No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948)

Promises, promises

No Orchids for Miss Blandish is a tawdry tale penned by prolific British novelist James Hadley Chase, an author now mostly forgotten but in his time very successful. The film was based on the eponymous book from 1939, also published under the more salacious alternative title of The Villain and the Virgin. 

Chase was an interesting phenomenon, a British writer of American pulp who had become fascinated by the hard-boiled crime fiction that made its way across the Pond. He began writing in the 1930s at a time when Prohibition in America gave rise to the gangster culture. Hollywood knew a good thing when it saw it and churned out one gangster movie after another. The British public fell in love with it too. So Chase decided to jump on the bandwagon and capitalize on the trend. Though he only made two brief visits to the US in his lifetime, most of his books were set in America. Chase got himself a slang dictionary, maps, newspapers and books about gangsters and set to work. The result was No Orchids for Miss Blandish, a book full of murder, drugs, rape, torture and sadism. It was a publishing sensation and gained notoriety very quickly. The critics jumped on it and deemed it vile, sick and disgusting. Always a good thing for circulation numbers.

No Orchids is an utterly unsentimental and matter-of-fact depiction of sex and violence which is without a doubt still quite astonishing today. Miss Blandish, kidnapped by mad-dog utterly depraved gangster Slim Grisson, is kept in a near-constant drug-induced stupor for months by Ma Grisson so her mentally unstable and impotent psychotic son can find out the differences between boys and girls. Miss B’s own father believes in tough love and doesn’t want his kidnapped “soiled” daughter back. “Better dead than deflowered” is his charming estimation of the whole situation.

The book is positively unsavory, exploitative and crude and as such a highly entertaining pulpy shocker.

For the film the story obviously had to be toned down tremendously. The film’s plot has Miss Blandish (Linden Travers) as the virginal and posh heiress to a vast fortune who is engaged to a bland but eminently suitable young man, of course approved by the family. Her fiancé considers her frigid and cold because she doesn’t return his kisses. On a way to a hot date, crooks hold up their car to steal Miss Blandish’s expensive necklace but botch the heist and kill the fiancé. They take Miss B with them for some fun. A rival group of gangsters, led by Slim Grisson (Jack La Rue), moves in and Grisson takes Miss B to his nightclub and keeps her prisoner. But of course she falls in love with him and turns her back on her family and her upbringing.

On the poster, the movie promises to be as "shocking as the book", but unfortunately the producers didn't deliver on that promise. The film is decidedly tame in comparison to the novel. Yes, there is quite a bit of pervasive violence throughout, people get knocked about constantly. There are lots of half-naked dames, suggestive situations and the barely more than mildly shocking subject matter of Miss B falling in love with the gangster who kidnaps her, which would now be filed under Stockholm Syndrome. But it is very hard to see what all the fuss was about. All the controversial aspects of the book were taken out. Grisson’s and Miss B’s whole relationship was transformed. They may have been off to a weird start, but in the movie Grisson never forces himself on Miss B, no drugs are involved and she clearly doesn’t leave when she has the chance. 

What the changes leave us with is simply a story about a doomed and tragic romance where both parties are victims of circumstance. One wonders why the censors had their knickers in a twist. The only explanation can be that Miss B is sexually awakened by someone socially and morally completely unsuitable, and likes it.

Pulpy cover at its best

Nevertheless the picture caused a huge public outcry and drew criticism from all corners. After the War much harder crime films about “spivs” had already become popular in Britain. It wasn’t all tea and crumpets anymore. Brighton Rock (1947) was one of the first films to spark the censors’ outrage due to its depiction of violence and crime. 

When the notorious No Orchids came along, British censors went haywire. Reactions went from “A wicked disgrace to the British film industry” to "It has all the morals of an alley cat and the sweetness of a sewer” and "the most sickening exhibition of brutality, perversion, sex and sadism ever to be shown on a cinema screen”. A tempest in a teapot surely but a brilliant way to orchestrate a sensation. The filmmakers got exactly what they wanted. Clearly this kind of high praise was enough to practically guarantee the movie’s overwhelming success. Who can resist this kind of advertisement? Low moral tone? Sold.

But underneath all this vehement condemnation lay a different fear: that British culture was becoming Americanized. British theaters showed a vast amount of Hollywood imports, loved by the audience but not by the critics and British filmmakers who saw themselves as defenders of British culture which they didn’t like to see “corrupted”. The most damning insult came from The Guardian. It labeled the film ”thoroughly un-British”.

