NO QUESTIONS ASKED (1951)

A black widow without a mate is just another spider.

A man is on the run through the wet, deserted streets of lower Manhattan. He scuttles into the shadows cast by a stairwell just as a prowl car tears by, its siren whining against concrete and brick. As the man hunkers down we hear his voice, “My name is Steve Keiver. That’s what all the sirens are about. They’re screaming for me. I was very popular that night—everybody wanted me, dead or alive. You think there’d be a thousand hiding places in a large city, but there aren’t.” More police cars make the scene, closing off any possible egress, their searchlights obliterating the deep dark. As Steve presses his back against the grimy recess of a doorway, the narration turns inevitably to the source of his dilemma, “You wonder how it happened and where it all really began…”

Steve (Barry Sullivan) is an insurance company lawyer who gets the brushoff from his girlfriend Ellen (Arlene Dahl), owing to the fact that his present salary won’t set her up in diamonds and pearls. A telling exchange early in the picture provides the straight dope on their shaky relationship. The scene finds their pair bickering during a taxicab ride home from the airport. Steve believes—what a chump—Ellen’s been on a solo ski trip to Sun Valley:

Her: “I’m not a one-room flat kind of girl. I don’t want to raise my children in the kind of poverty I was raised in. I couldn’t stand it. I want security.”

Him: “If you’re just patient honey—“

Her: “—I’ve waited a year. You can’t deposit patience in a bank.”

Him: “We’re never gonna be rich, that’s not security. But we love each other, you can deposit that in my bank.”

Steve asks for a raise the following day, but his boss parries: “Ladders are built for patient men,” the guy says. However, the boss also makes an offhand remark about a recent stolen fur case: he’d pay ten grand to the thieves, no questions asked, in order to avoid settling the claim. Steve gets a big zinger: he’ll find out who heisted the furs and broker a deal between them and the insurance company. He’ll receive a finder’s fee and everyone will be happy: the thieves will get more for the goods than a backroom fence would pay, his boss dodges a six-figure payout, and Steve’ll have enough in the bank to give Ellen a swimming pool full of sparklies. Unbeknownst to him—what a maroon—it’s already too late. Ellen just eloped to Europe with Gordon Jessman (Dick Simmons), a smooth operator she met on the slopes in Idaho. Steve is crushed when he discovers Ellen’s deserted apartment.

Steve contacts the crime syndicate and eventually manages to buy back the furs for the insurance company. It isn’t long before he’s finessing a deal over another caché of stolen goods, and then another, and another. Before long he’s flush. With Ellen out of the picture, Steve finally notices Joan (Jean Hagen), a coworker. Joan’s a nice girl. Steve—what an idiot—should be so lucky. She knows that Steve is walking a tightrope in his new venture, but she’s been carrying a torch for so long that she can’t help going along.

Cut to the gala premiere of a Broadway show. Two henchmen from the stable of gangster Franko (Howard Petrie), pull off a lurid robbery. In full-on drag-mode, they crash the powder room during intermission and relieve all the old broads of their Harry Winstons. During the fracas Joan gets pistol-whipped, leading the cops to think Steve might be in on the caper. What’s more is that the boys in blue have already named Steve Public Enemy Numero Uno—New York’s bad boys are stealing more than ever now that they know Steve can broker a high-dollar insurance company buy-back. Our guy Stevie may be a slick solicitor who knows how to walk the line between legal and illegal, but he’s forgotten all about the difference between legality and morality. It’s gonna cost him.

You didn’t think we were through with Ellen, did you? When she gets wind of Steve’s success, she gives Gordon the heave-ho and heads for Steve’s place, where she learns that he’s about to handle the buy-back of the loot from the Broadway premiere heist. Gordon—a cuckold but no fool—decides to rob Steve and take the jewels for himself. In doing so he kills a police detective and frames Steve as the trigger man. Already leery of cops, Steve runs. Real time and flashback coalesce as the film returns to its opening scene, with Steve clawing at the shadows in the cheap side of town.

