HIGHWAY 301 (1950)

“You cannot be kind to congenital criminals like these. They would show you no mercy. Let them feel the full impact of the law.”

Back in the days before the no-holds-barred speedway/parking lot that is Interstate 95, sun-seekers in their Nash Ramblers and Studebaker Champions trekked from Baltimore to Florida on U.S. 301. In the 1950 Warner Bros. noir, Highway 301, a ruthless band of killers known as the “Tri-State Gang” exploit the thoroughfare’s easy on-easy off access to engage in that most American of crimes: kicking over banks.

The leader of the outfit is played by Steve Cochran, a good-looking and underestimated actor who could do more than the critics of his day were willing to acknowledge. Cochran could be boyish and naïve in one picture and a greasy scumbag in another; in Highway 301 he creates a legitimately terrifying screen persona, most certainly influenced by Jimmy Cagney’s neurotic turn in the previous year’s White Heat, in which Cochran co-starred. Here, Cochran borrows from the older actor and still manages to keep him at arm’s length. Unlike Cody Jarrett, Cochran’s George Legenza murders so casually that the film’s heartbeat barely flutters whenever he squeezes the trigger. Yet despite the actor’s idyllic good looks and his wardrobe of switchblade-sharp suits, there’s zero glamour to be found in this evocation of the criminal life. The Tri-State mob live out their doomed lives in a series of cheap roadside flops, greasy spoons, and chop suey palaces. Hustling from place to place, all cigarette smoke and nervous sweat, crammed five or six to a car, going nowhere.

If you can get your hands on a copy (Warner Archive DVD), stick with it beyond the first five minutes—viewers must first endure a trio of warnings from the governors of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina about the perils of the criminal life. Juvenile delinquency was an ongoing national concern in the postwar period, as distressing as polio, the bomb, and Biro and Wood’s Crime Does Not Pay. Parents, teachers, and church groups wrung their hands over how all this glorification of crime might lead to a generation of profligates, so the brothers Warner must have been eager to let three pontificating politicians blow for a minute or two at the start of the picture. This is by no means a juvenile delinquency movie—that filmic fad was still a few years away—but given the gunfire about to light up the screen, it’s hard to blame them for welcoming any stripe of official endorsement.

Wait. Biro and Wood,* you say? Who? They were the boys behind the most brutal comic book ever made. You thought those 1950s EC strips were bad? Get wise. Crime Does Not Pay plumbed the depths of human depravity and put it all on display on the glossy covers and pulpy pages of a sensation that was devoured by millions of kiddies and adults each month from the 1940s to the early 1950s. The comic dodged censors (at least for a while) because its crooked culprits always got it in the end, but in the pages leading up to those last few panels, Biro, Wood, and company exalted in an orgy of tommy guns, nooses, shotgun blasts, short skirts, and shallow graves. They spilled buckets of blood; they jammed hypodermic needles in their characters’ eyes; they set women on fire. As a matter of fact, in their June 1948 issue they even told the story of notorious Depression-era gangsters Walter Legenza* and Bobby Mais, the same fellows whose capers loosely inspired Highway 301. The movie creeps right up on that same thin razor of a line between documentary and exploitation that Crime Does Not Pay gleefully spat upon. With the exception of, perhaps, The Phenix City Story, it comes closer than any other midcentury crime film to capturing the wanton lewdness of those comics.

Highway 301 opens in tobacco country, with the Tri-State crew taking down a Winston-Salem bank in broad daylight. One by one, as the hoods exit the idling getaway car and take up positions in the lobby, a narrator gives up the skinny on their respective yellow sheets. One henchmen boasts 21 arrests and zero convictions—accused of everything from arson to murder. Another has just as many collars, with nothing to show for it beyond a hundred-dollar fine. George Legenza himself is on the lam, having busted his way out of the state penitentiary some months ago—though if he’s worried about being nabbed it doesn’t show. Highway 301’s moralizing tone is front and center from open to close: the system treats crooks with kid gloves, and the boys and girls in the audience need to be scared straight before the George Legenzas of the world get their hands on them.

The robbery comes off fine—turns out the gang has been tearing up and down Highway 301 for a while, leaving the bluecoats in the lurch. Even the feds are in on it now, but, as it happens in so many mid-century noirs, the law is obliged to impotently wait on the crooks to goof up. Fate and Destiny are the twin puppet masters of the noir universe, and they don’t give a damn about making the police look smart. When noir screenwriters wanted to lay crooks low, they zeroed their scripts in on tiny mistakes that turned out to have big consequences—a cosmic, ironic brand of justice. Take, for example, a canonical picture like Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing: karma comes not via the law, but rather from a discarded horseshoe in a parking lot, a cuckolded husband, and a gust of wind on an airport tarmac. In the noir universe, cops mostly chase their tails until the time comes for them to swoop in and pick up the pieces.

In Highway 301, fate comes with penciled eyebrows and a French accent. Lee Fontaine, (B-movie actress Gaby André), a recent conquest of Legenza’s protégé, is new to the gang. After she’s logged enough time to see what Legenza does to cops (shoots them in the back), armored car guards (shoots them in the back), and his girlfriends (shoots them in the back), she decides to beat it back to her native Canada. The film’s second and third acts take a detour from all that bank robbing and nestle into the shadowy confines of the Warner’s back lot, as the narrative shifts focus away from the gang’s crime spree to Legenza’s efforts to snatch Fontaine before she can blab. Don’t think too hard about why the Tri-State boys carpool to and fro with their girlfriends stashed at nearby motor courts instead of leaving them safe at home—the story falls apart if they don’t. But let’s at least acknowledge that in most other like-minded films (including Cochran and Cagney’s White Heat) the paramours don’t travel. I’ll back off that point as far as Hollywood lifer Virginia Grey is concerned. Her seen-it-all floozy steals every scene, and Highway 301 would be a lonely stretch of blacktop without her.

Yet the film’s tone is such that it barely resembles the iconic noirs from just a few years before. Double Indemnity, Laura, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Big Sleep, and many others class-up their violence under a veneer of lust and sex. That’s not the case here—Highway 301 is as brutal as it is detached. Its killings are more coldly matter-of-fact than any seen in the classics mentioned earlier, and more closely resemble those from another bank job picture, 1995’s Heat, release nearly a half-century later.

