Noirvember – Freudian Femme Fatales – 1946 : The Dark Mirror (1946) & The Locket (1946) ‘Twisted Inside’

The Dark Mirror (1946)

In films such as The Dark Mirror and The Locket, the male psychiatrist is posited as an antidote to the bad female by being "˜'established as a detective figure whose principal function is to investigate and ultimately to eradicate "˜deviance' (represented in these instances by excessive female desire.)'' From Frank Krutnik IN A LONELY STREET; FILM NOIR, GENRE AND MASCULINITY 1991

It is the phantom of our own Self, whose intimate relationship with and deep effect upon our spirit casts us into hell or transports us to Heaven – E.T.A. Hoffmann

”The figure of the double has been manifest in diverse forms. At times the doppelgänger has shown itself as an ether being – a shadow, a reflection or an animated portrait. At other points, it has taken the shape of an identical being – a person of kindred appearance, a relative, a twin.” From TWO-FACED WOMEN: THE "˜DOUBLE" IN WOMEN'S MELODRAMA OF THE 1940S – Lucy Fischer Cinema Journal 1983

In the 1920s hard-edged and gritty crime fiction became popular, and by the 1940s Hollywood embraced them. At the same time Freudian psychoanalysis became a big deal in America. People knew the basics of Freud’s ideas, so Hollywood could paint stories with ideas the audience could recognize, knowing that people would get the main gist. It became the foundation for some amazing visual displays. Dream sequences started popping up a lot in American cinema, most distinctive in thrillers and in particular in film noir. The Dark Mirror is one of the standout films made during the 1940s and 1950s that introduced psychiatry – like – Spellbound 1945 and two years later, de Havilland would star in Anatole Litvak’s The Snake Pit 1948.

Much of film noir's psychological pathology gives rise to obsessive fixations on the object of one's desire. What differs with Siodmak's The Dark Mirror is that the psychotic's fixation lies with their sibling and not a lover.

The Dark Mirror is a psychological film noir released in 1946, directed by Robert Siodmak who worked with shadows in his various film noir/horror/ and thrillers like an artist works with paints.  The film was produced and screenplay written by writer/director Nunnally Johnson who penned a slew of diverse screenplays that spanned the 1940s through the 1960s – including The Grapes of Wrath 1940, and The Dirty Dozen 1967.

Nunnally Johnson, transitioning from writer and producer to director, secured the rights and brought the story to life on screen. The film materialized through a collaborative effort between International Pictures, co-founded by Johnson and William Goetz, and Universal Pictures, marking their inaugural project under the Universal Pictures-International Pictures Banner.

The recently established studios were looking for a well-known name for their picture and Olivia de Havilland who was a huge star at the time came on board. She had recently taken legal action against Warner Bros. to terminate her contract and was now free from the studio's stranglehold.

In 1947, she delivered a noteworthy performance in To Each His Own for Paramount earning her the Academy Award for Best Actress. Following two films, The Well-Groomed Bride and Devotion in 1946, she entered into an agreement with Nunnally Johnson to star in The Dark Mirror.’

The Dark Mirror, like The Spiral Staircase both of which were classic ‘paranoid women’ /  "˜woman's films' stars de Havilland who plays identical twins, one of whom is a knife-wielding paranoiac killer. The casting of de Havilland is significant particularly because she not only starred in a variety of women's pictures but her sister Joan Fontaine was also an iconic star of the paranoid woman's films. Some of the most notable are Hitchcock’s adaptation of Du Murier’s Rebecca 1940 and Nicolas Ray’s Born to Be Bad 1950. The Dark Mirror presents itself as a psychological noir right from the start of the film with the Rorschach blots backgrounding the titles.

Olivia de Havilland engaged in a notable real-life conflict with her younger sister – silver screen star Joan Fontaine. This behind-the-scenes rivalry positioned the actress to confront her own duality in Robert Siodmak’s 1946 quintessential film noir, The Dark Mirror.

Siodmak made some of the most critical film noirs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, including, The Killers 1946, Cry of the City 1948 Criss Cross 1949 and The File on Thelma Jordon 1950. he had left the spotlight that shined on his pictures specializing in terror and became one of the most prominent directors of crime noir and suspense. By the early 1950s, he grew weary of Hollywood and returned to Germany.

In this way, the reception of Siodmak's 1940s Hollywood films demonstrates the ways in which the category of horrors incorporates films now seen as thrillers, film noir, and examples of the ‘woman's film.’ Siodmak brought with him the sensibility of German cinema strongly associated with the art of shadows and horror.

It's clear, that director Robert Siodmak was drawn to exploring the human psyche in his picture, and The Dark Mirror is a perfect example of this. Siodmak was fascinated with the dynamic of the good sister/bad sister which was apparent in his earlier works like Cobra Woman (1944) and The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945).

Siodmak’s penchant for the use of shadow in his other work holds back his enduring use of chiaroscuro in The Dark Mirror. Apart from the opening scene, the only instances where he delicately manipulates light and shadow occur within the confines of the twins’ bedroom.

The bedroom is the place where we are most vulnerable, where they sleep, which is symbolic of the psychological warfare Terry wages against her sister Ruth. There was a historic rivalry and jealousy over the years. The perceived rejections by male suitors, even the adoptive parents who chose Ruth over her. At the end of the film, Detective Stevenson tells Dr. Elliot that he had the idea to lay a trap for Terry because he feared for Ruth's life. "˜'Even a nut can figure out that it's simpler to get rid of a rival than to go on knocking off her boyfriends all the rest of her life.''

A narrative featuring identical twins presented an ideal chance to delve deeper into the realm of the doppelgänger mythology, a theme that captivated him and inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927).

Based on a short story by Vladimir Pozner that appeared in Good Housekeeping in 1945, The Dark Mirror is notable for its exploration into the complexities of the human mind and the manifestation of conflicting identities.

Pozner's story was nominated for Best Story at the Academy Awards, though it lost to "˜'Vacation from Marriage” by Clemence Dane, which was adapted into a British movie released as Perfect Strangers in the UK starring Robert Donat and Deborah Kerr.

Collaborating with cinematographer Milton Krasner, known for his work on Lang’s Woman in the Window 1944 and Scarlet Street 1945, and All About Eve 1950, Siodmak enlisted an old colleague – Eugen Schüfftan, for visual effects. Schüfftan created the visual effects for Metropolis 1927. In the film, over three dozen shots feature mirrors, some to set the tone, but mostly to depict the inner conflict of the twins, highlighting their interchangeable likeness. De Havilland is shot beautifully in split screen using a stand-in when both twins appear.

Though de Havilland gave a very nuanced performance balancing opposing identities, down to the tone of her voice used for each sister, their body language, facial expressions, the subtle arching of her eyelids, and the sister's diverging character traits, Siodmak tried to ensure that the audience would have subtle cues for each of the characters. They were visibly "˜labeled' for us. De Havilland's Ruth is gentle yet timorous and softly spoken. She wrings her hands out of nervousness. Terry, however, is the bolder one, more assertive and hostile by a hair's breadth when challenged. Terry also smokes and is left-handed, while Ruth chooses to favor her right hand.

In a large part of the film, as in so many films, clothes often tell a story, in particular at the beginning of The Dark Mirror the twins wear identical clothing, Irene Shraff's costume designs, monogrammed dressing gowns, tailored houndstooth suits, initialed brooches, and largish necklaces bearing the letter ‘T’ and "˜R' might have been used as visual clues to help us sort out which twin was which, however, this does not dismiss de Havilland's ability to traverse the dueling roles.

It is important to note once we become aware of how unbalanced Terry is, the sisters begin to dress differently. For example: Ruth can be seen wearing a white long-sleeved sweater and conservative pencil skirt, while in contrast – Terry goes to Elliott's apartment pretending to be Ruth wearing a chic black satin dress with a jewel-encrusted pill-box hat. The visual clues summon the fall of the girl’s connection to each other and begin to symbolically delve into the cliché good vs evil through the emblematic use of color coding- black vs. white.

The narrative is framed by the presence of two significant mirrors, serving as visual parentheses for the story.

Siodmak initiates ambiguity with his use of mirrors and reflections: right from the opening sequence there is a shattered mirror which is reiterated or "˜mirrored' at the climax of the film when Terry throws an object at the mirror after she sees Ruth's image in the glass. Throughout The Dark Mirror appearances are deceptions – this is the central substance of the story.

The Dark Mirror is a psychological study of identical twin sisters Terry and Ruth Collins both played by Olivia de Havilland who vex and bewilder Thomas Mitchell (Stagecoach 1939, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington 1939, Gone with the Wind 1939 also with de Havilland, It's a Wonderful Life 1946, High Noon 1952.) who plays surly Detective Stevenson who gets frustrated and ornery trying to solve a murder he is convinced one of them has committed. Lew Ayres plays the role of Dr. Scott Elliott, a psychiatrist tasked by Stevenson to help unravel the mystery as to which one of the twins is guilty of murder.

De Havilland's performance is striking under Siodmak's direction a tough process considering both Collins sisters had to be filmed separately for the scenes where she/they occupied the screen at the same time. Adding to the struggle to make this work was the disagreements between Siodmak and de Havilland who clashed from the beginning over how to approach the way the twins were portrayed. Siodmak was making a psychological thriller and de Havilland saw the film as a character study of paranoid schizophrenia (Greco) "˜'One sister could and one couldn't commit murder, and that's all there is to it,'' the film's resident psychiatrist explains.

"˜'The film suggests but does not develop the possibility that Terry is Ruth's other self, the "˜dark mirror' that reflects the negative potential lurking beneath Ruth's sunny mask. However, the insistence on the separation of the characters into icons of good and evil makes the film a superficial melodrama rather than a probing psychological study. Good and evil do not engage in an internal clash but are presented as the essence of two separate characters, as in a medieval morality drama.'' – Foster Hirsch The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir

The film’s foundation rests on the "˜old wives tale' about twins, suggesting that one must possess an inherent darkness"”in this instance, a deep-rooted psychological one. Featuring the dramatic taglines: Dramatic tagline Twins! One who loves… and one who loves to kill! This is conveyed in the film's promotional ads, “To know this twin is to love her"¦ to know this twin is to die!”

When one of the twins is accused of murdering a doctor, both come under scrutiny. Ironically, it becomes impossible to establish which twin was identified by the eyewitnesses, so the law can't touch them.

In The Dark Mirror, Terry, the malevolent sister, murders her fiancé the prominent Dr. Frank Peralta when she realizes that he actually feels more genuine affection for her virtuous sister Ruth, though he is unaware of Ruth’s existence. He experiences a tenderness in Ruth’s and a peculiar absence of emotion when he's actually with Terry. Seeking understanding, he consults a psychiatrist to explore the possibility of a split personality in the woman he loves. The primary suspect is one of the Collins twins. However, the authorities are confounded by the fact that the twins are identical in appearance, making it difficult to determine which one committed the crime. Dr. Scott Elliott is brought in to evaluate the sisters and aid in solving the case.

Dr. Scott Elliott who frequents the medical plaza's magazine stand where he purchases his lemon drops from Terry, is shocked when he discovers that she has an identical twin sister Ruth. Dr. Elliot (Lew Ayers) is called to the district attorney's office to help with the investigation because he is an expert in the study of behavioral genetics in twins.

The Dark Mirror was Lew Ayers’s first movie after a four-year absence acting as an Army medic and awarded three battle stars during WWII. He returned to acting and became famous for his kindly Dr. Kildare series of films which was on the nose having been away for four years working as a doctor.

A darkened cityscape leads to an apartment that unfolds with a nighttime homicide and a shattered mirror like a fractured mind, an overturned lamp, and a man lying on the floor with a. knife stabbed through his heart. It establishes an atmospheric backdrop for a sinister and psychological story where the thin line between the narratives’ proposed trope of good vs evil is obscured behind the enigma of perceived "˜female' duality.

At the opening of the film, it is nighttime in the city and Siodmak masterfully employs protracted camera movements through two rooms in an apartment. He unveils the time of a violent struggle, the time is precisely 10:48 pm. A man has been stabbed in the back. A prominent mirror over the fireplace becomes the silent witness to the murder – shattered – it is a visual testament to the intensity of the attack.