Meanwhile, Ellen and Gordon are frantically packing their bags when Franko’s men arrive, expecting to find Steve and the jewels. Ellen thinks they can sell the jewelry bundle back to Franko, and she and Gordon go along willingly to negotiate a deal. This is where No Questions Asked becomes something special. Folks, take my advice: don’t mess about with gangsters. Pretty simple, huh? Not to stuck-ups like Ellen and Gordon, who think their nice clothes make them smarter than the lower-class types. Instead they’re amateurs who are about to learn one of film noir’s most brutal lessons. Dig them trying to handle Franko:

Her: “How much are they worth to you?”

Him: “How much are they worth to you? I don’t think I’m going to have to pay anything for them Mrs. Jessman. You’ve got the jewels—I’ve got you.”

Her: “If anything happens to me you’ll never find those jewels.”

Him: “You’re smart, but you made a big mistake: I never went to Vassar. I’m afraid you’re dealing with dirty people. When we get finished with you you’re going to be begging to tell us where those jewels are.”

Franko makes with some torture; Gordon pisses his pants and squeals. Ellen prostests. Ellen blubbers. Ellen screams. Franko puts a bullet in her. Ellen dead. Gordon looks on in stupified horror. Franko puts a bullet in him. Gordon dead. It’s one of the most matter-of-fact and chilling death sequences in the entire history of film noir.

Steve—what a cluck—stumbles in and decides he wants to fight. He and Franko somehow go head over heels into a swimming pool. Too bad for Steve, but we learned earlier in the picture—for real!—that Franko’s special thing is holding his breath for a really long time. Boffo! Franko triumphs. Steve floats, all glassy-eyed. Enter the cops. They cuff everyone, resuscitate Steve, and then cuff him too. They figured out he didn’t pull the trigger on the dead cop, but he’s an accessory whether you like it or not. Joan hates it. The cops tells her that Steve looking at a two year jolt in Rykers. 

Let’s get something straight about the noir femme fatale: she can’t exist without her special guy. And not just any old schlub—he’s got to be screwy enough to throw away everything he’s got and everything he believes in just to have her. In No Questions Asked, Ellen Jessman is that rare girl, a bona fide femme fatale. She’s greedy, manipulative, superficial, immoral, and exists to make Steve sacrifice his place in the world in order to satisfy her material whims. Irredeemable, and yet she’s merely one side of the coin—she’s got to have her man. Steve is every bit the archetypal a film noir protagonist. Like so many others before him, he suffers from the simple, fatal inability to resist a girl who’s no good. He sees it all clearly and still can’t help himself. Wasn’t Walter Neff the blueprint? When given a clear choice between a nice girl and vampire, Steve does the noir schmuck thing and chooses sex (and redheads). 

But because Ellen is beyond redemption she’s killed, along with her cowardly and murderous husband. Steve is murdered too, but just for a little while. He traded an honest career for a fast buck and gambled the good girl for adultery with the bad. Fate holds Steve—what a dumbass—accountable for his choices. His career is kaput, but maybe with luck and early parole for good behavior Joan’ll be waiting for him outside the gates. In the movies at least, the good ones wait.

In spite of the title’s admonition, there’s still one question left as the end titles roll: When all is said and done, does Steve really get wise or is he the same sucker as before? With Ellen dead we’ll never know.

No Questions Asked (1951)

Directed by Harold Kress

(Also one of Hollywood’s legendary film editors, recipient of two Academy Awards*: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), Mrs. Miniver, Random Harvest, The Yearling, I’ll Cry Tomorrow, Silk Stockings, How the West was Won*, The Poseiden Adventure, The Towering Inferno*.)

Cinematographer: Harold Lipstein

(Significant films as DP: The River’s Edge, Pal Joey, Ride a Crooked Trail, Hell is for Heroes.)
Story: Berne Giler

Screenplay: Sidney Sheldon

Starring: Barry Sullivan, Arlene Dahl, George Murphy, Jean Hagen.

Released by: MGM

Running time: 80 minutes

CODE TWO (1953)

“Our film tells the story of the men of the Los Angeles police department, whose job it is to keep us from killing ourselves.”

