William Castle had success with When Strangers Marry ’44, with (Kim Hunter and Robert Mitchum) and was well regarded for the work he did for RKO with his brilliantly offbeat The Whistler series.
With Johnny Stool Pigeon,Castle directs this uncluttered and obscure little film noir, pairing Shelley Winters and Dan Duryea who made Larceny a year earlier and would then do another picture together, Winchester ’73 in 1950.
Dan Duryea and Shelley Winters in Winchester 73 photo courtesy of all things Duryea @ http://danduryeacentral.blogspot.com/Shelley Winters and Dan Duryea in William Castle’s Johnny Stool Pigeon 1949 promo courtesy of Dan Duryea Central blog spot
It’s an entertaining programmer lensed with a semi-documentary style utilizing the usual noir voice-over to aid in the storytelling as Howard Duff’s character narrates the action as he goes undercover as Mike Doyle.
Scripted by Robert L. Richards (Act of Violence 1948) is based on a story by Henry Jordan. Using stock music by an uncredited Miklós Rózsa.
With cinematography by Maury Gertsman (Blond Alibi ’46, The Brute Man ’46, Ma and Pa Kettle ’49, The Glass Web ’53, The Creature Walks Among Us ’56). The moody visuals are courtesy of filming on location in San Francisco and Tucson. The old-style pier scenes with the opening shoot-out in the warehouse to the customs check with rows of cars at the Mexican border in Tucson give the picture the comfortable feel of added realism of 1949.
beautiful exterior shots of the Tucson sky.
A young sailor gets off a ship carrying a sack. He’s meeting up with a hood named Carter. They’re trafficking heroine from the Orient.Federal Agents Morton and Harrison are in pursuit.
“Get your hands up and stay where you are.”
The young man is shot by his accomplice. Agent Morton looks at his wallet to id him.Morton (Howard Duff) goes on to narrate from here-“Someone in Shanghai told him a way to make an easy buck and he believed him. All he needed was luck. And so one night on a Shanghai dock they slipped something into his hand that looked like an ordinary can of tobacco. Only it wasn’t and John Whalen wasn’t lucky.”it certainly wasn’t an ordinary can of tobacco
With a fantastic cast as follows-Â Shelley Winters, Howard Duff, Dan Duryea who made 3 other noir classics that year in 1949 (Manhandled, Criss Cross, & Too Late for Tears), and co-stars Tony Curtis, John McIntire, Barry Kelley, and Leif Erickson.
photo courtesy of Dan Duryea Central Blog Spot.
Duryea is marvelous as always, playing the quintessential sneering oily voiced cynic who’s a sympathetic slick, and snickering ‘bad guy’ that you just have to like.
Dan Duryea as Johnny Evans photo courtesy of Dan Duryea Central Blog Spot.photo courtesy of Dan Duryea Central Blog Spot
Howard Duff plays it straight as George Morton a federal narcotics agent who goes undercover to infiltrate a syndicate of criminal heroin smugglers. He enlists the help of childhood pal now convict, Johnny Evans (Dan Duryea) a hoodlum he’s sent to Alcatraz for life. Now getting him sprung so Johnny can help him sneak inside the big drug operation and bust it wide open. Naturally, Johnny hates cops but his wife has just died from an overdose which Morton uses to convince Johnny to help him catch these dangerous drug runners.
Of course, there’s conflict between these two men, as Morton’s on a mission and Johnny’s vowed revenge. Johnny Evans helps Morton get a new identity as they infiltrate the powerful gang of drug dealers.
photo courtesy of Dan Duryea Central Blog Spot
Morton now using the name of Mike Doyle, Johnny go to Vancouver where McCandles the drug lord uses his floozie blonde Terry to keep an eye on the pair. Like any good gritty and sexy charged thriller Johnny Evans falls for Terry who only only seems to have eyes for Morton. Ah, the eternal triangle lives on as they travel to Tuscon where the dangerous drug deal is about to go down at the Mexican border crossing.
Gangly but wily rancher Nick Avery (John McIntire) doesn’t trust these two from the get-go. The team must be loyal to each other if they want to remain above suspicion. It’s great grist for the noir narrative mill as we must wait and see whether Johnny will sell Morton out to this gang of thugs.
Johnny Stool Pigeon also features a first-time role for a young Tony Curtis who plays a mute pretty boy hired killer who can’t seem to place Morton/Mike Doyle’s face but it’s lurking in his memory from the time they chased Carter and Joey spots them in the hallway. He’d just killed Carter, having been sent there to kill their San Francisco connection so he wouldn’t squeal.
