Pop! Goes the Flashbulb: In Noir, Photographers Did It the Old Fashioned Way, and their Pictures Usually Turned the Town, and Crime Investigations, Upside Down

Howard Duff snaps a candid shot in "Shakedown" (1950).

Contains Spoilers

By Paul Parcellin

Lighting and photographic style play an outsized role in crime dramas of all kinds, including film noir. But then there are the noirs and thrillers that put a camera in front of the camera — or to be more precise, they’re films in which a photographer and his or her pictures play a key role in the story. 

It turns out that the camera can perform a number of roles, as recorder of truth, an instrument of deception and blackmail, a shield against assault or a device that uncovers crime that the naked eye wouldn’t notice. 

Holding a camera and press credentials — real or fake — can help get you into places that normally restrict access, be it a crime scene, lavish party or a war zone — and some are a combination of all three.

Here are some films featuring paparazzo whose pictures shake up the status quo for better or worse:

Martha Vickers, Humphrey Bogart, "The Big Sleep."

“The Big Sleep” (1946) 

A camera is a blackmailer's best friends. It can catch a dupe in the act of regrettable deeds and preserve that transgression for ill-gained profit. Private eye Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) is hired to get elderly Gen. Sternwood’s young daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers) out of just such a pickle. 

A blackmailer catches her on film, drugged up and in a compromising position. 

It’s highly embarrassing for Gen. Sternwood. For Carmen? Meh.

The incriminating pictures are taken with a camera hidden inside an Asian sculpture in the home of shady bookseller Arthur Geiger. In addition to handling volumes of Shakespeare and Spinoza, Geiger also maintains a backroom lending library of smut.  

But his blackmail scheme is just the tip of the iceberg, and the deeper Marlowe dives into this black pool of treachery the greater the number of players he discovers. So sprawling and complex is this mystery that even after hearing the solution you may be a bit confused. I certainly was.

Duff, "Shakedown" — the last shot.

“Shakedown” (1950)

News photographer Jack Early (Howard Duff) blows his boss’s mind with his candid shots of crimes in progress. Turns out his uncanny luck of being at the right place when the action unfolds has little to do with good fortune and a lot to do with inside info. Through manipulations and backroom arrangements he snaps pictures that other photographers miss, making him the newsroom star.

His editor sends him on a near impossible mission to photograph a crime boss who won’t allow his picture to be taken, and the camera clicker makes a deal with the kingpin — then double crosses him. 

The film’s wrap-up sees the slimy photographer set up his camera for a spectacular shot, and it turns out to be his last.

Keep an eye out for Hollywood wild man Lawrence Tierney and an uncredited Rock Hudson. 

Cyd Charisse, "Tension."

“Tension”  (1949)

It doesn’t take a pro photographer, an FBI agent or a blackmailer to shoot a picture that blows a mystery wide open. Sometimes an ordinary “Jane Q. Public” can handle the job.

Shutter bug Mary Chanler (Cyd Charisse) is romantically attracted to dashing salesman Paul Sothern (Richard Basehart). The problem is that Sothern isn’t who he says he is. He’s milquetoast pharmacy employee Warren Quimby, who’s planning to kill his cheating wife Claire’s (Audrey Totter) boyfriend, Barney Deager (Lloyd Gough).

Quimby assumes the fictional identity of Sothern, hoping to get close enough to Deager to do him in. 

He doesn’t go through with it, and his plan backfires after he drops the “Sothern” guise and goes back to being Quimby. Mary thinks he’s gone missing and gives the police a photo of him she snapped as a lark. Before long, the authorities figure out that Quimby and Sothern are the same person, and things begin to look worse for Quimby when Deager turns up dead.

If nothing else, it’s probably a good idea to remember that, in noir, there is no such thing as a harmless photograph. 

James Stewart, "Rear Window." 

“Rear Window” (1954)

Photographs can record information that the untrained eye would not normally see. And strangely enough, the camera can be used as a defensive weapon to obscure an intruder’s vision and stop him in his tracks.

Confined to a wheelchair with a broken leg, photo journalist L. B. "Jeff" Jefferies (James Stewart) wiles away his time watching the goings on visible through his neighbors’ windows. None of it is X-rated, but there’s an undercurrent of voyeuristic impulse on display in this Alfred Hitchcock thriller.

One resident in the unit across the courtyard catches his interest. It’s the apartment that Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) shares with his wife, and Jefferies begins to suspect that the burly Thorwald has done away with her.

Pondering this, Jefferies pores over photos of the garden and realizes that the camera has picked up something suspicious. A buried object, perhaps? 

Piece by piece, Jefferies and his lady friend Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) collect evidence and turn up the heat on Thorwald. His brooding neighbor finally breaks and comes to Jefferies’ apartment intending to silence him for good. 

But Jefferies’s trusty camera comes in handy when he repeatedly fires the flash attachment to temporarily blind the intruder. Flash bulb after flash bulb, Jefferies clicks away to ward off the attack. But like a soldier running out of ammo, his ploy can only stave off trouble for so long and the outcome could be very bad.

David Hemmings, "Blow-Up."

“Blow-Up” (1966)

Here’s another example of a camera capturing the truth and revealing odd details that the eye tends to miss. Sometimes that obscure information can reveal a criminal conspiracy. But no matter how air-tight the photographic evidence may seem, the pursuit of justice can be a futile endeavor. 

Fashion photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) plies his trade in 1960s Swinging London. Occasionally he delves into art photography, a pursuit that unexpectedly plunges him into a sinkhole of doubt and paranoia.  

While shooting landscape photos in a park one day, he photographs a couple lingering there. Upon enlarging and examining the resulting photos he sees a man with a gun and a body hidden among the greenery. He realizes that he’s stumbled onto a crime scene and the lingering couple are likely the victim and a co-conspirator.

Try as he might, he can’t seem to elicit any concern from his peers, all of whom seem to wallow in a haze of pot smoke, aloof and coolly detached from reality. 

When the alleged crime scene photos are stolen, Thomas is left with nothing tangible to persuade authorities to investigate and his efforts hit a brick wall. 

In the park he meets a mime troupe playing a mock game of  tennis with invisible rackets and balls, and he soon becomes wrapped up in watching the faux game. Reality, it seems, is what the majority believe it to be, regardless of any evidence to the contrary.

Joe Pesci, "The Public Eye."

“The Public Eye” (1992)

Freelance news photographer Leon "Bernzy" Bernstein (Joe Pesci) roams the streets of 1940s New York in search of gruesome crime scenes and other tabloid  fodder.  He’s a thinly veiled stand-in for shutter-snapper Arthur Fellig, a.k.a. “Weegee,” whose work is still shown in museums and published in fine art catalogues as well as coffee table books. 