In the end, this is a low budget affair, but a stylish one. Yes, Richmond, Virginia has far too many palm trees and conspicuously resembles the Bunker Hill neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles, but the serpentine streets of the WB back lot never looked better, doused in shadow and drenched with rain. The film’s final moments, including a fantastic car stunt and a hair-raising sequence set atop a train trestle, are not only worth the price of admission, but also render bearable all of the dreary semi-documentary bits that showcase law enforcement. •

Legenza in Crime Does Not Pay

 * Writer-artist Bob Wood beat a woman to death in New York’s Irving Hotel—she was “giving me a bad time” he bragged to the cabbie who drove him home—and did three years for first-degree manslaughter. Seem like a short sentence? Apparently in those days being drunk was a mitigating factor. Rest easy though: Wood signed some IOUs with the made guys at Sing Sing in order to make his prison stretch go easy. When he got out and the time came to pay the piper, Wood couldn’t find his wallet. He was murdered within a year of his release.

* The real-life Legenza would die in Virginia’s electric chair on February 2, 1935. A wealth of documents are available here.

Highway 301

Written and Directed by Andrew Stone

Produced by Brian Foy

Starring Steve Cochran, Virginia Grey, Gaby André, and Robert Webber

Cinematography is by Carl Guthrie

Released by Warner Bros. Pictures

Running time: 83 minutes

Mother of Mercy: Edward G. Robinson and Film Noir

It’s fitting that so many of the movies Edward G. Robinson made after he parted ways with Warner Bros. were film noirs: persecuted by red-baiters, alienated from the film community, and fated to a terribly unhappy home, Robinson’s personal life had taken on the dimensions of a real-life film noir. He was living an ordeal often worse than those of the men he portrayed on screen. And regardless of what anyone would consider an avalanche of bad luck, Robinson himself was partly to blame. He suffered from imperfections that led him to make foolish decisions that resulted in tremendous personal grief: He was naïve, incautious, and overly trusting. He cared — perhaps too much — about his image and what people thought of him. He didn’t fit the mold of the typical Hollywood leading man, so it was important to him that he be accepted and liked — even admired. He failed to anticipate problems, and then ignored them, hoping that they would simply go away. Yet if these qualities hurt him personally, they benefitted him greatly in his craft. Fritz Lang understood him well: “Each part he plays he enriches with deep and warm understanding of human frailties and compels us to pity rather than condemnation, always adding vivid color to the intricate mosaic of motion picture reality.” Even when he broke into the movies playing gangster parts, audiences were always able to sense the weakness and fear lurking just beneath the surface sheen of cartoonish bravado; as he branched off into other kinds of roles, he imbued his characters with aspects of his own personality that gave them a depth and subtlety surprising for the era. And although Robinson was embarrassed to star in many of the fifties crime films that enthusiasts now covet, his unique combination of talent and imperfection helped him become one of the great protagonists of film noir.


Robinson was born Emmanuel Goldenberg (hence the ‘G’) in 1893 in Bucharest. When the anti-Semitism that beset Romania at the time struck close to home, his father knew it was time to get out. So like nearly half of all Romanian Jews, the Goldenbergs began the arduous process of immigrating to the United States. Theirs is the quintessential story: unable to afford passage for all at once, they saved their pennies and sent one family member at a time. Goldenberg would arrive last, along with his younger brother, his mother, and his grandmother. The crossing was rough: the ten-year-old boy was forced to endure the hell of steerage for twenty-three days, constantly seasick. He was so depleted upon docking in New York that he had to be carried from the ship.

He grew up among the tenements and pushcarts of the Lower East Side, and as a youth briefly considered becoming a Rabbi before discovering a gift for public speaking. During high school he campaigned for mayoral candidate William Randolph Hearst; and said of the experience, “I cannot report with total candor that it was solely passion over the issues that led me to stump for Hearst; additionally, there must have been mixed up in it my delight at standing on a soapbox and addressing an audience.” Goldenberg left high school with a growing fascination with acting and enrolled at the City College of New York, where he joined the dramatic society and discovered Broadway. He later transferred to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and began to seriously develop his craft — he also dropped his given name in favor of the Anglo-sounding Edward G. Robinson. He found the post-graduation job market thin, but eventually talent won out, and by 1915 he was a working actor.

In the late twenties Broadway lacked air conditioning, so Robinson spent his summers in traveling shows or otherwise looking for work. Like most actors he considered the stage the pinnacle of his profession, and looked down on the movies. Yet a film role could pay the equivalent of many weeks theatrical work, and in advance. Hollywood was interested in him, and he was ready to listen. His first real movie part cast him as a gangster in The Hole in the Wall (1929), an early talkie starring Claudette Colbert. He played a mobster again in Universal’s Night Ride (1929) before doing A Lady to Love (1930) for Irving Thalberg, who by then wanted Robinson for a long-term deal at MGM. He met with the young mogul, but it didn’t go well. Thalberg offered a contract worth a million dollars, but theater work was forbidden. It was a deal-breaker for Robinson, who was so shocked after nixing the offer that he vomited on the sidewalk outside Thalberg’s office. He retreated to New York fed up with Hollywood, only to find Hal Wallis waiting for him — Warner Bros. was willing to meet his terms, including time off to do plays. The moguls had salivated over his fictionalized Al Capone in the stage version of The Racket, and they had their hearts set on Edward G. Robinson playing similar characters in their films. So with his wife’s blessing he signed the deal and returned to California.

Kid Galahad

Mervyn Leroy’s landmark 1930 film Little Caesar wasn’t Robinson’s first for Warner Brothers. He played a vice baron in a forgettable picture called The Widow from Chicago before Wallis offered him the part of Rico. Little Caesar was an immediate smash — Robinson had created the definitive screen gangster, making him a national sensation. His success was surprising considering how almost everything about him was peculiar for a leading man. When one ponders the obstacles he overcame on the way to such a lofty career, it isn’t hard to fathom why he was perpetually insecure about his celebrity. A stocky Jewish immigrant from Romania, by way of Manhattan, he seemingly had more in common with the moguls themselves than he did with their employees. He considered his lack of height and good looks “handicaps,” but his size was actually a crucial aspect of his image: audiences hated the cigar-chewing little hoodlum with the pinstripes and the machine gun even more because he was short, knowing that without the gat and the goons he was nothing. Robinson disliked portraying racketeers, and was surprised at his ability to render them so vividly: “In order to play a part, you have to have some kind of identification with the role; I had little understanding of larceny and murder. I was forced to invent the gangster because I had no yardstick by which to play him. I didn’t want to do it ….”  Through his thirteen-year association with Warner Bros. he starred in nearly thirty successful films. When he and the studio finally parted ways in 1943, most of Hollywood thought his time had passed. On the wrong side of fifty, Robinson recognized that he couldn’t play crime bosses forever, and without studio backing he would have to accept smaller roles in order to preserve his position in Hollywood.