Uncredited bit player Tony Curtis’ only spent a few seconds on screen doing the rumba with Yvonne DeCarlo in Robert Siodmak’sCriss Cross ’49, That little spark of sexy flare made Universal realize that they had a star on their hands.
doing the rumba with Yvonne DeCarlo in Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross ’49.
Gang moll blonde Terry is played by Universal’s new voluptuous Shelley Winters. Who begins her long career starting out as a whiny, trashy yet outre charismatic sex pot.
I’ve got a special feature waiting at the Last Drive In’s snack bar all about Shelley Winters and her impressive contribution to film.
Duryea’s character keeps us guessing as to whether he’s going to betray Morton and turn into a ‘stool pigeon’. It’s a great little match-up of the likable Duff and Duryea as they play the eternal unwilling partners in conflict as they journey from San Francisco to Vancouver and then to a luxury ranch in Tucson run by the slimy Nick Avery, as amiable as a snake in the grass.
Disembodied screams, rattling chains, and ghoulish groans amidst creaking doors- all a delicious mixture of frightful sounds that emanate from a jet-black screen.
Suddenly Watson Pritchard’s floating head narrates the evening’s spooky tale…
“The ghosts are moving tonight, restless… hungry. May I introduce myself? I’m Watson Pritchard. In just a moment I’ll show you the only really haunted house in the world. Since it was built a century ago, seven people including my brother have been murdered in it, since then, I own the house. I’ve only spent one night there and when they found me in the morning, I… I was almost dead.” -Watson Pritchard
The marvelously dashing face of Vincent Price or for the film’s purposes, Frederick Loren’s head sporting a plucky mustache and highbrow tone introduces himself in front of the imposing Modern-Ancient structure.
“I’m Frederick Loren and I’ve rented the house on haunted hill tonight so my wife can give a party. A haunted house party"¦ She’s so amusing. There’ll be food and drink and ghosts and perhaps even a few murders. You’re all invited. If any of you will spend the next twelve hours in this house, I’ll give you each $10,000. Or your next of kin in case you don’t survive. Ah, but here come our other guests…”“It was my wife’s idea to have our guests come in funeral cars… She’s so amusing. Her sense of humor is shall we say, original. I dreamt up the hearse. It’s empty now but after a night in the house on haunted hill"¦ who knows.”“Lance Schroeder a test pilot, no doubt a brave man but don’t you think you can be much braver if you’re paid for it?”“Ruth Bridges the newspaper columnist. She says the reason for her coming to the party is to write a feature article on ghosts. She’s also desperate for money. Gambling.”“Watson Pritchard a man living in mortal fear of a house and yet he’s risking his life to spend another night here"¦ I wonder why? He says for money.”“Dr. David Trent a psychiatrist. He claims that my ghost will help his work on hysteria. But don’t you see a little touch of greed there around the mouth and eyes?”“This is Nora Manning- I picked her from the thousands of people who work for me because she needed the 10,000 more than most. Supports her whole family… Isn’t she pretty?”“The parties’ starting now and you have until midnight to find the house on haunted hill.”
Von Dexter’s music, a mixture of solemn strings, and a sustained and queasy Hammond organ & Theremin greet us with an eerie funeral dirge while the shiny black gimmicky funeral cars pull up in front of the quite sinister post-modern structure.
And this is just the opening fanfare of William Castle’sclassic House on Haunted Hill!
White’s story is quirky and wonderfully macabre as it works at a jolting pace delivering some of the most memorable moments of offbeat suspense in this classic B&W B-Horror morsel from the 50s!
The success of the film inspired Alfred Hitchcock to go out and make his own low-budget horror picture- Psycho 1960.
Much of the style and atmosphere can be attributed to the unorthodox detail by art director Dave Milton and set designer Morris Hoffman. The exterior of the house is actually The Ennis Brown House in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, built in 1924, and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
There’s a pervasive sense of dread in House on Haunted Hill, that makes the house itself a ‘spook.’
Whether the house is haunted or not, its forbidding presence tells us that it just doesn’t matter. The history of the house itself, its violent past is enough to give one chills. While not in the classic sense like that of RobertWise’s diseased and imposing Hill House, William Castle does a fabulous job of inventing a parameter to tell a very cheeky and pleasurable little scare story. As David J Skal puts it succinctly “The real, if unintentional spook in House on Haunted Hill is postwar affluence.”
The narrative is fueled by the creepy atmosphere of the house itself. Not using a claustrophobic Old Dark House trope but rather a modern Gothic construction that swallows you up with odd motifs and a sense of malignancy within the fortress walls. The starkness of the wine cellar and it’s empty minuscule dark grey rooms with sliding panels is almost more creepy than black shadowy corners with cobwebs and clutter. Director of Photography Carl E Guthrie  (Caged 1950) offers some stunning and odd perspective camera angles and low lighting which aid in the disjointed feeling of the sinister house’s magnetism.
