VIOLENCE (1947)

Film noir’s definition may be as elusive as ever, but we can say with confidence that noir confronted the harsh realities of the postwar world more immediately than other kinds of Hollywood films. With their smaller budgets, noir movies developed a penchant for low cost, “ripped from the headlines” subject matter. They also often realistically depicted the internal and external struggle of veterans attempting to readjust to a culture irrevocably changed — more anonymous, more sophisticated, more neurotic — than the one they left behind at the outbreak of war.

Released originally by Monogram Pictures and recently made available through the Warner Archive, 1947’s Violence is concerned with the efforts of intrepid magazine reporter Ann Dwire (Nancy Coleman) and federal investigator Steve Fuller (Michael O’Shea) to uncover the truth behind veterans’ aid group the United Defenders. Headed by fire-breathing jingo “True” Dawson (Emory Parnell), and his cold-blooded right hand man Fred Stalk (Sheldon Leonard), the U.D. isn’t the legitimate organization it’s cracked up to be, but rather a picket-busting goon squad available to the highest bidder. Dawson uses his gift for polarizing oratory to enthrall returning servicemen, bellowing that the Defenders are the “…fearless spine that will stand behind you for all the things you’ve been promised: better housing conditions, your jobs back with privilege of seniority, and relief from the shortages that affect the happiness and well-being of you and your families!” Meanwhile, he and Stalk are secretly cultivating a six-figure deal with a mysterious “Mr. Big” figure to hire the Defenders out as club-wielding thugs: “We get ‘em young and tough, the kind that’s already wearing a chip on its shoulder — and then we’ll prime then for the payoff. We’ll prime them with hate! Hate for labor, hate for management, hate for the party that’s in, hate for the party that’s out!” During one such rant, a vet dares to challenge Dawson’s violent rhetoric, prompting the big man (in an obvious reference to HUAC — whether it’s an embrace or an indictment is unclear) to whine that the Defenders’ enemies can “get on the inside too.” He then calls for “a couple of red-blooded boys” to take care of the problem with their fists.

In order to properly come to grips with just how ‘of the moment’ Violence was, we need to take for a closer look at the domestic situation at the time of its release. It isn’t exactly correct, that conception most folks have about the period of time just after the war being a moment of unbridled prosperity and optimism in the United States. There was a short period of adjustment, before the renewed militarism of the Cold War and Korea (not to mention the rising middle class’s demand for new leisure and consumer goods) that would find returning soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines faced with a crisis of uncertain jobs, declining wages, sorry working conditions, and piss-poor housing.

Everyone who wanted a job had worked when the war was on, and while the home front labor shortages guaranteed high wages and almost unlimited overtime, rationing of staples and the general lack of luxury items led to out-of-control inflation, even after the surrender. After four long years folks were tired of going without; they had saved fastidiously during the war and now wanted to spend their money on their wants rather than their needs. By 1946 most families were eyeballing one of those new suburban bungalows, complete with a TV set in the living room and a Ford Super De Luxe in the carport. Yet as the economy was returning to a peacetime model and millions of G.I.s were rejoining domestic life, big business believed the transition period presented the right opportunity to slash wages and overtime, pare women from the labor pool, and return to a more profitable depression-era pay scale. An emboldened American people wouldn’t stand for it.

In the wake of the layoffs, the cuts in pay and overtime, and four years’ worth of stockpiled grievances (the AFL and CIO promised not to strike during the war), things got ugly. In what would become known as the Great Strike Wave of 1946, as many as five million Americans walked off the job. Steel, coal, oil, transportation, utilities, retail; it seemed to involve everyone. Entire cities went on solidarity strikes. Confrontations were commonplace, and there were those, like Violence’s Dawson, who were ready to cash in on the trouble. Big business had a long history of using the police and the National Guard to quash strikes, and when that wasn’t legally possible they turned to private contractors. By the time Congress opened the 1947 session, the labor situation was a national calamity, and more than 250 related bills were under consideration by lawmakers. It was during this maelstrom, in May 1947, that Violence hit theaters. Just a few weeks later, and over President Truman’s veto, congress passed the controversial Taft-Hartley Act, which, among other things, made it far more difficult for workers to strike.