Weegee, so called because of his ability to anticipate when and where juicy photo opportunities would crop up, was not above ginning up a crime scene to make more spectacular pictures. Likewise, Bernzy might move a fedora closer to a corpse for dramatic effect at the expense of fidelity to the truth. But that’s because Bernzy, like Weegee, sees a higher truth in his art — and he does see his photographs as art, not mere junk journalism. 

His aesthetic sense, his nose for news as well as his marketing savvy tell him to go for the dramatic gut-punch and leave the detective work to the coppers. He may have smudged a latent fingerprint here or there, but his pictures deliver the sort of blood and guts shots that leap off the page in tabloid bulldog editions.  

Jake Gyllenhaal, "Nightcrawler."

“Nightcrawler” (2014)

So far we’ve only talked about still photographers, but an exception can be made for “Nightcrawler,” which shines a harsh light on the TV news biz, more specifically, the sleazy, deceptive practices of freelance videographer Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), who covers nighttime Los Angeles and distorts the truth to fit what the viewing public wants to see and hear. 

As his career advances, Bloom reveals his utter lack of ethics as he makes a grotesque lunge toward success while trampling the journalistic ideals of even handedness, fair play and above all else, the truth. 

Charles Bronson, "Man with a Camera."

“Man with a Camera” (1958-1960)

This TV crime drama features war veteran turned freelance photographer Mike Kovac (Charles Bronson). Kovac usually snaps pictures for insurance companies, the police and average citizens. He’s known for taking dangerous assignments that others turn down and he often acts as a private eye, to boot. 

His police liaison is Lt. Donovan (James Flavin) and he seeks counsel from his dad, Anton Kovac (Ludwig Stössel). 

When working undercover, Kovac uses slick devices such as cameras hidden in a radio, cigarette lighter and his necktie — shades of James Bond. Better yet, he’s got car phone and a portable darkroom in the trunk for developing film on the spot, as did Weegee. Some ideas are just too good not to copy.

Is It or Isn’t It? “Clash by Night” is a Gripping Drama, Alright, But Some Insist It Doesn’t Make the Cut as an Authentic Noir Because It Lacks One Crucial Element

Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan,
"Clash by Night" (1952).

Contains Spoilers

By Paul Parcellin

“Clash by Night” has  the look and feel of noir, but not everyone thinks of it that way. It stars Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan, two giants of the shadowy crime dramas of the 1940s and ‘50s that define those dark films. Some might say they make the perfect brooding noir couple.

If that’s not enough to establish the film as noir, note that Fritz Lang, dean of saturnine German expressionist films and American made noirs, directed. The Austrian-born Lang came to America in 1934 and brought the angst and shadows of German Expressionism with him. With an immigrant’s objective eye, he saw beyond the glossy surface of American life depicted in Hollywood films and instead turned his focus to the alienation and desperation seething within common folk. 

Fritz Lang,
master of noir.

He directed noir classics such as “The Woman in the Window” (1944), “Scarlet Street” (1945), “The Big Heat” (1953) and “Ministry of Fear” (1944), not to mention his German expressionist masterpieces, “M” (1931) and “Metropolis” (1927), among many others. Set in Monterey, Calif., “Clash by Night” is about working class people who toil on fishing boats and in a cannery, away from the big cities where noir tales typically unfold. 

Director and film historian Peter Bogdanovich, speaking on the DVD’s commentary track says that, although he’s a fan of “Clash by Night,” it’s not a noir. Unfortunately, he doesn’t explain his reasons for that judgment call. The disc was released as part of a box set called “Film Noir Classic Collection, Volume Two,” and Bogdanovich’s pronouncement must have dismayed the distributor.

What others who doubt the film’s noir pedigree say is that because no one gets murdered it’s not noir. 

Hand to hand combat with the intent to murder erupts at one point, and there’s even a kidnapping, although neither turns into much of an actionable offense.

Even if the film comes up short in the homicide department, it’s got atmosphere galore and conflicted, alienated characters living under a cloud of existential dread, all of which makes it an awful lot like a noir.

The story begins when Mae Doyle (Stanwyck) returns to town after a decade long absence. Her hopes of marrying a rich man and enjoying the good life somewhere far from the fish cannery have turned to ash. She runs into Jerry D’Amato (Paul Douglas), a kindly but unsophisticated bachelor fisherman who wants nothing more than for Mae to be his wife. She warns him it would be a mistake, but Jerry is too smitten to take her advice. 

Meanwhile, his friend, Earl Pfeiffer (Ryan), a projectionist at the local cinema, turns up. He’s the polar opposite of teddy bear Jerry. Earl is arrogant, disenchanted with life and he harbors a hatred of women — he’s separated from his burlesque dancer wife. In his typically sardonic sense of humor, Earl mutters, “Some day I’m going to stick her with pins and see if blood runs out.” He’s joking, of course, but with Earl there’s a fine line between comedy and tragedy.

Earl is attracted to Mae, but she deflects his bravado and thinks he’s a lout. Earl harbors contempt for his so-called buddy Jerry, and it’s obvious to everyone but Jerry, who remains oblivious to the emotional stirrings around him. Mae resents Earl’s condescending attitude toward Jerry, probably because she secretly harbors similar thoughts and feels guilty about it.

She finally agrees to marry Jerry because she wants a safe harbor that will protect her from the uncertainty and disappointments life dishes out. Earl may be the more exciting of the two gents, but he’ll never be the protector that Mae believes she needs. But we know she’ll have trouble sticking to her promise to be the kind of wife that Jerry wants.

Later, Mae’s brother, Joe (Keith Andes), gets engaged to his sweetheart, cannery worker Peggy (Marilyn Monroe), and for a while she shares Mae’s darkest view of marriage, that of being trapped in the small fishing village with nothing to relieve the dullness.

When Peggy’s doubts surface, Joe tells her he’d kick down the door to get her back, and with that her indecision is vanquished — a testimony of true love if there ever was one, she feels.

Marilyn, scandal followed her.

This was Marilyn’s first above-the-title billing, and in her small role she makes a fine showing as the naive but plucky hometown girl. The casting was tough luck for Andres, however. Whenever Marilyn’s on the screen everyone else in the shot might as well be invisible. 