One of the first freelance jobs to come his way was in Billy Wilder’s criminal masterwork, Double Indemnity. Robinson was reluctant to accept the job, as it would mean a demotion to third billing behind Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. It had been years since he had played such a small part, but he liked the script and was ready to “begin thinking of character roles.” In the years since its release Double Indemnity has come to be regarded as a canonical American film, regardless of genre, and the consummate film noir. To top it all off he steals the show. Although New York Times grouch Bosley Crowther, not surprisingly, was lukewarm on the movie, he had nothing but praise for Robinson: “The performance of Mr. Robinson … is a fine bit of characterization … With a bitter brand of humor and irritability, he creates a formidable guy. As a matter of fact, Mr. Robinson is the only one you care two hoots for in the film. The rest are just neatly carved pieces in a variably intriguing crime game.” Crowther’s comment about Double Indemnity hints at the brilliance of Robinson’s performance as the hyperkinetic Barton Keyes. He is the only one you care “two hoots” about because he is the most human character in the film. Forget about Walter and Phyllis — they know all along what they’re getting themselves into and do it anyway, straight down the line. The schmuck in Double Indemnity is Keyes. He’s the only character naïve enough not to see what’s happening right in front of him (other than Mr. Dietrichson, of course, but in his case it happened behind him), and thus the person truly wounded by Walter’s betrayal. It’s not the bluster of Barton Keyes that makes the character so indelible, but the humanity of Edward G. Robinson.

Robinson was next offered the lead in Fritz Lang’s The Woman in the Window. He signed a two-picture deal just to work with the director, but he later remembered the shoot as very tense. Raymond Massey and Joan Bennett were both vocal members of Hollywood’s conservative, anti-Roosevelt camp; Robinson situated himself much farther to the left. Although the war was ongoing and the Russians were still, technically, our allies, Massey and Bennett engaged cast and crew in anti-Soviet banter between takes. When Robinson tried to defend “the defenders of Stalingrad” he was chastised, and retreated to his dressing room for the bulk of the filming. Not for the first time in his life he considered it a better tactic to run away from confrontation rather than stay and fight.

Scarlet Street was the source of much controversy in the weeks leading up to its release. Robinson plays an impotent husband pulled by the nose to his doom by femme fatale Joan Bennett. The film was originally banned in New York, with censors demanding cuts be made before the premiere. They found the scene in which Robinson stabs Bennett with an ice pick too grisly, and were also gravely concerned that his character actually survives the film. (Irony not lost on Robinson, who complained that he died in too many of his movies.) Scarlet Street, particularly with its expressionistic denouement, may have simply been ahead of its time. It didn’t fare that well commercially, though Fritz Lang considered it his best American picture. Robinson found both the film and his character “monotonous,” and couldn’t wait to move on. His choice of words is very telling. It’s fair to suggest that both roles were an approximation, though exaggerated, of his off-screen situation at the time; and consequently offer an explanation of why he interprets them so perfectly. Bennett, regardless of their political differences, recalled their relationship fondly, “He was going through a terrible time with his wife, Gladys. She was being given shock treatments, and despite his personal problems, he was always a sweet, kind man.”

 

Robinson bracketed the war with roles as Nazi Hunters. In 1939 he headlined Confessions of a Nazi Spy, and upon his return from entertaining the troops in Normandy he starred in Orson Welles’s The Stranger. In need of a mainstream project with strong box office appeal, Welles agreed to shoot from a studio-approved script and with a studio-approved final edit. Although the film gave Welles the boost he needed, it’s clear that his heart wasn’t in it. Neither, it appeared, was Robinson’s, who referred to the affair as “bloodless,” though unemotional may be a batter word. Loretta Young’s histrionics aside, the rest of the performances seem rote; which is surprising considering the idea of playing a Nazi hunter so soon after the war would have been close to Robinson’s heart. Whether he was carefully guarding his feelings or not, they are noticeably absent from his performance. The film’s biggest problem is that it’s as chock-full of in-jokes and winks at the camera as any other Welles project, and they just aren’t appropriate to the subject matter. It’s hard to imagine any circumstances under which Robinson would have approved.

Robinson’s co-produced his next project, The Red House. The film is more spook-fest than noir, about a murderer who raises his victims’ daughter while trying in vain to keep her from discovering his crime. As her realization becomes inevitable, his character disintegrates under the strain. It isn’t his best performance, but it improves as the films grinds towards the climactic moment, when Robinson is actually quite frightening. He was flippant about the movie, saying, “It was a moody piece, got moody notices, but I think it made a few bucks.” Unfortunately a good print of The Red House is hard to come by, as it has fallen into the dregs of the public domain. Judith Anderson and Robinson relied greatly on facial expression to enhance their acting; so much of the nuance of the film is lost to those without access to a quality print.

Robinson was back on the Warner Bros. lot in 1948, in what must have seemed like old times. He was once again cast as a gangster in a prestige production, playing alongside Humphrey Bogart in director John Huston’s Key Largo. The only difference this time was the billing: Bogart was now the bigger star. It’s easy to imagine that the pair would have a strained relationship, but they didn’t. After all, in Robinson’s glory days at Warner Bros. he made four films in which Bogart offered support. Now that the younger actor was on top Robinson found him magnanimous, “Let me tell you something about Bogie. On that set he gave it all to me. Second billing or no, I got the star treatment because he insisted on it — not in words but in action. When asked to come to the set, he would ask: “Is Mr. Robinson ready?” He’d come to my trailer dressing room to get me.”