The constant explorations into the viscera of the house by the guests is almost as titillating as the criminal set-up and conspiracy that is afoot propelled by Von Dexter’s tantalizingly eerie musical score with deep piano notes and eerie wispy soprano glossolalia.
House on Haunted Hill works wonderfully, partly due to the presence of the urbane master of chills and thrills, the great Vincent Price who plays millionaire playboy Frederick Loren. Vincent Price was a versatile actor who should not be pigeonholed as merely a titan of terror, given his too numerous layered performances in great films like Otto Preminger’sLaura ’44, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’sDragonwyck ’46, etc. Vincent Price did however make his mark on the horror genre with House on Haunted Hill. The New York Herald-Tribune praised Price’s performance as having “waggish style and bon-vivant skepticism.”
As David J Skal puts it in his, The Monster Show {Vincent Price} “Could bring an arch elegance to the most insipid goings-on…“
The omnipresent Elisha Cook Jr. is superb as Watson Pritchard, the neurotic sot who is riddled with fear, spouting anecdotes about the house’s grisly history.
I adore Elisha Cook, from his cameo in Rosemary’s Baby, his performance as George Peatty in Kubrick’s masterpiece The Killing ’56 to his very uniquely intense role as Cliff the sexually jazzed up drummer in Phantom Lady ’44.
Elisha Cook Jr as the doomed George Peatty in Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing ’56.
The strikingly beautiful Carol Ohmart plays Loren’s treacherously seductive wife Annabelle who is sick of her husband’s irrational jealousy. Has she already tried to poison him once but failed? The story alludes to as much. Annabelle wouldn’t be happy with a million-dollar divorce settlement, she wants ALL her husband’s money! Annabelle is Loren’s fourth wife, the first wife simply disappeared.
When I found out that Rachel from The Girl With the White Parasol was hosting a Barbara Stanwyck Blogathon, I chomped at the bit to participate. I love Stanny, pure and simple. She not only changed the way women demonstrated their power in the film, but she’s also gutsy, gorgeous, and persuasive in a very unconventional way.
Barbara Stanwyck, unlike some of her other vice-ridden murderous roles, plays Sally Morton an archetypal woman in peril, although not as individuated as ‘hysterical’ or pathetic like Leona Stevenson in Anatole Litvak’sSorry, Wrong Number 1948.
The consummate Woman-in-Peril is Stanny as Leonora Stevenson in Anatole Litvak’s Sorry, Wrong Number 1948.
Stanny brought a unique kind of dynamism to the Suspense & Noir landscape. She’s got a face bred with burning spirit and animal coolness, that exudes a subtle psychology ferocious independence, and dramatic intelligence.
The Stanwyck role was originally performed by Elisabeth Bergner in Martin Vale’s stage play. A suspense-thriller that fits within the realm of noir with Gothic tinges of horror. Humphrey Bogart appeared in the classic horror film The Return of Doctor X 1939. Bogart plays the subdued, yet sinister malefactor Geoffrey Carroll. He’s a cynical, eccentric, and alienated artist. Stanny plays Sally the woman he kills his first wife for, poisoning her with glasses of milk just like in Hitch’s Suspicion 1941.
The Two Mrs. Carrolls is also the second pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Alexis Smith, who plays Cecily Latham the ‘other woman.’ She first acted opposite Bogie in Conflict 1945 where he played Richard Mason pursuing his wife’s sister Alexis Smith’s Evelyn Turner.
Bogart and Smith in Conflict 1945.
Produced by Mark Hellingerfor Jack Warner and directed by Peter Godfrey (Cry Wolf 1947 also starring Stanny & The Woman in White 1948) The Two Mrs.Carrolls is a woman in peril, female victim story à la Hitchcock.
Barbara Stanwyck in Peter Godfrey’s noir thriller Cry Wolf 1947
Stanwyck’s role diverges from some of her more famous female villains, the noir femme fatale who embodies the unacceptable archetype of the sexually aggressive woman. In this film she plays the more marginalized ‘good woman’ who is worthy of being a wife and often the victim, contrasted by the lustful and conniving Cecily (Alexis Smith) who embodies treachery and a freely expressed sexuality.
The film co-stars Nigel Bruce as Dr. Tuttle, Isobel Elsom (Ladies in Retirement 1941, Monsieur Verdoux 1947) as Mrs. Latham Patrick O’Moore as Charles Pennington (Penny), Ann Carter as Beatrice Carroll, Anita Bolster (The Lost Weekend, Scarlet Street 1945) as Christine the maid, and Barry Bernard as the blackmailing chemist Horace Blagdon. There’s a welter of melodramatic music by Franz Waxman, plenty of Gothic shadows by cinematographer J.Peverell Marley (Hound of the Baskervilles 1939, House of Wax 1953) & gorgeous fashions by Edith Head.
