Slightly Scarlet is a 1956 American crime film, with some noirish elements, based on James M. Cain's novel Love's Lovely Counterfeit. It was directed by Allan Dwan, and its widescreen cinematography was by John Alton. The picture tells the story of Ben Grace (John Payne), a crooked cop working for a powerful metropolitan crime boss—Solly Caspar (Ted de Corsia), who uses entrapment, extortion, and blackmail to push Caspar aside and elect a “reform” mayor he exploits. Two sisters Rhonda Fleming, a self-interested “good girl” at the center of a love triangle, and Arlene Dahl, a “bad girl” ex-con and walking plot complication, add interest to a vibrant technicolor production. Plot The ruthless and uncouth Solly Caspar, Bay City's crime boss, is seeking to fend off an annoying “reform” campaign by multi - millionaire mayoral hopeful, Frank Jansen (Kent Taylor). Caspar tasks a bright “college boy” in his ring he thoroughly resents, crooked cop Ben Grace, to dig up some dirt on Jansen and torpedo his threatening race. Ben follows the candidate's brilliant scarlet-tressed and wildly curvaceous secretary/girlfriend, June Lyons (Rhonda Fleming), to a women’s prison to photograph her picking up her equally redheaded, sporty, and sex-starved kleptomaniac sister Dorothy (Arlene Dahl), a multiple ex-con. Ben immediately becomes attracted to June, and withholds his incriminating evidence from Caspar. Flipping sides, Ben instead gives June a tape he made proving Caspar killed a crusading newspaperman supporting the honest Jansen. Caspar, who had slapped Ben around and humiliated him in front of the rest of his gang for appearing to fail to gather any dirt on Jansen, is forced to flee to nearby Mexico. Ben then seduces June, steals her from Jansen, and, unbeknownst to her or the new mayor, takes over Caspar’s rackets. Rather than the smooth sailing he had planned, Ben faces blowback from Caspar’s gang and stiffened resistance from city hall and the police. Meanwhile, June’s nymphomaniac sister, who had been attracted to Ben from the start, continues her play for him. She accompanies him to a beach house he has claimed along with the rest of the spoils from Caspar’s empire, where Ben is headed to rifle its safe for $160,000 to leave town with. She determinedly tries to seduce a disinterested Ben, and becomes huffy when rejected, scaring him by firing a spear gun at his head. After searching the house, he is forced to leave without finding