Coming at a time when motorcycles and the image of the leather-clad rebel were popular in youth culture (The Wild One would premiere later the same year), and the police procedural style was popular in both film and television (Dragnet, in its third season, was the Emmy award winner for “Best Adventure or Mystery series”) MGM’s 1953 second-feature Code Two straddles both worlds, telling the story of an egocentric young know-it-all who comes of age as a member of the LAPD’s elite motorcycle unit.

Code Two has an unusual opening for a movie of its day: an introductory scene that runs before the Dragnet-inspired opening titles. A narrator talks about the various hazards of driving while the scene cuts between numerous shots of near misses on the busy streets of L.A. and the winding canyon roads above. Then we see a montage of accidents and destroyed cars as the narrator describes the routine circumstances of each crack-up. By the time he finally admonishes us against our own stupidity it appears that Code Two will be little more than the kind of public service films shown in drivers’ education courses. Not the case though.

The film stars Ralph Meeker, who is well known to audiences from that most cynical of classic film noirs, 1955’s Kiss me Deadly. Meeker’s interpretation of Chuck O’Flair very much anticipates his Mike Hammer: he’s gregarious, glib, and pathologically self-confident, yet without the pervasive cynicism and raunchiness that defines Hammer. It’s as if the chronological relationship of the two characters is accurate — it’s easy to imagine how a few years pounding a beat would inevitably morph O’Flair into Hammer, with the younger man’s easy-going smile gradually changing into the older man’s … leer. In that sense Meeker was the right actor for this film, yet it’s fair to suggest that in Code Two he’s perfectly cast. Here’s a movie that lives and dies with its star — without Meeker this would be nothing more than a bike flick and hardly worth remembering. Yet Meeker’s presence elevates this into something more.

He handles the stunt work well — looking like a seasoned pro on his motorcycle, and in the film’s many action sequences and fight scenes. Meeker is also the perfect actor to appeal to the film’s audience constituencies. His self-centered and practiced ambivalence certainly struck a chord with teenagers. When asked in one scene why he wants to join the motorcycle unit he responds bluntly, “I like the way a bike feels under me — and the uniform looks cool.” Yet dramatic conventions assure older viewers that Meeker will eventually get wise, and assimilate to a more mature and socially responsible position, which he does. One could suggest that in a role such as this Meeker serves as a poor man’s version of Hollywood golden boy Marlon Brando; but I wonder if Brando would have done as well with the part.

This is a certainly a forgotten film, yet it appears to have some justifiable reputation among motorcycle enthusiasts. Much of its brief 70-minute running time, the middle of the film in particular, is dedicated to the officers’ motorcycle training. The movie shows a parade of vintage bikes being put through their paces on police obstacle courses and off-road trails. Most of the incredible footage shows Meeker and Keenan Wynne making like daredevils: racing through the brush, powering up steep inclines and getting airborne over ditches and dried-up streambeds — all on beautiful police-issue Harley Davidsons. They crash too — spilling off the sides of their bikes and tumbling them down hills.

From a narrative point of view Code Two is routine, but still well put together and entertaining as can be. The main thrust of the story is O’Flair’s maturation from punk kid to one of L.A.’s finest, with the main catalyst being the responsibility he feels for the death of one of his pals. Along the way he and buddies Harry (Jeff Richards) and Russ (Robert Horton) romance their girls, race around on their “motors,” learn some cop wisdom from the old hats, and in the end O’Flair gets to redeems himself in a one-man battle with the bad guys. In an effort to compete with demon television, the film has a few moments that go beyond what was allowable on the small screen, one of which is the rather gruesome death by big-rig of one of the cops (take a look at the lobby cards and see if you can figure out how it happens), and the other is a somewhat inexplicable, yet sinisterly bubbling quick-lime bath that plays a part in the climax.

The rest of the cast in Code Two is good, with Wynn standing out as Meeker’s mentor. The unknown actors who play the friends are about as droll as can be, but necessarily so — Meeker is playing a cop who has to feel rebellious but look clean-cut, so he needed to be cast against some real square-jawed, apple pie costars. The film benefits also from its MGM pedigree in terms of its actresses, with beautiful and talented women in all parts. Sally Forrest (The Strip, Mystery Street) is Monroe-like as a Russ’s nervous wife and unknown Elaine Stewart is gorgeous as Meeker’s primary love interest. Stewart is another in a long procession of actresses that one wishes had a longer career.

