‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’: A Tinseltown Allegory that Ends Unhappily Ever After

Michael Sarrazin, Jane Fonda, 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?' (1969).

Harrowing Tale of Dance Marathons and the Depression-Era Downtrodden. But Those Marathons Remind Us of Something Else — the Studio System at its Most Heartless

Contains spoilers

By Paul Parcellin

"They Shoot Horses, Don’t They” is a noir tragedy about exploitation of the desperate and beleaguered in Depression-era Los Angeles, right?  True, but that’s only part of the story.

Based on the 1935 novel by hardboiled scribbler Horace McCoy, the movie’s plot revolves around the very real and very savage dance marathon competitions of the 1920s - ’30s. 

They were grueling, days-long endurance challenges witnessed by audiences of paying customers. Exhausted contestant couples shuffled and foxtrotted their way toward death’s door in hope of being the last ones standing as the orchestra played on. 

A possible dream come true

Winners would grab a sack of prize money — in theory — and stave off starvation another day. Others left through the back door, sometimes on gurneys.  

The film does double duty, not only as a historic document of unencumbered human depravity, but also as an allegory for the movie biz, particularly the old Hollywood studio system, and maybe the entertainment industry as a whole.  

Not convinced that there’s a connection between marathoners dancing themselves to death and the movie industry? Try this on for size:

Dreamers and the destitute 

Robert (Michael Sarrazin) and Gloria (Jane Fonda) are beaten down by life. Both are hayseeds dwelling on the fringes of Hollywood’s motion picture industry. Unlike the naive Robert, Gloria has been around long enough to be exhausted by false promises and rejection. Her personal life is in ruins when fate pushes the two of them together, thrusting them into the dance marathon spotlight. They make a cute couple but there’s no romance between them. It’s all about keeping up an image that’s appealing to the gawkers. 

Jane Fonda, Red Buttons, Susannah York, Michael Sarrazin.

Survival is the object

Beneath the surface, their’s is a strategic partnership. Each depends on the other for strength when despair sets in, and it does visit often.

The two are like the stars and starlets whose off-screen relationships (genuine or not) were often manufactured for the gossip rags and manipulated by the studios to fit the images crafted by Hollywood publicity departments. Actors were matched up, packaged and kept beholden to the studio for ongoing exploitation.

Making a show out of their pain

Contestants push themselves to physical and emotional collapse for a small chance of taking home a cash prize. It’s a lot like the struggles of actors who sacrifice a lot for a small chance of becoming a star.

Meanwhile, the contest's promoter and emcee, Rocky Gravo (Gig Young), keeps the audience entertained with periodic announcements highlighting juicy tidbits about the contestants’ personal woes and real life tragedies. 

Personal privacy be damned

The most private details of contestants’ lives are like breadcrumbs the emcee tosses to the crowd to keeps them engaged, much like studios of bygone days, shaping rising stars’ public images and exploiting their personal lives to sell tickets.

Gravo spells out the contest’s dramatic core in his patter to the audience. 

“Here they are again, folks! These wonderful, wonderful kids! Still struggling! Still hoping! … the marathon goes on, and on, and on! How long can they last?”

Like a prizefight, the marathon is buoyed by the palpable drama of contestants' suffering and their inevitable collapse, which holds the audience in suspense. 

Susannah York, Michael Sarrazin, Bruce Dern, Bonnie Bedelia.

Torturous antics for cheap entertainment

Dancers are initially sweet-talked into signing up for these punishing competitions, usually unaware of what's in store for them. The audience demands to see human agony and the competitors are pushed to give the crowd what it wants. It's a bit like the studio system’s restrictive contracts and bullying tactics that kept actors working endless hours, wringing every last dollar of value out of them.

An astonishing admission

Backstage at the marathon, Robert is dumbfounded when Gravo refers to the supposed competition as a “show” rather than a contest.

“They don’t give a damn whether you win,” says Gravo. “They just want to see a little misery out there so they can feel a little better, maybe.”

The spectacle of physical decline

Scenes show contestants’ bodily deterioration — they grow paler, shakier, more broken — while the show’s lights stay bright and the emcee sets an upbeat tempo.

In a parallel universe, the studio system thrives on the gradual burnout of its labor — stars aging, being pushed past their limits — while the machine presents a glossy, unaffected front. Their bodies become the product, worn down for continued profit.

The big break that never was

The down-and-out dancers take a shot at winning a jackpot. If they come out on top their woes will go away, or so they think. But the game is rigged. Fame and wealth are elusive. Most go back home to Iowa or wherever, or maybe land on the streets. The big payoff is a prize that never materializes.

Movie biz promises of a “next picture” or a “breakout role” keep actors in their place and hopeful despite the abuse they suffer.

As Gloria observes, “Maybe it’s just the whole damn world is like Central Casting. They got it all rigged before you ever show up.”

Gig Young, the puppetmaster pulling the strings.

The emcee is like a studio exec

Gig Young, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as the emcee, is appropriately oily as the character who controls the rules, shifts the goalposts and “packages” human misery into an entertainment product — much like movie producers who shape or kill careers.

The marathon organizers abruptly change the rules, limit rest periods and adjust incentives to strain contestants’ endurance.

It's all too similar to studio contracts and brutish demands that set long work hours, introduced unpredictable script rewrites and image “retooling.” Except for top-tier actors, talent had little say about work conditions. 

The audience is part of the exploitation

In a scene showing the publicity campaign promoting the marathon we see the audience’s voyeuristic fascination interspersed with shots of photographers and newsreel coverage. 

