WHY GIRLS LEAVE HOME (1945)

 

8.5.5

“C’mon Diana, make with the tonsils.”

Believed to be a lost film for decades, 1945’s Why Girls Leave Home recently became findable for those who know where to look for such things. I’ve been after for it for 25 years. And guess what? It’s a bona fide film noir. It’s not in any of the film noir books or on any of the film noir lists—because nobody has seen it. Were it not for a pair of Oscar nominations (score and song) it likely never would have resurfaced. 

Make no mistake, this is Poverty Row stuff. But as far as PRC trash goes, it’s pretty good. Not Detour good, but good enough to hold me tight for better than an hour. I’m a fan of director William Berke—Cop Hater (1958) was one of the very first movies I wrote up here, all the way back in November of 2008. Berke did a bunch of diggable B crime pics: Pier 23 (1951), FBI Girl (1951), Waterfront at Midnight (1948), and Shoot to Kill (1947).

Lola Lane

Berke’s predominantly female cast is stellar: Lola Lane gets top billing and the juiciest part, though not the lead. Never as famous as her A-list sister Priscilla, Lola nevertheless appeared in more than forty movies (including a few big studio hits) before taking a powder in 1946. This was her next to last picture—she makes the most of it. The girl on that sexy one sheet is actually lead actress Pamela Blake, a steady presence throughout Tinsel Town’s double-bill era and probably best known as the kitten-hating cleaning lady who famously takes one in the kisser from Alan Ladd in This Gun for Hire. Constance Worth is fine as the best friend and Claudia Drake is even better here than she was in Detour. (No, not her. Drake was the girl Tom Neal was trying to get to, not the one he was trying to get away from.

Pamela Blake

The men hold their own. Sheldon Leonard does his regular thing and so does Elisha Cook Jr.—except Cook does it and then some. His sleazy performance is the best piece of evidence that this movie has been buried deep since it last aired on small screens during Ike’s first term. If anyone had actually ever seen this, especially film noir folk, they’d still be talking about Cook’s work. Just as he’d done the year before in Phantom Lady, Cook plays a pasty white hepcat—except with a clarinet this time. Get a load of this boast: “Yeah, Benny Goodman’s pretty good, but I think I’m a little deeper in the groove.”  Pamela White must agree. She bounces up and down through a late night “jam session” just like a poor man’s Ella Raines. It’s not the musical numbers where Cook scores this time around though, it’s with the girls. He’s a straight-up predator, of the type seemingly unique to the City of Angels, where fresh-faced cheesecake with canary dreams arrive by the busload. He’s a scumbag worthy of Ellroy; the fake-tough innocence of Wilmer Cook is long gone.

Perhaps I should set the story? Diana Leslie (Blake) doesn’t like it at mother and daddy’s place. It’s too cooped up and the neighborhood stinks these days. She was tired of doing without during the Depression, now she’s tired of doing without during the war. She’s young, she’s bored, she can sing a little, and clothes look good on her—why shouldn’t she go out and make a few bucks if she can, and maybe even have a good time doing it? She wants money. She wants things. She wants…a career. 

Diana’s hipster boyfriend (Cook)‚ a 4F if ever there was one, thinks there might be something for her at the Kitten Club. Her family thinks she’s all wet: “Listen, you’re only my kid sister, but I don’t like you hanging out with those jive jumpers,” her older brother sneers, right before he slaps her face for having a mind of her own. That’s the last straw; Diana bolts. Next thing she knows she’s warbling at the Kitten Club. Between numbers she plays “hostess,” luring out of town squares into the back room where they get fleeced at the roulette tables. The club’s merely a front, illicit gambling and “dates” are where the real money is.

Diana has a knack for the job. She’s a tough dame now, with a Chesterfield in a thin black holder: “I know all the angles and I know how to protect myself in the clinches.” That is, until one of her marks loses his shirt at the tables and then feeds himself a bullet sandwich in the men’s room. When the guy’s buddy protests to the management he catches lead in the temple. Diana sees the whole thing and finally gets wise. Can she get out of it all in time? Here comes reporter Chris Williams (Leonard) to the rescue. Movie good guys back then were reporters.