Cut to Detective Stevenson (Thomas Mitchell) assigned to the case, who is interviewing several witnesses in his office at the police station. The identity of the victim is revealed to be Dr. Frank Peralta. Two of the witnesses claim they saw a woman leaving his apartment around the time of the murder. Soon he learns the name, Theresa ‘Terry’ Collins.

Peralta’s assistant tells Stevenson that the doctor was in love with Terry and had planned to propose to her which gave Terry a motive. It was no secret that Terry was dating Peralta. Maybe it was a lover’s quarrel? As far as Detective Stevenson knows, the only suspect is Terry Collins.

The next morning, Stevenson brings his two solid witnesses to Terry’s magazine stand in the medical building, in order for them to lay eyes on her and confirm she is the woman they saw leaving Peralta’s apartment. They are both certain it was her. He begins to interrogate her but is cut off when Dr. Scott Elliot comes by to purchase his well-loved lemon drops. Stevenson continues to put pressure on Terry to give her whereabouts the night before. She is able to detail every move as well as deliver the names of several witnesses who can swear to her presence, including a police officer and her butcher.

Once Terry learns that Peralta has been murdered she faints and seems genuinely shaken up by the news. Stevenson cannot break Terry’s alibi so he can’t arrest her. But this cop is doggedly convinced the girl is good for the murder and drops by her apartment to get to the bottom of the confusion with the witnesses. Then Ruth appears. The sisters are wearing the same bathrobes, though one is adorned with the monogrammed ‘T’ and one has the letter ‘R’ on it.

Stevenson almost combusts from the revelation that there are two of them- identical in every way and he is convinced that one of them murdered Peralta. The Collins sisters are resolute to stay silent. Neither sister will confess to which one has the foolproof alibi and which one stayed home that night. This drives Stevenson to distraction. The interrogation is getting him nowhere, there are no fingerprints on the knife and no way to prove that either one of them was there at the crime scene.

Orphans since childhood, Ruth and Terry Collins are inseparable. They live together, dress alike, and even wear wire necklaces that bear their names with a peculiar"” over-obsessive clunky jeweled monogram – as if they force their identities upon us or perhaps each might be threatened by losing themselves without them. Ruth is older by seven minutes, yet Terry seems to be the more dominant, controlling sister. Terry has a maniacal obsession with Ruth and is driven to prove that she is the superior twin.

The story unfolds – Stevenson learns how Terry and Ruth seamlessly orchestrate a charade, both working at the magazine stand as the same girl – taking turns to enjoy moments of respite – essentially to "˜switch out'' when one of them wants time off.

Under the guise of a singular job (which they cleverly share under Terry’s name), to the casual observer, no one can tell the difference until the murder exposes that they are, in fact, two separate people. Even Dr. Peralta didn’t know he was actually dating twins at the time he asked Dr. Elliott about split personalities.

Terry stands as a mother figure, a notion that the ‘bad twin’ constantly drives home to Ruth by asserting she is protecting her, making it more of a challenge for Ruth to betray her sister in the maternal role.

Among other films exploring dynamics projected by the good twin/the bad twin trope – they are often suggestive of variations on schizophrenia.

Detective Stevenson brings the sisters in for a line-up but they are so uncannily alike, that the witnesses can’t tell them apart.

Because both Terry and Ruth stay quiet, the DA is forced to drop the case against them because they won’t be able to convict with no evidence. But Stevenson is a bulldog and isn’t willing to give up. That’s when he seeks out Dr. Scott Elliott to help him uncover the truth about which one murdered Peralta.

The investigating officer on the case is Lt. Stevenson (Thomas Mitchell) enlists the unofficial help of up and coming psychiatrist, though Stevenson is more of a skeptic about psychology referring to him as a "˜fortune teller' who employs "˜gimmicks.' "Don't you witch doctors treat people with tinker toys?''

Dr. Elliot doesn't ascribe to the age-old superstitions that twins are usually "penalized in some way, physically or psychically."

He believes that "character, personality is the key" – that the two elements which are very black & white are pivotal, though one is a moral question and the other is scientific. Ayers is an actor who often comes across as a paternalistic figure puffs on his pipe and uses softly phrased insights as the even keel Dr. Elliott.

Dr. Elliot says, "Not even nature can duplicate' this quality, "even in twins" so this is what would tell who is the murderer. He adds that "˜one could and one couldn't commit murder, and that's all there is to it."

"˜'the insistent separation of the characters into icons of good and evil makes the film a superficial melodrama rather than a probing psychological study. Good and Evil do not engage in an internal clash but are presented as the essence of two separate characters, as in a medieval morality drama.'' Foster Hirsch

Terry and Ruth agree to be added as another set of twins for Dr. Elliott's research, though Ruth appears to be more wary of submitting to his examinations and acts cautious believing that Terry might be guilty of the murder.

Terry admits to Ruth that Peralta did propose to her and that she did see Peralta the night he was murdered. But Ruth agrees not to talk. She poses the question to Ruth, why would I kill him? Ruth is frightened that the truth will come out during Dr. Elliot’s examinations, but Terry thinks she's smarter than him and can pass all his ridiculous tests.

He invites the sisters to come to his office separately, where he puts them through a series of psychological tests, including the cliché inkblots that were groundbreaking at that time. Dr. Hermann Rorschach created them in 1921 to diagnose schizophrenia but that was modified in 1939 when it was used as a standard personality test.

As Dr. Elliott delves into the lives of Terry and Ruth, he discovers the stark contrast in their personalities. While Terry is manipulative, cunning, and emotionally unstable, Ruth is kind-hearted and virtuous.

The mystery deepens as Dr. Elliott tries to understand the motives behind the murder and grapples with the challenge of distinguishing between the sisters. The film takes an intriguing turn as Dr. Elliott employs psychological techniques to uncover the truth.

Elliott puts the girls through a series of standard psychological tests that seem to imply more of a moral evaluation than a psychiatric one. After Terry gives her impressions of the inkblots Elliott determines that she has a dark inner conflict, clever and calculating, even a tendency toward violence, after she describes "the lamb looks so innocent, but it has two men under its paws."

Terry's answers seem rehearsed, suggesting an attempt to assert her power though she tries to convey a helpless innocence. But Elliott notices the contrast in Ruth's answers right away. She appears very genuine, and is not aggressive, or threatening, with her contemplations more of a refined nature, as in dancers around a maypole and skaters in an ice show. Ruth is more retiring and amiable. This leads Elliott to conclude that Ruth is normal and Terry is the one who is mentally disturbed. Eventually, the monograms are disposable as de Havilland manifests the difference through her acting skills.

As Dr. Elliott delves deeper into the two personalities he begins to fall in love with Ruth, while Terry pursues him romantically. A pattern that is replaying itself. In the past, men have always chosen Ruth over her, while Terry desires them herself.

We learn that as orphans, a couple wanted to adopt Ruth but not Terry, and as they grew up, men were always drawn to Ruth, even Dr. Peralta preferred Ruth though he didn't know why. It was when he was with Terry that he feared she suffered from a split personality.

Ruth isn’t aware of Terry’s psychosis but Dr. Elliott is convinced that she is insane and killed Peralta in a jealous rage.

The narrative appears somewhat superficial, adopting a simplistic approach wherein the individual potentially toying with Elliott’s psyche, teasing him with aggressive insights, is labeled as the embodiment of evil. Meanwhile, the one exhibiting a gentler perspective through her mild and innocuous visions is deemed the epitome of normalcy.

"˜'20 percent of people who see things in the inkblots that expose the "˜'true secret patterns of their own minds'' The results for Elliott point to this"¦ "˜'one of our young ladies is insane.''

During the free association session, Dr. Elliott is left a bit mystified because the only unusual reflex is Ruth's reaction to the word "˜'mirror,'' to which she responds, "˜'death.'' Now he cannot wait to see how Terry responds to his prompts. But being visibly unnerved, having found out from Ruth how she reacted to the word mirror, it is not clear whether Terry would have given the same answer or if she is now toying with Elliott.

Terry is agitated when she hears Ruth's answer which shows some understanding of "˜that mumbo jumbo.' She refers to Dr. Elliott's tests as "˜'kindergarten games’' obviously trying to poison Ruth's faith in the doctor's credibility and that his psychological tests are nothing more than childish trials.

When Dr. Elliott gives them both a polygraph, it is hard for Terry to successfully manipulate her responses. Terry’s blood pressure spikes every time Elliott invokes Ruth’s name. Whenever her sister is mentioned the needle bounds frantically across the paper in a storm of black lines, especially bringing up the subject of a particular boy who liked Ruth.

From these tests, Elliotts makes his diagnosis – Ruth is sane and innocent of the murder while Terry is "˜'a paranoiac- a paranoiac is capable of anything.'' He is assured that Terry merely found his tests "˜'another challenge to her, another opportunity to show the world what contempt she has for it. That was the tip-off."

"A marker for insanity, or at least "˜'abnormality'' for women, then, is the transgression of typical patriarchal authority. The "˜tip-off' to Elliott that Terry is the "˜'wrong'' twin is her effort to thwart the masculine power and rules that are being applied to explain her motives, psyche, and very existence." – THE DARK MIRROR PSYCHIATRY AND FILM NOIR BY MARLISA SANTOS

Though Terry thinks she is putting one over on Elliott with his psychological "˜analysis' she begins to feel threatened by the growing romantic relationship between him and Ruth.

Terry witnesses Elliott and Ruth in an embrace outside their apartment building, but when asked Ruth doesn’t mention it. Terry becomes more desperate to sabotage Ruth's budding romance, something she evidently has done in the past. She decides to seduce Dr. Elliott herself, while gaslighting Ruth, trying to make her think she is losing her mind.

She begins to torture Ruth, hoping to push her to commit suicide and pin Peralta’s murder on her. She crafts illusions, spins nightmares, and conjures conversations, savoring every moment of her imaginative ploy.

Initially puzzling is why Ruth willingly covers for Terry despite being the target of Terry’s cruel gaslighting, nearly driving her to a mental breakdown. As Ruth witnesses Terry’s darker side, she hesitates to betray her, fearing that Terry’s potential for evil, even going as far as murder, might also exist within herself.

Terry starts by telling Ruth that she's been having nightmares, talking in her sleep, and then waking hysterical and terrified. Persuading Ruth to consume an excessive amount of sleeping pills, Terry secretly uses flashbulbs to light up their pitch-black bedroom in the dead of night. Ruth awakens startled while her cunning sister Terry pretends not to have seen anything.

Terry also secretly turns on a music box so it will remain playing after she leaves their apartment, to create the illusion that Ruth is only hearing the music from inside her head.

After all this, Ruth begins to believe she is descending into madness. Her head grasped between her hands she breaks down, – "Something's happening to me, and I don't know what it is. I don't understand it. I'm so scared; I don't know what to do." Pleased with her scheme to drive her sister crazy Terry reassures her –

"˜'Just remember that I'm with you and I'm always going to be with you. no matter what"¦ no matter happens, they can't do a thing without {her} consent.'' 

Terry is suggesting that Ruth is mad, but she'll be there to protect her as always. "˜'We'll be together as long as we live.''

"Terry converts feelings of loss and fragmentation into fantasies of total power and god-like control; she projects lack onto her own sister in the form of psychological disorder."˜' – Lutz Koepnick from Doubling the double: Robert Siodmak in Hollywood

Self-absorbed, Terry constantly seeks approval from Elliott, wanting to know what it is about Ruth that draws him to her. In a crucial scene, she even pretends to be Ruth, kissing Elliott and challenging him to be able to tell the difference. Yet she cannot restrain herself from self-aggrandizing “Terry is the smart one,” the one men usually go for.''

The use of a one-way mirror becomes a visual metaphor and a symbolic tool, reflecting not only the physical likeness of the twins but also the duplicity and hidden facets of their personalities. As the story unfolds, the audience is taken on a journey through the labyrinth of the human mind, exploring the nature of identity, morality, and the thin line between good and evil.

As the walls close in around Terry, she becomes more and more possessive of Ruth: "You and I are never going to be separated, as long as we live. You and I are going to be together. Always.''

Elliott tells Stevenson that Terry is a paranoiac and definitely killed Dr Peralta. Stevenson becomes concerned for Ruth's safety, so Elliott promises to tell Ruth that night about her sister. He calls the sister’s apartment and asks Ruth to come to see him later. But he is actually talking to Terry pretending to be Ruth. Fortunately, Ruth stops by his office right after the phone call, so he uncovers Terry's ruse. Later on, Terry arrives at his apartment not realizing that Elliott knows about her trickery.

