BODYGUARD (1948) ** Lawrence Tierney is the usual street fighting set-up cop wanted for murder who just assaulted his commanding officer so he quit. Priscilla Lane is his big-lipped girlfriend who spends most of the film trying to look scared or astounded, but instead adds a certain amateur silly charm. Richard Fleischer is good with the period black and white and shadows and reflection stuff, and keeps things rolling along nicely. I'm not sure if the clues Tierney follows are oblique or if the scriptwriters were considerate enough to allow my attention to occasionally wander, but there's never any question of a final showdown at the meatpacking plant. The final scene is incongruent and unexpected, though perhaps predictable to brilliant detectives like Tierney. It's good Saturday morning faire anyway, not too difficult or important to follow. It's also largely ineffective propaganda for moving the nation's focus from New York to LA. Partly at least because they concentrate on making LA look as much like New York as possible, dark metropolitan, baseball games (the Pacific Coast League scoreboard says 26-24, now that's slugging), newsmen, taxi cabs, with a twist of a store where you can make your own records...the LA movement wouldn't really get going until it focused on beaches and bikinis.