All of this we learn through flashbacks. The whole picture unfolds that way, another trademark of classic noir. There are more: an opening sequence that features a shadowy nighttime game of cat and mouse along the waterfront. A midnight car chase on the back end. Booze, smokes, broads. A succession of back rooms, gutters, and nightclubs, all dimly lit to hide the cheapjack cardboard PRC sets. There’s even a montage. The movie snaps along with sharp, rat-a-tat lines delivered by a game cast who know how to get plenty of chatter into a brief running time. Hard boiled? Only every once in a while, but plenty stylish.

More than mere style, however, Why Girls Leave Home carves out its noir street cred in how it treats its protagonist. (And, just as importantly, who it ultimately reveals as its villain. Wish I could say more on this, but forget it!). Diana Leslie makes the classic noir blunder: she wants. Our noir heroes get themselves into trouble when they want more than society has determined they ought to have. For Diana, it’s a career, new digs, a little money of her own. Why the hell not, we surely ask ourselves now. Plenty of reasons, 1945 audiences roar back at us. Ours, I guess, is not to judge.

Like I said a few hundred words ago, make no mistake, this is Poverty Row stuff. It’s not Detour, it’s not Phantom Lady, but it does have something all its own. A rotgut charm that was enough to keep a jaded customer like me fixed to the screen.

Why Girls Leave Home (1945)

Directed by William Berke

Cinematographer: Mack Stengler

Story and Screenplay: Fanya Foss (once Billy Bob Thornton’s mother-in-law)

Starring: Pamela Blake, Lola Lane, Sheldon Leonard, and Elisha Cook Jr.

Released by: Producers Releasing Corporation

Running time: 69 minutes

HONG KONG CONFIDENTIAL (1958)

Gene Barry, who made his mark on television as the star of such popular programs as Bat Masterson and Burke’s Law, plays an undercover CIA man on the trail of a kidnapped Arabian prince in the ultra low-budget back-lot thriller Hong Kong Confidential.


With a title like that, how can you resist? From New York, L.A. and Chicago to High School, put the word confidential in your title and count me in. Hong Kong Confidential is the strangest bird in the nest, a 1958 cheapie that clocks in at barely over an hour. There’s not too much meat on these bones, so this review will be as spare as the film.


The set up is as contrived as it is confusing: the American and Soviet governments are both wooing Thamen, some speck of a fictional country in the Middle East, “at the mouth of the Suez canal,” as a spot for an ICBM site. To tip the scales in their favor the reds kidnap the son of the emir in an effort to force the king to ally his country with them (Interesting logic, huh?). Historically a friend of the U.S., the emir receives an “anonymous note” in the wake of the kidnapping demanding that he abandon talks with the Americans and instead embrace the Soviets. He responds with an ultimatum to the CIA: find the crown prince in two weeks or he’ll jump in bed with the commies.


The intelligence service discovers a lead in Hong Kong, and they put their main far eastern asset on the case: one Casey Reed (Gene Barry), lounge singer extraordinaire. Barry gets through this by chewing every piece of cardboard scenery on the back lot sets. He’s over the top the whole way through, but his hammy performance is part of the reason Hong Kong Confidential qualifies as a campy delight. His character manages to track down those involved with the kidnapping, though their guilt isn’t established until the final moments of the movie — all along agent Reed simply has them pegged as baddies and goes after them for no other reason.


The film features women from both sides of the tracks. Allison Hayes plays the mysterious Elena Martine, smuggler and chief bad girl. Hayes is sexy as can be — in an overtly trashy sort of way. She’s that rare actress who manages to look good in hot pants, even at her normal height — later in 1958 Hayes becomes an American pop culture when she immortalized Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. IMDb also tells us that Hayes, like me, is a West Virginian, though unlike me, she got her big break as a Miss America contestant. On the flipside is all-American blonde Beverly Tyler, who plays Barry’s partner in his lounge act: he croons, she’s parked behind the piano. Tyler has no idea that her guy leads a secret life, and she’s devastated when he breaks up the act and heads for Macao. Of course she follows, and in true B-script fashion ends up as a captive of the other woman and her crew of cronies.