Adding more spice to the mix, Marilyn was the source of a scandal during production. The actress was on loan to RKO from Fox, and during production some nude photos she’d posed for a few years prior came to light. Fox protected her reputation and kept the photos under wraps. But RKO, then headed by Howard Hughes, had no long-term investment in the actress and leaked the story to the press to reap publicity from it. Consequently, reporters mobbed Marilyn and the film’s star, Stanwyck, got the short end of the publicity stick. Stanwyck took it all in stride and continued to perform like the trouper that she was. 

It’s easy to imagine Stanwyck rolling with the punches and getting on with the job, and that same sense of self-reliance carries over to her characterization of Mae. She’s in control and unflappable in the face of temporary agitations. But even Mae has her limits. As the story progresses she stoically resists Earl’s advances. Now married to Jerry and the mother of a baby girl, Mae puts the boorish Earl in his place. She calls him “crude” when he suddenly comes on too strong. “You impress me as a man who needs a new suit of clothes or a love affair and he doesn’t know which,” she tells him. 

Clifford Odets,
poetic dialogue.

The streetwise poetic flair in the dialogue comes in part from playwright Clifford Odets — others worked on the screenplay — whose play was adapted into the movie. Typical of Odets, words coming out of the characters’ mouths are strangely flamboyant and display the writer’s idiosyncratic manner of capturing the cadence of working class speech.

Verbal fisticuffs ensue when Jerry invites Earl to visit the couple, Earl has had too much to drink and is allowed to sleep it off. The next morning, with Jerry away at work, Earl, still impetuous as ever, tells Mae that she and him are alike, “You’re born and you’d like to be unborn,” he says. His gloomy outlook is an apt description of both her and him, and that shared sense of alienation causes Mae to let her guard down. 

Tensions among the three grow stormier like the roiling ocean just beyond their doorsteps, and the film’s occasional cutaways to the briny deep signal trouble on the horizon. Partly shot on location, the film opens with a montage of fishing boats in the harbor, Jerry and Joe hauling in a catch and Peggy laboring in the cannery, in essence we see the community in a nutshell. 

Lang’s career began in the silent era, and it shows in the way he tells stories without dialog. It’s a cliche to say that you can almost smell the air, but this composition of coastal shots have just that effect.

If you’re still in doubt that “Clash by Night” is in fact noir, consider this:

In the absence of felonious behavior — murder, robbery, assault — other forms of anti-social behavior — adultery, violence, betrayal and corruption are at the core of noir. Add to that the sense of existential dread and misanthropy that runs throughout “Clash by Night,” and yes, it is noir, through and through. In the end, it’s the emotions and mood, not the murder that counts.

One Revealing Moment: Something that Happens in “The Night of the Hunter” Made Me Rethink My First Impression of the Film and See It in an Entirely New Light

Robert Mitchum, "The Night of the Hunter" (1955).

By Paul Parcellin

I first saw “The Night of the Hunter” (1955) around 20 or so years ago and walked away impressed but not particularly in love with the movie, and having said that I know what many of you are thinking: Heresy! 

I have no real excuse for my initial reaction. I’ll blame it on a lack of sleep, fatigue after sitting through too many double features in a row, or some other convenient but less than honest alibi. 

Whatever. 

Sometimes the point of a film, that is, the thing that distinguishes it from others, can fly right past you. At least in my case it did. But, I’m glad that I recently rewatched it because I’d missed one salient point. Perhaps that is the reason why the popularity of this Charles Laughton directed drama, the only film he ever helmed, which has been an audience and critics’ favorite for decades, puzzled me a bit.

The story goes like this:

Itinerant preacher and psychopath Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) scours the American countryside during the Great Depression, preaching the word of the Lord as he searches for rich widows to romance, marry and bump off, after which he absconds with their dough. To say the least, Harry’s theological credentials are questionable. He’s the picture of evil, and if that isn’t obvious enough he has the words “LOVE” and “HATE” tattooed on the fingers of both hands. 

Sally Jane Bruce, Billy Chapin,
Shelley Winters, Robert Mitchum.

Before long he finds Willa Harper (Shelley Winters), widow of Ben Harper, who was executed for a couple of murders he committed during a bank robbery. Harry was Ben’s prison cellmate, and the evil preacher suspects that Ben stashed a pile of the loot from the robbery in his homestead. Once he locates his prey, Harry expertly worms his way into the Harper family, which includes 9-year-old John (Billy Chapin) and 4-year old Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce). 

A supreme conman, Harry earns Willa’s trust and dazzles her friends and neighbors with dramatic sermons. A look of serene satisfaction washes over the townsfolk’s faces whenever Harry waxes poetic about the struggle of good over evil. While his LOVE/HATE tattoos ought to be ample warning that something’s rotten in Denmark, a gaggle of believers, including Willa, remains deeply under his spell.

Before long, young John finds himself in the increasingly treacherous position of resisting his gullible mother, who marries the evil man and wants John to embrace Harry as his stepdad. The youngster already has Harry’s number, and tries to make his mother see the truth, but she’s smitten and unable to accept the obvious. It seems that nearly every adults in town has fallen down on the job of protecting the little ones.

Another Serial Killer Comes to Mind

Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten,
"Shadow of a Doubt" (1943).

“The Night of the Hunter”’s plot resembles Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt” (1943), in which Joseph Cotten plays Uncle Charlie, a mentally disturbed rake who hides from the law with his sister and her family, and has a habit of knocking off rich widows for profit. But Hitchcock’s film is anchored in a more natural and realistic view of small town American than is Laughton’s. “The Night of the Hunter” has a surreal edge that at times makes it seem like a storybook legend of horrific proportions come to life. 

Unlike Cotten’s seething but restrained Uncle Charlie, Mitchum’s bad guy is a thundering force of nature whose mere presence can charm an entire community whilst putting the lives of the vulnerable in danger. Like most villains, Harry is the hero of his own story and is only doing the Lord’s work, he reasons. He talks to God, seeking direction, and the Almighty furnishes the phony preacher with victims to murder and rob so that Harry can continue to spread the good word. Or at least that’s what Harry believes. 

So, is Harry delusional and psychotic or crystal clear about the ethics of his deeds and purely remorseless? Hard to say, exactly, but most likely it’s a bit of each of the above. But there’s no doubt that he’s a monster and what is most disturbing is that no one is suspicious of him when they ought to be — no one except John, that is, who seems to have inherited all of the common sense in his family. 

Mitchum, glowering at the Burlesque show.

Early on, we see the psychological conflicts behind Harry’s anti-social behavior. When we first meet him he’s tooling around in stolen car. The cops eventually catch up with him and haul him out of a burlesque show where he’s been seething and glowering at a dancer. It’s distinctly possible that the highly repressed preacher is window shopping for victim on whom he could murderously vent his psycho-sexual rage. Later, on his and Willa’s wedding night, she nervously prepares for her first erotic encounter with her new spouse, but Harry is enraged and disgusted by her conjugal expectations. Clearly, Willa is not in for a memorable honeymoon.