But the movie’s problems lie in completely different areas. Not only has the pulpy heart of the source material been snuffed out, but from the moment Miss B and Grisson meet they behave like two silly star-crossed lovers in a mawkish melodrama on their road to doom. This isn't exactly The Story of Temple Drake. The trash factor is gone. And what’s the use of pulp without that?

It’s Beauty and the Beast with all the beastliness taken out. What we get is a bittersweet love story. Grisson and Miss B act like moon calfs.

The only good thing is the downbeat and tragic ending. After Grisson is killed by the police, Miss B throws herself from her balcony over the loss of her lover. Well, that's at least something.

A much more tantalizing title

Another issue is Jack La Rue, a minor leading man of the 30s. He’s the only American in the cast and trying to impersonate George Raft (who had been tapped to play Grisson but bowed out), but simply can’t quite carry it off. I’m not much of a Raft fan, but he has La Rue beat by a long shot. La Rue doesn’t have much charisma and the supposed feverish chemistry between him and Linden Travers is more tepid than sizzling. Both parties are supposed to be in constant ecstasy, but it doesn’t quite translate to the screen.

The best and most genuinely sexy scene is not between LaRue and Travers, but between investigative reporter Dave Fenner, who’s been trying to free Travers from her ordeal, and nightclub singer Margo when she’s undressing for bed. He whips the drawstring from her pajamas. Those two generate more heat than the main couple. She invites him to stay.

Lily Molnar as Ma Grisson though is very good, a tough-talking and repulsive Ma Barker clone.

But what gives the audience a real headache is that No Orchids takes place in some alternate gangland universe. Made in England and starring a mostly English cast, the filmmakers clearly have an outsider’s view of America and can’t quite nail it. It’s gangland USA through English eyes. It’s all very genteel. It plays more like a parody of a gangster movie. The American slang never feels right. Accents are all over the place, one imdb reviewer called them appropriately “a mixed bag of crumpets and hot dogs”. The actors don’t quite fit their roles. For the most part it’s simply awkward. You can’t take a thing out of its natural habitat and expect it to survive untouched. 

The film’s an oddity. There are no orchids for Miss Blandish and no hotdogs either.

What it comes down to is this: The Brits make absolutely fantastic Brit Noir and crime dramas, but not American Noir. This of course goes the other way around too, Hollywood has a long and bad track record of meddling in things it shouldn’t.

This Gun For Hire (1942)

This Gun For Hire was directed by Frank Tuttle for Paramount. Tuttle was a contract director who executed most of his assignments routinely without much enthusiasm. But every once in a while he surprised everybody by doing a marvelous job. With Gun he hit the jackpot. The film is a loose adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel A Gun For Sale, though the original story is transported from Europe to the Noir cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles.  

This Gun For Hire is an early (transitional) Noir that develops some of the cornerstones of the genre. Visually it fits the bill, utilizing Chiaroscuro lighting to stunning effect. There’s the hard-boiled ambiguous anti-hero, doom and inevitable Fate but the picture isn’t wholly Noir. It certainly isn’t the most fatalistic and bleakest. We get a bit of man-on-the-run story, a bit of cops and robbers and a bit of espionage with two kooky musical numbers thrown in.

Gun was the first pairing of pint-sized powerhouse duo Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Maybe their partnership was born out of necessity - both vertically challenged at 5’6 and 4’11 respectively - but it quickly became clear that their on-screen chemistry was dynamite.

They would be paired up again in three more movies. Unfortunately both of them later battled alcoholism, personal problems and mental illness and died at the fairly young age of 50.

It is 1942 and the US has just recently entered the War. Contract killer Philip Raven (Alan Ladd) is hired by Willard Gates (Laird Cregar), manager at Nitro Chemical Corps., to retrieve a chemical formula and kill the man who stole it for blackmail reasons. Nitro’s boss Alvin Brewster has manufactured a nerve gas that he intends to sell to the Japanese. Gates is also moonlighting as manager of the Neptune nightclub, where he likes to play impresario for reasons of purely personal amusement.

Unfortunately Raven’s contract is a setup, Gates pays off Raven in hot money and now there’s a price on his head. Police lieutenant Michael Crane (Robert Preston) is assigned to the case. Crane is engaged to Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake), nightclub singer/magician at the Neptune Club. Ellen is hired by Senator Burnett to keep an eye on her boss Gates and his shady business dealings. Burnett suspects that Nitro Chemical is guilty of treason.