Unlike most of the other Confidential films this one isn’t by any means a noir, though on paper it might be confused for one: cheap production values, moody lighting (in some scenes), a bad girl, a rogue hero, and voiceover narration are all present; though there’s none of the determined fatalism, cynicism, or pervasive sense of doom that defines the noir picture. Hayes’s character is certainly bad, but she never manages to pull the wool of Barry’s eyes and couldn’t possibly be described as a femme fatale. The narration here is fascinating — unlike most films that use the device to provide some set-up or let us in the hero’s thoughts, Hong Kong Confidential employs voiceover for purely economical reasons: the narrator fills in story gaps. His omniscient voice chimes in regularly to tie together scenes, and fill viewers in on aspects of the story that are not filmed as scenes — talk about cheap!


The sets are strictly from hunger, clearly trumped-up back-lot hand-me-downs. Nevertheless, cinematographer Ken Peach does a good job with them, and while the film doesn’t have a distinct visual style it does have a few excellent moments of darkness and light. Peach did not have a noteworthy career, though ironically he did film the more noir-ish Chicago Confidential, and well as the fine Ruth Roman / Sterling Hayden vehicle Five Steps to Danger. In another bit of odd coincidence, director Edward Cahn is himself credited with the 1935 film Confidential. Cahn’s filmography is extraordinary, check it out here. It might just be me, but I can’t read a list of titles such as his and not salivate to see each and every one of them. The biggest talent in the crew had to be art director Bill Glascow, who decorated some iconic film noirs — Kiss Me Deadly in particular, and would later earn an Oscar nomination for Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte.


Hong Kong Confidential is a small, fun, campy thing. It doesn’t take itself very seriously and doesn’t expect you to. One look at the poster and you’ll know you’re in for a fun ride — or at least that Gene Barry is a fan of the squatting position, and he holds his .38 like a steak knife. Possibly the best thing about it is its availability. And don’t forget to be careful — the guy beside you at the bar might be listening.


Hong Kong Confidential (1958)

Directed by Edward L. Cahn
Produced by Robert Kent
Written by Orville Hampton
Starring Gene Barry and Allison Hayes
Cinematography by Ken Peach
Art Direction by William Glascow
Released by United Artists
Running time: 67 minutes.

HER KIND OF MAN (1946)

Generalizations about the sexes are treacherous, but men and women alike agree that there’s a certain kind of girl who invariably finds herself attracted to the wrong type of guy. Such relationships have been film fodder since the birth of the medium, and1946’s Her Kind of Man is no different. It tells the familiar story of a lounge singer, who finds herself caught between two men, one a professional gambler and heel, the other a clean cut newspaper hack. At first glance Her Kind of Man appears to be nothing more than a routine Warner Bros gang programmer—not to mention one made in the days after such films had gone out of style. However it has the shadings of film noir, and features a cast and production team well-represented in the noir cycle. In the end though, it’s just one helluva strange movie.

Her Kind of Man is strictly a star vehicle. The good guy / bad guy love triangle plot was familiar even to 1946 audiences, leaving the picture to sink or swim on the charisma of its three leads. The inescapable fact that this has been unseen and unmissed for many decades provides some insight into the relative magnitude of the star power in play. And yet there’s something to be said for the rediscovery of forgotten performers—in this instance TV’s Janis Paige. She’s the pretty part of the three-way; the other two sides of the triangle are noir stalwarts Dane Clark and Zachary Scott. It practically goes without saying that Scott is the heavy (and the real star despite third billing), while Clark is uncomfortable and miscast as a gossip columnist. The stars are competent—it’s just that this project was probably intended for, and would have been more gratifying with, water dipped from the deeper end of the Warner Bros talent pool.

Janis Paige (still with us!) was a talented singer with a throaty voice and fleshy, yet angular Maureen O’Hara-like good looks. She and Hollywood never quite saw eye-to-eye during the studio years, so Paige left the west coast for Broadway in the fifties and made a splash in the initial theatrical productions of a few iconic musicals, particularly The Pajama Game. Doris Day got the nod for the Hollywood adaptation, but Janis returned to films and cemented her reputation as a firecracker alongside Astaire and Charisse in Silk Stockings, the screen role for which she is best remembered. She transitioned to television, and worked steadily on the tube until the late-1990s. When Her Kind of Man was made, the studio was trying Janis out in a variety of parts in low-rent pictures to see how audiences would take to her.