So, What’s the Problem?

From the above plot summary you’d rightly conclude that this film has a lot of the elements that a noir ought to have, and you may be wondering why I hadn’t revisited it over the years.

As I relate this to you I can almost hear the crowd gathering on my doorstep, pitchforks, torchlights and axes in hand, so I’ll have to make this somewhat brief. This isn’t going to be a hatchet job, so please lay down your weapons for a moment as I make my case.

Part of the reason why I allowed this film to lie dormant in my memory for so long might be because it’s just plain hard to pin down exactly what kind of movie it is. Depending on who you talk to you might call it a noir, which I do, but it skirts other genres and styles, too. 

For instance:

An escape on the river.

If you think of it as a noir, you’ll probably notice that it tends to wander into unfamiliar territory from time to time. The young ones flee Harry’s murderous wrath, narrowly escaping on a skiff that carries them downstream on the river Huckleberry Finn style, and the film begins to feel more Mark Twain than James M. Cain.

At other times we get a distinctly western vibe, in part because of its rural setting, but especially when Harry takes to horseback in pursuit of the runaway children. 

To add yet another flavor to the stew, you might call it a monster movie and that wouldn’t be too far off base, either, although nothing supernatural occurs and it has not a hint of science fiction. But Harry Powell is clearly a demon and a serial killer in clerical garb who wants money and is willing to murder women and children to get it. 

Robert Mitchum, Billy Chapin, Sally Jane Bruce.

Also muddying the noir waters are those carefully arranged visual motifs that crop up every now and then. Even the dark, forbidding basement, with the staircase and doorway looming above the kids as they hide from Harry, is an artfully framed composition that is at once terrifying and strangely aesthetically pleasing. Almost each scene begins with a well composed, meticulously framed shot, like photographs in a picture book that come to life. Shots of the crescent moon, jackrabbits and an owl are incorporated into the nighttime scenes on the river. We see the kids on their skiff shot through a spiderweb in the foreground —  a metaphor that makes us wonder if they will be caught in Harry’s web? 

As the youths journey downriver, heavy (maybe heavy handed) symbolism continues. They pass a flock of sheep and we think of sacrificial lambs — Harry liked to call the kids “little lambs,” a creepy smokescreen that fooled everyone except John. 

Safe at Last?

Lillian Gish, Robert Mitchum, Gloria Castillo,
Harry waits to pounce.

They finally drift into the sheltering arms of kindly Miss Cooper (Lillian Gish), who has turned her home into a refuge for orphans and we’re allowed to breathe a momentary sigh of relief. Echoing John and Pearl’s dramatic trip downriver, more symbolism is in store at Miss Cooper’s nightly Bible reading, which happens to include the parable of Moses and the bulrushes; the infant Moses, floating downstream, is rescued by the Pharaoh’s daughter, a story that is all too familiar to the two youngsters.

I must admit that part of my problem with these thoughtfully composed sequence was that I didn’t get the B-movie charge I’d associated with noir. That’s not to say I didn’t care for films from the major studios, but I was, and still am, hooked on the slapdash craftsmanship that went into low budget Poverty Row B-movie, such as “Detour.” To me, their kind of ragged, shot on the fly aesthetic has an unselfconscious energy that’s hard to replicate.

Confronted with “The Night of the Hunter,” a strangely allegorical film, I had trouble accepting it as a noir. It’s full of dark shadows, thundering locomotives and murder; all the stuff that sounds like noir. But how could it be noir? It doesn’t take place in the present day, nor is it set in the city. Needless to say, my short-sighted views have since been revised.

Most significant of all was that “revealing moment” in “The Night of the Hunter” that caused me to rethink my opinion of the film. It’s one of the story's most important scenes: Harry’s arrest. 

It passes rather quickly so it’s easy to miss its significance — especially if you’re not particularly alert at the time. In it, John witnesses the lawmen’s takedown of Harry. As the police wrestle him to the ground and snap on the cuffs, John is nearly moved to tears, pleading with the cops to take it easy on Harry. 

John and Pearl's father, Ben (Peter Graves),
is taken into custody.

That scene is a replay of the one we see in the beginning of the film in which John witnesses his father, Ben, being roughly taken into custody. It’s a dramatic flashback for the young boy, who had remained stoic as he and his sister traveled through hell before arriving at this concluding scene, and it opens a floodgate of emotion in him. The whole experience may have cost him his innocence, but John has not forfeited his humanity. He still regards Harry as a human being even though the murderous thug killed his mother and was inches away from slaying him and his sister.

Because John was dragged through the virtual fires of Hades and survived, and was not tarnished or jaded from the experience, he is one of the film’s heroes. The other is Miss Cooper, who, with her trusty rifle saves the day. 

Another thought I had after seeing the film again:

In the end, it took a perceptive 9-year-old boy to see through a charlatan’s facade while most of the adults were hoodwinked by a conman who exploited their religious fervor. 

John's clarity of vision is something we could well use more of today.  

The Man From Nowhere: Who is Larry Cravat and why do so many people want to do him harm?

John Hodiak, Nancy Guild, "Somewhere in the Night" (1946).

Battle Fatigue on the Homefront:
Two views of life after the big one

By Paul Parcellin

“Somewhere in the Night” (1946)

George Taylor (John Hodiak) awakens in a military hospital, and to his horror discovers that his memory has been wiped clean by a serious wound he received in the war. He can’t remember his name or anything of his past, but he hides his amnesia from the doctors to prevent them from holding him longer. After his bodily scars heal, he’s resolved to discover who he really is. 

Shell shocked returning veterans like George are often seen in noir. Characters such as Gerard (Dick Powell) in “Cornered” (1945) and the unforgettable Buzz (William Bendix) in “The Blue Dahlia,” with a steel plate implanted in his skull and tormented to the brink of insanity by “monkey music.” Both walk down hostile streets, vulnerable, filled with rage and terribly lost. 

Like his war damaged brethren, George embarks on a mission, believing he may fill the black hole that has replaced his memories. Back in civilian life, he searches for leads but there’s scant information to go on. A note from an anonymous person wishing him the worst of luck because he committed an unforgivable deed, and a letter from a man he doesn’t know, Larry Cravat, is all that he’s able to find.

Right away we notice that he has an intuitive ability to analyze clues, which is itself a hint about his ilife before the war. His quest begins in Los Angeles, his hometown — he wouldn’t have known that if the discharge officer hadn’t mentioned it. 