In a demeaning and sexist soliloquy, Elliot begins to enlighten fake ‘Ruth’ about sisterhood rivalry. All sisters are rivals for men. How it is stronger for sisters than other women. Elliott doesn’t even take into consideration ‘social class’. This jealousy is ‘‘why sisters can hate each other with such a terrifying intensity.” Considering this misguided theory, the rivalry between twins is even more intense. It is this rivalry that has consumed Terry.

Dr. Elliot –"˜' All women are rivals fundamentally, but it never bothers them because they automatically discount the successes of others and alibi their own failures on the grounds of circumstances – luck, they say. But between sisters, it's a little more serious. Circumstances are generally the same, so they have fewer excuses with which to comfort themselves"¦ That's why sisters can hate each other with such terrifying intensity. And with twins, it's worse.''

He describes how the murder might have taken place. When he confronts Terry about her split personality, she realizes that he was in love with the part of her that is Ruth, even though he didn’t know that Ruth existed. In a jealous rage, she stabbed him in the heart. It struck me how risky this meeting is for Elliott, as Terry is genuinely dangerous having already killed one man. Sure enough, she goes to grab a pair of scissors when the phone rings, and Stevenson gives him the news that Ruth has killed herself. Terry snaps out of her homicidal rage and they rush to the sister’s apartment.

Terry as ‘Ruth’ tells Stevenson that Ruth killed herself because she was ‘sick’ and ‘twisted inside,’ words Elliott used to describe Terry. That it was Ruth who was insane and committed the murder. She killed herself over the guilt. Terry begins to ramble that she is actually Ruth. That it is Terry who has killed herself because she was so jealous of Ruth.

Elliot tries to provoke the fake "˜'Ruth'' into revealing herself as Terry, antagonizing her about her past rejections. The family that wanted Ruth but not her, and the boys who preferred Ruth.

He confronts Terry by telling her how mentally disturbed she is. He tells her while she is pretending to be "˜Ruth' that "Terry is "˜sick inside' and needs help. He imagines that it is tied to something that happened in their past when they were quite young but has grown inside like a poisoned seedling. "˜'more and more bitter and is now abnormal.’'

Finally working with the police, Ruth, who has been reluctant up til now to believe that Terry is dangerous stages her own "˜'suicide'' in order to trap her sister. As Terry begins to unravel, Ruth suddenly emerges from the bedroom. When Terry sees her reflected in a mirror behind her she throws an object and smashes it, symbolically destroying her sister who is the constant evidence of her "˜lacking.'

At this revelation it is all over for Terry and she smashes the mirror when she sees Ruth’s reflection.

By the end of the picture, Elliott and Ruth are united. He asks Ruth, ” Why are you so much more beautiful than your sister?”

"˜'Terry's possessiveness may be interpreted as a desire to absorb Ruth, to eliminate the "˜difference'' between them that haunts her and frustrates her desires.'' Marlisa Santos -The Dark Mirror

Dr. Elliot's comment in the end supports the actuality that good and evil can exist within two identical people as he tells Ruth, "˜'That's what twins are you know, reflections of each other, everything in reverse."˜'

This mental image -  signals the shattering of the mirror by the darker souled Terry at the climax of the picture when she is ultimately caught in her game of deceit, tricked by Detective Stevenson into thinking that the real Ruth has committed suicide. Caught by her own duplicity, she cannot help through her conceit she reveals her lies while claiming that she is actually Ruth and it was Terry that has killed herself.

She tries to convince Stevenson that "Terry' despised her (Ruth) out of jealousy because men always found her more attractive and likable. Unlike the doppelgänger who inhabits an evil that is transferred to the good person, this is subverted with the evil person Terry claiming that she possesses all the good attributes from their double.

The Dark Mirror is often praised for its innovative narrative and psychological depth. The film’s exploration of the duality within a single person, embodied by the twin sisters, adds layers of complexity to the story. Olivia de Havilland’s stellar performance in the dual role is a highlight, showcasing her ability to convey the nuances of two distinct characters.

It is lauded for its psychological depth, but some critics have noted that the resolution of the murder mystery may be somewhat predictable for modern audiences. However, it’s essential to appreciate the film in its historical context, considering its influence on subsequent psychological thrillers.

"˜'Sugar wouldn't melt in the mouth of Nancy, the heroine of The Locket. Yet if we are to believe the evidence, she is a first-class criminal. With this to go on, Nancy brings the wicked-lady psychopathic parade up to date. Laraine Day gives what must be her most fascinating performance. As with so many of these wide-eyed innocents who are supposed to be baddies inside, the spectator maybe have difficulty in crediting her with such heatless villainies. However, there is just enough of a defiant something about Miss Day. More of the spirit than the actual behavior, to raise the shadow of doubt. It is this question mark that holds one rapt.'' "”Philip K. Scheuer, "Laraine Day Psychotpath.'' Los Angeles Times May, 27 1947

"˜'The complexity of Sheridan Gibney's plot was what really enticed me to the material. It was an enigma within an enigma within an enigma. John Brahm, had done a very good horror picture at Twentieth about Jack the Ripper called The Lodger. He was a German- but not too German "” and I thought he would be good to direct this and give it some of the same atmosphere.'' "”producer Bert Granet in Lee Server's Baby, I don't Care

The New York Times (1946) found The Dark Mirror to be a lamentable production that operated as little more than a vanity project for Olive de Havilland, who "˜has been tempted by the lure of playing against herself.'

"˜'Siodmak explained that "˜audiences love a picture like The Dark Mirror because it affords what psychoanalysis call a psychic renovating'' The strategy of bringing all aspects of The Dark Mirror under the rubric of psychological science including even its purportedly positive influence on audiences, is indicative of the representational shift away from the cynical and at times gruesome depictions of psychiatrists and psychological practices that characterized wartime horror cinema. The horror films that went into production after the ebbing of the Shock controversy evinced Hollywood's newfound commitment to responsible depiction of psychiatry. A case in point was the 1947 film Possessed''– Bad Medicine from book Merchants of Menace: The Business of Horror Cinema edited by Richard Nowell.

In 1948 the Screen Guild Theater produced a radio version of The Dark Mirror starring Lew Ayres and Loretta Young. In 1950 de Havilland reprised her role for a radio broadcast at Screen Director's Playhouse.

Continue reading “Noirvember – Freudian Femme Fatales – 1946 : The Dark Mirror (1946) & The Locket (1946) ‘Twisted Inside’”

It’s the pictures that got small! – “Good Evening” Leading Ladies of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour Part 1

This is Part 1 in a series. See also Part 2 and Part 3.

The CMBA Presents the 2023 Spring Blogathon: Big Stars on the Small Screen — In Support of National Classic Movie Day

SILVER SCREEN STAR'S JOURNEY TO A SMALL GOLDEN BOX

1955 Headliner Alfred Hitchcock film director © Copyright CBS Broadcasting Inc.
All Rights Reserved Credit: CBS Photo Archive

"This is the way of television"¦ Half-hour shows were becoming one-hour shows, so it was decided that ours was to become a one-hour show. I don't recall whose idea it was. I cannot say I know how the arrangements were made. In television the problem is to maintain a standard (especially after seven years). We were always pretty offbeat, but people get used to us being offbeat." "”Alfred Hitchcock (as quoted in "The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion," 2001)

“TV has done more for old movie stars than plastic surgery,” -Popular TV critic for the LA Mirror Hal Humphrey wrote his articles based on network and press agent publicity, defended television's stars in comparison to films during the time in the period when big screen actors were transitioning to television.

The Anne Sothern Show began in 1958.

Citing the examples of Joan Blondell, Ann Sothern, and Joan Crawford, Hal Humphrey claimed that these actresses were not “has-beens.” It might be more apt to describe them as mistakes made by the movie industry and rectified by television.”

During the 1950s after decades of escaping the world and its worries within the vastness of the darkened movie theater, television delivered the actors we imagined vividly on the big screen and altered the illusion by fitting them inside a little box in our homes.

Television of the 1950s brought the big screen stars into the inner sanctum of our living rooms.
The emergence of television in the 1950s and 60s transformed the entertainment industry, leading many iconic Hollywood actresses to transition from film to TV.

In the 1950s, the transition from film to television was still a relatively new concept, and many Hollywood actresses were hesitant to make the switch.

“The dominant tendency in star studies has been to denigrate the stature of television stardom, to argue that television does not actually produce stars of the complexity, depth, and cultural value that film does, largely because of the medium’s lesser cultural status and its essential familiarity and intimacy…

Television studies scholar Susan Murray rightly comments suspiciously on these theories:

“. . . it would appear as though, while the cinema’s star system was delineated by a complicated aesthetic, industrial and economic history, the television star is simply a fall from grace."

Therefore, it would seem essential for television to boost the images of such marginal stars by drawing on authenticity as a value superior to the artificiality of constructed glamour and by underscoring television’s ability to rediscover or uncover the genuine talents of the film world’s castoffs and supporting players.”

While some actors perceived TV work as an abdication of their star power, others recognized it as an avenue to sustain their careers and connect with a fresh audience.

Early television frequently recruited performers from various entertainment media, enlisting film actors, radio personalities, and Broadway/stage performers to provide programming talent for the burgeoning medium. Radio had previously offered such a space for Hollywood stars to supplement their film work, but television increasingly took over this role. (Becker)

Until the mid-1950s, studios purposefully kept their stars away from television. However, this claim overlooks the significant number of actors who were no longer bound by contracts with major studios due to the upheaval in the industry.

As a result, these actors were able to seek employment wherever opportunities arose. With labor changes in Hollywood and a decline in overall film production, television became an attractive and viable option for Hollywood actors who were out of work. Studios relented provided the stars received the opportunity to plug the studio and its recent releases. Variety also cited the decision to allow the 1953 Academy Awards to be aired on NBC as a sign of the film industry’s acceptance of television’s credibility.

Television desperately trying to establish itself big Hollywood name became an incredibly exploitable asset as famous actors discovered a new outlet that eagerly sought their skills and their drawing power Hollywood actors played a crucial role in contributing the nuance of prestige to their anthology shows and dramatic teleplays.

Early television strategically leveraged the fame of numerous Hollywood film actors to generate publicity for specific shows, attracting viewers and driving the sales of television sets. Simultaneously, television presented a convenient new job market, offering a fresh lease on life for supporting actors and former stars who needed to revitalize their careers, maintain their popularity, and make money from the emerging medium of television.

Several iconic actresses from classic Hollywood successfully made the swift transition including Joan Crawford, Loretta Young, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck, all made the leap to television during this period. One of the most notable actresses was Lucille Ball, who starred in the popular sitcom I Love Lucy from 1951 to 1957. Television actually made Lucille Ball a household name.

There were obstacles these actresses encountered, such as adapting to the demands of the smaller screen and managing the more accelerated production schedules of TV shows.

Their performances retained every ounce of their impact, if not enhanced, as they continued to evoke profound emotions and captivate us with the same level of skill, quality, and substance

In fact, given the advent of dramatic teleplays featuring exciting directors and writers who either adapted classic stories, challenging content, or groundbreaking camerawork much of the performances were enhanced by the live format.

The assumption that only displaced film stars would agree to appear on television is challenged by a diverse array of stars who wound up making a foray into that medium. So what precipitated the union between Hollywood movie stars and television programming during the first commercial decade of TV? And how did television showcase the abundance of screen royalty that ran the gamut of beloved character actors to the reigning stars on the big screen? They were able to transfigure stardom and draw audiences with the same desire to see their iconic stars continue to shine but on a more intimate level.

Joan Crawford and The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse on ABC from 1953-1955.

"It is commonly assumed that only dethroned film stars would ever consent to appear on television, but the wide range of stars listed above certainly complicates this hypothesis and raises myriad questions. What industrial circumstances made possible this substantial marriage between Hollywood film talent and television programming in TV’s first commercial decade, and how did early television present this plethora of film talent, from the character actor to the reigning star? What can we learn about concepts of stardom by closely analyzing the activities of film stars at the discrete historical moment when television began as a mass medium, borrowing programming formats, corporate methods, and talent from radio and theater, while simultaneously trying to forge a unique institutional and cultural identity?"¦

…despite an avowed stigma attached to film stars appearing on television, a significant number did appear on the infant medium"¦ and television’s presentations of these stars, along with the public discourse that surrounded them, helped to expose and even alter the parameters of the filmic star system as it was developed to that point, an aspect which audiences surely perceived." – Christine Becker: Televising Film Stardom in the 1950s

Alfred Hitchcock’s anthology television series, which aired from 1955 to 1965, was a popular show that featured a variety of Hollywood actresses in its episodes.