There was one moment in the film that really stuck with me, if for an odd reason: Early on O’Flair and fellow cadet trainees Harry (Jeff Richards) and Russ (Robert Horton) are looking at framed photographs of uniformed cops on the walls of the administrative building when Chuck makes out like the old cops are all squares. A wounded Harry retreats from the room, but not before letting Chuck in on a secret: the photographs depict men killed in the line of duty, and one of them is his father. Distraught at hurting his friend Chuck remarks, “Me and my big mouth, somebody ought to sock me.” At which point Russ does, cracking Chuck and sending him tumbling to the floor. Shocked and red-faced, he lies there for a moment rubbing his jaw, before he collects himself and offers up a sincere, “Much obliged.” This is one of the more character-filled and genuinely masculine moments I’ve seen in a film in some time. The notion of masculinity seems to be creeping back into contemporary culture of late — though I’ve met this with a great deal of skepticism. Many current television shows and web communities that purposely appeal to and celebrate male masculinity seem driven by material or leisure pursuits rather than embracing male character or responsibility, while the reemergence of men’s social and church groups seem to be defined by a overtly political or anti-woman bias. Nostalgia is a powerful draw to old films, especially those discussed on this blog. The film noir protagonists of the 1940s and 50s remain popular today because of how they resonate with modern audiences: these are strong yet flawed men (and women), ill at ease with the world around them. It’s easy for us to imagine ourselves in their shoes — who doesn’t feel that way? We are drawn to their human failings and nostalgic for their more stylish and seeming less-complicated world. Yet this moment in Code Two makes me ask myself how many how many of us could take a well-meant sock in the jaw when we say the wrong thing? How many could learn from the experience without letting our indignation get the best of us? How many of us could throw the punch? I’m struck most by the character of the scene, and if for nothing else I’m nostalgic for that.



Code Two (1953)

Directed by Fred M. Wilcox
Cinematography by Ray June
Produced by William Grady Jr.
Screenplay by Marcel Klauber
Starring Ralph Meeker, Keenan Wynn, Sally Forrest and Elaine Stewart.
Released by MGM
Running time: 70 minutes

BEWITCHED (1945)

Considering many viewers don’t seem to care for Bewitched, there’s a lot of ink floating around out there about this slick little second feature from MGM. I find myself in the minority, because I think it’s a gem. Make no mistake, in one important way (depending on your point of view) it hasn’t aged well: it’s a rather crude look at schizophrenia in its most sensational form — multiple personality disorders. And because of the era’s (or rather, Hollywood’s) limited understanding of psychology and the movie studio’s propensity to take dramatic license with existing scientific knowledge, the film does a disservice to those whose lives have been touched to one degree or another by mental illness. Be that as it may, the problems are easily forgiven, and what remains is a well-made and inventive thriller with a few great moments. 


Why here at WDL? Bewitched is also distinctive as a prototypical film noir.


The story goes down smooth: Joan Ellis is a pleasant young woman with everything life has to offer, particularly a fine family and loving fiancé — but hang on — she hears a nasty voice in her head that wants to be in charge, to be “let out.” 


Fearful of a scandal, Joan skips her small mid-western town and makes for New York City, where she finds work as a cigar counter girl. Soon, she’s wooed by Eric, one of the building’s many attorneys (Stephen McNally). At first she’s skittish but after he comes on strong they are quickly engaged. Just when Joan feels that everything is once again coming up roses, she discovers her old fiancé waiting for her in her room — he’s tracked her down and wants to take her back home. As he packs her bag for the return trip, the voice in Joan’s head finally speaks up: it doesn’t want to leave the big city for Dullsville, so it commands Joan to pick up a pair of scissors and kill — which she does!