As the story unfolds, we’re left to ponder two equally mysterious men, Larry Cravat, whom we haven’t met, and George, who will lead us on a circuitous journey that is his quest. George sports the pencil thin mustache of a slick operator, and nearly everyone he encounters in his hunt for the truth lives a fast life, mostly on the wrong side of the law. 

Some might imagine that he’s been handed the opportunity of a lifetime, especially for someone with a sketchy past. This could be his chance to reinvent himself and start anew. But his blank slate of a life holds no appeal to George; it’s more like a nightmare from which he can never wake up.

It’s not until he encounters an older woman who reflects on her own isolated, lonely existence that George's existential crisis comes into focus. Few are as cut off from society as those with no history or ties to others. He’s not marooned on an uninhabited desert isle, but he may as well be. Worse still, danger can come from any direction, and he’s never sure who he can trust.

Once we see that desperation and terror are what drives him forward, it’s easier to understand why he takes the kinds of risks that he does. Most of us would go to the authorities for help if we were in George’s position, but he soon realizes that his pre-war activities make that impossible.

In Los Angeles he runs into some tough guys who want to know why he’s looking for the elusive Larry Cravat and are willing to pull a trigger to get rid of him.

The pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place when he discovers that a small fortune in cash is up for grabs and members of the underworld are eager to grab it. But most of all, the gangsters want to find the mystery man, Larry Cravat, and so does George. He finally does, and it’s an encounter that he could hardly have anticipated.

Hodiak’s Noir Films

John Hodiak was featured in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat” (1944) opposite Tallulah Bankhead. Fox gave him his starring role in “Somewhere in the Night,” and he acted with Lucille Ball in MGM’s “Two Smart People” (1946). He appeared with George Murphy and Frances Gifford in “The Arnelo Affair” (1947), and Paramount’s “Desert Fury” (1947) with Burt Lancaster and Lizabeth Scott. He played a supporting role in “The Bribe” (1949) and co-starred with Hedy Lamarr in “A Lady Without Passport” (1950).

Co-star Nancy Guild also appeared in “The Brasher Doubloon” (1947).

“Somewhere in the Night” director Joseph Mankiewicz wrote “Manhattan Melodrama” (1934), and wrote and directed “No Way Out” (1950), which launched the career of Sidney Poitier. He’s probably best known for directing “All About Eve” (1950) with Bette Davis.

His last film under contract with Fox was “5 Fingers” (1952), starring James Mason and Danielle Darrieux.

Barry Sullivan, Loretta Young, "Cause for Alarm!" (1951).

“Cause for Alarm!” (1951)

From the outside, everything looks chipper in Ellen and George Jones’s marriage, but for them, post-war domesticity is anything but blissful.  

Ellen (Loretta Young) and George (Barry Sullivan) meet during the war. She’s a nurse at a naval hospital and George is a pilot. Ellen has an amicable split with the physician she’s been dating, Dr. Ranney Grahame (Bruce Cowling), and takes up with George, who happens to be Ranney’s buddy. After the war, George and Ellen marry and settle down in the quiet of the suburbs. George, it turns out, is a brash lout whom Ellen can never seem to please. She endures a mountain of abuse from this narcissistic manipulator who never fails to play the victim.

“Nothing a woman likes better than shoving a man around,” he mutters at one point, although it’s clear that in his marriage, George is the one doing the shoving.

Later, he relates a telling story: As a boy, another youngster tried to take a toy ship he’d painstakingly built. He brutally assaulted the boy in retribution, and as punishment his mother made him give the toy to the battered youth. Despite the many hours it took to craft the ship, George intentionally dropped it on the ground and let it shatter.

It’s painfully obvious that Ellen will end up like that boat should she ever decide to leave him, although that seems unlikely. Despite George's rotten treatment of her, Ellen is devoted to him and is an apologist for his bad behavior.

But matters get worse when he shares with Ellen his paranoid delusion that she and Ranney are secretly involved and are planning to do him in.

A chain of events causes Ellen to rush madly across the city in an attempt to intercept a letter that George dropped into the post. In it, he fabricated evidence that could put Ellen in prison for life. The film’s last act is filled with near misses and constantly worsening complications. A nosey neighbor, her insistent mother-in-law and a child on a tricycle conspire to scuttle her quest to retrieve the all-important envelope from the rigid U.S. Postal Service. 

Despite its suburban setting, “Cause for Alarm!” shows us that  tree-lined residential streets can present a deceptively placid facade that masks what’s really happening behind the scenes. And it may be every bit as threatening as the mean streets of the big, bad city.

Gumshoe Confidential: Would-Be White Knights, Reluctant Heroes and Rotten Apples, Otherwise Known as Private Detectives, Walked the Mean Streets of a Noir Hellscape

Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Mary Astor,
Sydney Greenstreet, “The Maltese Falcon” (1941).

By Paul Parcellin

Private eyes, those lone rangers who traverse bleak urban landscapes, are romanticized in books, radio dramas and movies as upholders of right and wrong. They do the dirty work that the cops can’t or won’t touch. Often hired by those who are monied, corrupt, or both, they’re the go-to guys when it comes to cleaning up messes that the well heeled and their offspring leave in their wakes. 

But reality clashes with the fictional representation of the private eye. 

Some shamuses may be straight arrows, but few are Boy Scouts. In the 1930s-’40s, private detectives were apt to earn their bread and butter by spying on adulterers and snapping steamy photos that would turn up in divorce proceedings. Others were thugs for hire who busted heads to break up strikers’ picket lines — company men had no use for organized labor, you see.

Both crime fiction and movies of the 1940s paint a morally ambiguous but mostly favorable picture of the private sleuth. They are renegades, loners and upholders of justice in a world where, to quote crime novelist Jim Thompson, “Nothing is what it seems.” 

They’re often weather-beaten men with shabby offices and thin bank accounts. The honest ones mostly live in cramped walk-ups. A couple have a penthouse and a country club membership, but it’s a cinch that dirty money pays for their luxuries. 

Here’s the rundown on some noir private detectives — my favorites, not an exhaustive list, mind you — who work for the greater good, and a couple who never heard of the word “ethics”:

Many actors have played Philip Marlowe in adaptations of Raymond Chandler’s novels, but let’s stick with the two most prominent ones from the classic noir period, about 1940 to 1959.

In describing Marlowe and his world, Chandler notes that “down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything.” 

Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, “The Big Sleep.”