These actresses had already made a name for themselves in classic Hollywood films but found a new audience and showcase their talents. Anthology series typically featured a new story and cast of characters in each episode, allowing actresses to take on a variety of roles.
One of the more regular actresses to appear in Alfred Hitchcock Presents was Barbara Bel Geddes, who starred in the episode “Lamb to the Slaughter” in 1958. Barbara Bel Geddes’ performance in “Lamb to the Slaughter” episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents has also received acclaim, with critics noting her ability to shift between a sweet and innocent demeanor to a more understated sinister one as her character’s composed homicidal streak are revealed.

Bel Geddes previously starred in films such as “I Remember Mama” and “Vertigo,” and her appearance in Alfred Hitchcock Presents helped cement her status as a talented actress with a range of skills.
Another actress who appeared in the series was Vera Miles, who starred in the iconic episode “The Perfect Crime” in 1957 and Alfred Hitchcock Presents the very first episode, Revenge. And the episode that I will cover here Don't Look Behind You. and in Part 4 of my series, Death Scene co-starring John Carradine.

Teresa Wright appeared in perhaps 2 of the most enthralling episodes one darkly disturbing and one darkly humorous. And Mildred Dunnock appeared in 3 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and 1 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Jeannette Nolan is in 5 of the series and Jessica Tandy appeared in 3. That's a lot of star power in a small box.

Miles had previously worked with Hitchcock in the film “The Wrong Man,” and her appearance in Alfred Hitchcock Presents helped establish her as a talented actress who could hold her own in a variety of roles.

In addition to Bel Geddes and Miles, several other classic Hollywood actresses appeared in the series, including Joan Fontaine, Teresa Wright, Lillian Gish, Mary Astor (who also appeared in the Boris Karloff Anthology series Thriller) Gladys Cooper, Anne Sothern, Gloria Swanson, Anne Baxter, and Bette Davis, just to name a few.

Bette Davis in Out There-Darkness for Alfred Hitchcock Presents S4E16 1959.

Gloria Swanson in Behind the Locked Door S2E22 1964.

Lillian Gish in The Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode Body in the Barn S2E32 1964.

These actresses brought their star power and talent to the Hitchcock series and helped to establish it as one of the most popular anthology shows of the era. When Hollywood wasn't giving them the scripts and not renewing their contracts, they found a chance to continue showcasing their versatility and kept themselves a continuing familiar face with their fans new and old alike.

The success of Alfred Hitchcock Presents helped pave the way for more classic Hollywood actresses to make the transition to television in the 1950s and 1960s. It also helped to establish television as a legitimate platform for entertainment and helped to blur the lines between film and television.

Other actresses who appeared in anthology series in the 1950s include Barbara Stanwyck in “The Barbara Stanwyck Show,” Bette Davis in “The Bette Davis Show,” and Joan Crawford in “The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse.”

These shows allowed actresses to showcase their versatility and reach audiences on a regular basis, helping to solidify their status as Hollywood legends and both critics and fans have praised these actresses’ abilities to transition from film to television

Acting in front of the camera wasn't the only transition powerful Hollywood actresses made, Ida Lupino – pioneering actress, director, and producer, known for her trailblazing work in the male-dominated Hollywood industry of the 1940s and 1950s stepped into the episode of The Twilight Zone with its scathing mediation on the Hollywood system that chewed up actresses and spits them out as they aged out of their perceivably viable roles. In The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine starring Lupino – the opening narration goes as follows:

The Twilight Zone S1E4 1959 Ida Lupino The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine.

"Picture of a woman looking at a picture. Movie great of another time, a once-brilliant star in a firmament no longer a part of the sky, eclipsed by the movement of earth and time. Barbara Jean Trenton, whose world is a projection room, whose dreams are made out of celluloid. Barbara Jean Trenton, struck down by hit-and-run years and lying on the unhappy pavement, trying desperately to get the license number of fleeting fame."

Lupino plays aging film star Barbara Jean Trenton a recluse who lived in her private screening room reliving her old movie roles from the 1930s over and over. When she is offered a part in a new movie playing the mother, insulted by the callous film mogul who tells her she's living in the past, all the while Martin Balsam tells her she's wishing for things that are dead"¦ Barbara vanishes into a movie reel with her old co-stars descends the stairs and blows Balsam a kiss goodbye throwing down a scarf toward the camera and vanishes.

Not just on screen but behind the scenes Lupino who worked avidly with the camera directed several of the Hitchcock episodes. Another influential woman in the technical side of Hollywood, Joan Harrison made the transition from film to television. She came on board to produce the show and create the legacy that both series became in American Television.

“Seeing a murder on television… can help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.”

“T.V. has brought murder back into the home where it belongs.”

“It seems to me that television is exactly like a gun. Your enjoyment of it is determined by which end of it you’re on.”

“Blondes make the best victims. They’re like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.”

“A glimpse into the world proves that horror is nothing other than reality.”

"What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out.

“I’m sure anyone who likes a good crime, provided it is not the victim.”

Suspense is when the spectator knows more than the characters in the movie."

"Always make the audience suffer as much as possible."

“I can’t read fiction without visualizing every scene. The result is it becomes a series of pictures rather than a book.”

“I’m a writer and, therefore, automatically a suspicious character.”

“Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.”

“You think she’s pretty, you ought to see my slingshot!”

Promotional portrait of British-born American film and television director Alfred Hitchcock (1899 – 1980) as he sits on a stool inside an open steamer trunk, next to an unidentified woman in a top hat, short, satin outfit, and fishnet stockings, for his anthology program ‘The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,’ August 10, 1962. (Photo by CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images)

“… I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.” – Hitchcock according to designer Edith Head who dressed Grace Kelly, Doris Day, and Ingrid Bergman in Hitchcock’s movies. The two reportedly clashed heavily over wardrobe ensembles.

"” Alfred Hitchcock

"No one is writing good suspense stories these days"¦ I don't know what has happened to the great story tellers "” people like Kipling and Stevenson. We have to take stories and shape them to our needs. Meanwhile, we must go on. We can't wait for the great ones to show up. I must take the scripts as they land on my desk. I'm responsible for sixteen programs, and I have only seven properties on hand. [Lloyd and Harrison produced all but four episodes from the first season] I've managed to get several fine stories, I believe. One is a gambling tale, A Piece of the Action, starring Gig Young and Martha Hyer. It has bitter irony in it. Another is The Final Yow, in which Carol Lynley plays a nun involved in a search for a stolen statue. It has a delicious twist." "”Norman Lloyd (The Newark Evening News, August 26, 1962)

Here are a few quotes from classic actresses who starred in The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Alfred Hitchcock Presents:

Joan Fontaine & Gary Merrill in The Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode The Paragon S1E20 1963.

Fontaine and Hitchcock on the set of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

  1. “Working with Alfred Hitchcock was a great honor and an unforgettable experience. He was a master of suspense and a true genius of filmmaking.” – Vera Miles
  2. “Appearing in Alfred Hitchcock Presents was a unique challenge as an actress, as each episode was its own story and character. But it was also a great opportunity to showcase my range as an actress.” – Barbara Bel Geddes
  3. Alfred Hitchcock had a way of bringing out the best in his actors and actresses. He knew how to create tension and drama on screen, and he trusted his performers to deliver their best work.” – Joan Fontaine
  4. Alfred Hitchcock Presents was an exciting and innovative show, and I was thrilled to be a part of it. It allowed me to work with some of the best actors and directors in the business.” – Anne Baxter

Vera Miles and Hitchcock on the set of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

Hitchcock made the shift from a half-hour show to an hour format without much issue. "When we had a half-hour show, we could do short stories"¦{"¦} Now, in an hour, we have to go to novels." His staff read through thousands of crime novels to find the right script. Yet frequently it became necessary to utilize a short story and expand it, in order to fill out the hour.

In the opening set of each episode, the fabulist Hitchcock is given props against an empty stage. At times he himself becomes the prop or main focal point where he imparts either sage elucidation, comical warning, or sardonic advice. A witty prelude to the evening's tale or just a frivolous bit of shenanigans to put one in the mood for the evening's program. As he drolly introduces the night's story, his monologues were conceived of by James B Allardice.

Jessica Tandy in Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode The Glass Eye s3e1 1959.

THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR — “The Trap” Episode 18 — Aired 02/22/1965 — Pictured: (l-r) Anne Francis as Peg Beale, Donnelly Rhodes as John Cochran (Photo by NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour Triumph Episode 9 Aired 12/14/1964 Pictured: Ed Begley as Brother Thomas Fitzgibbons, Jeanette Nolan as Mary Fitzgibbons (Photo by NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

Patricia Collinge in The Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow -S2E25 1964

Repeat Performances:

*Jessica Tandy 3 episodes Alfred Hitchcock Presents The Glass Eye and not included Toby S2e6 and The Canary Sedan S3e37.

*Patricia Collinge 4 episodes Alfred Hitchcock Presents –The Cheney Vase, The Rose Garden, Across the Threshold, and The Landlady-  The Alfred Hitchcock Hour – 2 episodes Bonfire – and not included The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow April 17, 1964.

*Anne Francis 2 episodes Alfred Hitchcock Presents Hooked and not Included Keep Me Company and The Trap S7e5 Feb 22, 1965, aired Nov.7, 1961.

*Mildred Dunnock 3 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents – None Are So Blind, Heart of Gold and not inlcuded The West Warlock Time Capsule S2e35 and 1 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour – Beyond the Sea of Death.

*Vera Miles 1 episode of Alfred Hithcock PresentsRevenge and 1 episode of  The Alfred Hitchcock HourDeath Scene.

*Margaret Leighton 1 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents Tea Time and 1 episode of  The Alfred Hitchcock Hour Where the Woodbine Twineth.

*Barbara Bel Geddes – 4 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Lamb to the Slaughter, The Morning of the Bride and not included The Foghorn s3e24, and Sybilla S6e10 aired Dec. 6, 1960.

*Gena Rowlands – 1 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Doubtful Doctor and 3 episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock HourRide the Nightmare, The Lonely Hours, and Murder Case.

*Doris lloyd 5 epsiodes of Alfred Hitchcock PresentsThe Impromptu Murder, and not included Dip in the Pool, Safety for the Witness, The Shartz-Metterklume Method and The Silk Petticoat. And 4 episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour – One of the Family, Thou Still Unravished Bride and not included The Dark Pool s1e29, and Isabel s2e31.

*Gia Scala – 2 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents -Deathmate and not included Mother, May I Go Out and Swim? s5e26 and 1 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour not included The Sign of Satan s2e27

*Jeannette Nolan –4 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Right Kind of House, The Morning After, and not included The Young One s3e9 and Coming Home s6e35. 1 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock HourTriumph.

*Teresa Wright – 2 episodes of  The Alfred Hitchcock Hour – Three Wives Too Many and Lonely Place.

Mildred Dunnock in The Alfred Hitchcock Hour – Beyond the Sea of Death -S2E14 1964.

Teresa Wright and Bruce Dern in Lonely Place The Alfred Hitchcock Hour S3E6 1964

Married American actors Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes (1929 – 1989) in an episode of the television anthology series ‘The Alfred Hitchcock Hour’ entitled ‘Murder Case,’ January 24, 1964. The episode, directed by John Brahm, was originally broadcast on March 6, 1964. (Photo by CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images)

Alfred Hitchcock Presents renamed The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (between 1962-1965), is a classic American television anthology series hosted by preeminent filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, the show was also an Alfred Hitchcock Production produced by Joan Harrison and Norman Lloyd, airing on CBS and NBC between 1955 and 1965. The series premiered on CBS in October 1955 and went through several changes during its long run. It switched over to NBC for the 1960-61 season. It then returned to CBS with its hour-long format from 1962-1963. Getting whiplash it turned back to NBC once again to finish out its final season.