Barbara Stanwyck looks stunning throughout the film, in the costumes envisioned by Edith Head.
Made in 1945 Warner Bros. most likely held back the release of this film as it was very close to Bogart’s role in Conflict that same year. Bogart the quintessential scruffy cigarette smoking everyman equipped with a trench coat fedora and gritty sneer is very capable of playing complex characters with a disturbed pathology of inner turmoil. I think of his role as the controlling and ill-tempered script writer Dixon Steele in Nicholas Ray’sIn a Lonely Place 1950, or Captain Queeg in The Cain Mutiny 1954.
Humphrey Bogart as the unstable Dix and Gloria Grahame in Nicholas Ray’s 1950 psychological noir In A Lonely Place.
In The Two Mrs. Carrolls,Bogart is cast as Geoffrey Carroll a Bluebeardesque psychotic who first feels driven to paint his muse, the object of his desire, only to feel compelled to destroy her once he’s done exalting her essence using poisoned milk as his method of murder. He is not unlike Vincent Price’s anachronism of a Hudson Valley nobleman driven by an insane need for an heir in Dragonwyck 1946, in an extension of the Bluebeard mythos as he kills his wives who are incapable of giving him, sons.
Michael Redgrave as the deranged architect married to the object of his desire/destructive force Joan Bennett in Fritz Lang’s The Secret Beyond the Door 1948.
Certain Noir films are the manifestation of psychosis, emerging in the form of the ‘mad artist’  most notably Edgar Ulmer’s Bluebeard 1944. Franchot Tone was the obsessively deranged sculptor in Phantom Lady 1944, and Architect Michael Redgrave in Fritz Lang’s incredible depiction of noir psychosis in The Secret Beyond the Door 1947 which had suggestive imagery of a dream-like atmosphere with its overt Freudian fairy tale patterns tied to psychoanalytical interpretations of childhood trauma and sexual significance. Joan Bennett refers to her own ability to purge these ‘repressed poisons’ because she is so chatty and exorcizes her demons by talking too much.
Joan Bennett gazes at her own image in Fritz Lang’s The Secret Beyond the Door- the iconic mirror!
Peter Godfrey’sThe Two Mrs. Carrolls and Fritz Lang’sThe Secret Beyond the Door 1948 are ideal examples of a leading man portraying creativity and obsessiveness driven to madness. In the former Barbara Stanwyck plays Sally Morton who has a whirlwind romance with painter Geoffrey Carroll (Humphrey Bogart) only to learn that he is actually married to an invalid wife. Though Carroll is desperate to possess Sally as he claims she has ‘saved’ him so that he can now paint again. Before they had met, his work suffered. When Sally finds out that Geoffrey is married she flees their romantic sojourn leaving Carroll in a cave showing dismay and turbulence on his face. Carroll goes to London and sees a chemist, signing a fictitious name. After several glasses of milk, the first Mrs. Carroll is dead, and Sally becomes the second Mrs. Carroll.
Sally becomes his new ‘subject,’ a replacement as the artist’s inspiration and love object. But once the wealthy and decadent tigress Cecily Latham (she wears animal print) aggressively pursues him to paint her and become her lover, Sally’s fate is sealed. Carroll transfers his fixation to his new object, Cecily Latham, played by the gorgeous Alexis Smith (I saw her on Broadway in the 70s. She won a Tony award for her performance in the hit Broadway musical Follies… what a treat!)
The film is an odd and edgy thriller that opens in a pastoral setting in Scotland where Sally and Geoffrey are having a quaint picnic by the lake, while Geoffrey sits upon a rock and sketches her. The initial loveliness and serene atmosphere sets out to misdirect us as a place much like Eden. The couple we learn have been dating for two weeks. Everything bares the most ordinary of appearances, as Geoffrey and Sally’s budding romance seems filled with a lighthearted joyfulness in alliance with the surrounding paradisal scenery.
McGregor tells him he’s caught a fish, and Geoffrey yells to him, “Well from this distance that takes real talent. Throw that whale back, the way I feel today I don’t want even a fish to be unhappy!”
Geoffrey Carroll tells Sally, “Two weeks of the only real happiness I’ve ever known"¦ I love you Sally, I love you.” As soon as Geoffrey utters these words and the couple embraces, the sky begins to well up with uneasy clouds. Accompanied by old man McGregor who has the typified Scottish accent warning them of the rough weather brewing.
