Young jack lemmon sits behind the wheel of a convertible in his first film, a 1951 public-service short called Once Too Often. He looks a pleasant fellow, someone to prize as a neighbor in the sunny suburbia of the postwar era. His behavior is that of any blithe burgher: a carefree puff of his cigarette, a heavy foot on the gas pedal, an appreciative glance at a lovely lady as his car draws alongside hers. Then the scene cuts to black and ... CRASH!, a sickening fusion of metal and flesh. What begins as comedy, and accelerates toward romance, explodes into heedless tragedy, into death or worse: the souring of the American Dream.
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