Key Largo was a hit. Robinson offered an evolved take on his gangster persona — this time very much in keeping with film noir. The movies of the thirties explored gangsters as a threat to the social order, chronicling their rise and inevitable fall from power. A film noir like Key Largo shifts the focus to the inner workings of the criminal at the end of his rope. Robinson’s work is viciously physical, subtly intellectual, and buoyed by the actor’s own dark circumstances. The underlying weakness that colored Rico Bandello becomes cruel desperation in Rocco — only Robinson had the depth and nuance to pull it off, not to mention the life experience. Most amazing is his range — it’s difficult to believe this is the same actor who fawns over Joan Bennett’s toenails in Scarlet Street. The reviews were the best of his career. The New York Herald-Tribune commented, “Robinson is Little Caesar all over again … In a story of modern crime, his acting might seem extreme, but here its touch of the Twenties is exactly what is required of a brutish has-been ….”

Robinson returned to Paramount in 1948 to play a vaudeville mentalist who discovers he can actually see the future in the low budget Night Has a Thousand Eyes. The story is an eye-roller that waffles between film noir and parlor mystery. Robinson referred to the project as “unadulterated hokum,” and insisted he only did it for the money. It’s a peculiar film, and not a particularly good one — frankly of more interest for the presence of another sad Tinseltown figure, leading lady Gail Russell. He does fine work though, offering a melancholy portrait of alienation and loneliness. He followed up with a plum part in Joseph Mankiewicz’s House of Strangers at 20^th Century Fox, playing a Sicilian immigrant who makes it big in banking, but is eventually indicted and imprisoned, leaving his ungrateful sons to vie for control of the family business. House of Strangers is a fine social melodrama, though it hasn’t aged well. Robinson’s performance is offbeat, all bluster and over the top accent. Critics liked the film but were cool towards him. The New York Herald-Tribune noted, “Robinson gives [Manetti] an ominous quality, but he lingers too fondly over reminiscences of his youth as a barber on Mulberry Street and makes far too much of an Italian accent.” Ironically, the film afforded him the only acting award of his long career: He was named best actor at the Cannes Film Festival.

Following the completion of House of Strangers, Robinson’s already troubled personal life fell apart. Dating back to his schoolboy days as a campaign speaker for Hearst, he had cultivated an active political life. He was a far-left liberal and avid Roosevelt supporter. He considered himself a grateful American citizen who stood up for the causes he believed in. As a Jew who had witnessed anti-Semitism in Europe first-hand, he hated Hitler and during the war years he worked tirelessly to combat Fascism: he contributed his wealth and his name to practically every organization that claimed to be anti-Germany, whether that organization was openly pro-Soviet or not. He didn’t ask questions; he didn’t investigate. He just wrote the checks and hosted the get-togethers, believing all along that everything was on the square and that his patriotism was beyond reproach. However all of Robinson’s subtlety was spent in his performances — he failed to grasp how Americans could be both anti-Germany and anti-Russia at the same time. The time had come when his lack of insight would cost him much more than money.

As victory in Europe was assured, the government looked homeward, becoming preoccupied with the threat of subversive activity, particularly in the film industry.  In 1947 the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) formed to investigate the potential threat of domestic communism to national security. Robinson knew that he had been the subject of innuendo and whisperings for quite some time, but chose to ignore the rumors, believing his good name was unimpeachable. He was wrong. The potent but circumstantial amalgam of his committee memberships, political history, and donations — including an ill-fated check to the struggling family of jailed writer Dalton Trumbo, led to the listing of his name in the infamous Red Channels pamphlet of 1950, which accused him of affiliation with a dozen communist fronts. Before Robinson knew what hit him he was getting hammered with negative publicity in both industry publications and the mainstream national press.

Robinson was never actually blacklisted, as there was no legitimate evidence against him, but he was graylisted — or guilty by suspicion. The film offers dried up and he was forced to scramble to recover his reputation — the loss of status affected him deeply. Consequently he wanted to appear in Washington and be asked if he was a member of the communist party — but HUAC refused to issue a subpoena. It took a great deal of maneuvering before he could arrange to testify and exonerate himself. To satisfy the vipers on the committee Robinson was required to openly admit that he had been duped and made a fool of by industry subversives. It was at this time that he eloquently said, “Either snap my neck or set me free. If you snap my neck I’ll still say ‘I believe in America.’” HUAC considered him a schmuck — and told him so. Chairman John Stevens Wood chastised him as, “… a very choice sucker. I think you are number one on the sucker list in this country.”  Robinson got off the hook, but left Washington as damaged goods. It would be a long time before mainstream Hollywood would welcome him back.

 

Compounding his problems in the early fifties were the ongoing concerns with his family. He had married Gladys Lloyd in 1927. She was the daughter of a well-known sculptor and came from a blue-blooded family of Pennsylvania Quakers. In his book Robinson called it “Love At First Sight,” but then listed all the arguments against marrying her. Not only was she not Jewish, which bothered him; he suspected she didn’t appreciate that he was. She was also divorced with a child, which troubled him as well. He further described her as cool, reserved, manipulative, and enigmatic. In listing her attributes he described her as “aristocratic” and “groomed.” He seemed to desire her more as a status symbol than a partner, and in wanting her he failed to notice that something wasn’t quite right with Gladys. Yet in typical Robinson fashion, he married her anyway and simply ignored the negatives — until once again it was too late. It’s very telling that it took him two years to finally propose, and that he was unable to reveal his marriage to his parents until months after his father had passed away. Gladys was an undiagnosed manic-depressive who would rail against her Hollywood life, and during her rough periods would sue for divorce numerous times. She would spend much of their marriage institutionalized. Robinson, terrified of her and embarrassed about her illness, explained away her absences as visits to “health spas.”

Marriage left Robinson miserable, and he escaped his problems through work. The only catch was that he now had a son. He married believing that Gladys couldn’t have another child, but in 1933 Edward G. “Manny” Robinson Jr. was born. Fatherhood came as a surprise to him. He wanted desperately to be a good dad, but just didn’t quite know how. Robinson was happier at the studio than he was at home, so the actor and his son seldom spent time together. He tried to mend fences with expensive gifts, but Manny was as troubled as his mother. By the time he turned twelve he was drinking and bouncing from school to school, by twenty he was an alcoholic who couldn’t hold down a job. By thirty he had married, divorced, and done time. He wouldn’t live to enjoy his forties.