Raven takes Ellen hostage but they become allies pretty fast, because Gates wants them both dead. Raven simply wants to kill Brewster but Ellen appeals to his better nature to expose Brewster as a traitor…

Alan Ladd had been toiling in Hollywood obscurity for about a decade, struggling mostly in non-billed supporting roles, when he finally became an “overnight success” with Gun. Billed last as “introducing Alan Ladd”, he wasn’t supposed to be the star. Second-billed Robert Preston was but didn’t stand a chance. Ladd is magnetic and walks away with the picture. Preston, officially the male lead, has an utterly thankless role. Usually playing the best friend of the hero, he finally got the lead part in a movie only to be neatly outmaneuvered on every level by Ladd. Ladd not only became a star, but a romantic star by playing a merciless killer with glacial charm.

Raven is at the same time a compelling and unnerving character. He’s no shallow puddle. Ruthless, laconic, with ice-water in his veins, a steely gaze and a voice to match, he is the ultimate loner detached from humanity. The code of a professional hitman doesn’t allow for friends, family or personal feelings. Raven could refute John Donne’s idea that no man is an island. 

Ladd was plagued his whole life by a harrowing self-doubt about his small stature. He was full of self-loathing, about his height and his acting abilities. He let his fears devour him. He needn’t have worried. It was always astonishing to me that such a small guy could convey so much menace, sensuality and commanding presence.

Killing comes easy to Raven. His brooding menace is no show, he makes good on his threats. When asked by Gates how he feels about his profession, his utterly emotionless answer is “I feel fine.” Feeling nothing is his perpetual state of mind. 

Just how cold-blooded he is we can see when he goes to kill the blackmailer in his apartment. It’s one of the great entrances in cinematic history. Unfortunately the guy’s “secretary” is there too. Poor woman is in wrong place at the wrong time. Appeals for mercy fall on deaf ears. He guns her down anyway, he can’t afford witnesses. No hesitation, just an ice-cold: “They said he’d be alone”. It’s not an apology, just a simple clarification. Right afterwards leaving the scene, he’s spotted by a crippled little girl. For a short moment we hold our breaths, but he just retrieves her toy. Talk about ambiguous and morally complex. Raven is a study in contradictions. A hired gun with principles.

It is to Ladd’s credit that he pulls off the almost impossible and turns Raven into a sympathetic character which may have something to do with the cute little four-legged cat burglar he’s feeding. He has a soft spot for cats, because they - like him - need no-one and can fight for themselves. Just for that we’re willing to forgive him anything. When a slatternly and tarty maid - clad for work in a dress clearly designed to attract some special attention -  tries to kick his cat, he rips her dress and slaps her. We don’t even feel sorry for her. 

If there’s one thing Raven believes in, it is that cats bring good luck. Later he unintentionally kills a cat and his luck runs out.

The movie goes out of its way to humanize Raven. While under siege by the police and hiding in an abandoned railway car, he tells Ellen his life story about the cruel and abusive aunt he grew up with until he was 14…when he finally had enough and took a knife to her. He was then sent to reform school where he was beaten some more. It bred a seething rage and hate in him. Ladd plays it magnificently, with just the right amount of vulnerability. For a few moments, he gives the audience a glimpse of the hurt kid lurking beneath the ice-cold facade.

Raven is not a natural-born killer, the roots for his warped psyche lie in his environment and traumatic upbringing. He was doomed on the day he set foot into his aunt's house. 

It’s an amazingly modern school of thought. Or maybe just a touch of bargain-basement Freudianism, 40s Hollywood’s favorite infatuation.

Veronica Lake is luminous and sizzles as Ellen. Her little nightclub acts are a bit cheesy, but adorable and sexy, especially the one that has rather racy fetish undertones. She’s sultry and with the peek-a-boo hairdo that would become her trademark, but she only looks like a femme fatale. She’s a good girl and a smart little cookie who gets herself out of several bad situations by using cool wits and her sleight of hand abilities.

Through Ellen Raven experiences something he’s never experienced before, human kindness. She believes there still may be some good in him. Because of her influence his armor begins to crack. He saves her life when Gates wants to kill her. When she urges him not to kill anymore, for a second there’s a yearning in his eyes that maybe in another time and place, if things had been different… but he knows he’s too far gone to reform. Soon after he shoots a cop to get away from the police. “I don’t go soft for anybody.”

In the end he commits another act of mercy. He spares Crane’s life who he could have effortlessly plucked with one shot. But he knows Crane is Ellen’s man.

Laird Cregar is always a welcome addition to any cast and obviously has fun hamming it up as fat, gutless, effeminate and occasionally infantile Willard Gates. Here's a word to the wise for him though: don't try to double-cross a guy who bumps off people for a living. It never ends well.