As the opening serenity is quickly broken by the foreboding torrential rainstorm, this symbol of strife and disturbance oppresses the joy and becomes a metaphor as the film ends with a similar rainstorm that besets Sally’s world.
This will inevitably turn into a nightmarish landscape for Sally but the serene local diverts us from the darkness to come, as we soon discover that Carroll is a disturbed artist who constantly needs fresh female inspiration in order for his art and sexual gratification to thrive. His art depends on it, and he is willing to kill the women he once desired to sustain himself.
The couple seeks refuge from the rain in a nearby cave. As Geoffrey goes to get his fishing gear and picnic basket from McGregor, Sally remains behind holding his jacket. As she calls after him, a letter falls out of her pocket. She picks up the small white envelope and is horrified to see it is addressed to Mrs. Carroll. The extraordinary range of emotions Stanwyck is capable of reflecting within a single frame is cogent and palpable, as she shifts from content glances to an interior that aches. Her eyes glimmer with a crushed spirit. Franz Waxman’s dramatic score confronts the moment as Sally is framed by the dark outline of the cave.
Once Geoffrey returns to the cave he finds Sally suddenly unyielding and in emotional distress.
“This fell out of your pocket you evidently forgot to mail it when we left the inn. It’s addressed to a Mrs. Geoffrey Carroll.” “My wife.” “Why didn’t you tell me?” ” I tried to from the first day but I couldn’t. There’s a child too.” “Are you separated?” “No, that letter was to ask for a divorce.” “Have you been married long?” “We’ve been together for ten years, my wife’s been an invalid ever since the child was born.”“Do you think I’d marry you now? I’m afraid you don’t know me very well.” “I know I love you.” “I don’t want that kind of love"¦ why didn’t you tell me before, why?” “I didn’t want to lose you.” “But it would have saved so much hurt, and now it’s no use.” “I don’t believe that"¦ ” “Before I found you I was finished. There was nothing. I couldn’t work I couldn’t think I didn’t care. We mustn’t lose each other Sally, ever. We couldn’t if we tried because our love is"¦”
Sally breaks down and flees the cover of the cave crying ‘No… no’ Not wanting to hear Geoffrey’s excuses she runs out into the pouring rain.
“Miss Morton, do you hear me, you’ll catch your death,” McGregor calls out to Sally his words echo within the walls of the cave, reverberating in Geoffrey’s mind.
He gives a tortured look as symbolic bars of rain obfuscate his figure. As Waxman’s music acts like a buzz saw in his twisted psyche he looks down at the letter lying at his muddied feet he grips his head.
The scene switches to Blagdon (Barry Bernard) the cash chemist sealing up a package with wax. He’s an unsavory character with a scar that gives him an added edge of sleaziness. Bladgon hands Geoffrey the register, “You’ll have to sign for this sir.” Blogdan answers the phone, he’s lost a bet on the horses.
“You see this scar, Mr. Fleming, is it?"¦ well I got this scar when I was 9 years old I was kicked by a horse and I been trying to get even with the ‘orses ever since but it ain’t quite worked out.”The two walk over to an easel holding a painting. Bea tells her father, “You’re a genius"¦ wait until you finish this one father, The Angel of Death.” “You think it’s good huh?” “I should say I do. It’s frightening of course, and makes me shiver sometimes, but so definitely mother. Do you think she’ll live until we finish the picture?”
Geoffrey Carroll returns home to his London flat where he greets his daughter Beatrice. He takes the little white package from the chemist and puts it in his pocket. Geoffrey asks how her mother is doing, and she tells him about the same.
He says, “What are you talking about, well of course she’ll live. What do you mean?” “Don’t get excited father. We both want her to live because we love her so much. That doesn’t mean she will live does it?”
Bea tells her father that although she spends more time with her mother she adores him… “I love you too, and I admire you tremendously.”
A bell rings, it is time for Mrs. Carroll’s milk. Beatrice goes into the kitchen to prepare the hot white liquid for her mother. Geoffrey enters the room and takes the saucepan and glass from his daughter pouring the milk himself. Standing outside the bedroom door, holding the glass of warm milk a queer look sploshes over his face like waves of disequilibrium. He suddenly tells Bea that starting tomorrow she’ll be going away to school.
Carroll lurks outside his wife’s door like a fiendish vampire.
Christine the maid greets Mr.Pennington at the door, her angular face always an expression of joy!
Bea-“I said it was tremendous. “ Penny-“Yes but it’s a bit creepy don’t you think?” “That’s only at first. You get accustomed to it. Then you think it’s wonderful. She was my mother. Died a little less than two years ago.” “I’m sorry.” “You needn’t be. We all die sooner or later.” Bea’s comment is calm and canny. Penny says, “I’ve heard a rumor to that effect.” “It isn’t exactly as Mother was, because it isn’t a portrait. Yet it is like her too. Father says it’s representational.” “Your father took the very word right out of my mouth.”