A woman volunteers to sponsor Robert and Gloria and seems absorbed in the illusion of a romantic relationship between them. In moments of audience participation, spectators are told that their enthusiasm “keeps the dancers going,” as if their passive gaze helps ease the suffering on the dance floor, thus relieving them of any guilt that might impede their enjoyment of such savage entertainment.

Reaching the breaking point

Gloria, finally broken and unable to escape the vicious cycle she’s stuck in,  makes a final dreadful choice and Robert becomes a party to her collapse. 

The dance marathon disguises cruelty under a veil of competition, similar to the way Hollywood glamorizes the struggle of hopefuls who are ultimately exploited and often tossed away. 

In the end, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They” is one of the least romanticized depictions of the Gold Age of Hollywood to hit the screen. “Sunset Boulevard” (1950) and “The Day of the Locust” (1975) similarly take a hard look at Hollywood's decadence and exploitative practices. 

In all, we may love the movies, but when it comes to seeing how the sausage is made, not so much.

Mark Stevens: his quartet of searing films noir still light up screens today

Lucille Ball, Mark Stevens, 'The Dark Corner' (1946).

By Paul Parcellin

Mark Stevens made a string of taut crime dramas in the 1940s and ’50s that still resonate today. He acted in dozens of films, from westerns, war pictures to musicals and comedies, and directed two of his self-produced noirs as well as some hardboiled television series.

Born Richard William Stevens in 1916, he adopted "Mark" as his show business handle after Daryl Zanuck suggested he take on Dana Andrews’s character's name in “Laura.” His family lived briefly in Cleveland before his parents divorced and his mother brought him to England. She remarried and they settled in Montreal. 

A devastating injury

In his youth Stevens distinguished himself in competitive swimming and diving until he severely injured his back in a diving accident. He endured a number of surgeries that eventually returned him to normal mobility but his injury kept him out of the service. While convalescing he frequented movie houses and developed a love of cinema.

His first acting roles were in community theater and he later performed with a stock theater company. Setting his sights on the big time, he moved to New York but fell upon hard times and returned home to Montreal. He saved his pennies and bought a train ticket to California where Warner Brothers eventually gave him a screen test and made him a contract player. 

On the screen, then out the door

He appeared in “Destination Tokyo” (1943) with Cary Grant and John Garfield, and “Objective, Burma” (1945) with Errol Flynn. After two years of bit roles he complained to the studio’s top dog Jack Warner that his career wasn’t advancing as quickly as he’d like. Warner rebuffed him, and in protest Stevens played hooky from his job, after which the studio dropped him. 

But as one door slammed shut another opened at 20th Century Fox, where among other projects, he acted in a pair of solid noirs, “The Dark Corner” (1946), and “The Street with No Name” (1948). 

A promising start with Fox

Eager to capitalize on the surprise hit, “Laura” (1944), Fox assembled a similar array of characters for “The Dark Corner” with Stevens in the role of  Bradford Galt, an inexperienced yet somehow world-weary and cynical private eye. His recent hire, secretary Kathleen Stewart (Lucille Ball), is perky, wise cracking and street smart — just the kind of gal for Galt. Five years before her “I Love Lucy” debut, Ball gives us a taste of her acting chops and a touch of slapstick comedy — keep an eye out for the scene in which when she swings wildly in a batters cage. 

The story gets cracking when Galt slaps around a mug in a white linen suit (William Bendix) who’s been tailing him. Of course, that’s not the last he sees of Bendix, who turns in his signature tough guy performance. 

Different story, familiar characters

The story revolves around effete art dealer Hardy Cathcart (Clifton Webb), Galt’s former partner, Tony Jardine (Kurt Kreuger), and Cathcart’s wife, Mari (Cathy Downs). Webb is virtually repeating his role as acid-tongued gossip columnist Waldo Lydecker in “Laura.”  Alas, Ball, Webb and Bendix steal every scene they’re in, but Stevens still makes a strong enough, if not stellar, showing as the jaded shamus. 

Top of the heap, at last

He finally gets top billing in “The Street with No Name,” but, once again Stevens is both blessed and cursed to appear alongside co-star Richard Widmark. Widmark’s on-screen charisma is like a blindingly brilliant light that leaves Stevens’s solid performance a bit in the shadows. 

Richard Widmark, "The Street with No Name" (1948).

G-man goes undercover

In “The Street with No Name” FBI agent Gene Cordell (Stevens) infiltrates a vicious gang operating in a seedy anywhere-America city. Head crook Alec Stiles (Widmark) runs a boxing gym and commands a band of robbers.  Lloyd Nolan plays the same FBI Inspector Briggs of “The House on 92nd Street” (1945) and Ed Begley is the police chief. 

The film’s stunning look, crafted by cinematographer Joseph MacDonald, creates shadowy dive hotel rooms, dark, forbidding alleyways and menacing skid row streets with astonishing artistry.

Gunplay and fisticuffs

It’s a tight action drama with a slug-fest boxing match and a noir shootout, appropriately, in a gloomy factory.  Unfortunately, Stevens apparently didn’t live up to Fox’s expectations of a leading man and loan-outs to other studios began until his contract lapsed.

After Fox, he found work with the “three little majors,” Universal, Columbia and United Artists, and with low-budget B-movie factories on Poverty Row. Most notably he appeared in a noir for Columbia, “Between Midnight and Dawn” (1950), with Edmond O’Brien, in which he plays a rookie cop paired with O’Brien, patrolling city streets on the graveyard shift.

Mark Stevens, Edmond O'Brien, "Between Midnight and Dawn" (1950).