One source of escape for Robinson was collecting art. It was beneficial to his personal life because it was something he and Gladys could do together, and to his professional life because collecting accorded him a certain status in Hollywood. The Robinsons amassed the finest collection of impressionist paintings in the country, and built a beautiful custom home in which to display them. But by 1956 he was exhausted with Gladys and finally allowed her divorce demands to go through. California law stipulates an equal division of property, so Robinson was forced to sell his beloved canvases — he would spend the rest of his life trying to buy them all back. (Gladys died in 1971. Afterwards he came clean about their relationship in his autobiography. In it he also reaches out to his semi-estranged son, writing, “All of us Goldenbergs live to our eighties. You’ve got forty-one years more. Enjoy yourself, but make it work for you.” It wasn’t meant to be. Manny would die of a heart attack thirteen months later, at the age of forty.)

Robinson didn’t work as regularly from the late forties through the mid fifties — while the HUAC smear and constant family issues wrecked his personal life, few in Hollywood were willing to take a chance on him. Meanwhile, his free moments were consumed with trying to restore his reputation. The only roles he could get were in low budget, often independent productions, so he entered what he described bleakly as “the ‘B’ picture phase of my career as a movie star — or former movie star, if that’s a better way of putting it, or has-been, it that’s still a better way…” He was even more blunt with his close friends, describing his work during the period as “crap.” Yet crime film enthusiasts are sure to disagree. Even if he was embarrassed by the roles and imagined himself just going through the motions, enough angst found its way onto film that his performances are some of his best, and among the most deeply felt in film noir. No one who has seen Black Tuesday (1954) could disagree.

In The Glass Web Robinson appears as a researcher for the television crime program. When his girlfriend, played in true Cleo Moore fashion by Kathleen Hughes, realizes he can’t advance her acting career and tells him off, Robinson murders her and frames screenwriter John Forsythe. Hoping to take Forsythe’s job, he uses the murder as fodder for the show, but only manages to incriminate himself. Filmed in 3-D and intended to negatively portray the world of television, the film flounders under its own overwrought narrative and, ironically, bland TV-style lighting.

1954’s Black Tuesday is almost certainly the best film of the period. It’s a punch in the teeth kind of movie, half prison break and half standoff. Although Robinson plays another crime boss, he’s once again able to reinvent himself. Paul Beckley wrote in his review in the New York Herald-Tribune, “Mr. Robinson is still the old pro in this kind of thing and at no point in the film imitates his own past portrayals but gives a fresh and convincing portrait of an egomaniacal killer.” It’s as if Robinson is somehow able to channel all of the rage of his personal life into the character of Vincent Canelli. Gone is the swagger and bravado of Rico Bandello, or even Johnny Rocco. Canelli is vicious, cruel, and altogether terrifying. Robinson’s interpretation is so coldly focused and angry that the film almost hurts to watch. Although the story occasionally strays into cliché, director Hugo Fregonese’s film is well made, well acted, and well worth tracking down.

Tight Spot offered another good part, as well as an important step on the road back to Hollywood respectability. The film also starred Ginger Rogers, whose mother Lela was a HUAC star witness and one of Tinseltown’s chief red-baiters. Everyone in Hollywood knew that Ginger would never appear opposite him without her mother’s stamp of approval. The movie itself is a knockout. Robinson plays a district attorney bent on jailing ruthless mobster Lorne Greene. Rogers, released from prison in order to testify against Greene, is the only witness remaining alive. The bulk of the film is concerned with the interaction between the two leads, as Robinson desperately tries to convince the streetwise girl to take the stand. Directed by Phil Karlson and shot by Burnett Guffey, the film has instant noir credibility. Well paced and tightly constructed, Tight Spot is marred only by a poorly telegraphed twist ending.

A Bullet for Joey gave Robinson the chance to appear once again beside George Raft, with whom he famously came to blows on the set of the Marlene Dietrich vehicle Manpower in 1941. Raft was also experiencing his share of troubles — though his sprung from booze and dice. More importantly however, the film cast Robinson as a G-Man (albeit Canadian) out to nab a network of communist spies intent on pilfering a nuclear physicist. The role gave him the opportunity to prove his patriotism to audiences. Unfortunately, A Bullet for Joey tanked. Robinson’s performance is one of his weakest, and he despised the film. Raft seems utterly lost.

Robinson does angst-ridden attorney in Illegal, a remake of a remake for Warner Bros. and A Bullet for Joey director Lewis Allen. Down and out over sending an innocent man to the chair, Robinson’s character dives into a bottle of booze. He gets a career renewal as a defense attorney, and finds redemption in saving the life of his unjustly accused assistant, played by Nina Foch. Noir stalwart Albert Dekker appears as the heavy. The film got fair notices, with The New York Times commenting, “The fact that this hard-bitten lawyer is played by Edward G. Robinson in his old vein of stinging sarcasm is a clue to what you may expect.”

Nightmare, based on the novel by Cornell Woolrich, was Robinson’s final film noir, and it may have been one too many. If he could have magically removed one film from his résumé, it would have been this one. Low rent director Maxwell Shane had already filmed this in 1947 as Fear in the Night, though the remake benefits from a more talented cast and location shooting. The New York Herald-Tribune liked him, but remarked that, “good acting does little more than remind one of the waste.” The film was a bust at the box office; Robinson biographer Alan Gansberg advises the film is “best forgotten.”

Robinson was still struggling under the weight of the smear, and it appeared that no end was in sight. Producers were simply unwilling to risk the profitability of their most prestigious projects by having his name attached. Cecil B. DeMille was casting The Ten Commandments when it was suggested to him that Robinson would be ideal as Dathan, if only he was politically “acceptable.” DeMille, the conservative grandfather of the Hollywood establishment, reviewed his case and realized he had been given a bum rap. He decided to offer Robinson the part over the reservations of his associates. He made the most of it, earning solid reviews and the respect of his costars. He was forever grateful to the director, remarking that, “Cecil B. DeMille returned me to films. Cecil B. DeMille restored my self-respect.” Finally, the sixty-three year-old was welcomed back into the Hollywood mainstream. From then until the end of his life he worked steadily, and even managed to buy back a few paintings.