Jump to a quick trial where Joan’s sweet nature guarantees that she’ll beat the rap. Just as the not guilty verdict is being read, the voice speaks up, telling Joan how kill again and again in the future. Not wanting this to happen, Joan blurts out a last second confession and Bewitched begins to take some strange turns….


The voice in Joan’s head belongs to Audrey Totter, of Tension fame. Though Totter is uncredited, she really sinks her teeth into her part and although there’s a campy quality to the way she taunts and jeers at Joan, it works. The presence of Totter also lends Bewitched some extra credibility as a film noir, though it isn’t needed. The fascinating aspect of Joan’s dichotomy is that each half of her mind represents an archetypical film noir woman — Karen is a femme fatale and Joan is the good girl.


The femme fatale part is a no-brainer: Karen is a black widow — she uses Joan’s good looks to attract men, in order to act out her violent impulses. She kills Joan’s first fiancé, and warns her that she’s ready to kill the next, and then the next after that. Joan herself is both the pure innocent and the noir anti-hero: she’s cruelly victimized by fate and by chance, through what her psychiatrist calls “one birth in a million.” Like other noir protagonists, most often males, Joan is forced to ride out her predicament, with only the merest illusion of the outcome fate has in store for her. Despite this trauma, Joan’s actions are heroic: she attempts to save her family from the stigma of scandal by fleeing her hometown; and when presented with the unvarnished truth of Karen’s intentions at her trial, she sacrifices herself in order to kill Karen. Phyllis Thaxter’s performance deserves praise: she is able to make Joan and Karen appear dramatically different, without stooping to Jekyll and Hyde style preening. Her timing is good, and she is able to make her violent scenes creepy, if not actually frightening.


In addition to the role of fate and the thorough characterization of Joan, there are some exciting visual moments in Bewitched, including an expressionistic street sequence featuring an elaborate tracking shot: Joan is caught late at night on a deserted street, where she encounters a few real-life manifestations of her inner turmoil. The noirish quality of the atmosphere is excellent, though it doesn’t quite mesh with the rest of the film. Bewitched also uses montage to great effect, although the primarily to keep the running time brief. Joan’s entire arrest, booking, and courtroom experience is summarized in a fast cut, claustrophobic, and for lack of a better term — sweaty — montage that shows attorneys, witnesses, and jurors all grotesquely leering at the accused. Oboler’s direction is competent, but he doesn’t maintain a noir vision for the duration — after all this was only 1945.


Mental illness was popular fodder in film noir, especially in the years just after the war. The idea of a film protagonist being stricken by something so arbitrary and invisible (and at the time: fantastical) was a trendy way to demonstrate how an everyday Joe or “Joan” can get worked over by cruel fate. What separates noirish takes on the subject from more “serious” productions is that the illness in noir invariably becomes an excuse for violent crime. So in this regard film noir is quite exploitative of mental illness, which is why viewers shouldn’t knock the manipulative and melodramatic treatment of multiple personalities in Bewitched. If the subject was treated clinically instead of tongue-in-cheek, the film just couldn’t have been made. The one place where we can gripe is the whitewashing of Joan’s “cure.” It’s disappointing to think that even in 1945 audiences would believe a ten-minute hypnosis session with a psychiatrist would cure Joan of her demons. It smacks of witch-doctoring, and actually makes the finale somewhat droll. It would be more in keeping with the tone of films to come, and with the fact that the character had actually killed, if audiences thought Joan was obligated to bear her burden uncertainly into the future. In the end though, the trick to enjoying this picture is to take it with some salt. Bewitched isn’t The Three Faces of Eve or The Snake Pit — it’s a sensationalist second feature with roots in radio drama and isn’t meant to be viewed as anything more than diversionary entertainment. After all this is MGM, not Warner Brothers.