Cregar had a tendency to steal the show and make his short screen time count.

A lot of reviewers leveled their criticism of the movie at the “dated” heavy-handed wartime propaganda. Well of course there’s propaganda! And why shouldn’t there be? According to Blackout: WW2 and the Origins of Film Noir by Sheri Chinen Biesen film production ran from October 27 to December 6 (!) 1941, with two extra days of filming on Dec. 15 and 16. Pearl Harbor happened and put the nation and Hollywood on high alert. In the aftermath of the attack the PCA granted the film approval despite more violence and ambiguity in the script than they initially intended to let pass…as long as Raven would be on the side of the angels again in the end.

America’s politics of isolationism could not longer be sustained. Mobilizing the home-front to support the war effort became crucial. And if that included hired gunmen, so be it. Moral judgement could be suspended for less than squeaky-clean Americans willing to leave their pasts behind and go fight the good fight. Raven may be a killer, but that was nothing against the threat of traitors who were willing to sell out their country for sheer monetary gain.

The propaganda may be a laid on a bit thick, but so what? There is no reason why a bit of propaganda should stand in the way of enjoying and understanding the movie.

In the end Raven is both: ruthless killer and patriotic hero. It must be stressed however that it is not really the patriotic cause that is eventually his redemption, it is Ellen. His choice to go after Brewster is more personal than political. The stone-cold hitman develops a conscience because Ellen is the only friend he ever had. With his last breath, Raven seeks Ellen's assurance that he did good. He receives her absolution and dies peacefully.

The old bromide holds true: he just needed the love of a good woman. Oh God, I didn’t just say that, did I? 

Hoping against hope, of course I wanted Ladd and Lake to live happily ever after. There’s an amazingly sensual undercurrent between the two. Dammit, Raven saves the country but he can’t get the girl? Of course not. This is Noir, not a fairytale.

That final clinch at the end of the movie between Ellen and Crane is not too convincing, and it’s all Ladd’s fault. It seems the producers desperately wanted to push the idea that Crane is the right man for Ellen. It didn’t fool anybody.

Born to be Bad (1950)

Born to be Bad was directed by Nicholas Ray for RKO. Ray worked for Howard Hughes between 1949 and 1953, directing six features for the studio. The picture is certainly one of the director’s lesser - and lesser-known - efforts. It has an A list cast but at its heart it’s strictly B. Hughes as always couldn’t curb his meddling. Lots of different writers and directors tried their hand at the film before Ray showed up and straightened out the mess Hughes had made. Hughes was also wooing Fontaine at the time and that muddled (production) waters even more.

Ray was an extremely versatile director able to work in a wide range of genres without dulling the sharp edge of his vision. Though Ray’s filmography spans various different genres, his work maintains a remarkable thematic consistency.

As a director Ray was drawn to complex, hopeless characters.  Ray’s cinema was infused with a deep sympathy for losers, loners and vulnerable underdogs. Loneliness and loss play a big part in his films. François Truffaut called him “the poet of nightfall”.

Ray imparts his films with strong elements of sentimentality and bitter-sweet romanticism which at first seem at odds with Noir conventions, thus offering variations on well-trodden themes.

Desperate, star-crossed lovers (They Live by Night), redemption and spiritual renewal (On Dangerous Grounds) and emotional fragility and loneliness (In a Lonely Place) at first glance seem incompatible with Noir, but Ray’s interest lay primarily in his protagonists’ motivations.

Ray didn’t care for too much for Born to be Bad, but he did a competent job on a routine studio assignment. Still, coming from a man who liked his stories to have a message, this one’s a bit banal. One could say Ray had a day off when he made this melodrama but that would be a tad unfair.

For its time it’s quite frank in sexual matters and it is imbued with a cynicism that is lacking in his other movies.

Though often labeled Noir, this classification is a bit of a hard sell. If the picture is Noir then it is mostly that by virtue of a great femme fatale. There’s no grit, no desperation, no pessimism, no paranoia in this movie. Instead we get a stylish woman’s picture with occasional soap opera antics. It’s a sly melodrama that is so overheated at times it verges on campy parody, with Fontaine playing a conniving bitch to rival Eve Harrington.

Joan Leslie plays Donna, a young publishing assistant in San Francisco with filthy rich fiancé Curtis Carey (Zachary Scott). Her friends include gay painter Gobby (Mel Ferrer) who has a knack for zingy one-liners and put-downs; and Nick, a studly novelist (Robert Ryan, who else).