Cops in a radio car 

The film is a police procedural wrapped around a buddy movie with a documentary style opening. The film’s staccato newsreel-like footage gives way to a smoother paced story of police officers trying to tame the influence of organized crime in their city. A sub-plot offers some rickety comedy involving Stevens’s Rocky Barnes awkwardly wooing police radio dispatcher Katherine Mallory (Gale Storm). The light humor seems inconsequential, but Katherine becomes more significant to the film’s emotional backbone in the later part of the story. 

The green and the disillusioned

O’Brien’s Patrolman Daniel Purvis is street smart and cynical, while Barnes is as yet unscathed by bitter experience on the force. When the crime fighting duo arrest racketeer Ritchie Garris (Donald Buka) things get serious and a revenge drama is set in motion. The cast turns in solid performances all around as the film comes to a tense climax.

 After “Between Midnight and Dawn,” television roles followed for Stevens. In 1953 he took over the lead role in NBC-TV’s detective drama “Martin Kane.” He stayed with the show just one season, 40 episodes, but it provided him the security of a steady paycheck as he made plans for the future.

Mark Stevens, Trudy Wroe, "Big Town" (1954).

A leap into ‘Big Town’

It was a big risk, but the following year Stevens bought a half-stake in the TV series “Big Town” (1950-1956). The series, which ran on CBS (1950-1954) and NBC (1954-1956), is built around a crusading news reporter fighting corruption. Stevens appeared in 82 episodes. In his second season he began writing, directing and producing episodes, which would prove to be a key to his later success in film and television.

Out for revenge

Back on the big screen, Stevens directed and starred in “Cry Vengeance” (1954), a revenge thriller he made for Allied Artists, formerly Monogram Pictures. In it, San Francisco ex-cop Vic Barron (Stevens) is haunted by his past. He crossed mobster Tino Morelli (Douglas Kennedy) and soon thereafter his family was killed in a car bombing that left him disfigured. The mobster framed him for a crime he didn’t commit and Barron served three years in prison. 

We meet him as he’s released from lockup and filled with a desire for vengeance on Morelli. But is he after the right man? Barron’s search for the culprit brings him all the way to Alaska, but finding the perpetrator behind the bombing proves more complicated than he anticipated.

Mark Stevens, "Cry Vengeance" (1954).

A company of his own

Following “Cry Vengeance, he formed Mark Stevens Productions in 1955 with ambitious plans for films and TV series as well as an expansion into the music publishing and record distribution businesses. Most of these ventures didn’t pan out, with the exception of the noir “Time Table” (1956). This time, Stevens directs and stars, playing insurance cop  Charlie Norman who is assigned to investigate a train heist that turns out to be more than what meets the eye. 

Robbery on the rails

The gang pulls off a complicated railway robbery that depends on adherence to a strict timetable — if one move goes wrong a chain reaction would quash the caper. The film features a gripping 10 minute robbery sequence that showcases Stevens’s directing style. We learn about Charlie, who’s obsessed with status and material wealth. He’s jumpy and craves success — perhaps a bit like the real-life Stevens. He spells it all out in a short burst of anti-establishment dialogue: “For me, patience in poison!”

Just one film completed

The taut thriller would be Mark Stevens Productions’s lone completed  project. It’s unclear what exactly brought about the company’s demise, although it’s likely that Stevens invested too heavily in his productions. “Time Table” stands as a shining example of Stevens’s craft (at times, he claimed the company produced others).

Off to distant shores

The production company’s failure was enough to make Stevens flee to Majorca, Spain, where he eventually retired. Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s he returned to the states periodically for TV guest spots, mostly on westerns. He appeared in “Fate is the Hunter” (1964) with Glenn Ford, and back on the continent he appeared in a string of forgettable European movies.

He popped up now and again in TV guest spots on “Kojack,” “Simon and Simon” and “Magnum, P.I.” His final TV appearance came in 1987. He died of cancer in 1994 at age 77.

‘The Killers’: A much loved noir that’s the spitting image of another American classic

Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster, ‘The Killers’ (1946). 

By Paul Parcellin

“The Killers” (1946)

Some say “The Killers” is the “Citizen Kane” of noir, but how can that be?

One is a beloved noir, the story behind a brutal murder of a washed up prizefighter. The other, a fictional biography of a media tycoon, loosely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst. It’s like comparing doughnuts with dirigibles, isn't it?

Not exactly. The key to their kinship is the way the two films tell their stories. 

Here’s the rundown on 'The Killers':

The violent death of the Swede (Burt Lancaster) in the first dozen minutes or so of “The Killers” launches an investigation. But it's the preamble to the murder that draws us in. It starts when two hitmen come looking for Swede at the diner he’s known to haunt. 

Charles McGraw, William Conrad, Harry Hayden, ‘The Killers.’

They terrorize the staff and a young customer and announce that they’re going kill the former boxer turned filling station attendant. The customer, Nick Adams (Phil Brown), gets to Swede’s rooming house before the killers do, but his warning to the condemned man is pointless.

“Once, I did something wrong,” Swede tells the youthful Adams. 

The Swede (Lancaster) awaits dark visitors.

Swede doesn’t budge, but instead awaits the inevitable as the gunmen creep up the stairs. He grips the bedpost until the two torpedos burst in and fire. In one of noir's most famous close-ups, we see his grasp on the post release as his life slips away.

Based, in part, on a Hemingway short story

The film is based on an Ernest Hemingway short story of the same title. The opening sequence in the diner is faithful to the book, but the rest of the script is original material. 

The screenplay was written by Richard Brooks and then heavily re-worked by Anthony Veiller and his frequent collaborator John Huston. Only Veiller is credited on the final film. Huston went uncredited due to his contract with Warner Bros.

Everett Sloane, Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Ellen Lowe, ‘Citizen Kane’ (1941). 