Two years later, Sally now the second Mrs.Carroll and Geoffrey are living in Ashton in Sally’s Gothic manor house inherited from her father.
Charles Pennington (Patrick O’Moore) or Penny is greeted at the door by Christine (Anita Bolster) the housemaid. As he waits for Sally, he studies the painting of the first Mrs. Carroll, not noticing Beatrice sitting in the armchair. She tells him the painting is tremendous.
Ann Carter as Carroll’s precocious daughter Bea figures prominently in the film as sort of the lens in which the conscience of the story reveals its moral code. Ann Carter exudes a mature seriousness reminiscent of Curse of the Cat People 1944 with her otherworldly air. She possesses a no-nonsense touch to the mixed-up morality she’s surrounded by that contributes to the pervasive despair and instability.
Barbara Stanwyck looks stunning as she enters the room. Sally tells Bea she needn’t leave, that Penny is a dear old friend. Bea tells her they’ve already met, and he’s ‘nice, quite nice.’Â Penny asks how old she is ’45 or 50?’“She does give that impression, but she’s sweet.”
Penny is kind and obviously still very much in love with Sally. In a very evolved and civil manner, he hasn’t forgiven her for running out on him. She feels terrible about it and says she should have given him some words. But when she met Geoffrey, when he came back it was as if nothing else mattered. He tells her that all a disappointed suitor needs do is look at her. He asks if she’s as happy as she looks. Sally tells him “he’s good to me.”“He better be. Purely out of morbid curiosity, I should like to meet him.”
She tells him that Geoffrey is working upstairs in his studio and that she’ll call on him. Penny tells her that he’s not the only visitor. Mrs. Latham and her daughter Cecily are expected any minute. They’re friends and clients of his.
“And Penny in case I didn’t make myself clear. It’s grand to see you again really grand.”“Thanks in case I didn’t make myself clear"¦ Oh, Sally.”
Sally runs up the staircase excited about her guests, she addresses the vinegary Christine.
“Christine there’ll be other visitors take them straight to the garden. Tea for five.” “Tea for five! Bread and butter?” “Yes and some cucumber sandwiches.” “Some cakes too?” “Well if there are any.” “We haven’t got any cakes.” “Well then don’t serve them.” “I will.”
Waxman’s dynamically turbulent score breaks the witty moment, as Geoffrey paces his studio. Throwing down his paintbrush and grabbing the canvas, he begins to rub the oil with turpentine wiping away what he has painted with hostility.
Several frames show Geoffrey bisected by the large paintbrushes. This might be a visual indication of his fractured personality.Sally enters the room and sees him “What are you doing.” “Something I should have done weeks ago, I’m sick of looking at it. A phony.” “You can’t always paint masterpieces.” “Well, I can always try"¦ I don’t understand it Sally, this fine old house, the most beautiful surrounding I’ve ever known, and You. I have everything here. Then why isn’t my work better, what’s wrong?”
In honor of the 40th anniversary of Robert Ryan’s death July 11, 1973 with a special nod to Karen & The Dark Pages for their spectacular tribute to this incredibly real man!
“Ryan was unfailingly powerful, investing his tormented characters with a brooding intensity that suggests coiled depth. Cut off from the world by the strength of their ‘feelings’ his characters seem to be in the grip of torrential inner forces. They are true loners. Ryan’s work has none of the masked, stylized aura of much noir acting. He performs with emotional fullness that creates substantial, complex characters rather than icons.” –Foster Hirsch-FILM NOIR: The Darker Side of the Screen
ClearlyRobert Ryan’sinfinite presence in film and his numerous complex characters manifest an embracing universal ‘internal conflict’ of masculinity. I tribute certain roles the actor inhabited during his striking career. Though he was cast more often in the part as the imposing heavy, the depth and breadth of Ryan’s skill with his rough-hewn good looks should have landed him more roles as a lead male capable of such penetrating levels of emotion. He had a depth that suggests a scarcely hidden intensity smoldering at the surface.
Robert Ryan as Montgomery in Edward Dmytryk’s Crossfire 1947.Robert Ryan in Act of Violence ’48
A critic for the New York Times reviewing Act of Violence (1948)  wrote about Robert Ryan’s persona as the madly driven veteran bent on revenge, Joe Parkson calling him “infernally taut.”