"One must remember that in the early half-hour days, we were getting the cream of the crop"¦ Some of the best stories of their type in English literature, such as The Glass Eye. In the latter days of the hour show, however, we occasionally had to develop stories from scratch, and the results didn't always measure up. The half-hour show, which ran twenty-two and a fraction minutes, was sometimes a delight in its brevity and its point, but that doesn't mean it was a better format." "”Norman Lloyd (as quoted in "The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion," 2001)

Both series have become seminal works in television history, known for their unique blend of suspense, mystery, and dark humor. The show often revolved around murder plots, mind games, gaslighting, and visceral intrigue, featuring psychological dramas, suspenseful thrillers, and crime-oriented stories often framed through a noir lens and written by celebrated authors featuring a far-reaching cast of Hollywood stars and electrifying performances by beloved character actors.

Both series’ earned a fistful of Emmy, Look Magazine, Golden Globe, and Television Champion awards for the best anthology and/or mystery program during their decade-long run.

Known for its suspenseful and thrilling stories that often revolve around murder, mystery, and psychological intrigue that often framed crime-oriented stories through a noir lens.

"I much preferred writing for the half-hour show"¦ There was always the possibility of doing what I call "˜gems.' The half-hours were compact and full of sharp point-breaking, bringing the audience in at the middle and then hitting them with the climax. Very clean. This got a little difficult to achieve in the hour shows, which were more like features except that they weren't, not really. They were actually more like extended half-hours. More was told about the same thing. I think the show suffered because of it, and I think the Hitchcock people felt so, too." "”writer Henry Slesar (as quoted in "The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion," 2001)

Initially, a variety of the stories adapted for the show appeared to be written with the implication that "˜crime does pay if you’re clever and lucky enough to get away with it – clincher. But this did not sit right with the network censors, not to mention Hitchcock's regular derogatory indictment of their commercials which put him at odds with the sponsors. So"¦ by the postscript he would update us on the fate of the villains, evildoers, and culprits to assure us that there was a moral code that existed on the show, and ultimately these malefactors paid a price for their immorality.

In other stories, not all the players were inherently malicious, wicked, twisted, greedy, or conniving. Innocent bystanders and some protagonists were set down in a story that challenged them to come out on the other end of their unnerving or sinister circumstances, and ultimately either found redemption or were delivered from their ordeal. Instead of fate’s unwavering day of retribution, anyone who deserved a break got one, and the sympathetic characters found a silver lining to their storm cloud. Many of the show’s stories, revealed their humanity

The episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents cover a wide range of genres, including crime- drama, mystery, suspense, psychological thriller, and the occasional horror story. Many of the episodes are adaptations of short stories and novels by famous authors, such as Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, and Cornell Woolrich, among other notable novelists and screenwriters.

One of the trademarks of the series is its surprising turnaround of events and twist endings, which are often unique, cleverly crafted, and carefully calculated plots that keep viewers on the edge of their seats. The show’s stories often explore the darker aspects of human nature, delving into the psychology of the characters and their motivations. Themes of guilt, paranoia, revenge, and moral ambiguity are often explored, creating a thought-provoking viewing experience, framed with masterful understatement all wrapped up with Hitch’s deliciously droll commentaries, dramatic musical flourishes, and palpable fade-outs.

“Alfred Hitchcock Presents” has been highly acclaimed for its innovative storytelling, compelling performances, and Hitchcock’s masterful direction.

Hitchcock's strictly British sense of humor, the deliciously wicked tone of the series, and his attitude toward directing television had carried over from his big-screen work in a similar vein for small-screen audiences.

At first, Hitchcock was hesitant about the idea of appearing on TV as his primary interest rested with film. Hitchcock biographer John Russell Taylor wrote the revelation Alfred Hitchcock Presents could work came from MCA's Lew Wasserman who had been Hitchcock's former agent and friend. In 1955, Wasserman was putting his mind to potential programming during the early days of television. "We ought to put Hitch on air." The idea of putting the master of suspense hosting a weekly show had a great deal of good sense."

Hitchcock had signed a contract with Richard Decker allowing his name to be the image of a monthly magazine Decker published featuring short stories with a mystery theme written by established or up-and-coming authors. In return for allowing his name to be used Decker hired Hitch's daughter Patricia as assistant editor. The publication would be called Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

In the mid-fifties, very few of Hollywood's major studios were actively involved in producing series for television. In 1959 MCA under President Lew Wasserman's leadership added Universal Pictures to its growing list of subsidiaries, and MCA/Revue was changed to Universal Television which then released Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

According to biographer John Russell Taylor, Hitchcock was not pretentious about his success in the motion picture business, however, the iconic director was aware that not many filmmakers who had maintained visibility on his level were actively working in that industry’s medium. While other directors wouldn’t want to be associated with television, Hitchcock had faith in his friend Lew Wasserman and agreed to delve into the world of the small screen, and the series was born.

Alfred Hitchcock named the new telefilm company Shamley Productions after the summer home he and Alma owned in a small village in Shamley Green south of London.

*For most in Hollywood, tv was considered a spurious and unauthentic medium, a commercial junkyard suitable only for unknowns and has-beens."(from John McCarty and Brian Kelleher from Alfred Hitchcock Presents – An Illustrated Guide to The Ten-Year Television Career of the Master of Suspense)

Wasserman viewed the show and Hitchcock's hosting of it as a logical, intuitive outgrowth of the very successful Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. In fact, many of the series' episodes were adapted from stories that first appeared in the magazine.

And Hitchcock's attitude toward directing television was that it was a bit of jolly devilry and fooling about from directing feature-length films, as it was far less a painstaking endeavor.

Though Hitchcock still brought his methodical work ethic to the table-

"He took enormous pride in doing these things very fast on a tight TV schedule without going a moment over. I remember when he did Lamb to the Slaughter" and he finished on the nose at six o clock quitting time, he turned around and said "there's your picture" Then he looked at everybody as if to say, "So don't comet o me with any ideas that you need an extra hour or two for something else. "It was all in fun, but the message was clear: all of you had better be able to finish at six too." – Norman Lloyd

Vera Miles in the premier episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents ‘Revenge’ S1E1 in 1955.

After its debut on October 2 1955 with the first episode "Revenge" directed by Hitchcock himself, each week gained devoted viewers who were thrilled with the show's sense of the macabre.

Hitchock’s well-known public persona while considered the archetype of genius over collaboration, boldly moved into the realm of television and was part of a team that created an anthology series with a team of extraordinary writers & directors who were perceptive, literate, and witty.

Hitchcock directed only 18 episodes during its run including Revenge with Vera Miles, Breakdown with Joseph Cotten, The Case of Mr. Pelham, and Back for Christmas starring Isobel Elsom and Hitchcock regular, English gentleman John Williams. The series was an instant hit and ran for five seasons on CBS, and three on NBC. It won three Emmy Awards and was nominated for 11 more. The series is considered a classic of American television and has been praised for its suspenseful stories, Hitchcock’s iconic introductions, and its illustrious and stellar cast, to say nothing of the outstanding resource of imaginative writers like – Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Garson Kanin, John Cheever, Henry Slesar, Ellery Queen, Charles Beaumont, H.G. Wells, Rebecca West, Barré Lyndon, Morton S. Fine, Evan Hunter, Margaret Manners, Robert C. Dennis, Francis M. Cockrell and Columbo’s Richard Levinson and William Link.

Above are two images of Jessica Tandy and Tom Conway in The Glass Eye S3E1 1957.

Robert Stevens who directed 145 episodes of a similar theme show Suspense which ran between 1949-1954 directed over thirty episodes in Hitchcock’s series more than any other director overall, including some of the most memorable like the chilling installment – The Glass Eye starring Jessica Tandy which is a ghoulish adaptation of the classic theme of the ventriloquist who is bedeviled by his dummy. This installment of the show’s second season earned Stevens an Emmy as best director of a half-hour show. He was the only director ever to win an award for Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

In 1959 Stevens took time to direct the pilot for Rod Sterling’s Twilight Zone with Earl Holliman in Where is Everybody. He did another of the show’s most memorable episodes, Walking Distance.

They helped establish Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour as one of the great classics of American television – distinctive for their sardonic prologues with Hitchcock as the master of ceremonies conducting the series of sketches, and macabre tableaus that invited you into the evening’s story. Hitchcock intoning impish incentives by writer Jimmy Allardice. The show offered a collection of Mephistophlean teleplays, infused with suspenseful, often darkly humorous masquerades.

The series also features a collection of impressive directors: Ida Lupino, Paul Henreid, Herschel Daugherty, John Brahm, Arthur Hiller, Alan Crosland Jr., Leo Penn, Joseph Pevney, Robert Stevenson, Stuart Rosenberg, Bernard Girard, Robert Florey, John Newland, Don Medford, Francis Cockrell, Boris Sagal, Alf Kjellin and George Stevens Jr.

Hitchcock, Joan Harrison, and actor/producer/director Norman Lloyd preferred stories about unextraordinary people, their lives outwardly not illicit or taboo however they become involved in dubious, unlucky, or dangerous situations like murder, blackmail, or misguided schemes that descend into a darkly ironic conclusion.

Norman Lloyd, whose speech and singularity carved out a niche as typically British and thoroughly sardonically impish appeared in several of Hitchcock's films, most notably Saboteur 1942 as the menacing Frank Fry who meets a spectacular cinematic end.

Norman Lloyd in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur 1942.

"Around 1955 they got Hitchcock to say he'd do television which was a big thing. And in '57 the order for the half hour show was amplified, with a new series called Suspicion. I think Suspicion had many shows. Hour shows. And MCA took ten of them. New York took ten and so forth. And with the ten he was adding on they used to do 39 half hour shows a series. It was his producer Joan Harrison, is how I really learned how to be a producer. Divine. She was beautiful, exquisitely dressed, in perfect taste for the set. She was divine. She was a writer for him, and she was now his producer. And they needed someone else to come in an help her because of the quantity of the work not for the half hours, but now the hour. So she and Hitch decided, they wanted me to do it. Cause I also knew Joan very well. And so they presented my name"¦ however"¦ And this was told to me by Alan Miller who headed television at MCA, he came back, Alan Miller from the network and says "˜there seems to be a problem about Lloyd' and Hitch said, "˜I want him!' that was the end of the blacklist!" -Norman Lloyd

The television series also consisted of several episodes that featured both Hitchcock and Lloyd’s daughters Patricia and Josie.

The show is characterized by its Aesopean host- "Televisions jovial undertaker" (McCarty and Kelleher)"¦ offering his solemn "˜Good Night.’

Alfred Hitchcock’s cheeky little teasers featured its iconic musical initiation with Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette" as Hitch's silhouetted kisser merged with the quirky little line drawing which was led into one of Allardice's offbeat fun size segues.

Hitchcock emerges mischievously at the beginning and end of each episode, delivering satirical introductions and conclusions, with his signature tongue-in-cheek reaction to that evening’s stories. His dry and sardonic presence effectively compliments the show’s featured parable and displaces any tension from the seriousness of the episode with Hitch’s comic relief.

The show was ravenous for stories trying to compete with its rivals The Twilight Zone and Boris Karloff’s Thriller. The insistence on only published stories.

One of Hitchcock’s primary producers was a British-American film producer, screenwriter, and casting director, Joan Harrison. She met Hitchcock in 1935 after answering his ad in a London newspaper for a secretary. She may have begun her career as a secretary to Alfred Hitchcock in 1939. Harrison gained momentum, forging ahead with her career, and by 1940 she was Hitchcock’s associate producer.

But it was her ultra-motivated astuteness and keen administrative proficiency that helped advance herself until in 1939 she became his closest collaborator co-writing several screenplays for Jamaica Inn, Rebecca 1940, Foreign Correspondent Suspicion 1941, and Saboteur. Additionally working with Hitchcock on several films, including Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Rope 1948 and Strangers on a Train (1951).

In 1942 she pursued her own career as an independent producer, a position not held by many women, then. Much of her films fall under the influence of a mystery bent, with one of her finest films being They Won't Believe Me 1947 a psychological film noir directed by Irving Pichel and starring Robert Young, Susan Hayward, and Jane Greer.