Hemingway’s part of the story, just the tip of the iceberg, is the culmination of a years-long series of events. The bulk of the film, which explains what led to the murder, owes a lot to “Citizen Kane” (1941). In both strikingly similar films an investigator pieces together the story of a deceased man, around whom a mystery swirls. 

Investigator steps in, post mortem

After newspaper publishing magnate Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) dies of natural causes at an advanced age, a newsreel company reporter pokes his nose into Kane’s life, interviewing those who knew him best. 

Swede’s death barely captures the attention of local law enforcement. The only one interested is insurance investigator Jim Reardon (Edmond O’Brien), who needs to find a mystery woman who’s due to collect the payout from Swede’s life insurance policy. 

Cryptic final utterances

Both Kane and Swede utter puzzling last words just before they die, and both films involve a quest to find the meaning of those words. Swede’s “Once, I did something wrong,” contrasts with Kane’s short and sweet one-word finale, “Rosebud.” 

It turns out Kane’s last gasped syllables are packed with delicious meaning and irony (which I won’t go into here lest I dish out two spoilers for the price of one). 

Both stories are told in a series of flashbacks, a noir staple, that we see as each interviewee spills his or her chunk of the story. All of the fragmented, nonlinear pieces coalesce into complete, or near complete, portraits of the two men. 

Witnesses speak, but are they reliable?

Mind you, there’s good reason to question the reliability some of the witness’s accounts of the facts. Yet both films seem to take those recollections at face value, each building toward a revelation about those cryptic last words both men spoke. 

Edmond O'Brien, Ann Staunton, 'The Killers.'

Reardon figures out what Swede meant about his doing “something wrong.” It isn’t like the Sphinx-like riddle that the newsreel reporter is tasked with unscrambling. He discovers a richly detailed story of Kane, but never finds out what “Rosebud” means, and he gives up, defeated. 

A revealing view of Kane's clutter

But when the camera takes a God's-eye view of the grim cleanup of Kane’s earthly possession, we see the humble object, which obviously held great symbolic importance to the fabulously wealthy media magnate, and occupied his final thoughts. It’s as sad and touching a moment as you’re likely to see on screen, describing the core of the man and what drove him forward in his remarkable life. 

A mountain and a molehill? Perhaps not

The Swede’s story, tragic as it is, isn't as broad in scope as the newspaper mogul’s sprawling, tainted saga. Swede’s gritty tale is a eulogy to a wounded, gullible has-been who was putty in the hands of a gorgeous, evil woman (Kane had his women problems, too). Still, “The Killers” is a top shelf noir that set a standard for the classic era of films like it.

And as it turns out, both Swede and Kane had this in common: Despite living widely disparate lives, both men, once mighty, go out lonely and haunted, not with a clap of thunder but with a whimper.    

Off the Hook: A bedridden heiress glimpses the face of doom in ‘Sorry, Wrong Number’

Barbara Stanwyck, ‘Sorry, Wrong Number’ (1948). Crossed phone lines deliver chilling news to a woman stranded in her apartment.

Post war prosperity,

women’s position

in society go

under the microscope

Contains some spoilers

By Paul Parcellin

‘Sorry, Wrong Number’ (1948)

Barbara Stanwyck plays Leona Stevenson, a woman distinctly different from cold blooded Phyllis Dietrichson, whom Stanwyck portrayed in “Double Indemnity” four years before. Leona is no femme fatale — she’s a femme in jeopardy. 

That alone ought to make us feel sympathy for her, but she’s hard to warm up to.

At first glance Leona is churlish, short tempered and demanding. But she’s also a bedridden invalid, apparently neglected by her businessman husband and left alone in a sprawling New York apartment. Her bedside phone is her lone companion.

One night telephone lines get crossed and she overhears a couple of mugs plotting a murder. It gradually dawns on her that someone's planning to make her the guest of honor at a deadly soiree.

Ann Richards as Sally Hunt. The film's flashbacks are channeled through phone calls.

She tries to tell the police, who take her for a crank, and as the night wears on her worries turn to panic, and finally, terror — Stanwyck’s transition from panic to terror is something to see.

Prosperity and women's place in society

That’s not to say that “Sorry, Wrong Number” is merely a nail-biter or a horror film. Beneath its thriller surface the film turns a gimlet eye on post war prosperity and women’s position in the society. In flashbacks, we get a fuller picture of what led up to Leona's terrifying night alone in her apartment as well as the mores of the times.

It’s the latter half of the 1940s and there’s a paucity of marital bliss among the folks we meet. By all appearances, affairs and marriages of convenience are rife in post-war America, where power, position and money are within reach, and joy is all but a distant memory.

Burt Lancaster and Stanwyck. Husbands order their downtrodden wives around like domestic servants, but that's not the case with Leona.

Here, most everyone is a bully or a victim. Husbands order their downtrodden wives around like domestic servants, while the breadwinner’s job is of paramount importance. Household management and child rearing are undervalued maintenance work that the little lady performs without complaint, or else. 

Henry is the poor son-in-law who’s been shunted off to the back office, pushing papers in dad-in-law’s mega firm, and he’s pissed.

Leona is the exception. When she strong-arms her husband, Henry (Burt Lancaster), into submission, we see how deeply dissatisfied he is with their materially comfortable, yet emotionally vacant life. Leona, the “cough drop queen,” is the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, James Cotterell (Ed Begley), who heads a medical supply and pharmaceutical corporation. 

Henry is the poor son-in-law who’s been shunted to the back office, pushing papers in dad-in-law’s mega firm, and he’s pissed. But it’s precisely because of his vacuity and lack of ambition that he landed where he is. It's unusual to see Lancaster play the emotional and moral weakling, but he makes his journey from average shmo to the pawn of evil men seem credible and tragic.