Frank Krutnik discusses ‘Masculinity and its discontents’ in his book In A Lonely Street,“In order to make the representation of masculinity in the noir thriller, there follows a schematic run-through of Freudian work on the determination of masculine identity.” Claiming Freud’s work can be co-opted into film with an emphasis of its relevance to analysis of the cultural machinery of patriarchy.” He discusses patriarchal culture which relies heavily on the maintenance of a gender-structured ‘disequilibrium’ with its roots in the myth of the Oedipal Complex. Involving not only the power-based hierarchy of male service to masculine power but the established normative gender values which inform both the male and female figure.
Act of Violence Robert Ryan as Joe Parkson co-starring Janet Leigh
Many of the characters in Ryan's noir world are informed by a cultural ‘determinacy of the phallus’ that authorizes toughness and strips the limits of desire as an obligation to masculine identity. The patriarchal power structure predetermines a fixed and limited role that creates a destiny of submission and impotence in Ryan's characters. But within the framework of these extreme male figures lies an intricate conflict of varying degrees of vulnerability and fragility.
Ryan manifests this duality within hyper-masculine characters. Outwardly physical, confrontational, and hostile, Ryan is a master at playing with men who suffer from alienation and inferiority surrounding their own ‘maleness’ and self-worth. He was never just a dark noir brute or anti-hero but a complex man actualized through layers of powerful dramatic interpretation. His performances suggest a friction of subjugated masculinity bubbling within.
Ryan as Earl Pfeiffer and Barbara Stanwyck in Fritz Lang’s Clash By Night.
The trajectory of the male through the Oedipus Complex encompasses male subjectivity which is a principal issue in the noir ‘tough-thriller.’ The ‘existential thematic’ link to the Oedipus myth concerns questions of male desire and identity as they relate to the overarching law of existing patriarchal culture substituted for the original fearsome ‘divinity.’ This element is one of the driving psychological themes underlying any good classic film noir.
In this post, I put my focus primarily on Ryan’s characters within the framework of each film and while I discuss the relationship between him and the central players I do not go as in-depth as I usually do discussing his co-stars or plot design.
I apply this thematic representation to many of the roles engendered in the films of Robert Ryans‘ that I’ve chosen to discuss here. A patriarchal power structure establishes the tragedy of man’s destiny, a fixed and limited role in the character’s own destiny as there is a predominant power that threatens them into submission and sheds light on their own impotence. So many of the noir characters in a Robert Ryan noir world are shaped by a cultural authority structured through ‘determinacy of the phallus’ that authorizes toughness in the male identity that strips away the limits of desire, as an obligation to ‘masculine identity.’
Ryan’s stoic boxer Stoker in Robert Wise’s The Set Up.
I’m focusing on particular Ryan’s roles within a noir context that depict archetypal hyper-masculine tropes and the problematic strife within those characters. Whether Ryan is playing the deeply flawed hero or the tormented noir misfit, his characters are afflicted with an inherent duality of virility and vulnerability, inner turmoil, alienation, persecution, and masochism. It’s a territorial burden that Robert Ryan so effortlessly explores.
These films show Ryan’s trajectory through forces of menacing restraint and poignant self-expression. Within a noir landscape, the schism of stark virility and tenuous masculinity exposes the complexity of alienation, masochism, and frailty. Robert Ryan’s performances are a uniquely fierce and formidable power.
Within the framework of these ‘extreme’ male figures lies an intricate conflict with varying degrees of vulnerability & fragility within the male psyche. The narratives don’t necessarily flesh out this conflict plainly, but Ryan’s performances certainly suggest and inform us about the friction of this subjugated theme bubbling to the surface as he manifests the duality within his hyper-masculine characters. Robert Ryan was a master at playing men who suffer from alienation and inferiority surrounding their own ‘maleness’ and self-worth.
Ryan is never just a dark noir ‘brute’ or anti-hero but moreover, a complex male who is actualized through layers of powerful dramatic interpretation. A complexity of stark virility and ‘tenuous maleness’ as the narrative witnesses Ryan’s trajectory transforming him through various dynamic forces of menacing restraint and poignant self-expression. Outwardly physical, confrontational, hostile, and ultimately masculine, and the schism that is inwardly emotional, alienated, self-deprecating, masochistic, and fragile within the film noir landscape. Robert Ryan’s performances still maintain a uniquely fierce and formidable aesthetic of the ‘suffering-marginalized man.’
Gritty film noir directed by Joseph M. Newman (Dangerous Crossing 1953, This Island Earth 1955) starring Rory Calhoun who plays the suave Tony Dumont an import/exporter or dealer in stolen gems who becomes enamored by chic novelist Pamela Vincent played by the lovely Barbara Rush. Pamela is drawn to Tony, when they first meet on a plane bound for Hong Kong, which is hi-jacked for it’s shipment of diamonds. Tony is a soft hearted rogue master-mind who smuggles gems for the syndicate in Macao.
