job working at his brother Johnny’s gas station. He seduces Rosa, his brother’s fiancee who hopes to reform him but can’t resist his determined advances, which he makes in part to show her it’s not so easy to be good in a bad world. Vincent becomes interested in the armored car that makes regular stops at the bank across the street. He romances Eileen, a beautiful independent-minded secretary at the bank, after the police detective who arrested him last time says she’s out of his league. At first he’s just interested in the challenge, but realizing she knows a lot about the bank’s inner workings, he starts pumping her for information. She finds him fascinating, but is a lot tougher than Rosa. Vincent begins to plan a bank robbery, and to recruit men he knows from prison to pull the job with him. He shared a cell with a master bank job planner, and listened carefully to the man when he talked about how to make such an operation work.