Ride the Pink Horse is a 1947 film noir crime film produced by Universal Studios. It was directed by Robert Montgomery, who also stars in it, from a screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer, which was based on the 1946 novel of the same title by Dorothy B. Hughes. Thomas Gomez was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance. An army veteran known only as Gagin travels to San Pablo in New Mexico to avenge the death of his wartime buddy. Some of the villagers refer to Gagin as "the man with no place." Ride the Pink Horse and the noir genre A common theme in noir films is the post-war disillusionment experienced by many soldiers returning to the peacetime economy, which was mirrored in the sordidness of the urban crime film. In these films a serviceman returns to find his sweetheart unfaithful or a good friend dead. The war continues, but now the antagonism turns with a new viciousness toward American society itself. In Ride the Pink Horse, Gagin's quest to avenge his friend's death leads him to rural New Mexico, an unusual setting for the noir motif more typically associated with corrupt urban environments. Plot Lucky Gagin (Robert Montgomery) arrives on a bus in San Pablo, a small rural town in New Mexico, during its annual fiesta. He plans to confront and blackmail a mobster named Frank Hugo (Fred Clark) as retribution for the death of his best friend Shorty. He unpacks a Colt .45 pistol from his luggage, sticks it in his waistband, places a check which incriminates Hugo in locker 250, and hides the locker key behind a framed map in the bus depot waiting room using a piece of chewing gum. Because of the fiesta, Gagin cannot find a room at the hotel by the bus station. He is directed to the non-tourist side of the town. At the merry-go-round there, he meets Pila (Wanda Hendrix), who takes him to the La Fonda Hotel and gives him a "charm of Ishtam" that she says will protect him. At the hotel, Gagin uses a ruse to find out that Frank Hugo is in room 315. Gagin comes, uninvited, into the hotel room, and proceeds to knock out Jonathan (Richard Gaines), Hugo's private secretary. Marjorie Lundeen (Andrea King), a sophisticated female acquaintance of Hugo's, comes in and uses her wiles trying to learn