“The Big Sleep” (1946)

First-time viewers may find the film's labyrinthine plot challenging. No matter. We're immersed in Philip Marlowe's world and wherever he goes we gladly follow. Then, there's the Bogart-Bacall chemistry — always a treat to behold.

Humphrey Bogart gives Marlowe a streetwise, working class persona. He went to college and worked in the district attorney’s office, parting ways due to his tendency toward insubordination and a dislike of red tape. He’s not above skirting the edge of the law when the situation calls for it, but strongly believes in an incorruptible code of ethics.

Dick Powell, Claire Trevor, "Murder, My Sweet."

“Murder, My Sweet” (1944)

This adaptation of Chandler’s “Farewell, My Lovely” was retitled to avoid confusion. Dick Powell, who stars as Marlowe, was best known for musicals, and audiences might have thought it a romance or light comedy. Far be it from the truth. Marlowe is hired by ex-con Moose Malloy who is obsessed with finding his former girlfriend, Velma. Be careful what you wish for, Moose.

Powell plays Philip Marlowe with the air of a sophisticated wise guy who harbors an extreme reluctance to toe the line. He’s an outsider who doesn’t suffer fools and can’t bring himself to play ball with the big guys. The actor's background as a song and dance man shows through when on a whim he playfully skips across a kid’s chock-drawn hopscotch outline on the pavement — a move we could never picture Bogart making.

Jack Nicholson, "Chinatown."

“Chinatown” (1974) 

In 1930s Los Angeles, murder and corruption tarnish the city's pastel vistas. He who controls the water supply is king, and private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) stumbles upon a scheme to grab land, money and natural resources from humble farmers.

Jake Gittes wants respect. He’s got a fancy wardrobe, — he’s dapper and vain — a swell office with a staff at his beck and call. But he ain’t respectable. Like the guy in the barber shop says, “You’ve got a hell of a way of making a living.” Jake sees the water scheme as a means to redeem his reputation. He’s a sleazy but successful detective who specializes in catching adulterers en flagrant. He wants to be the white knight who rescues a damsel in distress (Faye Dunaway), perhaps making up for another woman in his past whom he tried to help but ended up hurting. Add to that, he means to save the humble working people of Los Angeles from the clutches of evil men who would steal their land and their water rights. He overreaches and it gets him in trouble.

Jane Greer, Robert Mitchum, "Out of the Past."

“Out of the Past” (1947) 

We're doomed to repeat our mistakes, especially if Jane Greer is involved. In "Out of the Past,” gas station owner Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) thinks he left his days of shady dealings behind. But gambler Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) thinks otherwise.

Jeff Bailey used to ply his trade as a shamus in New York, then dropped out of sight. By chance his past comes back to haunt him. He’s unlike real private detectives of that era. He doesn’t peep through open transoms or photograph adulterous couples in the heat of passion. He couldn’t abide by his employer, gambler Whit Sterling, but his weakness for the dangerous Kathie Moffat (Greer) proves to be more than he can resist. He wants to disappear, but he’s smitten with Kathie and will go down with the ship if he must. As the reluctant private eye forced out of retirement he’s about to be framed for murder. His respectable life in a small town is about to go up in flames. Yet he tells the scheming Kathie, “Baby, I don’t care.” 

Ward Bond, Humphrey Bogart, Barton MacLane,
"The Maltese Falcon."

“The Maltese Falcon” (1941)

A motley gaggle of thieves and cutthroats enlist private investigator Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) to help locate a missing jewel encrusted statue, the "dingus," as Spade calls it. The search is an exercise in futility. The film itself? Exhilarating.

Sam Spade wants to protect the code of honor among private eyes everywhere. He needs to avenge his detective partner Miles Archer’s death even though he didn’t like him much. He messed around with Miles’s wife once — loyalty has its limits. Much of Dashiell Hammett’s book, on which the film is based, is taken nearly verbatim in the movie. But Bogart’s Samuel Spade isn’t as callous and ruthless as the one in the book. Spade is smooth and can pretend to be corrupt when it helps him take down the bad guys, all of whom want to hire him to do their bidding. But he’s a straight arrow who protects his clients, even when he doesn’t follow in their criminal ways.

Nick Dennis, Ralph Meeker, “Kiss Me Deadly.”

“Kiss Me Deadly” (1955)

P.I. Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) roams Los Angeles with a suitcase full of hell fire. Mickey Spillane's blood and guts opus, transported from the grimy streets of New York to L.A., sees the city teetering on the brink of nuclear armageddon. And Hammer means to stop it.

Mike Hammer is the kind of private eye who doesn’t mind twisting an arm when vital information is being withheld. He’s sleeker and better looking than others in his field. He’s got a swank apartment, drives a Corvette and lives the lifestyle of James Bond. A crew of marauding gangsters is after a suitcase full of hot nuclear soup and Hammer finds himself in the middle of a mad scramble for the deadly stuff. It’s a detective story for a world living in the shadow of the H-bomb. The film received the condemnation of the U.S. Senate’s Kefauver Commission, which accused it of being "designed to ruin young viewers.” 

Sounds like an endorsement to me. 

It Came from Poverty Row: Hollywood's B-Movie Factories Mined Noir Gold

Ann Savage, Tom Neal, "Detour" (1945).
Hitchhiking on the road to hell.

So many westerns were filmed at the small, independently owned studios near the intersection of Sunset Blvd. and Gower St. in Hollywood that people began calling it Gower Gulch. From the 1930s to the ’50s it was the epicenter of low-rent film production and the gaggle of studios there was disparagingly known as Poverty Row. Monogram, Republic, Eagle-Lion and Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), among many others, cranked out westerns, gangster films, horror movies, comedies, teen musicals and films noir, usually on beer-money budgets with modest sets and B- or C-list actors. 

Back in the days when movie houses showed double features, cheaply made B-pictures were paired with big budget films produced by the major studios. Strong demand for B-pictures gave rise to an industry dedicated to knocking out 55- to 75-minute dramas, comedies and musicals that the larger studios were unwilling to bother with. 

Always pinching pennies, Poverty Row directors were known to use sets left behind by more prosperous productions that had been shooting at neighboring soundstages. To save money, directors shot scenes outdoors, often in natural light with Hollywood neighborhoods as backdrops. Interior shots with vast black pools of shadow could mask a lack of sets, props, costumes and even adequate lighting equipment.

Films were often spare, with unfiltered images that seemed to convey noir’s tales of murder and treachery with an air of authenticity not found in polished productions by the majors. 

Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) in Hollywood.
One of the studios where B-pictures were made.