Tight Spot

Film noir is often preoccupied with the cruel indifference of the universe — how a man can get knocked off his feet for no reason whatsoever, and then kicked in the gut while he’s down. Of course Edward G. Robinson enjoyed the wealthy life of a celebrity, but he paid for it playing characters he often held in contempt. And he was far more generous with his wealth and his free time than most stars. He made mistakes, many have been detailed here — but who hasn’t? He loved being an American and was instead called a traitor, eventually to be humiliated in front of the world. His family life was tragic. He found peace in collecting paintings, but even they were taken from him. It was as if Robinson was doomed to never receive the things from life he wanted and deserved, not even from the industry to which he had given so much. There had been buzz of an Oscar nomination for his work in The Ten Commandments, but it never amounted to anything. Though he was one of the most acclaimed actors in film history, Robinson was never even nominated for an Academy Award. There’s no blacker mark against the Oscars. He wasn’t even nominated for Double Indemnity, where he delivers one of the greatest supporting performances in motion picture history — a stinging injustice considering Barry Fitzgerald, the winner for Going My Way, was nominated for the same role in both the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories.

In 1973 the Academy finally decided to recognize him with an honorary statuette, but fate would deny the great man even this small moment of recognition: he died before he could be given the award. 

This essay was originally published in Noir City, the magazine of the Film Noir Foundation. If the noir community has a hub, it’s the FNF. My pals over there are working hard to preserve original 35 mm prints of classic noirs, putting on the fantastic Noir City film festivals, and publishing a great magazine. Consider clicking the link and sending ’em a couple bucks. They’ll put it to good use — you’ll become a real part of film conservation, and get some cool swag too. 

Just Shy of Respect: The Hollywood Life and Death of Alan Ladd

Most people believe Alan Ladd committed suicide, but the details surrounding his 1964 death are so convoluted no one can be sure what really happened. History is often guilty of erring on the side of sensationalism—but in Ladd’s case suicide is a reasonable assumption. Just two years before, in 1962, he was discovered at home, lying half-dead in a pool of blood, a bullet lodged in his chest. The newspapers and fan mags bought into the story of an accident, but everyone who knew Ladd believed that he’d botched a suicide attempt. It really doesn’t matter whether his January 1964 death was intentional or not—Ladd’s life had been spiraling downward for years, perhaps even from the moment he broke into the movie business. It was apparent to anyone paying attention that he was hell-bent on digging an early grave.

The average movie goer doesn’t understand how arduous life could be for the stars of studio-era Hollywood, or how truthful that old industry adage: “you’re only as good as your last picture” really was. It’s a dollars-and-cents, bottom line, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately kind of racket, and despite a product that was usually lighthearted, uplifting, and sentimental, the industry itself could be painfully harsh. It goes without saying that Hollywood dreamers had to be made of tough stuff, but as is often the case in life, many of those who struggled mightily to achieve success were bewildered once they actually made it—and surely didn’t know what to do after the spotlight left them for the next big thing. Certainly this was the case with Alan Ladd, a hardscrabble kid who worked a million crap jobs before he finally made it, then was so terrified of losing it all that he let his insecurities devour him. The foundation upon which Ladd’s self-esteem stood was simply not strong enough to sustain him. His fame and wealth notwithstanding, he was the most insecure, frightened, and guilt-ridden superstar in Hollywood.

Few performers ever made as smashing a debut as Ladd did in the 1942 film This Gun for Hire, if it can be called a debut at all. Devotees know This Gun wasn’t his first appearance. The misconception exists owing to the “and introducing Alan Ladd as Raven” treatment he gets in the opening credits. Ladd had been getting bit parts in studio pictures since the mid-1930s, and he had already scored small gigs in Citizen Kane, as well as 1942’s Joan of Paris before his unforgettable breakout in This Gun for Hire. When the first rushes came in, This Gun director Frank Tuttle and Paramount execs realized they had lightning in a bottle, and reworked numerous shots to build him up, bolstering Ladd’s scenes with Veronica Lake while shifting the focus away from top-billed Robert Preston. The screen persona that Ladd establishes in This Gun for Hire’s very first scene is one that he would riff on for more than a decade. It would carry him to the peak of Mount Hollywood, and make him, for a short while, the most popular screen actor in the world.

Ladd emerged from This Gun for Hire as a bona fide movie marvel, Paramount’s incandescent star—bigger even than Bing Crosby. The studio hurried to craft an image that would ensure the public’s continued adoration. The newly-minted Alan Ladd would be featured primarily in romantic hero roles. He’d still be tough as nails, but his days playing hired killers were over. Consequently, Adolph Zuckor felt it was important to give Ladd a fantastical, picture postcard life story. He was provided with a studio-written script to use for press interviews and public appearances, while certain aspects of his past, such as the brief first marriage and resulting child, were swept under the rug. Ladd would need to present himself as the smiling family man beginning to dominate the covers of fan magazines. The sanitized version of his life story presented in Screen Romances and Movie Story wasn’t an outright lie, but it was a lot for an insecure young actor, uncomfortable with success, to try to live up to. 

Ladd was kind and good-natured, but horribly apprehensive about his size, his personal history, and, most of all, his acting. His costars often found him unapproachably distant, though those he worked with more than once came to realize he was simply terrified that people would think he was a fraud. Ladd ignored praise, but took to heart every negative thing written about him. When Geraldine Fitzgerald encouraged him to accept the lead in The Great Gatsby he confided, “I won’t be able to do it because I can’t act, you know.” Yet Robert Preston said, “…he was an awfully good actor. So many people didn’t realize this. It’s said that the publicity department invented him, but they didn’t really have to. He would have made it without that, and I think his life would have been happier.” Virginia Mayo, who adored him, said it best: “The whole problem with Alan’s psyche was his inability to remember that he was a big star. And he was the biggest…. The lack of artistic recognition affected him, affected him tragically…” Though Veronica Lake, who appeared alongside Ladd more often than any other actress, and whose sad life in some ways paralleled his, characterized their time together in surprisingly professional terms: “both of us were very aloof…. We were a very good match for one another. It enabled us to work together very easily and without friction or temperament.” However, all who worked with him sensed a deep sadness in the man. When an interviewer asked him what he would change about himself if he could, he famously replied, “Everything.”

