SUSPENSE (1946)

On the one hand, if you are going to call your movie Suspense, try to make sure you’ve got some. On the other, unless you can imagine someone walking up to the box office and asking for a pair of tickets to “Turgid Potboiler,” Suspense ain’t so bad.


There are about a dozen plot formulae that account for at least half of the movies ever made. It might be fun to figure them all out at some point, but suffice to say that Suspense implements one of the doozies: Down-on-his-luck guy breezes into town and finds a chump job. Through some stroke of genius (or luck) he quickly becomes the boss’s right hand man. Guess what? The boss has a honey of a wife, and she and the new boy light a fire together. The boss feels the heat and all of a sudden him and his right hand aren’t so friendly anymore — and the dame is stuck in the middle. Something’s gotta give and someone’s gotta go — the hard way. Sound familiar? This story has been played out in films such as The Postman Always Rings Twice, Gilda, The Strip, and a million more dating all the way back to Josef von Sternberg’s iconic Underworld. The trick to using such an old saw effectively is to sharpen it up somehow — in the case of Suspense screenwriter Phillip Yordan put the production on ice — literally.


Maria Belita Jepson-Turner, known in film just by the exotic moniker Belita, was only twelve when she skated for Britain in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, ironically finishing well back of Norwegian gold medalist Sonja Henie. With a face and figure that movie cameras took to well enough, Belita skated after Henie to California to make it in the picture business. While Henie landed at Fox, Belita ended up at Monogram. The studio, which would eventually become Allied Artists, was home of the Charlie Chan, Mr. Wong, The Shadow, Joe Palooka, and Cisco Kid franchises, was one of the better B factories. Monogram had scored a huge hit in 1945 with Lawrence Tierney in Dillinger (The bosses at Monogram knew you just can’t beat a well-made gangster picture — following Suspense, they would reteam Belita, sans skates, with Barry Sullivan in — you guessed it — The Gangster.) In an attempt to achieve “A” status for the studio, the profits from Dillinger were pumped into Suspense, the only truly big-budget picture to bear the Monogram trademark. Both Suspense and The Gangster did fair box office, though not enough to elevate either Monogram’s status as a studio or Belita’s as a star. She made a picture a year in the forties, and appeared in a few more in the fifties, then retreated to life on the road as a professional figure skater.


Look, Suspense isn’t a very good picture, but that’s not to suggest it isn’t still interesting. What makes it so is its absurdity. The banal roadhouse in Postman becomes a neon nightspot with an ice show in Suspense. In lieu of incandescent sweater girls like Lana Turner or Rita Hayworth who can command an audience while standing still, Belita is forced to skate about and soar through sword-encrusted hoops in sequined outfits. The movie is punctuated every fifteen minutes or so with either a musical number or ballet on ice, and the affect on contemporary viewers is one of wonder — as in ‘Did they really have clubs with ice shows in the forties?’ In a sense that’s beside the point as the film was made in order to cash in on Sonja Henie’s success and possibly grab some of her audience for Belita and Monogram. The movie is remembered today for its status as a film noir, but at the time of its theatrical run it was first and foremost an ice skating picture. That’s appropriate because the skating numbers play with much more verve than the story. Phillip Yordan’s screenplays in the mid-forties were pulp, but fairly derivative — he still had a way to go before penning The Big Combo. Yet with Yordan's story and Frank Tuttle assigned to direct a film noir was inevitable. The reason Tuttle wasn’t able to rise to the level of This Gun for Hire wasn’t his budget, or even the talent involved, but the difference between the Yordan and Graham Greene source material. Yordan’s dialog isn’t very good, the screenplay borders on obnoxious, and it’s full of contrivances that add at least 20 minutes of unnecessary prattle to the film. Worst of all, the darn thing doesn’t generate a lick of the promised titular suspense.


Still, the movie has its saving graces. Bonita Granville is one of them. The star of the late-thirties Nancy Drew franchise did a fair impersonation of Dick Powell and reinvented herself as a tough broad in the 1940s. In Suspense she plays the Barry Sullivan’s jilted lover from Chicago. She makes a delectable woman scorned and pumps a ton of life into Suspense — if only she could skate. Also of note is Eugene Pallette, in his final film. Pallette was a fixture in classic movies, and one of those guys with an unfamiliar name but instantly recognizable face — and voice. Most will recognize him as Henry Fonda’s pop in The Lady Eve. Here he plays the sort of character who serves as a bridge between the two male leads. He’s older, and consequently non-threatening to either man — a confidant to Albert Dekker’s man in charge and a mentor to Sullivan’s boy on the make. Pallette’s presence has the same affect of someone like William Bendix — the film feels a lot more comfortable with him in it. Also of note is the cinematography. If I’m putting a beating on this film, noir purists will still want to see it for it for Karl Struss’s camera work. Suspense is really Struss’s only film noir, which is a shame. This is the guy who won the first Academy Award for shooting Sunrise, and went on to DP The Great Dictator and Limelight for Charlie Chaplin. Suspense has overwhelmingly dark look, more shadow than light, yet still seems bright and sharp because of the incredibly high contrast. Struss likes to put the camera up high and establish a focal point for each scene, with the action often taking place in the middle ground instead of up close. One could say his set-ups and style are reminiscent of John Alton, but Kruss probably got there first.


Suspense is a film that leaves you wanting: wanting a more original story and better dialog, wanting more Bonita Granville, and wanting more Karl Struss. But it doesn’t leave you wondering what’s gonna happen — you’ll figure that out in the first ten minutes.

Suspense (1946)

Director: Frank Tuttle
Cinematographer: Karl Struss
Screenplay: Phillip Yordan
Starring: Barry Sullivan, Belita, Albert Dekker, Bonita Granville, and Eugene Pallette.
Released by: Monogram Pictures
Running time: 101 minutes