Known for quick and dirty operations, Poverty Row studios took on films that Paramount or Warner Bros. would shy away from. Stories too tawdry for polite company may have been rejected at Fox, but they were the stuff that made Poverty Row’s engine fire on all cylinders. Titles such as “The Red Menace” (1949), “Bury Me Dead” (1947) and “For You I Die” (1948) rolled off the Poverty Row assembly line. Many had a sensational, ripped from the headlines feel that reflected the brash energy of American tabloid journalism of the 1940s and ’50s. 

Of course, not each an every film shot on Poverty Row sparkled like a diamond. With rushed schedules and budgets stretched to the breaking point there's bound to be some clunkers. Production values were less than top-notch, performances could be uneven and scripts had plot holes you could drive a Buick Roadmaster through. Shooting schedules were usually short and hectic, often less than a week for feature films. While a goodly amount of the output was dreck, a number of masterpieces were the product of those thread-bare productions. Ingenuity and craftsmanship could make up for tight finances and screenplays sorely in need of a rewrite. 

Many skilled technicians who’d been in Hollywood since the days of the silents found a steady income there. The low-rent studios didn’t pay much, but kept droves of film industry veterans off the breadlines during the Depression. It was a blue collar island in a neighborhood bulging at the seams with high falutin artistes.

Poverty Row was a corner of the industry that didn't take itself overly seriously. No one expected that Monogram, PRC and Eagle Lion’s pictures would ever be regarded as art, and the likelihood of critics ever seeing them was slim to none. Above all else it was a tough racket. Films were at times cut with the delicacy of a flying meat cleaver and distributors were often paid a flat fee for each film regardless of how many tickets were sold. 

This was a market of mass production and the goal was to deliver the product with great speed. 

The chaotic atmosphere and urgency to get a film in the can paradoxically offered directors and other artists greater latitude to try things that would never be approved by larger studios. The relatively low cost of each project allowed directors and actors to be largely left alone to do their work without interference, which resulted in some spectacular and enduring films that otherwise might never have been made. 

Five Noirs Made for Peanuts 

that Still Knock Our Socks Off

Here are a handful of top-notch crime dramas (and one that's not so top-notch) produced during Poverty Row’s heyday. I’ll list more of them in the coming weeks. Please feel free to enter your picks for the best Poverty Row crime and noir features in the Comments section below.:

Tom Neal, "Detour." Trapped in a paranoid nightmare.

“Detour” (1945) Producers Releasing Corporation

We begin with the grand daddy of noirs done on dirt cheap budgets by independently minded directors. In this case it’s the King of B-pictures, Edgar G. Ulmer. It’s a classic example of how a bottom-rung budget can set a gritty, claustrophobic mood that looks just right for noir. We can almost feel desperation radiating off the screen. It’s the production’s thread-bare look that enhances the protagonist’s sense of hopelessness and isolation. 

The very down-at-the-heels look is in itself a character in this movie, and it’s that shop-worn texture that sets the mood and somehow makes the plot all the more credible. It’s the story of pianist Al Roberts (Tom Neal) who just can’t seem to catch a break. His head is filled with visions of Carnegie Hall, but instead he pounds the keys at a gin joint, scooping up tips from the punters and gritting his teeth. His gal sings at the saloon to his accompaniment, but fed up with their dead end existence, she cuts bait and heads for the West Coast in search something better. 

Al stays behind in New York until he finally gets the gumption to follow his love. He’s broke, so he gets out on the highway and sticks out his thumb. He feels a rush of enthusiasm he hasn’t experienced in years, like he’s on his way to the promised land. But his journey turns into something resembling the third circle of hell. 

He catches a ride with a big-wheel gambler, but that goes sour — real sour —and he decides to change his identity, as you do in noir. When he begins thinking his luck might be changing for the better he crosses paths with hitchhiker Vera (Ann Savage), a spitfire whom he soon wishes he never met.

This is arguably Ulmer’s noir masterpiece (he felt that “Ruthless” [1948] was his best), a story so unyielding in its pessimism that big studios would likely pass on it. Just as well. They’d probably try to dress it up for maximum consumer appeal, and that would ruin everything. The film was remade in 1992 with Tom Neal’s son, Tom Neal Jr. — it’s best to stick with the original.

Edward Norris, Jean Gillie, Herbert Rudley, "Decoy" (1946).

"Decoy" (1946) Monogram Studios

When it comes to cruel, irredeemable femmes fatale, Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie) wins top honors as the rottenest apple in the orchard. Told in flashback, “Decoy” features double crossers, a death row execution and a doctor who raises the dead. Then, things start to get weird.

Throughout the film, Margot remains a cold-blooded double crosser. For her sheer cruelty and outsized zest for sadism, she stands out among noir’s most treacherous females.

She pulls off a murder that is as hideous as any committed by man, woman or child onscreen at the time. In her crazed pursuit of a $400,000 stash of loot, she disposes of an accomplice as he’s fixing a flat tire by slamming her car into forward gear and running over the unsuspecting sap several times for good measure. She hops out and rifles through the dead man’s pockets before driving off.

Aside from Margot’s depraved antics, the centerpiece of the film’s first half is a whacky stunt that involves hijacking a morgue meat wagon that’s carrying the body of an executed man. Margot and her band of ghouls bring the corpse to a laboratory where a doctor administers a drug that brings the dead man back to life. (Yup, you heard right.)

In the film’s closing moments she lies on her death bed while Police Sgt. Portugal (Sheldon Leonard), who has been on her trail, stands over her. She asks him to come closer, as if she means to tell him something — something confidential — and he crouches down, bringing his face closer to her’s. Is she about to unburden herself and express regret for all the wrong she has done, we wonder? Nah! With her dying breath she cackles hysterically in the copper’s face. She can now leave this mortal coil, warmed by the fact that she’s had the last laugh at another in a long line of suckers. With her rotten-to-the core exit, Margot is the very model of a film noir femme fatale.

Elyse Knox, Don Castle, "I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes" (1948).

“I Wouldn’t be in Your Shoes” (1948) Monogram Studios

Ann Quinn (Elyse Knox) wishes that a saint would deliver a pot of gold to her and her vaudeville hoofer husband Tom Quinn (Don Castle). Tom says it wouldn’t mind if that pot of gold was delivered by “the opposite of a saint.” We get a creepy feeling that in uttering those works he’s unintentionally summoning up a demon. When Ann switches off the lights a chorus of cats begins to howl outside their bedroom window. The hoofer chucks his shoes at the vocalizing felines, setting off a disastrous chain of events that no one could have predicted. 