That brings us back to Violence, a movie that attempts to cash in on the fears and the tumult of a country trying to get back to work, and hoping to recover from too many years of war and depression. It opens in the cellar of the United Defenders’ Los Angeles headquarters with the thuggish Stalk and simple minded crony Joker (Peter Whitney) murdering an employee who got too close to the truth, while Dawson blusters away to the Ladies’ Auxiliary in the meeting hall just over their heads. It’s a delightfully noirish beginning — dark and hardboiled — but the rest of the film fails to live up to these opening moments. As the action moves upstairs, we meet UD secretary Ann Mason, who appears dutiful until we realize that she’s using her secret bracelet camera to photograph everyone in the room! Mason is actually Ann Dwire, girl reporter for VIEW magazine. With microfilm negatives hidden in her bag, she departs for Chicago to pen her exposé. She hops a taxi outside the Union Station, but is tailed by agent Steve Fuller. The chase results in a fiery crash that sends Ann to the hospital with a bad case of — wait for it — amnesia. Deciding to play the situation to his advantage, Fuller sneaks into the hospital and convinces her that they’re engaged, and then tricks her into getting him a job with the UD. Unfortunately for Steve, Ann no longer remembers who she really is, and when she learns that he’s actually a G-Man, she rats him out to Dawson and Stalk!

Violence was Monogram’s follow up to its 1946 hit Decoy, and features many of the same principals: director Jack Bernhard, producer Bernard Brandt, writer Stanley Rubin, and actor Sheldon Leonard. But don’t go looking for a repeat performance. WhereDecoy was creative and stylish, Violence is drab and predictable. The cast often seems disinterested, the production design is tepid, and Bernhard’s direction is uninspired. Even the talented Leonard suffers in comparison. His droll delivery in Decoy acts as a foil to Jean Gillie’s outrageously over the top femme fatale, and his deadpan style doesn’t wash playing against two leads (Coleman and O’Shea) unable to parry his style. In short, Violence fails to deliver on either the tastiness of its title or the promise of its topicality — and it fails to capture even a little of the same verve that made Decoy so much fun. Rather than drawing attention to an issue of national importance — the problem of returning veterans in labor strife — Violence simply morphs its fascinating premise into grist for the Poverty Row mill. What it needed was a shot of Methylene Blue.

Violence (1947)Directed by Jack Bernhard
Produced Bernard Brandt
Written by Stanley Rubin and Lewis Lantz
Cinematography by Henry Sharp
Starring Nancy Coleman, Michael O’Shea, Emory Parnell, and Sheldon Leonard
Released by Monogram Pictures
Running Time: 72 minutes

THE PRETENDER (1947)

We make allowances in our enjoyment of films that we withhold when considering other art forms — movies seem to operate by a different set of standards: so many disparate elements come together from so many different minds and sets of hands, not to mention competing agendas, that audiences can be incredibly forgiving if a film isn’t up to par — provided some aspect of it captivates them. It’s one of the reasons that movies are timeless — viewers can find something worthwhile in a film they would otherwise consider a failure. The Pretender, a second feature from Republic Pictures, is a good example of such a film. It offers the sort of half-baked film story that gets dreamt up in some writer’s bed during those hazy moments somewhere between awake and asleep. Its overly contrived and forces itself upon us, but it nevertheless piques our curiosity in some way that, despite the flaws, we still want to see how its particular gimmick plays out on-screen.


The Pretender stars Albert Dekker, a man whose name is familiar to film buffs but more or less forgotten by the general public. Dekker had a sturdy career in the movie business, finding his way west after making his bones on Broadway. Today he’s remembered mostly for the title role in the 1940 science fiction classic Dr. Cyclops, though he did make a few crime pictures, including the essential 1946 film noir The Killers. He can also be found chewing scenery in the 1945 noir-on-ice, Suspense, and playing it mysterious in the fascinating 1941 proto-noir Among the Living. In spite of Dekker’s work in front of the camera he remains one of the unlucky souls for whom the Kenneth Anger-hyped speculation surrounding his grisly, sexualized death will forever overshadow anything he accomplished in life. It seems that whenever his name comes up writers feel obligated to rehash the details of his demise. Dekker’s corpse was discovered in the bathroom of his Hollywood apartment in 1968, hands shackled behind his back and body hanging limply from the shower curtain. For three decades conjecture involving robbery-murder, suicide, autoeroticism gone wrong, and things even more bizarre have made the rounds. The gossip is unfortunate, because it obscures the fact that Dekker was a pretty good actor — he had an intelligent and refined screen persona that was enhanced by sheer physical size. He was able to use that persona to affect either feelings of pathos or enmity from his audience. The guy had real range and he should have been a bigger star. His performance is the saving grace of The Pretender.