The film is a sort of hybrid of multiple forms: romance, gangster movie, film noir (just a little), and musical. Paige gets to do three numbers, but despite being a popular singer herself, the studio decided to dub her—and with at least two different vocalists. The music is worked into the story seamlessly—after all, Paige plays a lounge singer—with the highlight coming in a glamorous, if incomplete version of Body and Soul. Somehow the genre mashup works, though as the film becomes more and more noirish as it goes along, the early musical numbers feel out of place. But perhaps such diverse genre-based thematics at play in one B picture is what makes Her Kind of Man inordinately interesting.

Besides, I’m not even certain it’s fair to call this a legitimate gangster film. Zach Scott’s character is more a gambler and opportunist schooled during the Prohibition era than he is a professional criminal. And while it’s true that he eventually gains enough bankroll to open his own nightclub-cum-backroom-gambling-parlor the film depicts him more as a cad and a polished bumbler than a Robinson-esque big-timer. He mixes it up throughout the film: slapping his toady (Harry Lewis) around, talking tough at the dice table, shooting it out with a second-rate Moose Malloy, and finally with the cops; but we are constantly left with the impression that Scott is a lot more lucky than he is good—and in the end he isn’t even that lucky. His criminal ineptitude is most evident in a crucial scene at the end of the film where he finds himself wielding a shotgun from on high, tangling with the cops who have just busted in on his gambling operation. Scott fires a few shots to let them know he means business, but forgets to aim and accidentally blasts his sister in the gut. What a schmuck.

Clark is hardly better—frankly it’s difficult to believe that this is the same actor who made such a vivid impression in Moonrise. He plays second or third fiddle despite top billing—leering his way through the reels, his hair standing so tall that he brings to mind Seinfeld’s Kramer. In one eyebrow-raising scene Clark and Scott actually put on boxing gloves and climb into a ring to fight over Paige. The good guy wins, though ludicrously, as Clark KOs Scott with a twice-around-the-world haymaker of an uppercut that looks as if it were swiped from a Popeye cartoon. Hard to fathom considering rumors that before coming to the movies, Clark tried to make a go of it in the ring.

Film noir? Forget it—though some familiar trappings are put to use: narration, flashback, and montage. And as mentioned above, Her Kind of Man gets much darker as it comes to a close. So dark that on the basis of the final sequence alone, it has been ascribe noir status by some. I disagree, but I’ll happily acknowledge that the final moments do much to redeem an otherwise absurd movie, and make the noir label forgivable. It’s an exciting scene: Scott, having shotgunned his sister (Faye Emerson, the Lady Gangster herself) is holed up looking to dodge the cops. The toady with Scott’s handprint on his left check drops a nickel on him, and the police, along with Clark, come roaring along hellbent for blood. They get it when Scott, the born loser, staggers out into the rainy night and a downpour of gunfire. The visual atmosphere and fatal determinism of the scene come on like a ton of bricks as Scott collapses face-first into the gutter—his blood and Paige’s tears mingling with the filthy rainwater as it rushes through an eddying whirlpool and into the sewer. The camera sweeps from the corpse along the gutter to the whirlpool, then upwards to rest on a one-way street sign before cutting abruptly to a long shot and the end card.

Note: for another write-up about Her Kind of Man, check out Laura’s review over at Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings.

Her Kind of Man (1946)
Directed by Frederick de Cordova
Produced by Alex Gottlieb (Macao, The Blue Gardenia)
Screenplay by Gordon Kahn and Leopold Atlas (Raw Deal)
Story by Charles Hoffman (The Blue Gardenia) and James V. Kern
Cinematography by Carl Guthrie (Caged, Hollywood Story)
Art Direction by Ted Smith (High Sierra, The Mask of Dimitrios)
Starring Zachary Scott, Janis Paige, Dane Clark, Faye Emerson, Harry Lewis.
Released by Warner Bros Studios
Running time: 78 minutes

9/17

Deanna Durbin & CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY (1944)

I became interested in classic film early in my teens. Able to stay up late during summer vacations I passed the time with American Movie Classics. (TCM was still more than a decade away.) Despite being weaned in a house where films such as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Rebecca, and Laura were part of the vernacular, I didn’t truly begin to love old movies until those black and white summers of the early eighties. I vividly remember seeing Freddie Mac play the horn to Carol Lombard in Swing High, Swing Low and being astonished by Harold Russell in The Best Years of Our Lives. It was back then that I first discovered and fell in love with Deanna Durbin, who from the mid thirties to the mid forties was, as TCM host Robert Osbourne recently described her, “The absolute queen of Universal Studios.” Durbin accomplished something that few touched by Hollywood success have ever done: she walked away at (practically) the height of her stardom and never looked back. Unlike Judy Garland, to whom her career is forever linked, she neither aged, faded away, nor fell victim to any of the cruel perils of fame — instead she became a different sort of legend.