So lovely...so pure...she can't be bad

Into town breezes Donna’s seemingly prim and proper cousin Christabel Caine (Joan Fontaine) who thus far has lived with her old maiden aunt in a stagnant backwater. Christabel’s trouble from the second she establishes herself in Donna’s apartment. She goes to work immediately on every man in sight. But what Chris really wants is Donna’s fiancé, or better his money, and she isn’t too choosy in her methods. The sucker falls for it of course. There’s just the little complication of Christabel’s hot and steamy affair with Nick who doesn’t want to give her up…

The against-type casting of Fontaine as femme fatale is quite inspired though not every viewer bought into it. Subverting her genteel on-screen persona, she gives an entertaining performance. That patrician air of hers could go either way, naughty or nice. Her character is described by Nick as "a cross between Lucrezia Borgia and Peg O' My Heart". 

She’s fluffy and sweet cotton candy, laced in copious amounts of deadly poison. So helpless, so sweet, so eager to please…but under a facade of simpering maidenish virtue and humility - she even clutches her pearls several times! - she is a passive-aggressive schemer and manipulator, a deceitful and calculating social climber who leaves a wake of destroyed relationships in her path.

She plays her innocent act so well that it takes people a while until they catch on to her. Always on the lookout to drive a wedge between Donna and Curtis, innuendo is her weapon. She preys on people’s insecurities. To get her way she sweetly coos poisonous nothings about Donna into Curtis’ ears to encourage him to think of Donna as a gold-digger.

Christabel’s cool turns to smoking hot whenever she’s around Nick. The scenes between Fontaine and Ryan sizzle. We get lots of steamy clinches and sexy talk. I always considered Ryan a sexy man and he was at his rugged handsome best here, spouting insinuating pick-up lines and convincing Chris with his phenomenal kissing technique.

Nick isn’t fooled by her though. He has Christabel’s number alright and he knows that his lady love is a scheming tramp with the soul of a cash register, but he doesn’t care. He wants her anyway.

Mel Ferrer is charming as gay artist Gobby, the cynical and catty Greek chorus of the film, with a penetrating insight into human nature. He’s throwing out acerbic little barbs and one-liners continually which are as razor-sharp as they are funny.

He has Christabel pegged from the start too, yet he never breathes a word. He’s almost too non-judgmental. Chris’ malicious ambition seem to amuse him more than shock him. He is contemptuous of the people he paints, but at least he’s honest about it.

Ray wrote the character as obviously gay as he could get away with, including declarations of his orientation. Christabel, who notices his lack of sexual interest in her, asks him: “You don't care very much for women, do you?” to which he answers: “My dear girl, apart from painting my major occupation is convincing women's husbands that I'm harmless.” Gobby thankfully avoids any hint of the typical effeminate stereotype so often found in older films. He doesn’t feel neutered and steals every scene he’s in.

Joan Leslie is sympathetic as Donna. Her shining hour comes when she tells Christabel what exactly she thinks of her. She may be one of Chris’ victims, but she doesn’t take it quietly.

There’s an interesting little social comment on working women in the 50s. The good woman, Donna, works for a living while the evil woman here has no interest in work, explicitly rejecting career opportunities thrown her way.

Zachary Scott has the most thankless role in the film as wooden and a bit dim-witted fiancé who wants to be loved for himself, not his money. He was so much better when playing cads.

In a nice change from the norm the ending doesn’t follow the Code-approved formula that evil must be punished. Curtis gets wise to Christabel’s shenanigans and finally kicks her out. Her world comes crashing down but Chris lands on her feet. Avoiding the cliche of the punishment scene, Christabel doesn't die as the credits roll. No professing of shame and guilt on the deathbed for her. She isn’t looking for redemption, she gets clean away with it all, no doubt looking for some other poor sap to hook. She lives to lie another day.

In an interesting side-note, there was an alternate ending shot which can now finally be found on the Warner Archive Collection DVD. It’s even better. While speeding away from the house, Christabel crashes her car. Does she die? No, she ends up in a hospital where she immediately starts to hit on her surgeon whose wife then sues her for alienation of affection. She’s created another juicy scandal that needs the delicate touch of a lawyer, also married but susceptible. Another day, another sucker, and a game that can be played endlessly. It fits the tone of the movie perfectly.

The movie is far from a masterpiece, but it's an entertaining piece of fluff nevertheless.