Joan Harrison produced one of the most underrated film noirs Phantom Lady 1944, directed by Robert Siodmak, based on a novel by Cornell Woolwich author of Rear Window, and scripted by Bernard C. Schoenfeld, who would both later write many of the show’s episodes. Another highly effective and sorely underrated noir Harrison directed is Ride the Pink Horse 1947.

The Very Thought of You: Andrea King in 4 Fabulous Unsung Film Noir Gems!

In 1944, she left Hitchcock’s production company to start her own, producing several films, including The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), and The Locket (1946). 

One of the aspects of both the half-hour and full-hour series’ magic was the brilliant cast, borrowing from some of television’s outstanding dramatic character actors of that period, but notably, the stars who made the transition from the big screen to television’s more intimate venue.

Working with Hitchcock on The Trouble with Harry clearly foreshadowed the direction Hitch’s show was going to take. In 1955 Joan Harrison rejoined him as an associate producer both knowledgeable about mystery and suspense literature – she became actively involved in the story selections.

In 1955, Harrison not only produced the show but she served as the casting director for Alfred Hitchcock Presents for its entire run from 1955 to 1965.

She helped cast some of the show’s most famous episodes, including Back For Christmas, Lamb to the Slaughter, and “Hitch Hike”

Isobel Elsom and John Williams in Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Back for Christmas s1e23 1956.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Hitch Hike S5E21 1960 starring Suzanne Pleshette, John McIntire, and Robert Morse.

Joan Harrison lends the show its engaging charm which credits Harrison’s keen eye for selecting the best possible actors to fit the archetypal characters for the compelling ironic murder mysteries, nail-biters, and crime-driven stories.

Harrison who progressed from secretary to screenwriter to independent producer signed onto the show where she was fully able to materialize her vision of some of the most suspenseful dramatizations. She retired from the film industry in 1965.

Norman Lloyd started producing and directing a limited number of episodes each season. At this same time, Gordon Hessler was elevated to associate producer.

Gordon Hessler who had a tv background that included a period where he was enlisted as a story editor, director, and production associate also joined the show as a producer. Once Harrison started to phase out her involvement on the show and move back to England with her husband British mystery writer Eric Ambler,  she passed it on to Lloyd while he continued to assist as associate producer.

"At the end of this time, there was a rearrangement at Shamley and I was made a producer equally with Joan Harrison. It was also around this time that the show went to an hour. We both produced alternately. Then, for the final two years, I was made the show's executive producer alone."

Eventually, he moved on to directing horror features- The Oblong Box 1969, Scream and Scream Again 1970, Cry of the Banshee 1970, Murders in the Rue Morgue 1971, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad 1974.

The series often used writer Robert Bloch who began working on the show in 1959 in the middle of its ten-year run. The writer hadn't met with Hitchcock while filming the adaptation of his novel Psycho 1960. Two of Bloch's published stories had been bought for the series and adapted by others before his arrival in Hollywood later that year.

He began adapting his own published stories and his work was dramatized for the series. He was heavily involved in the show and mutually committed to writing screenplays and contributing to Boris Karloff's similar anthology series Thriller both programs produced at Universal Studios.

Boris Karloff’s anthology tv series: It’s a THRILLER!

"Shortly after I began my own work as a novice television writer for a little-esteemed syndication series, I was summoned to Hitchcock's Shamley Production office and offered an assignment to do a script based on Frank Mace's story ‘The Cuckoo Clock.'– Robert Bloch

“Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.” – Alfred Hitchcock

Continue reading “It’s the pictures that got small! – “Good Evening” Leading Ladies of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour Part 1″

BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 4: The Dark Goddess-This Dark Mirror

BARBARA STEELE- BLOODY WELL BELOVED

The role Barbara Steele plays in the legacy of Italian Gothic cinema of the 1960s achieving cult status, is arguably her most recognizable contribution to the sub-genre of the horror film. She’s been christened The High Priestess of Horror, Queen of Horror, and The Dark Goddess, the latter, the implication being her prowess is proof there’s a link between beauty (a woman’s power) and evil. Steele’s persona is suitable as a femme fatale, and the sum of her work is extremely feminist.

According to journalist Maitland McDonagh, she is The Face that Launched a Thousand Screams. She is the sadomasochistic Madonna of the “cinefantastique”; the queen of the wild, the beautiful, and the damned.”

“Of all the stars of horror cinema, Barbara Steele may have come the closest to pure myth {“¦} she suggests a kinky and irresistible sexual allure” – (David J Hogan)

“With goldfish-bowl eyes radiating depraved elfin beauty, and what she calls herold, suspicious Celtic soul burning blackly within, Steele played the princess in a dark fairytale.” ‘They sense something in me’ she once said of her fans, but surely it was true of her directors also. Steele followed with ‘Maybe some kind of psychic pain. The diva Dolorosa of the 1910s, reincarnated as a voluptuous revenant.’ – (from David Cairns and Daniel Riccuito for Sight and Sound)

“Angel Carter (1982) named the three surrealist love goddesses as Louise Brooks first and foremost followed by Dietrich and third Barbara Steele. With regards to Steele however, not all the following descriptions emanate from surrealists caught in the grip of amour fou” (obsessive passion).- (The Other Face of Death: Barbara Steele and La Maschera Del Demonio by Carol Jenks from NECRONOMICON edited by Andy Black)

“The very symbol of Woman as vengeful, alien and “˜other’.” (Nicholls 1984)

“Steele perfectly embodies both the dread and the desire necessary to imply alluring and transgressive sexuality.” (Lampley-Women in the Horror films of Vincent Price)

“It’s not me they’re seeing. They’re casting some projection of themselves, some aspect that I somehow symbolizes. It can’t possibly be me.” Barbara Steele quoted-(Warren 1991)

“You can’t live off being a cult.” Barbara Steele

“When did I ever deserve this dark mirror?”

 

Continue reading “BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 4: The Dark Goddess-This Dark Mirror”

A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! The Premonition 1976 – Bright Mother, Nightmare Mother

I saw this obscure chiller during its theatrical release and remember being very effected by its moody, dissonant, and menacing tone. Like many of the horror films that exist in the ether of the 1970s, (Let's Scare Jessica To Death 1971, The Brotherhood of Satan 1971, Don't Look Now 1973, Silent Night, Bloody Night 1972, Lemora, A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural  1973, The Witch Who Came From the Sea 1976, Squirm 1976, The Sentinel 1977, Tourist Trap 1979) this is among those films that left an impression on me.

A supernatural-psychological horror film by director Robert Allen Schnitzer, with cinematography by Victor Milt leads us in a dream state that is not only atmospheric and Kafkaesque it conjures up lucid nightmares for the bright mother, Sheri, and for us.

Raven-haired psychotic Andrea Fletcher (Ellen Barber) has been declared an unfit mother, and unfortunately is released from the mental institution too soon. She immediately goes in search of her little girl Janie (Danielle Brisebois in her first role) who has been adopted by Sheri and Miles Bennett (Sharon Farrell and Edward Michael Bell).

Andrea seeks help from her companion Jude, a former patient at the same hospital, a woeful carnival clown who goes looking for Janie, finding her with her adoptive mother Sheri.

The two wounded souls, Andrea and Jude, restless in their desire to reunite Janie with her birth mother, leads to Janie’s kidnapping. When Andrea snaps, Jude kills her in a fit of rage. Devastated by the loss of her daughter, Sheri has a breakdown and becomes haunted by psychic images of her daughter and Andrea's tortured spirit. Andrea’s insanity reverberates beyond her death and outward like an echo that is picked up by Sheri, whose disturbing visions reveal that she is clairvoyant.

Sheri's husband Miles, an astrophysicist brings in a colleague, Jeena Kingsly a professor of parapsychology, who studies the realms of human consciousness. Kingsly attempts to help Sheri connect to Janie telepathically. The two mothers begin a psychic tug-of-war over the possession of Janie.

Ellen Barber gives a paralyzing performance as the deranged Andrea, volatile and unhinged, she is a dark wraith in her red satin dress and black velvet cameo choker.

The character of Jude is perhaps the most layered. Richard Lynch (The Seven-Ups 1973, God Told Me Too 1976, Vampire 1979 TV movie, The Ninth Configuration 1980, The Formula 1980, Invasion U.S.A 1985, Bad Dreams 1988, Rob Zombie's Halloween 2007) – is an interesting actor, ever present in so many roles, with his interesting angular face, scarred and weathered and blond hair that hangs like a darker archangel, he is oddly sinister-sexy. A hard-working acting in film and television, he is striking often cast in horror and action films, playing odd characters with his unique persona. Schnitzer apparently hired him for his “widely divergent moods” Lynch influenced by legendary mime Marcel Marceau, brought an element of his gestures to the role of Jude.

This is your EverLovin’ Joey saying I had a premonition that you’ll be back to The Last Drive In, very soon! Happy month of October!

BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 3

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ELSA MARTINELLI

Euro art house director Roger Vadim adapted Blood and Roses in 1960, from Sheridan Le Fanu’s Sapphic vampire novella Camilla, setting down in contemporary Italy.

A lonely and bitter young heiress – jealous of her cousin’s engagement to another woman – becomes dangerously obsessed with legends surrounding a vampire ancestor, who supposedly murdered the young brides of the man she loved (IMDb).

The role of Carmilla was cast by Annette Vadim and Elsa Martinelli plays Georgia Monteverdi engaged to Leopoldo (Mel Ferrer). Camilla is secretly in love with Leopoldo. He and Georgia host a costume party to celebrate their upcoming wedding, which includes fireworks, that wind up unearthing the grave of Milarka, who is Carmilla’s ancestor, a vampiress. Milarka now possesses Camilla and designs to corrupt the lovers. Although the film is in technicolor, Vadim shoots his impressionistic dream sequence in black-and-white with red-tinted blood.

The film stoked the theme of the lesbian vampire, though not explicit, the trope gained traction in the late 1960s and 70s with Hammer Studios. Martinelli also appeared in The 10th Victim 1965.

Hayley Mills

Hayley Mills comes from acting royalty, she is the daughter of great British actor John Mills and the younger sister of Juliet Mills. I happened to have the good fortune of meeting the gorgeous Juliet Mills twice at the Chiller convention here in New Jersey. I have to say that I’ve never met a more kind and gracious actor who has a profound inner glow. Having already been a fan, I’m even more enamored with her.

Hayley was discovered while at her parent’s home in 1958 by director J. Lee Thompson who immediately cast her opposite, of her father in the thriller Tiger Bay 1959. Her breakthrough performance, winning an award at the Berlin Film Festival and being acknowledged in Hollywood by Walt Disney signed her to a five-year contract. There she starred in Pollyanna 1960 garnering rave reviews and a second hit was for The Parent Trap 1961. She went on to do That Darn Cat! 1965 and The Trouble with Angels 1966.

Mills had been offered the role of Lolita in Stanley Kubrick’s film (1962) but her parents warned off the part fearing the sexual nature of the role would taint her iconic image of purity. Sue Lyon was cast in the role instead, but Mills regretted not taking the part.

in Twisted Nerve 1968, Hayley Mills plays Susan Harper who befriends psychopath Martin Durnley (Hywel Bennett) who appears to be a painfully troubled young man, taking on the persona of a six-year-old boy who calls himself Georgie. His mother (Billie Whitelaw) infantilizes Martin. He has a brother with Down syndrome who has been hidden away in an institution. Georgie becomes fixated on the lovely and patiently kind, who realizes there’s something very wrong with Martin who ultimately goes into a murderous rage.

After Twisted Nerve in 1968, Hayley Mills went on to do more psychological thrillers in the 1970s – Once again co-starring with Hywel Bennett in Endless Night in 1972, and Deadly Strangers in 1975.

ANNA MASSEY

Anna also comes from acting royalty being the daughter of actor Raymond Massey. She is known for her role as Helen Stephens in Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom 1960 starring Karlheinz Bohm as Mark, a disturbed young man who films women as he kills them with a tripod sword so that he can get off on their reactions of terror. Anna plays Helen Stephans, the one girl that Mark feels a connection.

Once Mark is drawn to Helen they begin to spend time together. In Helen’s innocence, she remains out of danger from his dark, deranged eye on women’s suffering.

She also appeared in Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake is Missing 1965, the psycho-sexual thriller drenched in paranoia. Carol Lynley reports her little girl missing, but there seems to be no evidence that she ever existed. Anna plays Elvira Smollett one of the teachers at the school where she disappeared.