Lancaster as Henry, a willing prisoner of his father-in-law's fortune.

His type is frequently seen in noir — the unexceptional man who believes he deserves something better. But now, Henry, the seemingly dormant volcano of frustration, is ready to blow his top. Before long he makes foolish choices that put himself and others in harm’s way. 

As he’s making his furtive moves we can almost empathize with him, even if we can’t abide by his actions. His hands are tied, or so he believes, and there’s little chance of getting out of his predicament without taking drastic measures.

Flashbacks conveyed in phone conversations

Back in the present, Leona is prisoner in her bedroom, and only in flashbacks do we see her freed from the constrictions that have left her all but immobilized. The flashbacks, seen from various characters’ points of view and conveyed in phone conversations, reveal her backstory. 

Her mother died giving birth to her, and she was raised  by a well meaning but distant father. You might think that her frustration and pain as a bedridden adult are the source of her sour and demanding personality, but in flashback we see that she’s difficult even at her best.

Stanwyck, Lancaster, Richards. Leona steals her friend's beau at a dance.

She snubs a college friend, Sally Hunt (Ann Richards), whom Henry is courting, and brazenly steals him from her. Later, once they become an item, she browbeats her father into accepting Henry into the fold. 

The old man doesn’t believe Henry’s good son-in-law material, and it turns out he’s right. Henry isn’t really attracted to Leona, but an heiress is an heiress, and he adapts. Meanwhile, her dad is carousing with a lady young enough to be his daughter — no one’s perfect, you see. 

“Sorry, Wrong Number” favors dialog over movement, yet director Anatole Litvak maintains Hitchcock-like suspense and conjures up a persistent sense of dread about Leona’s fate.

While the most tense and dramatic parts of the story take place in the present, in Leona’s opulent room, flashbacks give us breathing space, taking the action (not that there’s a lot of it) out of the confined bedroom and placing it in the outside world. 

Because it was adapted from a radio drama, “Sorry, Wrong Number” favors dialog over movement, yet director Anatole Litvak maintains Hitchcock-like suspense and conjures up a persistent sense of dread about Leona’s fate. Although she’s difficult and a bottomless pit of need, we stay sympathetic with her as the present threat against her grows. 

But a devastating revelation, seen in flashback, alters our view of the stricken heiress, from pitiful to pathetic with a wisp of malevolence thrown in for good measure. (I’ll avoid spoilers here). 

Harold Vermilyea, Lancaster. Henry's impulses lead him down a less righteous path.

The stunner brings a sea change to Henry’s outlook on his relationship with his wife. The dam breaks, and the years of frustration and rage he’s been holding back begin to rush to the surface. 

He makes unsavory, foolish choices, as noir antiheroes do, morphing from beleaguered trophy husband to unwitting villain, and realizing that his underhanded actions have gotten him in over his head. 

With friends like these ...

His new friends are gangsters and when they try to squeeze money out of him he caves in to their pressure. But what happens next is yet an added layer of irony that he couldn’t see coming, and it makes the story all the more tragic.

 Leona is scheduled to receive an uninvited visitor at 11:15 p.m. and like the grim reaper himself he will work efficiently and leave little trace of his clandestine operations. As the clock runs down, Leona can only hope for a visit from a hero who will save her from this fate. But in her world, heroes are in short supply.

‘Gun Crazy’ Has a Classic Robbery Scene … But We Never See the Actual Holdup

John Dall, Peggy Cummins, 'Gun Crazy' (1950).

For a dizzying moment
spectators become 
accomplices to a crime

By Paul Parcellin

“Gun Crazy” (1950)

The thoroughly American story of violence and rebellion that is “Gun Crazy” influenced generations of filmmakers since its release and laid the groundwork for many a crime picture to come. One of its most obvious kin is probably Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) (the berets and sweaters worn by femmes fatale in both films are a visual link between the two).

In “Gun Crazy,” one scene in particular, a robbery that takes place off camera, stands out as the most recognizable and influential in noir. 

Cummins as Laurie,
sideshow queen. 

Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins) is a carnival sharpshooter dressed in a cowgirl outfit performing in the sideshow. Bart Tare (John Dall) faces off with her in a shooting contest and the competition takes on an erotic charge. It’s lust at first sight for this all-American couple with a gun fetish and they get hitched on the spur of the moment. But Laurie wants diamonds and furs and she browbeats Bart into sticking up stores, which they do before stepping up to the big leagues.

Frequently celebrated for the groundbreaking cinema it is, the Hampton robbery scene, the sharp shooting pair's first bank stickup, resonates with a kind of ragged energy. Director Joseph H. Lewis shot the entire robbery sequence, more than three minutes in duration, in one long take with a camera in the back seat of the getaway car. 

Dall as Bart,
born to shoot.

Lewis was unsure if the bank scene would work. So he shot a test scene with a hand-held 16mm camera and used high school kids as stand-ins for the two stars. The film's producers, the King brothers, Morris, Frank and Hyman, were impressed.

The getaway car is a stretch Cadillac with the rear seat removed to make room for Lewis and other crew who were crowded into the back. They mounted the camera on a greased wood platform so that it could be moved easily. Microphones hidden in the sun visors picked up dialogue and two sound men stationed on the roof with boom microphones recorded the sounds of the car.

The result is a scene that almost leaps off the screen. It feels authentic and raw due largely to its unscripted elements. As Bart and Laurie approach the bank, a car pulls out of a parking space and they pull into it. This was not prearranged (if no parking space was available they planned to double park). The patter between the two novice bank robbers, both before and after the heist, is improvised. No one, other than the bank’s staff and the police, knew that a film was being made — some on the street thought they were witnessing a real robbery.