The Racket (1951)

The Racket is another fair to middling Howard Hughes offering that is less outright Noir than straightforward crime thriller. It was a remake of Hughes own 1928 movie of the same name which in turn was based on a 1927 stage play. The play daringly suggested that crime was not only practiced by gangsters, hoodlums and career criminals, but also by guardians of law and order and scions of society. Gasp! By 1951, especially after the Kefauver Hearings on Organized Crime, this was a bit of an old chestnut and nobody was particularly shocked anymore.

On top of being a bit out of date, the picture can’t hide its stage origins, especially in the precinct scenes. Characters enter and exit stage right and stage left, as if they’re on Broadway.

Mobster Nick Scanlon (Robert Ryan) has been running Anytown, USA for years by having several local government and law-enforcement officials in his pocket. However, he can't touch incorruptible police captain Tom McQuigg (Mitchum), who refuses all attempts at bribery. He’s continually transferred from one precinct to another because he’s stepped on too many toes. When Johnson (William Talman), one of his best and most honest officers, gets killed by Scanlon, McQuigg wants to bring down Scanlon once and for all with the help of nightclub singer Irene Hayes (Lizabeth Scott).

Hughes overzealous supervision created another movie that - if not an outright mess -  certainly could have been tighter and more streamlined had Hughes kept his harebrained ideas to himself. No such luck. As he was want to do, he not only couldn’t leave a picture alone during filming, he had to tinker with it even after wrapping. Again he spent thousands of dollars on editorial revisions, retakes and reshoots, especially after Kefauver and his Hearings had become trendy. With predictable results.

Sam Fuller wrote the script’s first draft, but of course Hughes scrapped it. I assume it wasn’t quite safe enough. He had the more  conventional William Haines rewrite it, then tossed his script too and drafted hard-boiled crime writer W. R. Burnett to do the deed and add more action. 

Though John Cromwell was the credited director, directing duties were shared by many, including Mel Ferrer and Tay Garnett. Hughes even pressed producer Edmund Grainger and film editor Sherman Todd into (directing) service. In the end it was Nicolas Ray who was left with the thankless task to pick up the pieces and make a decent film out of the chaos. Needless to say, even he couldn’t make a purse out of a pig’s ear.

What Hughes never understood was that you can’t make a good film out of bits and pieces of material, sewn together like a patchwork quilt. It has to be built from the ground up with a solid foundation. His tinkering was supposed to achieve perfection, but it actually yielded a product that was uneven, choppy and occasionally schizophrenic.

What stays though is an amazingly dark vision about Anytown, USA, a city like a hundred others that is completely in the hands of a corrupt mob. It almost seems as if the entire city is mob-affiliated with no way out.

In the wake of the Kefauver Hearings on Organized Crime (1951) - alluded to on the movie poster - a wave of crime films followed which purported to tell exposé stories of stalwart lawmen and their fight against organized crime. In the beginning of the movie we get the obligatory preachy “crime doesn’t pay” message, this time not delivered by a governor, but the a Crime Commission clearly modeled after Kefauver’s Investigating Committee.

Crime had moved out of the hood into the boardroom, from smuggling illegal booze across state lines to buying judges and rigging elections. Crime had not only gone corporate, it had gone national. It now functioned as a partnership of corrupt politicians, judges and business men with methods a lot less crude than Prohibition-era strong-arm tactics.

If this movie belongs to anyone, it is scenery-chewing Robert Ryan. He’s at his psychotic, deranged and snarling best. Ryan is incredibly intense and literally seething with venomous rage, but at the same time manages to come off as a tragic figure. He is oddly sympathetic when he has to realize in the end that his days are numbered. He’s a man who has outlived his time. As a Prohibition-style enforcer, a streetwise tough guy, muscle and violence is all he knows when it comes to protecting his two-bit territory. But times are changing as even his goons notice, Scanlon just didn’t get the memo. It is a battle for dominance between Nick Scanlon and the (never-seen) Old Man, between old-school gangster and the new faceless Syndicate.

It is to Ryan’s credit that his Nick Scanlon doesn’t end up as a one-note caricature.

Mitchum though is a different matter. He’s on the other side of the fence, in true 30s gangster fashion a former boyhood pal of Ryan’s. Honest, stolid, upright, righteous…stop! hold it right there. A squeaky-clean Mitchum? Say it ain’t so. To say he’s playing his role with indifference would be an understatement. He sleepwalks through the movie. He even gives the cops in his new precinct the requisite “stay on the straight and narrow, boys!” speech. But it comes off as anything but motivational, as if Mitchum knows he’s really not the guy to pontificate, especially after his own marihuana bust a few months earlier. I saw a review that called him “Eliot Ness with a hangover”. Spot on.