Massey went on to do two more horror films in the 1970s, Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy 1972 and The Vault of Horror 1973 an anthology directed by Roy Ward Baker.

Continue reading “BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 3”

BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 2

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JANE ASHER

British-born redhead Jane Asher started out as a child actress who worked extensively in television and film. Her contribution to the horror genre is that of her character, Francesca the unflinching heroine peasant girl who out of six is the only one to survive the plague and begs Prospero to spare her father and brother. She is thrust into the hedonistic Danse Macabre of the castle, as Prospero’s unwilling mistress, in Edgar Allan Poe’s story directed by Roger Corman THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH 1964.

From Roger Corman’s How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime –

“Masque was the most lavish of the Poe films…(part of what made the film so visually stunning with it’s vibrant color scheme is the work of cinematographer by Nicholas Roeg)

Masque was a surreal, philosophical tale set in medieval Italy with Vincent Price playing Prince Prospero, a sadistic debauched Satan worshipper who retreats into his castle and hosts a lavishly decadent ball as his land is ravaged by the Red Death…{…} I had started going out with my Masque leading lady, Jane Asher, and we were having coffee on a Friday. But Jane showed up with a young companion. “Roger”, she said, “I’d like you to meet a friend of mine from Liverpool, Paul McCartney. Paul’s never been on a movie set and he’d like to see what’s happening.” … Jane had been dating Paul but because he was constantly away on tour, she was seeing me in London.” -Roger Corman

She was Paul McCartney’s muse for much of the 1960s; “Here, There And Everywhere” and many other songs were written with Jane in mind. They were engaged for seven months until finally separating in July 1968. -IMDb tidbit

She appeared in the television series – Journey to the Unknown 1968 episode Somewhere in the Crowd. And went on to star in the psychological thriller Deep End 1970, The Buttercup Chain 1970, and the television movie, The Stone Tape 1972. Most notable is her performance in the major motion picture Alfie 1966 co-starring with Michael Caine. IMDb tidbit-By the time she was fifteen, she had appeared in 8 films, made 9 television appearances, over 100 radio appearances, and was in five plays-

Personal quote – “Of all the things I do, acting is the thing that grabs most, but there’s another level on which it strikes me as being a little silly. In the end you’re dressing up and deciding to be somebody.”

Maxine Audley

British actress noted for her perfect diction and for her excellent acting range in classical plays on stage, on television, and on radio. Her contribution to the 60s horror genre is her marvelous performance as Mrs. Stephens in Michael Powell’s subversive Peeping Tom, who can see Mark Lewis’ psychopathic personality clearly though she is blind. She has the instinct to feel that she and her daughter are in terrible danger.

Peeping Tom 1960, The Brain 1962, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed 1969.

Michiyo Aratama

Beautifully shot, suffuse the landscape with haunting and uncanny stories that are chilling in Masaki Kobyashi’s- Kwaidan 1964.

Continue reading “BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 2”

BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 1

This special The Last Drive in Halloween Feature will conclude with Part 4 and it’s primary focus exclusively on the great Barbara Steele!

‘through the complex changes in society surrounding traditional female roles using the ambivalence of the horror genre’ – Claudia Bunce

The 1960s were plagued by controversy and convulsed with violence. Horror cinema with the exception of Hammer Studio and European filmmakers’ colorful pageantry of Gothic tales, and the colorful dreamlike poetry of Mario Bava, mainly transitioned from classical themes. In the 1950s, B-horror movie narratives were concerned with outside hostile forces, alien invasions, and fear of nuclear war, but the new decade began to explore more interior horror that originated in the home and within ourselves. And many of these movies stand out as women-centric protagonists…

“Widely interpreted as a pivotal moment in the horror genre. Suggestive that monstrosity must be defined as inherent to the bourgeois family structure rather than an arcane social aberration: the crimes of Norman Bates can be read as the consequence of the sexually active mother, not unlike Marian Crane. The film is profoundly subversive.” – source unknown

After Riccardo Freda abandoned Black Sunday, the project went to cinematographer Mario Bava and became his directorial debut. The film was the start of the director’s momentous contribution to the genre with his masterful grasp of mise en scené composition, allegorical visual symbolism imagery, and the bold use of expressionist color, vivid tones, and spectrum of light. Bava directed Kill, Baby Kill! 1966 features a ghostly little blonde girl (actually a boy actor) with a white ball that is the creepy harbinger of a series of violent deaths.

Mario Bava unleashed on us his very dark-hearted black & white Black Sunday in 1960 with jolting scenes of death and a new horror goddess, the provocative, wide-eyed- Barbara Steele. During the decade of the 60s, Steele's ascendance within the genre was part of a broader trend in horror cinema that echoed the real world. Her strong presence and instinct to captivate our gaze, stood head to head with male horror stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing during that period of horror cinema. Barbara Steele inhabited the haunted screen with such a formidable primacy, there's no disputing she is the ultimate scream queen.

The Italian movie industry of the 1960s saw a wave of Italian gothic chillers. Bava's Blood and Black Lace 1964 is best remembered as the first "˜Giallo' a particularly savage trademark of murder mysteries.

Riccardo Freda directed The Horrible Dr. Hichcock 1962 and The Ghost 1963, Margheriti's beautifully orchestrated, eerily atmospheric ghost story Castle of Blood and Ciano's Nightmare Castle 1965. All starring Barbara Steele.

Roger Corman established himself as a successful director. Of course, maverick filmmaker Corman showered us with some of the best campy low budget sci-fi/horror films of the 1950s, and in the 60s we were reintroduced to the splendid Poe adaptations in a series of vivid films of glorious terror and dread, with Daniel Haller's gorgeous hallucinogenic art direction. These films are a series of Gothic masterpieces, – House of Usher 1960, Pit and the Pendulum 1961 and Masque of the Red Death 1964, featuring Hazel Court, another icon of 60s horror, who would command the screen with her fiery sensuality, flexing her bloodlust to offer herself up as Satan's bride in Red Death.

Corman established himself as a successful director with his landscapes as Rodrick Usher says are a "˜feverish and deranged mind' with his colorful more substantial yet still low-budget homages to Poe's series of horror tales. With screenplays by Richard Matheson and cinematography by Floyd Crosby. Reaching its artistic peak with the Masque of the Red Death. Many of the women in his Poe series feature a more incendiary female character. The horror genre especially from the 60s forward would prove to have more provocative roles for women since the femme fatale reigned during the time of film noir.

Instead of the restrained earlier decades, the 60s held up a mirror to the decade’s social turbulence and reflected back to us, with subversive storytelling, its edgy gore, and taboo-breaking narratives that fed a whole new audience who were hungry for more realistic and challenging scenarios. A new vanguard of filmmakers shattered traditional boundaries that restrained on-screen violence and sexuality.

Women's roles in classical horror films of the 1930s & 40s (to my memory for now), with the exception of Elsa Lanchester as the Bride, and Gloria Holden as Countess Marya Zaleska in Dracula's Daughter, initiated most of the leading ladies and supporting actresses, as easily fainting from fright, who screamed with hollow innocence, projecting reductive nuances of helplessness.

Still, there were established directors such as Alfred Hitchcock who caught wind of the changes, inspired by Clouzot's le Diabolique 1955 and impressed by William Castle's popular run of low-budget horror formula (albeit with its use of gimmickry).

Psycho 1960 would be set in safe and secure American suburbia instead of the imposing castles of Europe. The clean-cut serial killer would eclipse the caped swarthy vampire as the screen's new boogeyman. Yet Marion's ascendancy is as much a major element of the narrative as Norman Bates' psychopathy!

Hitchcock offered us the bold cautionary, The Birds, a film Fellini referred to as "an apocalyptic poem" featuring a beautiful woman perceived as a she-devil that ushered in the natural world's revolt.

FROM BARBARA CREED THE MONSTROUS FEMININE:

"Melanie Daniels in The Birds is a single woman in her thirties drifting – who must go through a trial by fire which she suffers, is humiliated and lectured to lower her defenses. She is an outsider who is being shown how social behavior becomes physically agonizing."

The stark black & white Psycho 1960 based on a real-life serial killer, Ed Gein, pushed the boundaries of the Production Code with its shocking scenes of murder and inflected frames of Janet Leigh's bra and slip. Leigh's 30-minute on-screen persona of the immoral Marion Crane was a diverging representation of the traditional leading lady.

The decade also signaled a multitude of black & white psychological thrillers. Hammer split off some of its focus on the gory period pieces- translations of Frankenstein, Dracula, and Mummy, and jumped on the Psycho bandwagon with films like Scream of Fear 1961, Maniac 1963, Nightmare 1964, Hysteria 1965, Die! Die! My Darling! 1965 starring Tallulah Bankhead as the menacing Mrs. Trafoil, not a Medieval crone but a modern-day unleashed psychopath. And, The Nanny 1965 with Bette Davis, coming off of her pair of shockers by director Robert Aldrich, plays a sinister governess terrorizing young William Dix.

After Baby Jane, the industry was rife with menacing Hollywood starlets. I'll be writing about the shattering of the myth of Hag Cinema, down the road. Robert Aldrich set in motion a trend of psychological horror films after he paired Bette Davis and Joan Crawford together in what is considered campy, outrageous at times, sickening – What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1962. It was a watershed moment for the genre.

Crawford and Davis in particular in Aldrich's films made the bold and courageous decision to act under harsh white lights, in grotesque makeup, and willing to immerse themselves into a character -eccentric, cringingly childish, and utterly sadistic.

After Baby Jane, Aldrich followed up with Davis, de Havilland, and Agnes Moorehead in Hush"¦ Hush, Sweet Charlotte 1964. Crawford worked with William Castle on Strait-Jacket 1964, and Geraldine Page played a greedy murderess in What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? Co-starring Ruth Gordon. Shelley Winters appeared as the maniacal villainess in the fable-like Who Slew Auntie Roo? 1969 and Winters, Debbie Reynolds, and Moorehead in 1971 topped it off with Harrington's What's the Matter with Helen? A personal favorite of mine.

The second wave of the feminist movement and its emergence and impact began with Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, giving 50s suburban housewives a different vision of domestic enslavement and began to disassemble the myth of that decade's family values. The quaint and complacent sentiment of post-WW2 comfortability became subverted by empowered women who broke free and found new independence reigniting the Monstrous Feminine giving permission to women as represented more freely in film, with more prominent parts, especially fostered in"¦ the horror genre.

The 60s subverted the expectations surrounding the traditional housewife roles. Witches could be well-bred housewives like Janet Blair in Burn Witch Burn 1962 or a malevolent ingénue, Sharon Tate in Eye of the Devil 1966.

“The housewife witches of Burn, Witch, Burn and Season of the Witch use witchcraft to escape the confines of the domestic sphere and subvert their husbands' patriarchal power. Then there is the cult leader witch of Eye of the Devil who uses her femininity to intimidate traditional societal gender roles” – Claudia Bunce

Significant films like Robert Wises' The Haunting 1963, which were suggestive of lesbianism and repressed sexuality, star two very significant central female characters, Julie Harris and Claire Bloom who give intensely complex and reflexive performances. Bloom as the stylish and extraordinarily self-composed Theo is a truly independent woman who lives life on her own terms. There isn’t anyone who wouldn’t shiver while at the mercy of the malevolent forces of Hill House. Director Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (The French title Les Yeux sans Visage) 1960 has perhaps one of the most graphic scenes of horror, a gruesome fairytale with its medical experimentation with facial transplantation and a lead actress, Edith Scob with her macabre blank mask who floats around the halls like a lost princess swallowed up inside a night terror. The film also stars a stoic Alida Valli, a strong ally to the twisted plastic surgeon in search of a new face for his daughter.

Jack Clayton's adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, became a screenplay by William Archibald, The Innocents 1961' lead actress Deborah Kerr lies wide open with her distillation of a woman tortured by her sexual paranoia. Dressed in classical clothes, unlike Deneuve's role in Repulsion, where her character Carol's neurosis is flayed and hung out naked on display.

And most significantly, the female-centric role of Mia Farrow as the allegorical heroine Rosemary Woodhouse, hunted down by a coven of upper west side devil worshipers in Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby 1968. Farrow's performance is a striking denunciation of control over women's bodies, a slow burn of paranoia, and a strong instinct for survival.