The movie finds Dekker in the role of Kenneth Holden, a Wall Street loser who likes to play the market but can’t pick a winner. He’s in the hole big-time, so he starts drafting five-figure “loan” checks from the accounts of one Claire Worthington (Catharine Craig), a pretty young woman — years his junior — whose sizable fortune he holds in trust. Dekker writes check after check in hopes that his luck will turn, but when it doesn’t he gets the idea to marry the girl and co-opt her funds the easy way. The problem is that Claire is already engaged to Dr. Leonard Koster (Chares Drake) — a good-looking psychiatrist she’s fallen head-over-heels for.


Holden refuses to let a little thing like love get in his way, so he arranges with local racketeer Victor Korrin (pudgy Alan Carney, scene-stealer par excellence) to have the boyfriend knocked off — which is exactly when The Pretender begins to sink under the weight of its own contrivances. It starts when Holden can’t pass along the name of Claire’s fiancé — she has conveniently kept his identity a secret. Korrin’s only option is to scan the metro society columns for her engagement announcement, and then kill the man she’s pictured with. And of course he doesn’t do the dirty work himself— he subcontracts the messy stuff, and refuses to reveal the hired killer’s identity to Holden. It’s in the scene where the killing is arranged that the filmmakers frustratingly fail to cash in on one of those moments of wicked irony that so often makes film noir a treat. Korrin wants twenty grand for the job, which obviously Holden can’t get his hands on unless he raids Claire’s accounts yet again — but the filmmakers fail to cash in on the irony of one man purchasing his rival’s death with the money of the woman they both desire. The addition of such a scene would have done much to elevate The Pretender as a film noir, yet Wilder let the moment pass. Nevertheless the scene is still the best in the film by a mile — the camera gets in tight on both actors, each cloaked in shadow. Carney, performing his ass off, does a bit with his cigar that makes the scene unforgettable.


No sooner than the Holden and Korrin seal their deal the film jumps across town to an equally critical scene, when Claire, ready to paint the town, meets Dr. Lenny at his hospital. Just as the young lovers head for the elevator he gets called to the operating room for a psychiatric consult that quickly turns into surgery, a ruined evening, and hurt feelings. In a startlingly forced 180, even for a B-movie, Claire decides she isn’t willing to share her man with the medical profession and stuffs her diamond into an envelope along with a hastily scribbled note that reads simply, “It won’t work.” She fumbles the envelope into a nurse’s hands, then slinks to a phone booth and dimes Holden: “Let’s get married…tonight!” In spite of the silliness of her character, I found Craig to be an actress with pluses. She looks like a cross between Norma Shearer and Kay Francis — classy without being aloof, sophisticated yet attainable. The camera seemed to like her, so it’s surprising she didn’t have a longer career in the movies — it lasted just ten years from start to finish, then a forty-year marriage to the Music Man himself, Robert Preston.


The story briskly shoves its way along, damn the credibility, until it gets what it wants: Claire ducks out of her engagement to the shrink and instead elopes with Holden. But before he can get in touch with Korrin to cancel the contract on her husband, the fat man’s past catches up to him and he gets bumped off, leaving a bewildered Holden with a big target on his back and looking over his shoulder for a man with a gun. The latter sequences of the film focus on Holden’s unraveling psyche as he scrambles to identify and try to stop the would-be killer. His fear of this unknown reaper causes him to come completely unglued — leaving him sequestered in his room, fittingly unable to exalt in the wealth he conspired to obtain. Holden’s paranoia overtakes him at a lightning pace, and it’s not particularly credible from a story standpoint, but Dekker is good enough to keep you intrigued. He changes his appearance, mistrusts and dismisses his servants, refuses to eat anything but canned goods, and fails utterly as a husband — next thing we know Dr. Leonard is back on the scene. The inevitable conclusion offers a fitting consequence of the noirish fatalism that permeates the movie, with an ironic, smirking postscript reminiscent of such films as Shockproof and Tomorrow is Another Day tacked on for good measure.