In spite of the success of All Quiet on the Western Front, the Academy Award winner for Best Picture in 1930, Universal didn’t have much going for it at the outset of the depression beyond its burgeoning success in the horror genre. Carl Laemmle’s sprawling Universal City allowed the studio to bang out high quality fright pictures using the same sets and seasoned production teams. Audiences embraced Universal’s brand of gothic escapism, and the revenues generated by the horror unit were substantial enough to keep Laemmle’s head above water during the lean years of the depression. Yet these profits paled in comparison to those over at MGM, where Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer were setting the standard for box office returns through their star vehicles and prestige productions. Unlike the big studios, Laemmle never invested in theaters or distribution and consequently Universal was forced to rely on box office hits in order to remain solvent. The lack of a theater chain meant that all of Universal’s films had to have predictable box office potential in order to gain wide distribution. MGM, Paramount, and Warners could block-book their weaker features by packaging them with sure-fire hits and star vehicles — obliging their theaters to exhibit them and thus guaranteeing profits.


The desire to compete with and gain market share on the other majors led Laemmle to take another shot at the first-run picture market, but the studio simply didn’t have the cash reserves or the financial backstops to sustain more than one or two failures. Laemmle borrowed heavily in order to finance Frankenstein director James Whale’s 1935 big-budget production of the musical Show Boat, but Whale was out of his bailiwick and couldn’t deliver the finished film in time for boss Carl to cover the loan — so Laemmle lost his shirt. Ironically, Show Boat went on to be a big moneymaker — just not in time to save Laemmle. The studio went into receivership and was taken over by Wall Street creditors in 1936. They quickly ousted Carl and Junior Laemmle and put a new team in charge, who all but eliminated prestige production.


Enter producer Joe Pasternak and Deanna Durbin. Pasternak was a European émigré stationed in Berlin, producing German-language musicals for Universal’s European outfit. When the situation in Europe caused the subsidiary to shut down Pasternak returned to the States hoping to reestablish himself in Hollywood. At the time of his arrival Durbin was being groomed by MGM, but was dropped when Mayer decided to back Judy Garland instead. The circumstances surrounding Mayer’s decision are as murky as they are legendary, but no matter how the edict came down MGM dropped Deanna and Universal snagged her, giving Pasternak what he needed to reproduce his European successes. Working with a modest budget he assembled a team that would become known at Universal as The “Durbin Unit,” featuring himself, director Henry Koster, and cameraman Joe Valentine. Their first project was Three Smart Girls, which proved to be a runaway hit, earning Durbin a special Oscar and making the fourteen-year-old Universal’s biggest star. Pasternak understood formula filmmaking very well, and soon the Durbin unit was reliably churning out the hits, all based on the squeaky-clean formula established in Three Smart Girls. While many have suggested that Durbin single-handedly saved Universal from bankruptcy, it may be more accurate to say that in the years following the Laemmle debacle Durbin’s success insured that of the struggling studio.


By the beginning of the forties Deanna Durbin was a household name and bona fide Hollywood superstar. She was never comfortable with her success or the way in which her screen image was crafted, so as she matured she sought more dramatic projects that called for less and less singing. It’s important to remember that the Hollywood studio system was built around the idea of the star-genre combination, of which Deanna is a prime example: Deanna Durbin + musical comedy = audience appeal and studio profit. To put it simply, audiences went to Durbin pictures for laughs and songs, and as much as Deanna may have wanted to give them something else, they just weren’t inclined to see her that way. Nevertheless by the time the war started Deanna wanted to try more dramatic parts and had the clout at Universal City to make demands. After a few lukewarmly received dramatic pictures during those years, such as Christmas Holiday, a frustrated Deanna walked away from the film industry in 1948. She married and retired to France, where she lives today.





