Nightmare Alley - Film Noir And The American Dream (53 page)

37
. R. Barton Palmer aptly points out that the doctor, an “archly patriarchal figure who sees women as prisoners of their own nature,” views Louise as an enigma who can be explained only by “discourses … articulated by men” (157, 158).

38
. Richards also scripted the Fritz Lang film
Secret beyond the Door
, a Gothic-noir hybrid about female entrapment in marriage. She underwent Freudian therapy in the mid-1940s and credited it with saving her life (Francke 52–53). A former Communist, she was subpoenaed by HUAC in 1953; worried about her two children (she was separated from husband Robert Richards) and pressured by the men in her life, including writing partner Richard Collins and lawyer Martin Gang, she cooperated with the committee. “My decisions about HUAC were passive—those of a woman,” she later admitted (qtd. in Navasky 266). Richards retired from film work after 1952 (aside from scripting Lang’s
Rancho Notorious
) and became a nursery school teacher. See Navasky 264–68, who, like Buhle and Wagner, misspells her first name as “Sylvia”; her film title credits spell it “Silvia.”

39
. This ending was encouraged by Breen, who recommended to Jack Warner a conclusion in which Louise was found “incurably insane” (Breen to Warner, August 26, 1946).

40
. The PCA files demonstrate how difficult it was to squeeze in any tough material. The censors objected to any reference to “dope addiction” and to the suggestion that some of the inmates might be prostitutes. They also insisted that the film indict not the system but only “corrupt” officials (Breen to Warner, June 10, 1949, 1–2). The most absurd objection—one that delayed the granting of the film’s certificate of approval—involved the implication that inmates might actually take showers in the nude and that other inmates might see them that way! See letter from Breen to Warner July 22, 1949; see also the memo from Jack Vizzard (a Breen staffer) to Warner.

41
. Kellogg and cowriter Bernard Schoenfeld received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay. Kellogg had previously written the original stories for
White Heat
and the Anthony Mann/John Alton film
T-Men
.

42
. Ophuls, the original choice, was debilitated by an attack of shingles, so Berry was hired. But when Berry fell behind schedule, he was fired and Ophuls rehired. Production manager Robert Aldrich estimated that between a third and a half of the finished film is Berry’s work (Eyles 24–25). Laurents had previously scripted Hitchcock’s
Rope
and later forged a distinguished theatrical career that included the librettos for
West Side Story
and
Gypsy
.

43
. Enterprise was co-owned by Charles Einfeld, David L. Loew, and A. Pam Blumenthal. The studio produced nine features between 1947 and 1949, including
Body and Soul
and
Force of Evil
, but the box-office failure of its would-be blockbuster,
Arch of Triumph
, doomed it (Eyles 20–21).

44
. Originally cast as Leonora, Ginger Rogers wouldn’t approve a script, so the younger and more credible Bel Geddes took her place. Smith Ohlrig was allegedly based on Howard Hughes, who insisted on seeing the rushes every evening but never demanded changes (Eyles 23–24).
Caught
’s Smith is likely a latent homosexual: his relationship with his valet, Franzi, indicates his proclivities about as clearly as a Hollywood film of the period could do so. The character differs considerably from the one in Libbie Block’s novel, where he is a passive boy-man who cares little about money and really wants to collect art and is dominated by his older brother Earnest, who asks for Maud’s hand in marriage by appealing to her mother.

45
. In her brilliant reading of this scene Doane remarks that Leonora’s laugh “breaks the mirror relation between Ohlrig and his image,” and notes the reversal of Leonora’s spectatorial role (
Desire
159, 162).

46
. These scenes depart widely from the novel, in which Maud’s child does not die and in which she is portrayed as a loving mother. A mildly satirical coming-of-age story,
Wild Calendar
depicts Maud marrying and divorcing Ohlrig, getting a humble job, then wedding hotel employee Sonny Quinada, who, unlike the film’s do-gooder doctor, is narrow-minded and rather unpleasant. The novel’s title implies that women must pass through adolescence, young adulthood, courtship, marriage, and motherhood in the proper order. If these stages occur in the “wrong” order, the woman will be stunted or regress.
Wild Calendar
does contain a blunted critique of marriage: at one point Maud wonders if “marriage is a cage” (Block 310), and she seems happiest, though she doesn’t seem to realize it, when single.