Laurie and Bart, on the lam and incognito.

Once the robbery gets under way, Laurie waits in the car while Bart ducks into the bank. Both are clad in cowboy outfits, finally acting out the roles of real desperados that they’d only been cosplaying for carnival crowds. The American myth of the old west, with its history of violence and lawlessness, is the larcenous duo’s fantasy come to life.

Despite the buildup to the big event, we never see the heist take place — an unconventional move on the filmmaker’s part. This is due, in part, to the film’s budget restrictions, but Lewis’s unconventional approach has a payoff. 

We spend the duration of the robbery with Laurie, who stays cool when things start to go south. A cop strolls into the shot and lingers in front of the bank as Bart is inside. She hops out of the car and chats with the peace officer, then takes swift action once Bart barrels out of the bank. 

As they make their getaway, she turns to see if the cops are on their tail. Facing the camera, she grins, thoroughly enjoying the intense and dangerous dash from the law. It’s a carefully designed shot. Bart’s eyes are on the road and he doesn't see Laurie’s thrilled expression as they flirt with disaster. Had he realized that she's an adrenaline junky, and a dangerously unbalanced one at that, would he have dropped her and run the other way? Probably not, but this revealing, reckless moment makes it plain that their criminal partnership is teetering on the edge of destruction.

With the camera stationed behind the couple, the audience sees the entire scene from the back seat of the getaway car, which makes viewers not only spectators but virtual accomplices to the crime. 

Although more common today, this kind of offbeat camera placement was more of a novelty in 1950. Of course, “They Live By Night” (1948) includes a robbery scene in which the camera stays trained on the car rather than recording the holdup that's under way. In "The Killers" (1946), a robbery scene is shot in one long take. But neither of those films use the more daring camera placement of "Gun Crazy," putting it inside the moving vehicle and taking us, the audience, along for the ride. 

A narrow escape.

Quentin Tarantino doesn’t specifically mention “Gun Crazy” as a direct influence on “Reservoir Dogs” (1992), or the film's off-screen diamond heist. But he's a “Gun Crazy” admirer [he also cites Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing” (1956) and Lewis’s “The Big Combo” (1955) as influences] so it’s not a stretch to imagine that he borrowed a page from Lewis’s playbook and left the heist to the viewer's imagination. 

Like “Gun Crazy,” “Reservoir Dogs” focuses on the aftermath of a crime and the relationships among characters rather than the details of the crime itself. Both films were made under tight budgets, so eliminating an extra expense would be an attractive option for both directors.

The "Gun Crazy" bank robbery scene evolved as it was revised and reworked from its original form. Blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo rewrote MacKinlay Kantor’s script and mostly left the robbery scene intact. Kantor had written a longer, more comedic exchange between Laurie and the policeman, but Trumbo trimmed it down. 

It was Lewis’s idea to make it all one continuous shot, from the pair approaching the bank, to the robbery and finally the getaway, and those may be the film's most revealing moments. While the robbery takes place offscreen we’re given a chance to size up Laurie and calculate her and Bart’s odds of survival. Clearly, neither of them will be robbing banks for long.

Whiteout Noir: 6 Films With Cold Blooded Crimes In Wintery Places

Ward Bond, Robert Ryan, "On Dangerous Ground" (1951).

Murder has a different look atop a crisp blanket of snow

By Paul Parcellin

Winter is upon us, and in many places snow has either fallen or soon will. So it’s time to consider noirs that feature arctic blasts of frigid air and piles of the white stuff. Can’t think of any? Understandable — there aren’t a lot of them.

Snowfall plays a dramatic role in a handful noirs and it’s a surprisingly natural fit. The arresting beauty of a snowy landscape is a natural foil for manmade concrete and steel jungles where noirs are typically set. 

But with beauty comes danger. Those frozen vistas and iced over waterways can be deceptively peaceful settings for robbery, kidnapping and homicide. Thickets of unspoiled nature are apt havens for villains on the lam from crimes committed in the big city. 

What’s more, expanses of wilderness blanketed in deep, heavy snowpack can be as isolating and barren as the sands of the Sahara.

Here are six noirs that feature wintry squalls, the aftermath of punishing blizzards and miles of soft white powder. Tread carefully, and don’t forget to bring warm clothes, good boots and maybe a revolver, too:

Robert Ryan, Ward Bond, Ida Lupino, “On Dangerous Ground.”

“On Dangerous Ground” (1951)

Police detective Jim Wilson is an isolated, rage-filled outsider. He struggles to hold back his contempt for most others and is prone toward violence. Wilson can’t stomach the public’s disrespect for law officers, and as we meet him he’s edging close to an emotional breakdown. 

He regularly pummels suspects held in custody and roughs up anyone on the street who looks remotely guilty of a crime.  His superiors and colleagues notice his mental deterioration and send him away to a small upstate town where he’s to help with a murder investigation. 

The murder case is that of a young girl killed while walking through a lonely field. Her grieving, infuriated father is, understandably, in much greater emotional distress than hot headed Wilson. The shotgun toting dad wants vigilante justice and he takes an instant dislike to Wilson, the big city cop.

Wilson is extraordinarily out of place in this hick town, never more so than when, in pursuit of a suspect, he races through snow covered woodlands in his wing tips, fedora and overcoat. The snow is itself an antagonist that bogs down the city guy. When pursuing a suspect in a car chase over icy, treacherous roads, he slows the vehicle and the other driver gets away, further enraging the bereaved father.

