When she is personally affronted by the sarcastic, denigrating remark, he responds, "I was merely drawing a parallel," and explains to the perplexed lady how he knows her name - from a courtroom appearance after a destructive, expensive practical joke." (A few moments earlier, a man of that description, soon introduced as ""hoodlum"" Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden in his first major starring role), ducked behind a pillar as the car passed."The story flashes back to six months earlier, when Joe, a struggling, down-and-out, depressed, Midwestern hack screenwriter, finds that he is unable to sell his scripts ("I seemed to have lost my touch") and is behind three payments on his car." Spaulding replies with a contemptuous, politically-inappropriate retort:Yes, but the trouble is, you can""t enforce it.