McQuigg is never even tempted once. The script gives him nothing to learn about himself, nothing to work with. He’s the same man at the conclusion of the movie as in the beginning. He has almost the entire town against him, his house is blown up and his wife almost killed yet he faces no internal conflicts at all. His character doesn’t evolve.

McQuigg must be one of Mitchum’s least interesting roles, and he knows it too. It’s a toothless performance. That wholesome act just doesn’t sit right. This is Mitch we’re talking about, not Jimmy Stewart. He’s not so much understated as bland. However, as RKO’s No.1 star he dutifully did his job as Hughes asked, even if the material was beneath him.

Mitchum only comes to life in his last standoff with Ryan. It’s a collision of two giants.

As always Liz Scott is good in her role as yet another nightclub singer. No-one could ever mistake her for a great actress, there’s always something slightly wooden about her acting, but with her husky breathy whiskey-soaked bedroom voice she could hold any man’s attention. She doesn’t so much give a performance as take up space on the screen and that's okay with me. Given the right material, she is very effective.

William Tallman is cast against type as goody two shoes rookie officer who gets killed by Scanlon. But the real scene stealer here is gum-chewing William Conrad as another crooked cop who brings to life his character more than anybody else on the screen.

In the end the picture doesn’t amount to much. The stuff of greatness is there, it’s just that it is all too moralistic, too simplistic, too clear-cut. The good guys are good, the bad guys bad. Nobody’s motives and intentions are in the least bit murky, there’s no ambiguity here.

There is something incredibly old-fashioned about this film which is simply out of whack with Noir. The punch is missing.

The star power of Ryan and Mitchum counts for a lot, but the very good cast is hampered by an outdated story and trite cliches.

Hughes may have tried to update his Prohibition era play, but ultimately he got a 1920s crime melodrama that should have stayed in the past. I give it an A for effort.

The Damned Don't Cry (1950)

“Don't talk to me about self-respect. That's something you tell yourself you got when you got nothing else.”

Joan Crawford is an actress I find an endlessly fascinating object for study, though I can’t profess to be an unabashed fan at all. But there was always something incredibly gutsy and intriguing about her performances. 

What jumps to the eye right away when viewing especially her later movies is a recurring theme that runs through them. To get a deeper understanding of films like Mildred Pierce, Flamingo Road, Possessed and The Damned Don’t Cry to name a few, one has to look at the phenomenon that was Crawford herself and in the process dig a little deeper into her mental make-up.

Crawford’s life was the classic Hollywood rags-to-riches story. Born into poverty, she knew from an early age that she wanted to BE someone. Her sole desire was to be a star and her ambition was all-consuming. She wanted money, success, respect, beautiful clothes, luxury… and she was incredibly ruthless in her methods to achieve her goals. Nothing and nobody was allowed to stand between her and the top. If this sounds suspiciously like a plot of one of her movies, that’s because it is.

Young Joan literally set out to invent herself. In gossip columnist Louella Parson’s words she was “the only star I know who manufactured herself…she drew up a blueprint for herself …and then set out to put life into the outline.” Bette Davis said in a similar fashion: “To me, she is the personification of the movie star. I have always felt her greatest performance is Crawford being Crawford.”

Crawford used every hour of the day to promote herself and her image. BEING Joan Crawford took precedence over everything else. Crawford has often been called The Ultimate Movie Star simply because she was such an exquisitely manufactured product.

Crawford pictures were star vehicles. Especially from the mid-40s on the narrative featured women from the wrong side of the tracks who claw their way to the top and succeed against all odds.

Not a trained actress, she lived her roles more than she played them. Her films fit her like a glove, because they used elements of its star’s life story. Crawford took a character and moulded it around her own personality. Most of the pictures she made could simply be renamed: The Joan Crawford Story. They were all simply about Joan's fabulousness.

Granted, the formula became repetitious quickly, but it proved to be successful with the audiences. It could seamlessly be combined with any other formula, be it gangster movie, Noir or woman’s melodrama. Joan’s loyal fans loved her for it, notwithstanding script absurdities.

Crawford craved total control on the set over every aspect of filming. As the center of attention, nobody could be favored above her. Her jealousy of other actresses was legendary, and her control issues most certainly led her to often choose male co-stars who were not only younger but often much less famous and well-established than she was, if they weren’t outright nonentities.

In The Damned Don’t Cry, we have contract player David Brian, B actor Steve Cochran and nice but dull-as-dishwater Kent Smith. They’re all just supposed to act as a foils for Crawford’s star performance. 