He meets a blind woman, Mary Malden, who lives a fairly isolated life, but unlike Wilson, she’s not lonely. When we see the two together it’s clear that Wilson’s isolation fueled rage just might melt before the snow does. A cop doesn’t trust anyone, he tells Mary. She, on the other hand, must trust everyone.

 For a while it looks like the two of them will get together, but things change when Wilson discovers the identity of the fugitive from justice. Then all bets are off. 

Brian Keith, Aldo Ray, “Nightfall.”

“Nightfall” (1956)

Jim Vanning tries to look inconspicuous as he walks the pavement on Hollywood Boulevard. As the film opens we get a gander at 1950s Hollywood in shots that are like time capsules. When twilight falls the boulevard is aglow with neon and lined with well known nightspots: Musso & Frank, Miceli’s and Firefly, among others. This is about as far removed from a snow covered vista as you can get. Or so you’d think. 

An unplanned and involuntary trip to the putrid Venice Beach oil fields lies in store for Vanning. Then, in a flashback, we’re transported from that industrialized wasteland to a snowy Wyoming campground. The idyllic spot is nestled on the bank of a dazzling frozen lake surrounded by powder covered peaks.

Vanning and a buddy are winter camping when two thugs, running from the law, careen over an embankment and wreck their car. Their very presence despoils the dramatically beautiful landscape. That transgressive acts should take place in such a pristine setting seems to violate the laws of man and nature. 

It’s amid the rolling, snow covered hills of Wyoming that this story of greed, violence and narrow getaways concludes — against a stark white backdrop, far from Hollywood Boulevard and the Venice oil fields.

James Mason, F.J. McCormick, “Odd Man Out.”

“Odd Man Out” (1947)

Snowfall only makes a bad situation worse for Irish Nationalist Johnny McQueen. He’s on the run through the streets of Belfast, dodging police who are after him for a robbery and murder.  He and some allies heisted cash meant to fund further Nationalist endeavors. Johnny suffered a bullet wound and a broken arm. 

Heavy rains pound the streets as he dodges police and seeks shelter. Then the rain turns to snow. If inclement weather isn’t punishment enough, some whom he meets in his Odyssey toward safety offer sympathy and sometimes a bit of help, while others scheme to use him for their own gain. 

He’s the leader of the local “organization” and well known in the community. Many of those who’d like to help him fear retribution. His love, Kathleen Ryan, is one of the few who selflessly provides aid. But it’s a losing battle; Johnny’s wounds make it hard to run and he’s losing blood by the minute.  

Snowfall covers the grimy streets and makes the city beautiful — ironic that the freedom fighter should suffer greatly as the brick and cobblestones are painted a brilliant, angelic white. 

Eugene Pallette, Belita, Barry Sullivan, “Suspense.”

“Suspense” (1946)

This one could have been called “Noir on Ice.” Joe Morgan breezes into L.A. looking like he’s been sleeping under bridges since leaving New York. He gets a job at the ice show, first as a peanut vendor, then he quickly climbs the ladder to a management position. A love triangle develops with him, the ice show star Roberta, and Max, who runs the operation.

The action switches to a hunting lodge in the snow covered High Sierras, which is to say, a soundstage with painted backdrops of snow drifts and icicles. (Yes, it’s a bit cheesy, but this Monogram film looks like a big budget production by Poverty Row standards.) 

Tensions rise when Joe unexpectedly drops in on lovebirds Max and Roberta as they relax at the mountain hideaway. It’s all too much for Max, and he decides to put an end to the flirtations between Roberta and Joe. 

His actions seem to backfire, and here we see what lots of snow cascading down a mountainside can do. But lest you think that those messy little affairs of the heart have been covered up in tons of the white stuff, think again. In noir, there’s always the danger that the past will come back to haunt the guilty. 

Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, “Spellbound.”

“Spellbound” (1945)

Don’t mess with the table linens when Dr. Anthony Edwardes is around. The young psychoanalyst, who happens to be the newly appointed director of a Vermont psychiatric hospital, will be upset. 

Edwardes’s colleague marks a white tablecloth with the tines of a fork and the parallel lines remind him of ski tracks left in the snow. Suddenly, a repressed memory bobs to the surface and Edwardes freaks out. 

Dr. Constance Petersen, a psychiatrist at the facility, notices that Edwardes shows a number of troubling signs, and she suspects the worst. The problem is, she and he have become an item, and things may get … awkward. 

This is a story of deep seated psychological wounds that, irony upon irony, are apt to be misinterpreted by the psychiatric hospital staff. There’s even identity confusion, and as the story progresses we’re less sure of who is who and what thoughts are lodged in the deeper recesses of the staff’s minds. Alfred Hitchcock directs. 

Cornel Wilde, David Stollery, “Storm Fear.”

“Storm Fear” (1955)

Let’s say unexpected company drops by and a heavy snowfall traps you all under the same roof. It might be fun, sort of. Not so for the Blake clan. Fred, the missus and their young son find themselves penned in with Fred’s brother, Charlie, and a couple of his associates. 

Seems Charlie and his friends just robbed a bank, need a place to hide out and won’t leave. The Blakes’ mountain cabin, under siege, becomes a stage where where family squabbles, resentments and betrayals play out. 

Fred, a struggling writer, is jealous of the close bond between David, his son, and the family’s hired hand, Hank. Charlie seems to develop the same rapport with David. To make matters worse, Fred senses an attraction between his wife, Elizabeth, and Charlie — they were once a couple. 

Benjie, Charlie’s mentally unstable, violent cohort, wants to run off with the bank loot. Tensions rise when the trio of robbers, guided by young David, snowshoe over the mountain and try to make their escape. But a snow covered peak can be a mighty obstacle to conquer, and most city folk aren’t up to the challenge.