Bewitched (1945)

Director: Arch Oboler
Cinematographer: Charles Salerno Jr.
Screenplay: Arch Oboler
Starring: Phyllis Thaxter, Edmund Gwenn, Audrey Totter (voice only).
Released by: MGM
Running time: 65 minutes

THE STRIP (1951)

An existential film noir musical? The Strip is one of those pictures that’s more interesting for what is says about midcentury Hollywood than it is a piece of entertainment, despite MGM production values and a big-time star. Billed as “MGM’s musical melodrama of the dancer and the drummer,” the film opens with ample noir flair: a narrator speaks over a long shot of an urban landscape. In this case it turns out to be the Sunset Strip, as a police prowl car splits the breaking dawn, siren blaring. Cut to a low shot of a girl’s body lying in a pool of blood, phone cradled in an outstretched hand, cops peering in through a distant doorway. Cut again to more cops rousting a young man from sleep, then sweating him in the interrogation room. It sounds a bit more hard-boiled than it actually is — especially considering the youth is none other than cute-as-a-button Mickey Rooney. The cops tell Mickey that a man is dead and the girl is barely hanging on. They think he knows something and better start talking. Cue the flashback.


Mickey is Korean War vet Stanley Maxton, who moved to Cali to find work as a drummer in one of the big L.A. clubs after getting out of the VA hospital. Along the road, racketeer Sonny Johnson (James Craig), accidentally runs Stanley’s jalopy into a ditch. Sonny’s girl lays on the guilt-trip, so the cowed gangster offers Stan a job at his sports-book. Two hundred scoots a week is too much to turn down, so Stan signs on and quickly makes good as a bookie. He still yearns to bang the drums though, and ends up sitting in with Louis Armstrong’s group one night at a dive called Fluff’s bar. Fluff (William Demarest) offers Stan a permanent job and begs cigarette girl Jane (leggy Sally Forrest) to help him seal the deal, which works like a charm when Stan falls hard.

Stan takes the drumming job to be near Jane, but she was just fooling. She’s really not interested. She has stars in her eyes and only has a minute for those who can help with movie star dreams. Sonny knows plenty of movie hot shots, so Stan thinks he’ll score points with Jane by introducing them. Sonny smiles but never lifts a finger to get her a screen test. Stan gets mad—he thought they were pals—and takes a beating. Jane has a climactic off camera confrontation with Sonny, resulting in his death, her sprawled out in a pool of her own blood, and Stan in handcuffs. The flashback concludes, bringing the scene back to the interrogation room. Stan gets nobles and confesses to the murder in hopes of saving Jane, but she’s way ahead of him. She cops to Sonny’s death from her hospital bed, just before her lights go out permanently. Distraught, Stan returns to Fluff’s where he bangs through an up-tempo number as the end titles roll.

A word or two about the music: The Strip, which received Oscar nominations for Best Music and Best Original Song, has at least ten numbers woven into the story — ensuring its status as a legitimate musical. Consisting primarily of jazz numbers featuring Armstrong’s band, which here includes Earl Hines on piano and Jack Teagarden on trombone, there are also some popular songs from Monica Lewis and Vic Damone. Owing to the musical nature of Rooney and Forrest’s roles, the songs fit in nicely and in a few instances help move the story forward. Along with the music we get a birds-eye view of some of the brightest nightspots on Sunset Boulevard, including Ciro’s, The Trocadero, and The Mocambo Club — all considered the height of chic to 1951 audiences. The Strip uses that omnipresent movie-land device of showing a montage of neon signs, one fading into the next, to suggest a full night of drinks and dancing.


Despite all the musical numbers, this is most definitely a film noir. It’s evident in the extraordinarily anonymous characterization of Jane. She tastes a bit like a femme fatale, but that isn’t what makes The Strip a noir. It’s the cruelty with which the film treats her that makes it a noir. The film purposefully makes no effort to develop in her any personality or notion of likability beyond her good looks — in fact her looks are her character. She’s disposable. Why get to know her? Who really cares? She’ll either make it or she’ll go home, but either way she won’t be here very long. That’s how it is with the girls that Fluff calls “career crazy.” Stan falls for Jane merely because he thought she was nice to him once, but she was just pretending, honing her “craft.” Instead, Fluff sagely discourages Stan and reminds him he’d do better to find a girl who didn’t have stars in her eyes. The movie actually gives us such a person in the form of Edna, hatcheck girl and wannabe songbird. Edna is smitten with Stan from the first time he enters the club, but with Jane around he doesn’t notice her.