47
. Enterprise was in serious financial trouble by 1948 and folded before
Caught
was released in early 1949. Though the film was distributed by MGM, the studio had little interest in promoting it, and
Caught
did poorly at the box office.

48
. Coscripted by future blacklistee Paul Jarrico,
Not Wanted
was credited to Elmer Clifton, but he had a heart attack at the outset of the shoot, and Lupino took over. An earlier version of the script, entitled
Bad Company
, was considered by Enterprise before it went to Lupino. For more on the film’s production history see Donati 148–53.

49
. Lupino and company conducted lengthy negotiations with the PCA to get the story approved; for details see Waldman, “Not Wanted” 21–31. Quite grateful to the censors for working with her, Lupino was outraged when an interview she had granted to Virginia McPherson of UPI was used to mock the film in an article entitled “A Degenerate Article about a Degenerate Industry,” when it appeared in the
Ashland (WI) Daily Press
in February of 1949. Lupino wired Breen, expressing her shock and assuring him that the “key note” of her remarks to McPherson had been gratitude toward the code administrators (Lupino telegram). Breen wrote to the
Daily Press
’s editor defending the film.

50
. Wald, who had written the original story and coauthored the screenplay (with Albert Maltz) for
The Naked City
, also cowrote
Outrage
and
Not Wanted
.

51
. The mise-en-scènes of the two settings underline these differences: high-key lighting and a lavish apartment in San Francisco; low-key lighting and repeated shots of doors and enclosures in LA (Seiter 108).

52
. This situation gains additional resonance when one realizes that cowriter Young had been married to the ambitious, glamorous, and highly successful Lupino.

53
. This sequence contains a couple of inside jokes: when the driver announces that they’ll see their “favorite stars of stage and screen,” the next shot is of Ida Lupino. And one of the homes they gawk at is hailed as the residence of the world-renowned star of
The Miracle on 34th St
., Edmund Gwenn—the actor playing Jordan in the film we’re watching!

54
. Scheib writes that Eve represents Graham’s “former driving, future-oriented ambition,” whereas Phyllis embodies the “take-it-as-it-comes intimacy that tempts him in middle age” (64). This reading, however, makes bigamy seem innocuous and Graham psychologically sound.

55
. Seiter writes that the film insists on marriage as a “social arrangement” (112), but that interpretation ignores the central importance of childbearing and -rearing to the story—the Grahams’ desire to adopt and Harry’s care of his baby in his other marriage.

1
. For a helpful account of the Popular Front’s rise and fall see Ceplair and Englund 83–199.

2
. See Ceplair and Englund 268; Navasky xiii; and the Dassin interview in Mc-Gilligan and Buhle 209.

3
. The roster includes
A Walk in the Sun
and
Edge of Darkness
(both directed by the radical Lewis Milestone and scripted by Rossen);
A Guy Named Joe, Tender
Comrade
, and
Thirty Seconds over Tokyo
(scripted by Trumbo);
Cornered
and
Crossfire
(directed by Edward Dmytryk, produced by Adrian Scott);
Destination Tokyo, This Gun for Hire
, and
Pride of the Marines
(scripted by Albert Maltz; the last-named film starred John Garfield);
Action in the North Atlantic
and
Sahara
(written by John Howard Lawson);
Objective: Burma
(scripted by Lester Cole); and
The Master Race
(written and directed by Herbert Biberman). Except for Milestone, Garfield, and Rossen, these artists were all members of the indicted Hollywood Ten.

4
. Lawson and Irving Pichel contributed many articles; Polonsky wrote for
HQ
as well. See Buhle and Wagner 291–300.

5
. For a summary of Hollywood labor struggles in the 1940s see May 180–95; for a more expansive account see Ceplair and Englund 209–53.

6
. The journal that Trumbo edited, the
Screen Writer
, unwittingly helped to bring on the reaction by publishing James M. Cain’s proposal to found an American Authors Authority, which would oversee credits and copyrights for screenwriters. His idea—which aimed to protect the intellectual property of writers and was therefore thoroughly capitalist in spirit—was quickly and viciously attacked as “communistic.” See Tim Palmer (65–66) and the Dassin interview in McGilligan and Buhle (211).