Brian though is amazingly charismatic as snake-like gangster, and testosterone-laden Cochran, as always, steals the show though that surely couldn’t have been Crawford’s intention. A little misstep maybe on her part.

Loosely based on the story of Bugsy Siegel and Virginia Hill, The Damned Don’t Cry was directed by “woman’s director” Vincent Sherman for Warner Bros. The production values are top-notch, definitively helped by on-location shooting in Palm Springs.

The film has some ludicrous plot contrivances, but what Noir hasn’t? Yes, it’s hokum, a lurid and trashy potboiler, but the film effectively conveys a sense of moral ambiguity and entrapment that builds around Crawford and her descent into a life of crime from which there is no escape. To me this pictures has everything a torrid melodrama should have, even if it is completely overwrought. Or maybe just because of it. Crawford and camp go hand in hand, and I don’t mean that as a slight. But to her credit, Crawford never loses her dignity, not even when the material was beneath her. She managed to make tawdriness classy.

The film starts out with a “where did I go wrong” flashback confession from Crawford in which she recalls the events that drove her back to her estranged parents’ house, the last place she ever wanted to see again.

Crawford plays Ethel Whitehead (what a name), a miserable drudge from the wrong part of town married to a poor oil worker. They live in shabby respectability that is just this side of abject poverty. The death of her little son shows her that living by the rules doesn’t get her anywhere. “I want something more out of life and I’m gonna get it” becomes her mantra. She takes off to New York where she catches on pretty fast to life in the big city. She finds work as a “model” for a low-rent fashion house, and soon discovers that “private fittings” with customers, I mean buyers, are a lot more lucrative. On top of being an escort, she becomes a cast-iron gold digger and climbs the social ladder to the top one gullible suitor at a time.

On the way up she encounters mild-mannered and timid account Martin Blackford (Kent Smith) who’s easy pickings. He wants to marry her, but she’s set her sights a bit higher. He lacks her compelling drive and ambition and so becomes negligible. She then becomes the mistress of big-time gangland boss George Castleman (David Brian), an ice-cold, urbane and polished snake, who knows the difference between a flowerpot and a “vahse”. He helps Ethel reinvent herself as mysterious socialite Lorna Hanson Forbes (sounds familiar?). All this luxury has its price though and Castleman’s price is her help in bringing down his underling Nick Prenta (Steve Cochran) who’s gotten a bit too big for his own good. Lorna falls for Prenta though, Castleman doesn’t like it  and the inevitable showdown of all involved ends in tragedy…

The Damned is a movie about ruthless ambition, greed, corruption, betrayal and ultimately murder. A deep-rooted cynicism runs through it. Success by any means is everyone’s philosophy, so corruption becomes by necessity the only way ahead. Accountant Martin is willing to go along for the ride leaving his scruples behind because he thinks he can win Lorna. For her he’s just a step up the ladder. Lorna tries to take the boys on in their own world and uses sex to compete because it’s the only currency she’s got. She does understand that what she’s doing is morally wrong, it’s just that the difference between right and wrong has become inconsequential and her moral compass has slipped.

Castleman clawed his way out of his humble beginnings and stopped at nothing to achieve his goals. He’s nobody’s fool, not even Lorna’s. His power is a strong aphrodisiac for Crawford and their relationship is a twisted struggle for control.

That is Noir: the world is a dark place and sucks all the goodness out of decent people once they’ve gotten a taste of the good life, until nothing is left. But you can depend on karma to come back to bite you in the behind…

Crawford makes hers transformation from downtrodden housewife to glamorous socialite believable even though a good bit of suspension of disbelief is required. But that is a testament to her acting ability. You can’t take your eyes off her though she is most certainly too old for her part. Even over-the-hill Joanie doesn’t disappoint.

Eddie Muller described Noir as suffering with style and this is certainly the case here. Joan suffers beautifully, however the mink and pearls she swathes herself in take the edge off considerably.

In later years Crawford was often the butt of jokes and not unjustifiably so. She hardened into a parody of herself. By the early 1950s Joan Crawford was coming towards the end of her spectacular run as one of the leading female stars of Hollywood and even with her best years behind her, she was still a force to be reckoned with though it became increasingly hard to believe Crawford as the irresistible siren the script requires her to be. But by sheer force of spirit she manages to rise above script absurdities and make tosh enjoyable.

When lesser pictures fail, it's often because the actors can't put across the ridiculous plot contrivances. Crawford always could.