The film’s final statement is so full of a stark existential bleakness that more than anything else it establishes The Strip as a film noir. Following the news of Jane’s confession and subsequent death, Stan returns to Fluff’s. As he makes his way toward the stage he passes Edna, who has climbed one pathetic rung on the ladder: she’s out of the cloak room and sporting Jane’s lacy cigarette girl outfit. In no time at all she’ll be singing with the band and thinking of Stan as a little fish. He notices her, as if for the first time, as he slumps onto his stool at the drum set and begins to bang out a rhythm. In this sublime moment, the film gives us a frightening vision of the real Hollywood: there will always be another girl — the buses are laden with them. Jane was just a star-struck wannabe who didn’t find her dreams in tinsel, and now she’s dead. Why should the film bother to tell us anything about her? It’s another night at Fluff’s, and Satchmo is on the stage. Jane is easily replaced. Forgotten. The drummer might remember her, but he’s lost in the music.

The Strip (1951)

Director: László Kardos
Cinematographer: Robert Surtees
Writer: Allen Rivkin
Starring: Mickey Rooney and Sally Forrest
Distributed by: MGM
Running time: 85 minutes

RAY DANTON DOUBLE FEATURE: The Night Runner (1957), The Beat Generation (1959)

Ray Danton starred in two pseudo-noirs in the late fifties, The Night Runner and The Beat Generation, both of which I caught recently. Despite the triple play of being tall, dark, and handsome, Danton’s limited skill forever doomed him to a low budget existence in Hollywood — though he did manage the occasional part in a big picture, and had a relatively successful run both behind and in front of the camera in Europe. In both of these films Danton plays a character with a screw loose, in the first a killer and the second a serial rapist, yet his good looks and likable demeanor begged audiences to find external forces to blame for his eroded mental condition.

In the The Night Runner (curiously titled because it takes place mostly in broad daylight), Danton plays Roy Turner, ex-mental patient. Turner is a victim of bureaucracy, cut loose by his doctors and unprepared to cope with the world. As an examination of the merits of the system which set the mentally ill free without any sort of support structure, The Night Runner is a failure, laughably so when compared to a film such as 1961’s The Mark with Stuart Whitman and Rod Steiger. Despite the attempt to be taken seriously, The Night Runner is B-exploitation that plays more like a bedtime story told to frighten children.

We never learn much about Roy Turner, but considering that audiences require a reason for all mental illness, there’s a token effort made to give him a troubled past: young Roy owned a pet seagull, shot and killed by his father, who Roy decries as a “mean old man.” The act of pet-murder causes Roy to flee his home for a new life as a cabin boy on a freighter, a story recounted to a dreamy-eyed girl in a moment of signature Danton deadpan. Somehow life’s winding paths have led Roy to his current profession of draughtsman at an engineering firm.


If The Night Runner doesn’t score points as a social exposé film, it’s hardly more successful as a thriller. Most of the running time is devoted to scenes of Roy trying to assimilate into the idyllic seaside community where he finds himself after wandering off the Greyhound bus. He fits in marvelously well, and we forget his past as he gets frisky with the innkeeper’s daughter and chummy with everyone else. Only the innkeeper is wary, though his suspicion is no more than that of any father with a 22 year-old daughter whom he rightly suspects is in heat. Sure, there are a few moments when Roy stares oddly into the distance as he is questioned about his past, but for the most part he displays a collected, bland exterior. The jump to murder is abrupt and hard to swallow. Roy conks the innkeeper over the head when the old man gets wise to his checkered past, and the film assumes we’ll go along with the idea that murder is Roy’s only option. This might make sense if Danton played Roy as a legitimate psycho, but instead he comes off as completely sane person guilty of a crime of passion. Following the act, Roy cleans up his mess, wipes the room, and tries to make the scene play as a robbery gone wrong.

The rest of the film deals with Roy’s attempt to conceal his crime unraveling, until he finally comes clean to his shocked sweetheart, who then falls from a cliff into the raging surf below. In the one moment in the film that Roy actually appears frightening, he stares vacuously down at her body as it is buffeted about in the cove. When Roy’s sanity finally reasserts itself he plunges in after her, and carries her limp and unconscious body home, where he calls the police. The film closes as Roy calmly waits for the sirens in a front porch rocker.