Ladd was always more at ease with the crew than he was other performers or studio executives. He had begun in Hollywood as a laborer and enjoyed being around those who worked behind the scenes. Yet he was able to form lasting friendships with a few of his costars in spite of being “aloof,” including Edmond O’Brien, Lloyd Nolan, and Van Heflin — but most notably William Bendix. The pair met while costarring in The Glass Key and would appear together in often. They began auspiciously, after Bendix accidentally cold-cocked Ladd during a fight scene. Ladd was so taken by the big man’s concern for his safety that they formed an immediate bond. Their close friendship was widely publicized — they even purchased homes across the street from one another. According to Bill’s wife Tess Bendix, things went astray when Ladd’s wife Sue Carol made an offhand remark about Bendix’s lack of military service. Stuck in the middle, Ladd was obliged to choose between his friend and his wife, and it would be a decade before the two would have a conversation that didn’t involve reading lines on a movie set. Once they finally reconciled, Ladd would lean heavily on his old friend. Bendix was constantly out of town during the early sixties, working almost exclusively on the stage. Tess remembers many late-night phone calls that involved a despondent Ladd pleading with Bendix to break his contracts and return to California. Bendix’s heartbreak in the wake of Ladd’s 1964 death was tremendous, and unfortunately short-lived — suffering from pneumonia, he would follow his best friend in death before the year was out.

The roots of Ladd’s depression can almost certainly be traced back to his childhood, which was anything but stable — his father died before his eyes when he was only four years old. When his mother remarried, the family began a Joad-like trek west and eventually settled in California. Their itinerant days cost Ladd a few years in school — and consequently he was not only the smallest, but also the oldest boy in his year. Nor did it help that he made poor grades, was excruciatingly shy, and had no stable male role model. If suicide is hereditary, then he never had a chance. In 1937, wrecked on alcohol and poverty, his mother swallowed ant poison and died before his eyes, just as he was struggling to get his first break. The incident naturally devastated him, and many insiders have speculated that he spent the rest of his life seeking to replace the doting woman who had been his only source of reassurance and approval. Sue Carol, ten years his senior, filled some of the void left in his mother’s wake, and Ladd came to consider the Paramount a surrogate home. Nonetheless, he was plagued with guilt about his mother for the rest of his days, and when he left the comfortable surroundings of Paramount his peace of mind and sense of stability deteriorated even further.

Even in the years after he achieved stardom and financial security, Ladd’s self-image and the rigors of a public life were a source of distress — he referred to himself as “the most insecure guy in Hollywood.” He wanted to be thought of as a serious actor but took to heart the whisperings that he was more a product of Paramount’s publicity machine than his own ability. He wanted to try different roles, but Adolph Zuckor considered him too valuable, and wouldn’t risk damaging his carefully constructed screen persona by giving him other kinds of parts. Ladd never complained much — he would have felt too guilty. The studio had given him his start, and after having been poor for so long he felt deeply indebted; so much so that he played ball with his bosses in ways that seem perplexing today. For much of his career, he kept his first marriage and the resulting child, Alan Ladd Jr., a secret from the public. The fan magazines, as well as Sue Carol herself, were more than happy to go along with the script. Ladd’s squeaky-clean image sold millions of magazines, and it did no one any good to rock the boat.

Carol, a former actress-turned-agent, represented Ladd tirelessly during the period leading up to This Gun for Hire. Even in the years after they were married, when her public role shifted to that of wife and mother, she remained the guiding force behind his career. Everyone from film historians to family friends has suggested that she did as much to maintain Ladd’s screen image as the studios, and that while their marriage was sound (Ladd absolutely refused to remove his wedding ring during production of his films) she nevertheless contributed to the burden of stardom that so weighed on her husband’s shoulders. She also contributed greatly to his happiness by giving him two children. Alana was born in 1943, followed by David in 1947.

Of his three kids David would follow most closely in his father’s footsteps. He appeared briefly in Shane, and then won a much larger role alongside Ladd in 1958’s The Proud Rebel. David received solid notices for his work — as well as a Golden Globe for Best Juvenile Actor — and quickly became a sought-after child star. He worked for two decades as a film and television actor, then transitioned to a long career as a film executive, and was married to Charlie’s Angels actress Cheryl Ladd for seven years.

The need to protect Alan Ladd’s image waned with his stardom, and the full story of his first marriage and son finally became public. Movie fans embraced Laddie with no hint of scandal, though the guilt the father felt at keeping his son a secret for so long was debilitating. Alan Ladd Jr. would also enjoy a significant career in the movie industry, becoming one the most successful executives in Hollywood. His tenure as president of Twentieth Century Fox saw Young Frankenstein, Star Wars, and Alien hit theaters. In 1995 he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Picture as producer of Braveheart. He continues to produce quality films — most recently Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone.

Alan Ladd spent a decade at Paramount following This Gun for Hire, in a succession of weaker and weaker films that still scored millions for the studio. By the end of the forties, he was arguably the most popular actor in the world, regardless of the second-rate material the studio put him in. Darryl Zanuck called him “the indestructible man,” and fully aware of Ladd’s reputation as a one trick pony, he longed to get him under contract at Fox. When Ladd finally left Paramount for big money from another studio, it wasn’t Zanuck but Jack Warner who placed the winning bid. Warner would quickly come to regret the deal however, as Ladd, no longer in the comforting embrace of Paramount, began to flounder. His performances got worse and worse, and even 1953’s Shane — made at Paramount but released after he and the studio separated — couldn’t resurrect his career. He got great buzz and Shane was a colossal success, but the studios responded by rushing every awful Ladd picture they had canned into release in order to cash in — before long he was back where he started, longing to appear in a decent picture and wondering where things went wrong. For the rest of the fifties Ladd made one bad movie after the next. He was hopeful about 1957’s Boy on a Dolphin. Cast next to rising star Sophia Loren, he was devastated when director Jean Negulesco favored the statuesque Italian beauty and treated him like an afterthought. Michael Curtiz helmed 1959’s The Man in the Net, with Ladd in the title role. He was excited to work with an A-list director, even if Curtiz had a reputation for being a tyrant. Both were awful failures; it was clear to all that Ladd’s tenure as an above-the-title film star was over.