At 69 minutes The Pretender is so brief that it’s fair to suggest it doesn’t get made, even on Poverty Row, a few years further into the era of television. The gimmicky story, which feels more like an episode of The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents than it does a feature film (or even a second feature for that matter), seems more suited to the smaller screen. It’s notable on the production side for two reasons. This is the moment in which famed cinematographer John Alton gets his first real crack at noir subject matter, and while his work is as uneven as the film itself, there are a few great moments — like the deal-making scene between Holden and Korrin. Also noteworthy is the use of theremin music in the soundtrack. The instrument that would give the science fiction films of the following decade their distinctive electronic sound is used with gusto in The Pretender, and while it seems somewhat foreign in a crime picture, the movie wouldn’t be the same without it.

The Pretender (1947)

Director: W. Lee Wilder (Billy’s older brother)

Cinematographer: John Alton

Screenplay: Don Martin

Starring: Albert Dekker, Catharine Craig, Alan Carney.

Released by: Republic Pictures

Running time: 69 minutes

THE WEB (1947)

Look, Ella Raines is in it. Now go find it and watch it.

That’s not advice — it’s just how I tend to Ella Raines pictures. There are only about twenty or so out there, and I savor each one of them (well, maybe not Singing Guns). As a Raines film noir The Phantom Lady has no peer, but The Web is a good film with a big role for the elegant brunette. Most of the conversation about The Web tends to focus on whether or not the movie is a true film noir or a straight mystery / thriller. For what it’s worth: it is a film noir, albeit a lesser one, written and filmed in that brief window of time following the war when the fear of nuclear devastation hadn’t yet permeated the American psyche, and the ensuing cynicism and paranoia hadn’t taken root in film noir. That’s not to suggest that the film is without cynicism — the presence of Edmond O’Brien guarantees it. Instead, The Web is a film noir with roots in the mystery tradition of the 1930s. Working against it is a lack of hopelessness and a dogged determination towards a positive outcome. It is different from the more iconic films to follow only in that it occurs earlier in the cycle — a cycle with evolving conventions.

The story is intriguing: A little old man named Kroner does five years in stir after getting caught selling a million dollars’ worth of forged T-bonds. He clams up, knowing that if he does his time he’ll be taken care of when he finally gets to breathe fresh air again. Meanwhile, his partner in crime figures it makes more sense to kill him than to pay off, so he sets up a patsy to do the job. After the deed is done the patsy gets wise and sets out to bring down the one who hired him. In addition to a guilty conscience he realizes that he has fallen for the man’s secretary / girl Friday. In the end though, the patsy and the girl are caught in the downward spiral of cruel luck, unable to save themselves (there’s the noir!) until fate takes a hand and the bumbling, overconfident killer foolishly incriminates himself.

 The scheming businessman is Vincent Price, the patsy is Edmond O’Brien, the girl Friday is Ella Raines, and the smug cop investigating them all is big Bill Bendix. Price was born for these sorts of parts, his mannered performance here reminiscent of his work in Laura. Replace Shelby Carpenter’s whininess with smooth self-confidence and you’ve got The Web’s Andrew Colby. Price may have even borrowed from another “web” — Clifton Webb, his costar in Laura. One way in which this can be seen in Price’s character is the suggestion of his homosexuality: Colby spends his days and evenings with Raines’ Noel Faraday, and although their relationship is more than merely professional, the film carefully avoids any suggestion of romance, which clearly defies Hollywood convention. In many ways their relationship is similar to that of Waldo Lydecker and Laura Hunt — except that in The Web Colby encourages Regan’s passes, demonstrating his lack of romantic feelings for a woman so beautiful that other men fall over themselves to be near her. And make no mistake, the typical noir villain had no problem using his own woman as a pawn in his scheming. In The Mob, a man actually convinces his own wife to come on to Brod Crawford, fully expecting her to come back home to him after the deal was closed.