The Night Runner’s flaw is that it doesn’t depict Roy’s insanity, instead asking us to accept it on faith. Even though Roy commits murder, his motive is a too common to be cuckoo: he’s merely trying to conceal his past. Even after the murder, his attempts at concealment are coolly methodical. The fact that Roy is supposed to be a lunatic is immaterial.

Danton is a much more convincing psychopath in The Beat Generation, a film that in spite of its many flaws and its complete lack of a identity is engrossing. Undoubtedly the credit goes to legend-ary scribe Richard Matheson. It’s one of those pictures that tries to capture lightning in way too many bottles, even though each of the bottles is still interesting. Here Danton plays Stan Belmont, The Aspirin Kid, a psychopathic rapist with an itch for married women. In order to set up his victims, he waits for the husband to leave home, then shows up at the door on the pretense of wanting to repay a small loan. “Is your husband home?” — “No? Well, can I leave him a check?” — “Oops I don’t have a pen, could you get one for me?” — “Thanks, do you mind if I wait inside?” Stan’s nickname comes from the final step in his elaborate ritual: he feigns a migraine, and as his host is fetching a glass of water for his aspirin, he dons a pair of black leather gloves and slips into his criminal identity. Stan’s a rapist, not a killer, so each victim is left to share her story with the police.

The detective assigned to the case is Dave Culloran, played by one of the most underrated actors in all of film noir: Steve Cochran. Dave is a hard-boiled man’s man with his own ideas about the willingness of the Kid’s victims — until his wife becomes one of them. Cochran’s rough-and-tumble exterior and manner demonstrate inspired casting: he’s the spit to Danton’s polish. When his wife turns out to be pregnant, Dave can’t seem to come to grips with the situation, and it shows in his physical presence as much as it does in the dialog. Much of the running time deals with the debate between the Cullorans about the future of their unborn child, though it eventually strays to melodrama as the Mrs., played by Fay Spain, has a front lawn heart-to-heart about abortion with the local priest.

The presence of beat culture is wholly exploitative. Stan chums around with a bland clan of ‘Hollywood-ized’ beatniks, though his best friend is played by Robert Mitchum’s son Jim, who makes for a piss-poor Neal Cassady. The dialog is wonderfully over the top in a few segments, and there are scenes where young people cavort around or simply whine about ‘the man,’ but only when the film feels compelled to give the audience a dose of beat-this or beat-that. In a few of the club scenes we meet a young Vampira and an old Louis Armstrong— though like us Louis seems painfully aware that he’s in the wrong movie. Ostensibly Stan uses the beat crowd as a cover for his half-life as the Aspirin Kid — easy since the film presents his cronies as a bunch of vapid numbskulls. This is fine as a story point, but Stan’s role as a beat is that of willing fraud or con-man, which forces one to reexamine the reason for giving the film this title, and showcasing Mamie Van Doren on the poster, much less in the cast — though to her credit she injects some life into the second half of the picture. That is, before the climactic underwater harpoon gun battle.

The Beat Generation is a smorgasbord that deserves a larger audience. It’s by far the more interesting of the two films discussed here, and certainly provided the juicier part for Ray Danton. There’s no space to cover the bits with Jackie Coogan, Dick Contino, Charles Chaplin, Jr., or Maxie Rosenbloom, not to mention the harpoon guns.

The Night Runner (1957)

Director: Abner Biberman
Cinematographer: George Robinson
Screenplay: Gene Levitt
Starring: Ray Danton and Colleen Miller
Released by: Universal International Pictures
Running time: 79 minutes 

The Beat Generation (1959)

Director: Charles F. Haas
Cinematographer: Walter Castle
Writer: Richard Matheson and Lewis Meltzer
Starring: Ray Danton, Steve Cochran, Mamie Van Doren, Louis Armstrong, Fay Spain, and Jackie Coogan
Distributed by: MGM
Running time: 95 minutes