What does a Dancer, an Actor, a Magician and a Disenchanted Cop Have in Common? They All Meet in a “City that Never Sleeps”

Marie Windsor, Gig Young, Chill Wills, "City That Never Sleeps" (1953).

A cloud of failure hangs over a handful of Chicagoans whose dreary lives are about to become a lot more dramatic. In “City That Never Sleeps” a would-be ballerina, reduced to dancing in a burlesque house; an out of work actor, his face painted silver, poses as a mechanical man in the burlesque theater’s front window;  and an unemployed magician who uses his sleight of hand skills to pick pockets and commit robberies all figure into the story. 

Thwarted dreams and bitter resignations to less than ideal lifestyles drive the younger generation’s general sense of dissatisfaction. But it’s not just the frustrated show biz types who have a beef with the system. 

Wally Cassell, Mala Powers.

At the center of this tale of woe is Johnny Kelly (Gig Young), a young Chicago cop who’s having an affair with the burlesque dancer, Angel Face (Mala Powers), and plans to resign from the force the following day. The idea is to leave his wife, Kathy (Paula Raymond), and run off with the paramour. But his last graveyard shift turns out to be a doozie and Johnny begins to rethink every wrong footed step he’s set to take.

But before he has any revelations, the otherwise straight arrow law officer decides to get his hands dirty in order to finance his split from his wife and his job. He accepts an offer from a crooked lawyer, Penrod Biddel (Edward Arnold), to kidnap the equally crooked magician, Hayes Stewart (William Talman), and bring him over state lines where he’s a wanted man. Stewart has been getting in Biddel’s hair, and the shady attorney aims to put the pesky prestidigitator on ice.

In a marvelous scene that tells us almost all we need to know about the relationship between the two, Biddel plucks an invisible hair or some other morsel of debris from the sleeve of Stewart’s sport coat and dismissively blows it free from his fingers. Their interactions all go downhill from there.

Gig Young, Ron Hagerthy, William Talman,
"City That Never Sleeps."

The tension between Biddel and Stewart is just the tip of the iceberg. Johnny’s life becomes more complicated by the minute. If his extramarital affair and plans to vacate his wedding vows weren’t vexing enough, Johnny’s family members become entangled in the goings that unfold on this absurdly crazy night: his dad, Johnny Kelly Sr., (Otto Hulett), is also one of Chicago’s finest, and Johnny’s delinquency-curious kid brother, Stubby (Ron Hagerthy), is also on the scene. The senior Kelly’s presence plays a significant and tragic role in the film’s final scenes. 

Yes, there are a stunning number of coincidences in this story — way too many to be at all credible. On this evening, not only is Stubby out aiding and abetting the villainous Stewart, but John Kelly Sr. is also on the beat, patrolling the same mean streets of “Chi Town,” as his son.

Adding to the strangeness of this remarkable confluence of Kelly family members is Johnny Jr.’s patrol car partner on this nerve shattering evening, a sergeant who will only identify himself as Joe (Chill Wills). His voice sounds remarkably like the one that narrates the film’s opening scenes, which is meant to be the voice of Chicago — a rather strange device if there ever was one. 

As they drive together, Joe gives Johnny sound advice about life and codes of conduct, none of which the younger patrolman is in the mood to hear. Might he have listened more closely if he realized it was the city itself offering sage advice? Probably not.

Marie Windsor

A network of love triangles help this heated pot of soup boil over: Biddel learns that Stewart is having an affair with his wife, Lydia (Marie Windsor); robotic man Gregg Warren (Wally Cassell) is smitten with Angel Face, who is in love with Johnny; meanwhile, dancer Agnes DuBois (Bunny Kacher) is sweet on Gregg, but he hardly knows she’s alive.

We learn that the source of Johnny’s turmoil is two-fold: he became a police officer to please his father and he dislikes the job; he wants more money, not because he’s particularly materialistic, but because his wife earns more than he does and that hurts his pride. Successful women in the workplace were a threat to 1950s American men, it seems, and Johnny’s ego is wounded deeply enough to make him want to pull up stakes and head for the hills.

Meanwhile, over the course of his last shift, Johnny delivers a baby and busts up a rigged craps game, returning money to the swindled gamblers. He realizes, with the help of Joe’s words of wisdom, that he’s playing a useful role in the community and that it’s essential that he salvage his marriage before it’s too late.

That’s not the harbinger of doom that many would demand of noir. Some will say it’s not noir, but so what? As Sara Smith suggested in her thought provoking book, “In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City,” noir can be evaluated by the noir elements it contains, much like the way alcohol is rated by proof. Not all noirs contain all of the elements associated with the genre, and some are more noir than others. Noir or not, call “City that Never Sleeps” what you want; it’s an entertaining crime story.

Now, it’s time to talk about two silly little points from this movie that jump out at me.

First, it’s New York, not Chicago that’s known as the “city that never sleeps,” but I suppose “The Windy City” isn’t a very noir title.  

Secondly, toward the end of the film someone gets shot in a very public space, a hotel room. We’ve all seen this in films and TV shows, old and new. The shooter never seems to expect that anyone will hear the very loud gunfire and call the cops, and in the movies and TV they usually don’t. In “City that Never Sleeps” a shooter reasons that people will probably think it’s just a car backfiring (right, that’s always my first thought). 

I’m not a firearms expert, but I suspect that discharging a weapon inside a public building would attract attention — a whole lot of attention — like firing a cannon or riding a horse through the lobby.

It’s just another one of those “only in the movies” moments that just seems to wash over us without making a dent in the conscious mind. Sure, it’s strange, but I’m willing to give the shooter a pass on this one.