O’Brien is well-cast as attorney Bob Regan — smugness being an integral part of O’Brien’s screen persona. His brand of confidence is usually perceived as arrogance, which is exactly how he is meant to be seen in The Web. His comeuppance when he discovers he’s the sucker somehow seems all the more real or gratifying to audiences when the joke is on O’Brien.

Raines’ beauty was more sophisticated than sexual, and it’s obvious in The Web that Noel Faraday is a match for any man in the film. Though she plays Colby’s secretary, she’s clearly his right hand and first choice for advice. The script calls for Regan to come on like a drooling heel when they first meet, though it’s apparent the scene is intended to develop her character much more than his, by showing us how deftly Noel fends him off. The script is talky, but Raines does a plum job of making the conversations seem believable, even contemporary. The typical blunt noir dialog is replaced with slick witticisms, especially between Regan and Faraday. Even Bendix gets the intellectual treatment in The Web. His signature physical presence is diminished by his character’s sarcastic and biting remarks. Big Bill even wears glasses!

In spite of the good dialog in The Web, the plot suffers from a large glitch that strains credibility. Needing the old accountant, Kroner, dead and gone, Colby contrives to have Regan shoot and kill him. Remember, his whole plan hinges on Regan killing the old jailbird, but it can only succeed if Kroner is shot cold dead — if he is merely wounded and has the chance to tell his story, Colby knows he’ll get the hot seat at Rikers Island. Sure, it’s possible to imagine that he could scheme to get Regan to pull the trigger, but no reasonable man would take such a chance. But that’s how it plays out. The scenario is repeated with a different victim at the film’s climax, when Colby himself guns down an employee who might incriminate him — while framing Regan for the job. In the film’s best use of irony, the police inform Colby that his victim is still alive, and he’s finally undone when he sneaks into the wounded man’s room late that night in order to finish the job.

The Web’s production values are middling. In film noir it’s crucial for the film’s visual crew, the director of photography, art directors, and set designers to accentuate character emotions and reinforce specific aspects of the narrative through visuals. In other words: form follows function, especially in noir. DP Irving Glassberg disappoints. He captures Raines well, but his attempts to make The Web distinctive fall short, resulting in a film with little more going for it than lackluster surface gloss. There are some dark corners and foggy streets, but what separates the great noirs from the not so great are the reasons for all those velvety shadows. What does that dark corner hold? What do the elongated shadows, absurd camera angles, and extreme close-ups suggest? What do they tell us about the protagonist’s predicament or state of mind? In late 1946 Glassberg didn’t know. The lighting is especially weak, and eventually becomes annoying. All of the scenes, regardless of staging, are photographed with a single key light, which creates a theatrical quality. Also suspect are the exterior back lot exteriors, which fail to properly evoke New York. The promising opening titles roll against a car’s-eye view of Manhattan streets, but the film fails to follow up. 

The Web is an entertaining crime thriller with a good script and a good cast. though it fails to distinguish itself as a film noir.

The Web (1947)

Director: Michael Gordon
Cinematographer: Irving Glassberg

Screenplay: William Bowers and Bertram Millhauser.
Story: Harry Kurnitz
Starring: Edmond O’Brien, Ella Raines, Vincent Price, and Bill Bendix.
Released by: Universal International
Running time: 87 minutes

CALCUTTA (1947)

It’s easy to understand why the studio bosses at Paramount would pair Gail Russell with Alan Ladd in Calcutta. She seems to fit the same mold as Veronica Lake, with whom Ladd struck gold on numerous occasions — beautiful, reserved, demure, and vulnerable. Russell was only hampered by her nerves. She was cripplingly shy and suffered from what today would certainly be called a severe social anxiety disorder. Her story is one of Hollywood’s saddest. She was discovered while still in high school and placed under contract with Paramount as soon as she got her diploma. Her beauty was special in that she bore no particular resemblance to any existing famous faces. Her doe eyes, high cheekbones, and full lips were hers alone, and Paramount had high hopes. They cultivated her acting skills and brought her along slowly, but whether it was due to a lack of talent or her personal difficulties she never caught on. She worked on a few big projects, including Angel and the Badman and Wake of the Red Witch opposite John Wayne and The Unseen with Joel McCrea, but despite the many opportunities afforded by her looks and a certain magically ethereal quality she was never able to break into true stardom. She only found the courage to get in front of the camera through alcohol, and eventually got popped by the LAPD for driving drunk. In a testament to her personality, numerous people from the industry, including Wayne, tried to help her get past her troubles, but it wasn’t in the cards. Russell died from a heart attack in a low rent Hollywood apartment at the lamentable age of 36.