Lacking the meaningful work to distract him from his thoughts, Ladd became an alcoholic. He couldn’t sleep and got hooked on Secobarbital. Neither his family, his legacy, nor his tremendous wealth could undo the damage. He believed he had never been given the chance to be a real actor and had never been taken seriously as anything other than a pretty face. His problem was that he believed every bad word the critics had ever written about him, and it was too late to rewrite history. He appeared one last time, in 1964’s The Carpetbaggers, as an aging western star. He got decent notices and there was talk of a comeback as a character actor, à la Edward G. Robinson, but it wasn’t to be. The once beautiful lead of such films as Lucky Jordan, Two Years Before the Mast, and The Great Gatsby was simply used up. On January 29, 1964, eight weeks prior to the release of The Carpetbaggers, Ladd’s butler discovered his body in his Palm Springs bedroom. Having mixed liquor and sleeping pills one time too many, his body finally failed. It’s easy to believe he killed himself, but whether he chose to end his life that night or not, the more important truth is that some people are simply not blessed with happiness, despite fame and fortune, and try as they might their pain is such that it eventually overwhelms them. Nobody in Hollywood was surprised to learn that Alan Ladd was dead.

***

Returning to This Gun for Hire after viewing the full arc of Ladd’s career is jarring: his blonde hair is burned into our memory, though for his debut Paramount ironically dyed his hair black — a character named Raven couldn’t possibly be fair-haired. Ladd’s mop had held him back for years —studios believed dark hair photographed better! Paramount, home of Sterling Hayden and William Holden, was the only lot where sandy hair wasn’t considered a setback. However it’s the industry’s never-ending campaign to camouflage Ladd’s height that we recall now, particularly in This Gun for Hire. Few other actors have been so stigmatized by their shortness, Ladd especially so because he was a screen tough guy. Sure, Edward G. Robinson was Little Caesar, but with him size was part of his swagger, an integral part of his screen image — and unlike Ladd, Robinson was never a romantic leading man. In Ladd’s case, everyone wished he were taller. He stood 5’6”, as tall as Cagney and just two measly inches shorter than Bogart. Yet there was something about his look — his boyishness, the pretty face, thin frame — that made him appear smaller than his older and more famous peers. Like most small men Ladd was sensitive; he would shy away from making personal appearances in order to avoid the surprised expressions and hurtful slights of his those surprised at his size. And while he could occasionally dodge the public, his stature was an inescapable issue on-set. Robert Preston would write of their time doing This Gun for Hire, “…you couldn’t use a stand-in when you were working in a scene with him because there would be so many cables and stands and reflectors you couldn’t get in or out. And this is what sort of stultified Laddie. They were photographing a doll … It’s so sad, because he was an awfully good actor.”

Yet it is to Ladd’s credit that Paramount went to such extremes to give him a public face, as well as conceal his height — for anyone else they wouldn’t have bothered. He was the studio’s golden goose; audiences just loved him. There was no need to purchase a major literary property or shoot on-location, Ladd’s name on the marquee ensured major profits — even if the picture was a stinker. Throughout the 1940s his movies were simply bulletproof: every single one made money, to the tune of $55,000,000 in the studio coffers. No other star made so much money in such cheap pictures. In the grand scheme of things, making him look taller was just good business.

Nowhere are the studio’s efforts to carefully cultivate Ladd’s screen image more apparent than in This Gun for Hire’s opening scene, which finds his Philip Raven waking from a night of troubled sleep. He sits up and reaches for an envelope, while palming his nickel-plated automatic. The camera work is all strictly low angle, and when Ladd finally gets off the bed his head practically brushes the ceiling. Whether it was the camera position, a shallow depth of field, or a cut-down set, the shot is obviously contrived to make Raven appear a great deal taller than Alan Ladd. When that famous kitten-hating maid shows up, itching for one of the best slaps in movie history, the camera angle shifts from low to high, and Ladd, now looming over the girl, is suddenly ten feet tall. This sort of cinematic sleight of hand would characterize his career. The studios used a number of tricks to make him appear as tall as possible: he might stand on a raised platform or his leading lady might step into a freshly dug hole. It’s worth noting that in addition to their great sexual chemistry, Paramount loved pairing Ladd with Veronica Lake because she was barely five feet tall — one of the few actresses who could wear heels and still look right to him.

Although Ladd is more often described as a movie star rather than an actor (which meant then, as it does now, that critics credited his success more to his looks than his ability), his performance in This Gun for Hire is damn good. The producers knew the film depended casting an actor able to portray a psychopathic killer who would come across as both cold-blooded and sympathetic. Ladd was blessed with a face that was chiseled and attractive, and his knife-edge voice was simply magnificent. His early-career experience as a radio actor had given him precise control over his pitch and timbre: he could portray different emotions while keeping his face cold, making Raven one of noir’s iciest killers. In a few key moments throughout the movie Ladd softens his character just enough to give the audience a glimpse of the hurt kid lurking underneath the grim façade. The effect is powerful, and in terms of Hollywood currency, a star-maker. His special ability to play characters both vulnerable and tough-as-nails was unique, his special something, the “it” that made him a magnificent screen star. His physical beauty and potent chemistry with Lake was the icing on the cake. The Hayes code demanded that Raven pay for his crimes in the final reel of This Gun for Hire, but you ache for it not to be so. You wish that he could somehow survive to escape with the girl, his misdeeds revealed as a frame-up or as a hoax. Instead, the denouement is clumsy and artificial, with Lake and her putz boyfriend Preston awkwardly embracing as Ladd bleeds to death at their feet.

The New York critics may have had Alan Ladd’s number when they derided him as merely a movie star, and it may also be true that the “serious” career he wanted so badly eluded him. But in spite of all the criticism and Ladd’s immense self-loathing, his movies have pleased millions. He made his first splash as a professional killer in an iconic film noir, establishing a potent new character type that would stand the test of time and be exploited to the point of cliché in the crime pictures of the forties and fifties. From trendsetting early efforts such as This Gun for Hire and The Glass Key, through the more mature The Blue Dahlia, and even in less well known noirs such as Calcutta, Chicago Deadline, and the fantastic Appointment with Danger, Ladd was a key actor in the canon of film noir. His screen charisma, immense popularity, and ability to humanize the hoodlum ensured the continued development of the noir style in the Hollywood studio system; and his movies have weathered the years in ways he couldn’t possibly have imagined. His last great role came as the good-guy hero in what many consider to be the American western.

And he thought he was small. 

***

An earlier version of this essay was published in Noir City, the magazine of the Film Noir Foundation. If the noir community has a hub, it’s the FNF. My pals over there are working hard to preserve original 35 mm prints of classic noirs, putting on the fantastic Noir City film festivals, and publishing a great magazine. Consider clicking the link and sending ’em a couple bucks. They’ll put it to good use — you’ll become a real part of film conservation, and get some cool swag too.