“No papa, no mama… no whiskey soda”“Me too kid”
Mama Lin played by the wonderful Soo Yong (The Good Earth 1937, Sayonara 1957, Flower Drum Song 1961) has been a benefactor to Tony since he was a boy, and looks after him like a sagely mother.
She cautions him that it is a time for goodbyes, because his infatuation with Pamela will cause him to lose his steady girl Jean Blake (Dolores Donlon). Tony doesn’t heed Mama Lin’s warning and he winds up cheating the mob out of the stolen shipment and lamming it with the diamonds in order to be with Pamela in San Francisco… I won’t spoil the outcome, just catch it if you can on Netflix!
“The heart is a small room Tony… when someone enters it, someone else must move out”-Mama Lin
Beast from 20,000 Fathoms 1953Bela Lugosi and Irene Ware in Chandu the Magician 1932Fred Williamson in Black Caesar 1973Cat People 1942 Alice at the poolLon Chaney -He Who Gets Slapped 1924Claudette Colbert and Henry Wilcoxon in Cleopatra 1934The Sound of Fury aka Try and Get Me 1950Crime Wave 1954Dante’s Inferno (1911)Fallen Angel (1945) Dana Andrews, Alice Faye and Linda DarnellGun Crazy (1950) Peggy Cummins and John DallIn a Lonely Place (1950) Gloria GrahameAnn -Margret in Kitten With a Whip 1964Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews Laura (1944)The Innocents 1961 with Deborah KerrMary Astor The Maltese Falcon (1941)James Garner and Angela Lansbury -Mister Buddwing (1966)Out of the Past (1947) Robert Mitchum and Virginia HustonPlunder Road (1957) Elisha Cook Jr.Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough Seance on a Wet Afternoon 1964Svengali (1931) John Barrymore and Marian MarshThe Blue Dahlia (1946) Alan Ladd and Veronica LakeAelita: Queen of Mars (1924)
Joan Camden is the hostage, wife Karen Manelli prisoner to jealous, mad, and murderous concert pianist husband Claude Manelli (Francis Lederer)Handsome Donald Buka (Street With No Name 1948) plays an American in Vienna in search of a passport to freedom and happiness. He steals the identity of the dead man in his cab, and fate throws him and Karen together. The film is produced by actor Turhan Bey and directed by Gunther Von Fritsch who co-directed with Robert Wise on The Curse of The Cat People 1944.
“Claude has one great love… himself. His love is like a religion and his God asks for human sacrifices!”
Director Roy Ward Baker and Writer/Screenwriter Charlotte Armstrong  (The Unsuspected 1946) offer this tense Psycho-Melodrama/Noir starring Marilyn Monroe as the very disturbed Nell Forbes, who comes to New York to stay with her uncle Eddie the ubiquitous Elisha Cook Jr.who bell hops in a ritzy Hotel. He manages to get his niece, who was recently released from a sanitarium a job babysitting a young girl named Bunny (Donna Corcoran) for one night. Nell has had a breakdown and a suicide attempt after the loss of her beau Air Force pilot who went down with his plane. Along comes Jed Towers (Richard Widmark) who’s just been dumped by the Hotel’s nightclub-singing sweetheart Lyn Lesley (Anne Bancroft). Jed sees Nell through the window across the alley and they meet up in the Hotel room for a little bottle of rye and some good times, until Jed realizes that Nell isn’t quite what she appears to be. Nell is living in a fantasy world and resents the little girl’s intrusion into her concocted love affair with Jed, and she starts to slowly unravel, and go quietly ‘hysterical’ Monroe does a pretty darn good job with the role, she’s dripping with a tragic frustrated sensuality and she’s got great legs and other things too.
Barbara Stanwyck and Wendell Corey in Robert Siodmak’s The File on Thelma Jordon *photo courtesy of Doctor Macro
Directed by Robert Siodmak (The Spiral Staircase 1945, The Killers 1946, Criss Cross 1949) this is a slick film-noir crime thriller with the ballsy Stanwyck as femme fatale Thelma Jordon in love with jewel thief Tony Laredo (Richard Rober) who gets her to steal from her rich aunt, and winds up shooting her, then making it look like a robbery. Wendell Corey plays gullible Cleve Marshall the assistant district attorney who manages to get Thelma an acquittal at trial. They start a passionate affair but Thelma is no good, and Tony reappears back in the picture… these things never end well…
“I’m no good for any man for any longer than a kiss!”
photo courtesy of Doctor Macro
“Maybe I am just a dame and didn’t know it!”
Maybe I’m just a dame and thought I was a MonsterGirl…