The miscasting of Gail Russell is the most obvious problem with Calcutta, but it bears pointing out that replacing her with Lake would have been unlikely to salvage the picture. Lake too, being that she and Russell were somewhat similar types, would have been miscast in the role of femme fatale Virginia Moore. That’s not to say that a demure, even girlish, leading lady couldn’t be effective as a black widow in the right picture — think Jane Greer — but it doesn’t work here. Russell was cast because the producers were hoping her type would once again strike lightning against Ladd’s brooding hero. However the exotic mystique of a film such as this demands an equally exotic leading lady — a highly sexualized, larger than life type: Hayworth, Mayo, Gardner — maybe even the other Russell, you get the idea. Not Gail Russell, not Lake, not even Greer. Someone involved in the production recognized this early on and tried to spice up the movie with a sexy second lead. In this case it’s June Duprez, who outshines Russell by a mile and only makes her look worse by comparison. Duprez, who even resembles Russell (it gets confusing, they should have given her part to a blonde), gives the film a shot in the arm and has a real spark with Ladd.

In 1947 Alan Ladd was still on top of the world. He looks great in Calcutta, like a man who is in his prime and knows it. He is very comfortable playing the brooding, morose, tightly wound hero who seems to have no time for women and is struggling inwardly to get over the war. (Ladd was practically playing himself here.) The film casts him as Neale Gordon, American ex-pat pilot now flying the Chungking to Calcutta route with air corps buddies Pedro (William Bendix) and Bill (John Whitney). When Bill turns up strangled, Neale and Pedro take a leave of absence from the airline to hunt for his killer. They get mixed up in all sorts of far eastern intrigue and cross paths with a variety of colorful Indian habitués, from the colonial authorities to urbane casino owners to native jewelry smugglers. Neale also gets involved with Virginia (Russell), who was engaged to Bill and knows more about his death than she lets on. One of the popular conventions of film noir, so far as bad girls are concerned, is that the hero’s first impression of the woman tends to be correct—even if she initially manages to pull the wool over his eyes. That’s certainly the case here, and it plays out through a good deal of the running time. Neale’s first impression of his dead buddy’s girl is that she’s a no-good gold digger, though her girl-next-door facade thaws him out as they get to know each other better. In Calcutta’s best use of irony, she helps him get to the bottom of the mystery, all the while aware of her own culpability.

In the end Calcutta is little more than a routine potboiler. John Farrow’s direction and John Seitz’s cinematography are competent yet uninspired — disappointing considering that each made numerous quality film noirs, including two pretty good ones together: The Big Clock and Night Has a Thousand Eyes. Farrow’s pacing is a too deliberate and the middle of the picture drags. Seitz does a fine job of masking the back lot locations, though he isn’t able to reproduce any of the exhilaratingly noirish shots of The Big Clock. There are some good lines in Seton Miller’s script, though there aren’t nearly enough of them. The best one comes in Ladd and Russell’s first scene, when she tells him he’s “cold, sadistic, and egotistical.” His response, “Maybe, but I’m still alive.” With the exception of Russell the cast is fine, though the two brightest spots, Bendix and Duprez, don’t get nearly the screen time they deserve. There are lengthy stretches that unfortunately contrive to keep big Bill out of the film, ostensibly for the sake of romantic scenes between Ladd and Russell. But as was often the case with Ladd and Bendix, their movies only got going when they were on the screen together. Their chemistry is obvious in each of the eight films they made together and it’s nice to see them on the same side of the fence for once. If the forties had a character actor with more vitality than Bendix, I’m at least certain that Bill could take him in a fistfight.

Calcutta (1947)

Director: John Farrow

Cinematographer: John Seitz
Screenplay: Seton Miller
Starring: Alan Ladd, William Bendix, and Gail Russell.
Released by: Paramount
Running time: 82 minutes

2/14