Based on a Cornell Woolrich story, “I Wouldn’t be in Your Shoes,” like a number of Woolrich’s yarns, is the story of a man wrongly convicted of murder. As Tom sits on death row, Ann frantically searches for evidence that will prove him innocent. Frequently, Woolrich’s persecuted men are rescued by strong willed, inquisitive females who go to great lengths to dig out facts that will save the poor dope whose neck is on the chopping block. 

We get the story in flashback, with Tom’s echoey voice narrating as he sits in a prison cell. Ann is a ballroom dance instructor whose most dedicated pupil is a big tipper she calls Santa Clause. It turns out that Santa is really Police Insp. Clint Judd (Regis Toomey), a crusty veteran of the force known for cracking difficult cases. He finds a footprint outside of a murder scene that links Tom to the crime. The murder victim is Tom and Ann’s shut-in, cash laden neighbor, and coincidentally, not only does a thick wad of moolah find its way into Tom’s hands, the pair of shoes he hurled at the noisy cats unexpectedly materialized on their doorstep the next morning. It’s a cinch that there’s a frame-up in the works, but Tom has a date with the hangman’s noose and time is running out for him. 

Hokey touches (the echoey narrator), static camerawork and uneven performances don’t take much away from the outlandish plot that, while stretching credibility to the breaking point, is pure Woolrich, and that alone makes it worth a look. Strangely enough, if the film was a high budget production, I doubt that we’d be willing to forgive the parts that don’t make a lot of sense. How, for example, does Insp. Judd find the time to do the seemingly enormous amount of personal sleuthing and still hold down a job? No matter. In a low-rent, funky production such as this we sit back and go along for the ride.

Dolores Fuller, Herbert Rawlinson, "Jail Bait" (1954).

“Jail Bait” (1954) Howco. 

When it comes to cheapie film productions with odd plot lines I could hardly neglect to mention Edward D. Wood Jr., director of cult classics such as “Plan 9 from Outer Space” (1957), “Glen or Glenda” (1953) and “Bride of the Monster” Wood’s wild, frequently disjointed work tends to land in the science fiction and horror genres and is widely renown simply for being so, so bad. He was awarded two of film critic Michael Medved’s Golden Turkey Awards, one for Worst Director of all times and the other, a Worst Film award for his “Plan 9 from Outer Space.”

Regardless of their premise, Wood’s films, be they science fiction fantasies with cheesy flying saucers or a pseudo documentary about transvestites and sex change surgery, don’t lean heavily on verisimilitude and plausibility. Perhaps because of that, the Wood oeuvre has for decades attracted packs of hipsters who view the stuff largely for its ironic comedic value.

“Jail Bait,” the director’s sole attempt at film noir, may be the lesser known Wood film on the midnight screenings circuit mostly because it avoids outrageous and inflammatory topics and the plot stays basically within noir’s conventions. The title doesn’t refer to under-aged girls, by the way. It’s what one character calls the gun her delinquent brother carries with him on the streets. Although it’s probably not an accident that the film is tagged with a suggestive title — in this business you gotta have a gimmick.

The film is a straight-ahead crime drama telling the story of Don Gregor (Clancy Malone), a partner in crime with gangster Vic Brady (Timothy Farrell). Don, fresh out of prison, is brow beaten onto committing a robbery with Vic, and it goes badly. That's when Don's father, plastic surgeon Dr. Boris Gregor (Herbert Rawlinson) is forced to perform a plastic surgery job on Vic, who wants to hide his identity. Don is being held hostage until the surgery is complete, so Dr. Gregor goes to work on the desperate criminal with great urgency. 

Vic is a wanted man, so they can’t risk using an operating room. Naturally, the procedure is done on the sofa in Vic’s living room. A nurse isn’t available to assist, so the doctor’s daughter, Marilyn (Dolores Fuller, Wood’s real life girlfriend) pitches in. The entire operation is conducted with a basin of hot water, some ether, a scalpel or two, probably, and some clean sheets used to make bandages. Voila! Vic gets a new face, but in an odd twist his new profile is something less than what he expected.

Produced on a measly budget, “Jail Bait” suffers from uneven acting, vacuous dialogue (Dr. Gregor thoughtfully remarks, “Plastic surgery, at times, seems to be very, very complicated.”) and scattershot direction. But somehow Wood’s strange ending and some laughably stiff line readings add up to a rather likable mess. It’s enough to make me wish that Wood had tried his hand at noir at least one more time.  

Leslie Brooks, "Blonde Ice" (1948).

“Blonde Ice” (1948) Film Classics

San Francisco society columnist Claire Cummings (Leslie Brooks) gets hitched to a rich dude, then shows off her mastery in the art of two-timing. Claire never met a man she couldn't play for a sucker, because she’s … you know, cold like ice.

“Blonde Ice” director Jack Burnhard also directed “Decoy,” and between both films he gave rise to two of the most dastardly femmes fatale in all of noir. Unlike gun moll Margot Shelby in “Decoy,” Claire is a wage slave working among ink stained wretches. But both are driven by an insatiable desire for riches and will Hoover up every dollar, diamond and mink they can extract from unsuspecting marks. The difference between them is that Margot is an underworld denizen and Claire is a social climber. Margot uses blunt force to get cash, while Claire would prefer to marry it. She does, however, pack a pearl handled revolver in her purse and isn’t afraid to use it.

Nicknamed Blonde Ice, we meet Claire as she’s about to walk the plank with a middle-aged moneybags while giving her whimpering ex-beau, sportswriter Les Burns (Robert Paige), the heave-ho. Even after taking the vows she still tantalizes crestfallen Les, stringing him along as her husband of 15 minutes grows huffy watching from the sidelines. She calms hubby, but he won’t stay pacified for long. For Claire, it’s a minor bump in the road. She always keeps an eye open for new prospects with bulging bank accounts should the need for a substitute arise. 

It’s no wonder that she took up her vocation in the news biz, chronicling the comings and goings of the conspicuously wealthy. According to her peers, she ain’t no newspaperwoman. That’s immaterial to Claire — the job’s main perk is a bird’s eye view of eligible dupes who are ripe for the picking. 

In large part, what’s most enjoyable about both films, for me, at least, is the cold bloodedness of the crimes to which both lethal ladies resort. Claire is blasé when she pulls the trigger, and is quick to put on a charming face when the situation calls for it. After shooing away a blackmailer who wants to take her for 50 grand, she switches from a snarl to a smile, deftly toggling into her charming socialite persona to greet arriving guests. In the end, Claire lives up to her nickname, but when the people around her get wise to her dark motives and darker deeds, the world becomes too chilly a place for her. 

Next time, I’ll talk more about Poverty Row, directors who learned their trade there and the films that they made.