Christmas Holiday hit theaters at the height of the war in 1944, and its mood is as fittingly dark and unsettling as the time’s. The story opens with newly-minted Lt. Mason (Dean Harens) rushing home to San Francisco in lieu of a Dear John letter. He wants to have it out with his girl before he ships out, but weather diverts his flight into New Orleans, where he’s forced to take a cheap room. In the hotel bar he meets sleazy newsman (Richard Whorf) who hustles him to a nightclub / brothel where he meets “hostess” Jackie Lamont (Durbin). It turns out that not only was Jackie previously married, but her real name is actually Abigail Manette — her husband Robert (Gene Kelly) was famously convicted of killing a bookie and sent to Angola for life. She works at the club to punish herself for not seeing the truth about Robert or helping him when she had the chance. Based on a work by W. Somerset Maugham, Christmas Holiday is one of the most oddly titled films of the forties. There’s little to do with Christmas beyond a midnight mass at which Deanna breaks down and is motivated to share her story and real name with Lt. Mason, and any other evidence of the holiday season is conspicuously absent. Told primarily through flashback, the story details the strange course of the Manettes’ life together, from their meeting until Robert’s imprisonment and climactic confrontation between them in the wake of his breakout.


Durbin’s performance is memorable. She delivers as an actress in a few key moments, the first of which occurs in the Christmas Eve mass scene where Jackie / Abigail’s life overwhelms her and she confesses her past. The mise-en-scene is so spectacularly baroque that Deanna is able to give herself away to the moment without risk of going over the top. She moves from quiet weeping to openly sobbing on hands and knees — yet the scene remains affecting and believable. Later in the film a flashback details her first meeting with husband-to-be Robert. Ironically, they (Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly of all people) meet at a concert and get to know one another thanks to a shared passion for music. Durbin again deftly shows her ability to interpret the moment, as she handles the excitement of a first date by simply closing her eyes and being swept away in the music of the concert. As the story unfolds her performance takes on a progressively more world-weary and melancholic mood. By the denouement she’s frayed and exhausted. It’s reasonable to think that much of the credit for her work is due Robert Siodmak, but her performance begs one to consider how far she might have gone as a dramatic actress.


The film benefits greatly from iconic noir director Siodmak (Criss Cross, The Killers) and cinematographer Woody Bredell. Amongst fans of film noir Bredell doesn’t share his cohort’s level of name recognition, even though he filmed Christmas Holiday just after completing the highly stylized Phantom Lady with Siodmak and Ella Raines, and would work with the director again on The Killers. Bredell was also quite familiar with Deanna Durbin, having photographed her in seven films, including the forgotten Can’t Help Singing. Can’t Help Singing, Deanna’s follow up to Christmas Holiday, and surprisingly her only Technicolor picture, provides an interesting counterpoint to her two film noirs (the other being Lady on a Train). A musical western produced by Universal in an effort to cash in on the success of Broadway’s Oklahoma!, Can’t Help Singing offers a completely different look at Durbin and argues strongly that her star would have only risen has she stayed in her wheelhouse as a performer and continued to make romantic musicals. Can’t Help Singing was nominated for two Academy Awards and is a surprisingly good showcase for the 22-year-old star. (Also worth noting that Hans Salter received a score nomination for Christmas Holiday — Hollywood paid attention to Durbin films.)


Deanna Durbin’s place in history so unique that commentary about Christmas Holiday tends to focus solely on this movie’s role in her career path. What gets overlooked is the strength of the film’s noir statement. The film is mildly unorthodox in that its universe is more thematically than visually noirish, and even more so because its protagonist is a woman. Christmas Holiday is concerned with corrupt and perverse relationships and the absurd obligations that accompany marriage. The film is noirish not in the sense that these relationships exist, but instead in that Abigail, the protagonist, fails to see them — and consequently pays a terrible price. Her failure is characterized by melancholy, isolation, a severe sense of regret and alienation from the functional world that churns away outside the doors of her palatial antebellum home. When Abigail enters the sphere of Robert and his mother (the amazing Gale Sondergaard) she fails to grasp that the ticket is one way, despite Mrs. Manette’s weak attempts to warn her off. It’s in this determined failure to see what’s right in front of her that Abigail takes her place alongside all the other suckers and fools that populate film noir, whatever their gender. Yet it’s important to recognize the importance of gender reversal in Christmas Holiday. Turning the tables on traditional noir structure, Robert functions as a homme fatale. In an attempt to overcome the corruption of his own soul — gambling, sloth, and violence, possibly even incest — he reaches for Abigail. However instead of lifting him up she is drug down into his personal quagmire. Like the femme fatales of more well-known pictures Robert can’t help himself — he simply is what he is and can’t overcome his demons, no matter how much he hopes otherwise. In thinking Abigail can save him he damns her, and in failing to recognize Robert for what he is Abigail consummates her doom.