7
. Lawson, Dmytryk, Cole, Trumbo, Maltz, Biberman, and Scott, along with writers Samuel Ornitz, Alvah Bessie, and Ring Lardner Jr.—the so-called Hollywood Ten—all went to prison. For a brief list of the Ten’s credits before the hearings see Navasky (80–81). Bertolt Brecht, who also testified, left the United States and never served jail time. The others subpoenaed were Milestone, Rossen, and director Pichel; actor Larry Parks; and writers Richard Collins, Gordon Kahn, Howard Koch, and Waldo Salt.

8
. The best and most thorough account of the hearings remains that of Ceplair and Englund (254–98).

9
. The full statement is printed in Appendix 6 of Ceplair and Englund (455).

10
. The red scare was not, of course, confined to Hollywood. Broe notes that more than 20 percent of the workforce in the early 1950s was subjected to loyalty oaths; workers risked investigation or loss of employment if they failed to sign (84).

11
. Earl Browder was the general secretary of the CPUSA in the 1930s, and Henry Wallace, who was President Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president during the war, ran for president as a Socialist in 1948.

12
. Kemp asserts that noir offers “far too many … examples of left-wing slant to be credibly attributed to a handful of individuals” (268), adducing as his test case
Where Danger Lives
, a product of the reactionary Howard Hughes’s era at RKO. Although Kemp seems to conflate all social criticism with “leftism,” he nonetheless makes a persuasive case that noir as a whole critiques the “cash nexus,” condemns the “wealth-based class system,” and dramatizes how rampant individualism shatters communities (Kemp 269).

13
. It is not an accident that ten of the sixteen films on Hirsch’s list were independent productions. Nor is it a surprise that among their makers, eleven directors and nine writers were either blacklisted or deemed politically suspect by HUAC (J. Hirsch 91). Hirsch also declares that “after 1951, the blacklist rendered the social critique of films gris not only inconceivable, but impossible” (91).

14
. Hirsch writes that the 1930s gangster films presented a “symptomatic” critique, while the later films offer a “systematic implicit critique” (85). By
symptomatic
he means that the critique must be extracted by critics; by
implicit
he means that the critique is deliberate. But these terms seem misleading (
implicit
actually means “explicit”) and rely on too much speculation about the earlier filmmakers’ intentions; hence I have substituted different terms.

15
. In his interview in
Tender Comrades
, Dassin calls it a “really dumb picture” (207).

16
. The original script, by Malvin Wald and Albert Maltz, swooped through the working and impoverished classes of New York City, pointedly contrasting street sweepers and homeless people with upper-class citizens. Dassin and producer Mark Hellinger, a former investigative journalist who had also produced
The Killers
and
Brute Force
for Universal, aimed to imitate the documentary aesthetic they admired in Italian neorealism (see Prime 145–47). Their decision to shoot on the streets of New York was as radical as the content, which, Dassin feared, would be challenged by the studio heads, particularly after Maltz was subpoenaed by HUAC. And it was.

17
. When the script was first submitted to the censors (as
Hard Bargain
) on November 1, 1948, the Breen Office objected to the implication that Rica is a prostitute (Breen to Jason S. Joy). This letter specifies several other objections to the sexual suggestiveness in the scenes between Conte and Cortesa. The producers agreed to re-shoot the scenes to eliminate suggested nudity and sex. A letter to Joy from Robert Bassler of the PCA (Feb. 24, 1949) notes that Rica would be given a job as a fortune teller. The film was approved on June 20, 1949. Despite these alterations,
Variety
enthused about its “torrid sex” and “no-holds barred love sequences” (Rev., Sept. 7, 1949). Its reviewer was quite aware that Rica is a prostitute.

18
. In his review Bosley Crowther, no Communist, recognized the leftist implications of the story, writing, “you will never be able to eat an apple or tomato again without calling up visions of trickery, mayhem, vandalism and violent death.”

19
. In the interview accompanying the DVD Dassin relates how Zanuck shot the ending while he was away and, earlier, had forced him to add the Polly character, whom Dassin calls “useless.” But Dassin himself had lobbied for the casting of Cortesa instead of Shelley Winters, whom Zanuck wanted for the role. Bezzerides comments: “I had [to deal with] the producer’s chickenshit changes, the director’s girlfriend, and Zanuck’s ideas” about the beginning and ending, all of which, he believes, weakened the final product (qtd. in Server, “Thieves’ Market” 120).