How ironic to realize that one of the fundamental inhabitants of the plastic world of film noir is the femme fatale, while with gender reversal comes a somewhat more familiar representation of life in the real world.


Lady on a Train Christmas Holiday




Christmas Holiday (1944)

Directed by Robert Siodmak
Cinematography by Elwood “Woody” Bredell
Written by Herman J. Mankiewicz, based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham
Produced by Felix Jackson
Starring Deanna Durbin, Gene Kelly, and Gale Sondergaard
Released by Universal Pictures
Running time: 93 minutes.

BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND DAWN (1950)

“A brutal policeman is a terrible thing. He has too much power, too many chances of taking his viciousness out on helpless people.”

Optimism and pessimism fight it out Between Midnight and Dawn, an entertaining and well-crafted crime melodrama from 1950. These competing worldviews are embodied in the characters of prowl-car officers Rocky Barnes (Mark Stevens) and Dan “Pappy” Purvis (Edmond O’Brien). After bonding as Marines on Guadalcanal, the pair returned to Los Angeles and continued their partnership as cops. The laid-back and gregarious Rocky came through his war in better shape than Dan, who in typical Edmond O’Brien fashion is bitter, cynical, and brooding. Dan has trouble seeing the world in anything other than black and white — people are either all good or all bad, as he says to Rocky in a telling early exchange, “Wait until you’ve had your fill of the scum. Slugging, knifing, shooting holes in decent people. You’ll toughen up, junior.”

The film opens with an especially noirish sequence where the partners respond to a report of suspicious activity at a warehouse. They discover two young women parked on the lonely street outside the run down building, doing a piss-poor job looking out for their no-good beaus. Rocky and Dan put the bracelets on the girls and head into the warehouse. They corner the suspects inside and short gunfight ensues —  Rocky grazes one of the youths with a shot from his service piece. Back at the station, the delinquents put on a tough act, but one of the girls falls apart, pleading and “blubbering” (per Dan) to be let go. Though Rocky wonders about justice for a wayward teenager, it’s plain that age and gender don’t carry any water with Dan — stone-faced as the hysterical girl is taken into custody, screaming over and over “I don’t want to go to jail!” as she’s dragged away.

The scene does much to establish the competing personalities of the two partners, as well as the noir milieu of Between Midnight and Dawn. Although the dark visual framework of the picture is thoroughly realized by noir stalwart George Diskant (The Narrow Margin, On Dangerous Ground), the narrative is also distinctive. Rocky and Dan live in an uncertain world of deteriorating values in which people are not what they appear to be. Two innocent-looking girls in a parked car are engaged in larceny; shop owners live in fear of all-powerful criminals; children in the street are as prone to violence as hardened felons. Even the most innocent character in the film, love interest Kate Mallory (Gale Storm), initially deceives the pair — though her fib is understandable: as the daughter of an old-guard Irish cop who was gunned down in the line of duty, Kate, who works as a dispatcher, is reluctant to begin a relationship with the infatuated Rocky, who has quietly fallen in love with her sultry voice, which he hears each night through the prowl car’s radio.

Speaking of Gale Storm, she’s a revelation. Every boy’s idea of a high school cheerleader does well in this role, and although she doesn’t sing, she demonstrates more range here than in most of her other pictures. All of the characters in Between Midnight and Dawn are developed to a greater degree than expected, and Storm plays the part of the dead cop’s kid with aplomb. She projects outward confidence and wit carefully blended with the street smarts of one reared in a cop’s house. The movie takes seriously her efforts to steer clear of involvement with Rocky and Dan, and includes a few nice scenes between Gale and her live-in mother (Madge Blake). There’s a fine moment when Mrs. Mallory, having lost her own husband to violence, is able to convince her daughter that beginning a relationship with Rocky is the right thing to do. It might be a bit unusual for a film noir to have such a pronounced romantic angle — as Between Midnight and Dawn does — but it actually works because the romantic tension between Rocky and Kate is so firmly situated in her neurotic, if understandable, fear of death.

And Rocky does indeed die, gunned down by foaming-at-the-mouth gangster Richie Garris (Donald Buka). Every element of the story foreshadows Rocky’s killing, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise. In fact, even in 1950 it was a sturdy movie-land cliché that in a buddy-cop film one of the partners — inevitably the nicer of the two — was doomed. What makes this scenario interesting is rather how Kate and Dan respond to Rocky’s murder. 

Both suffer from a markedly cynical strain of pessimism. Kate’s is rooted in the fear of losing yet another loved one; Dan’s is more complex. He clung to his idealism throughout the war, but lost it when he came home to a world changed from what he believed he had fought for. The wonderfully depressing — and inarguably noirish — notion of this aspect of the story is that unlike the narratives of more mainstream Hollywood productions, Kate and Dan’s dour worldview is ultimately confirmed! She loses her new love just as she lost her father, while Dan loses his partner and best friend to the senseless violence of a world gone mad. After surviving the unimaginable horrors of the Pacific, Rocky is shot in cold blood by a chickenshit gangster looking for revenge.

While Kate’s response to Rocky’s death is ultimately bittersweet, Dan sinks into despair and self-pity. He begins to haunt the nightclub where Garris’ girlfriend Terry Romaine (Gale Robbins) warbles, hoping she’ll lead him to the killer. When nothing pans out Dan braces her directly. He’s so frustrated and enraged that he beats and humiliates the girl even when she denies knowledge of Garris’ whereabouts and claims to have broken off their relationship.

The characterization of the gangster villain in a 1950 noir picture is worth talking about for a moment. In the legendary Warner Bros. pictures of the depression the romanticized gangster-hero was ultimately brought down by the society he exploited — he was an aberration against a fundamentally incorruptible and morally superior social system. When the sleeping giant of that system became aroused against him, he didn’t stand a chance. One of the crucial differences between the postwar film noir and the 30s gangster film is in its portrayal of the system itself, which noir presents as  Kafka-esque in its bureaucracy — uncaring, immoral, and burdened by corruption.

By the 1950s, Hollywood’s treatment of the gangster was also tired, and certainly less romantic. Donald Buka plays Garris as a caricature — a sputtering hood who manhandles his girlfriend and tries to clumsily bribe or bulldoze his way out of every tight spot. His actions are childish and irrational. He represents everything in the world than Dan Purvis hates. Yet within the mid-century film noir construct the power of the system and social justice is diminished. That 30s gangster is reincarnated as a pure sociopath who exists in a system unable to stamp him out. After Garris is convicted of murder, his cronies easily bust him out of prison. He’s then able to exact revenge on Rocky and successfully elude the dragnet, until tripped up by his urge to creep on the girlfriend who no longer wants him. The police finally nab Garris by staking out Terry’s apartment.

It’s in this final set piece that Dan has the chance to avenge his friend and restore some sort of balance to his world, though even in this he’s nearly undone. Although he’s clearly better than Garris with his bare hands or his firearm, fate conspires to muddy the waters of his revenge — and in so doing forever alter the way he sees the world. As Garris attempts to escape the encircled building, he dangles a child from a high window in order to scare the police. Dan sneaks into the building hoping to take the gangster from behind. When he sees that Garris has abandoned the child to hide elsewhere, he tosses a gas bomb into the apartment and climbs through the window. Inside the smoke-filled apartment Garris gets the drop on Dan, but Terry steps into the line of fire and takes the bullets, saving Dan’s life and freeing him to blast away. Garris tumbles down the stairs, leaving a bloody, smeared handprint on the wall, while Dan leaves the building and discovers Kate waiting for him amidst the throng of onlookers.

Dan has a great deal to ponder as he and Kate exit the frame arm in arm: he has to live knowing that he wasn’t her first choice — that his best friend had to die for him to end up with the girl. Far more importantly, he bears the newfound responsibility to redeem himself and to become a better man, granted by a woman he had denigrated and beaten, who stepped in front of him when the bullets went flying.

Between Midnight and Dawn (1950)

Director: Gordon Douglas
Cinematographer: George Diskant
Story: Leo Katcher and Gerald Drayson Adams
Screenplay: Eugene Ling
Starring: Mark Stevens, Edmond O’Brien, and Gale Storm
Released by: Columbia Pictures
Running time: 89 minutes