"but when he (Guy Woodhouse) took control of her reproductive functions, he asserted his dominance over her in the darkest way possible.

Assertion of dominance reinforced his masculinity and the traditional role that men had in relationships. Guy's taking control assuages the fear of women gaining too much independence." – From Jenna Labbie damsels in Distress Analyzing gender in horror movies of the 1960s and 70s

Polanski's earlier released Repulsion 1965 strayed from Hitchcock's black humor drizzled about in Psycho. Repulsion rather has a sense of nightmarish realism and a protagonist, Catherine Deneuve who goes down a rabbit hole of repressive seizures.

Repulsion is an extremely disturbing contemplation on the destructive forces of loneliness, isolation, and paranoia seen through the lens of a sexually repressed young woman, Carol who suffers a homicidal breakdown while her sister and married lover leave her alone for a long weekend. An exit from the cheeky dark humor of Hitchcock's Psycho, Repulsion brushes the screen with strokes of Carol's existential misery.

Michael Powell's groundbreaking shocker Peeping Tom is a hauntingly twisted mood piece about serial killer Karl Bohm who films his victims in the last moments of their death to capture their fear. It features two very strong female leads, Anna Massey and Maxine Audley.

Mexican fright flicks abound with atmospheric gems like The Curse of the Crying Woman 1963, The Brainiac 1961, and The Witch's Mirror 1962, featuring strong female-centric characters played by Rosita Arenas and Rita Macedo. And in Jack Hill's oddball black comedy Spider Baby 1967 benefitted from the quirky presence of both Beverly Washburn and Jill Banner as two bizarre, homicidal sisters.

Luana Anders features significantly in the genre, highlighted in Coppola's Dementia 13 as the independent yet ruthless Louise Halloran and as prostitute Sylvia in Robert Altman's psycho-sexual thriller That Cold Day in the Park 1969. The film stars one of my favorite underrated actors, Sandy Dennis who gives a stunning performance as the disturbed Francis Austen, who holds Michael Burns hostage.

George Romero broke ground with the brutal realism of Night of the Living Dead 1968 which has not so indirect social relevance. 60s horror films were breaking away from Hollywood and being forged by gutsy independent filmmakers with smaller budgets, and an imaginative longing to experiment with diversity, artistic style, and a divergent way to visualize and process gender roles outside traditional cultural norms.

Barbara Shelley

The Queen of Hammer

Ryan Gilbey, in her obituary in The Guardian, praises Shelley’s acting in the Hammer films, considering that she had “a grounded, rational quality that instantly conferred gravitas on whatever lunatic occurrences were unfolding around her.”

The world lost Barbara Shelley in January 2021 at the age of 88. With hair like paprika, Barbara Shelley was born Barbara Kowin. A glamorous gothic leading lady was considered the "˜Queen of Hammer' during the studio's golden age of Gothic horror. A classical beauty, with an air of elegance and self-assuredness, she has co-starred with other Hammer royalty Christoper Lee and Peter Cushing. Shelley was an actress with such integrity and beauty that she transcended the horror genre.

The London-based production company was founded in 1934 by William Hinds and James Carrera who made a string of hit Gothic horror films from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Inspired by classic horror characters like Baron Victor Frankenstein, Count Dracula, and the Mummy and appeared in 104 films and television series until 2000. She was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company between 1975 and 1977.

From Wiki-
{Hammer reintroduced to audiences by filming them in vivid colour for the first time. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies, as well as, in later years, television series. During its most successful years, Hammer dominated the horror film market, enjoying worldwide distribution and considerable financial success.}

"Hammer was like a family, a very talented family"¦ with a wonderful atmosphere on the set and a wonderful sense of humour"

"When I first started doing Hammer, all the so-called classic actors looked down on the horror film. All the other things I did, nobody remembers those. But for the horror films, I'm very grateful to them because they built me a fan base, and I'm very touched that people will come and ask for my autograph. If you went to see a [Hammer] film in the cinema, the gasps were interspersed with giggles because people were giggling at themselves for being frightened, they were frightening themselves, and this is what made Hammer very special."

With her success as a teenage model, she made her minor film debut in Hammer's motion picture Mantrap in 1952 directed by Terence Fisher and starring Paul Henreid and Lois Maxwell.

Shelley took her screen name from Italian actor Walter Chiari who saw something in the actress and suggested that she use the last name as a tribute to his favorite English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. She wound up living in Rome for four years and appeared in nine Italian-speaking films.

She returned to the UK in 1957, starring that year for British Lion Film in her first starring role within the horror genre as Leonora Johnson née Brandt in Cat Girl (1957), directed by Alfred Shaughnessy who set out to borrow from Jacques Tourneur's superior, and innovative Cat People (1942.) Leonora Johnson returns to her ancestral home that is beset with the family curse, that she will be possessed by the spirit of a leopard. The film was a collaboration between American International Pictures and the British Anglo-Amalgamated.

Her first starring vehicle was Cat Girl (1957), Alfred Shaughnessy's offbeat variation of Jacques Tourneur's influential Cat People (1942), and A.I.P.'s first co-production with the UK's Anglo-Amalgamated. The following year she made her first major appearance in a film for Hammer The Camp on Blood Island.

In 1958, she co-starred as a woman in peril at the hands of mad scientist Callistratus (Donald Wolfit). In Blood of the Vampire, Shelley is the picture of fainting beauty chained to the wall, a garish period piece in line with the days of Universal's classic horrors though scattered with gory scenes satiated by fake blood and understated cleavage.

In 1880 Transylvania Dr. Calistratus is brought back to life by his one-eyed hunchback assistant Carl after he'd been executed as a vampire. At the same time, Dr. John Pierre (Vincent Ball) is on trial for killing one of his patients whom he tried to save with a blood transfusion. He is found guilty and sentenced to life. Barbara Shelley plays fiancee, Madeleine, set on finding the truth behind the incriminating letter allegedly proving his guilt, forged by Calistratus.

He is brought to prison for the criminally insane by the mad doctor's hunchback Carl. John is put in a cell, a menacing place guarded by vicious dogs, where Calastratus experiments and tortures his human subjects. In order to prove John's innocence Madeleine poses as Calastratus' housekeeper who winds up chained to a wall and strapped to an operating table!

Shelley was against her body being exploited or appearing in any nude scenes while being menaced by Wolfit. She warded off this endeavor by producers Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman by writing the word "STOP" on her chest. She threatened to sue the studio if it even used a body double.

"I had one or two dissertations on horror sent to me by students, and all the discussion ever seems to be concerned with is exploitation and the licking of blood and a scene of people making love, and it's not right. It annoys me intensely because my career was not built on exploitation and sex. It was built on working very hard."

In 1960, she is marvelous in the heartbreaking role of the tragic mother Anthea Zellerby who has given birth to an unfeeling monstrous alien boy who has uncanny dangerous powers along with the rest of the children of Midwich. All the mothers in Midwich have conceived during a strange blackout where they wind up giving birth to a breed of malevolent telepathic sociopaths.

Shelley's character is earnest in the role of a woman torn between motherhood and sheer terror in director Wolf Rilla's incredibly unsettling moody classic blend of science fiction and horror-Village of the Damned (1960) based on John Wyndham's science fiction novel The Midwich Cuckoos. The film co-stars George Sanders as Shelley's altruistic husband Gordon, who seeks to understand the menacing children with their freaky white hair and piercing eyes and his creepy son David played by Martin Stephans. These dangerous little progeny can get inside people's minds and make them do anything they want, as in making Shelley's character stick her hand in a pot of boiling water. The screenplay written by Stirling Sillipant is quite a disturbing potboiler it total.

She went on to star in John Gilling's turn-of-the-century old dark house mystery Shadow of the Cat (1961)

Some of the outstanding pictures that put her upon the thrown as the reigning Queen of those splendid years of Gothic horror are Dracula: Prince of Darkness 1966, Rasputin the Mad Monk 1966 with Christopher Lee, and The Gorgon 1964 with Peter Cushing. The monstrous Gorgon is portrayed by Prudence Hyman.

"She really was Hammer's number one leading lady and the Technicolor queen of Hammer.
"On-screen she could be quietly evil. She goes from statuesque beauty to just animalistic wildness"¦ She adored Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and loved working with them, that was very dear to her."-Agent, Thomas Bowington

What truly established Barbara Shelley's esteemed reputation as the First Lady of British Horror in the mid-1960s is her collaboration with Terence Fisher. Leaving behind the more exploitative persona of the luscious heroine with inviting bosoms Shelley portrayed the sympathetic character of Carla Hoffman in Fisher's mood piece The Gorgon. Carla is the assistant to Dr. Namaroff (Peter Cushing) and a tortured soul possessed by an ancient evil spirit with serpents for hair and the ability to turn whoever gazes upon her to stone, and Shelley conveys the bleakness of a woman who is held captive by her monstrous alter ego.

Before Shelley turns into the blood-sucking bride of Dracula, she plays her first woman transformed into a monster in The Gorgon (1964). She told the studio "I wouldn't need any makeup"¦ just a green face and the headdress of real snakes." Shelley absolutely let down when she saw what the special effects department conjured up, “They came up with these terrible sorts of rubber snakes dancing around and it just looked awful. It wasn’t frightening at all.” She had said that it was “probably the biggest regret I’ve had in any film I ever made.”

She was absolutely dejected when they chose to substitute Prudence Hyman in the part of the Gorgon, "They came up with these terrible sorts of rubber snakes dancing around, and it just looked awful. It wasn't frightening at all." She called it "probably the biggest regret I've had in any film I ever made" though she admired the look of the picture, noting that "every shot "¦ resembles a Rembrandt painting."

In Dracula: Prince of Darkness 1966, Christopher Lee resurrects the count from Horrors of Dracula 1958. Shelley plays Helen the heroine whom we empathize with as she is trapped by her circumstances, when her stubborn husband Alan (who dismisses Helen's panic), and his brother Charles, both refuse to leave the creepy unwelcoming Castle Dracula after stumbling onto the unattended mausoleum.

They want to stay and partake in a meal laid out for them, but Helen is justifiably spooked by its strange undercurrent. "Everything about this place is evil".

Once Christopher Lee's resurrection, Helen goes through a diverging transformation from the archetypal repressed female to an unrestrained raptorial vampiress liberated from her proper English breeding, in high contrast to her tight up swung hair in a provincial hat, was now wide open with unwound flowing hair and unequivocal breastage. Shelley loved how distinct her character's trajectory was in Dracula: Prince of Darkness. From inhibited, startled gentlewoman to the monstrous feminine as one of Dracula's brides. When she appears at Karlsbad Castle, telling Suzan Farmer, “Nothing’s wrong” through hungry red lips and baring fangs. "Come sister, You don't need Charles"¦" she tempts, with inviting arms outstretched to the innocent Suzan Farmer as Diana. Shelley's virtuous woman who reveals to her Diana that she is now a vampire is lauded by Gilbey in The Guardian as having “traumatized and tantalized” viewers.

Shelley's scream in Dracula is actually dubbed by fellow actress Suzan Farmer (Die Monster Die! 1965 with Boris Karloff) who appeared with her in Dracula: Prince of Darkness and Rasputin The Mad Monk.

A terrifying scene perhaps inspiring Stephen King's Salem's Lot, has Helen tapping on the window in the middle of the night. "Please let me in," she pleads. "It's cold out here. So cold. Everything's all right now."

She was delighted by one of her most potent scenes -when she contends with her adversaries – monks who lie her on a table and hammer a stake through her undead heart.

Shelley told Mark Gatiss in his 2010 documentary series A History of Horror, “The scene that I’m most proud of is when she is staked that’s absolute evil when she’s struggling and then suddenly she’s staked and there is tremendous serenity. And I think that is one of my best moments in the film.”

"… and then suddenly she's staked, and there is tremendous serenity. And I think that is one of my best moments on film."

“Christopher Lee, who was an eloquent Gothic figure of pure evil in 1958’s first adaptation of Stoker’s vampire, had now evolved into a hissing fiend. But Shelley had this to say about the actor -“He brought dignity and veritas. It’s a difficult thing to bring to a fantasy like a vampire. And that is just Chris’ appearance and his personality. He did all that. He used to walk onto the sent and I’d say to him it’s an extraordinary performance, cause we know each other so well and you could hypnotize me. But it was brilliant because he completely dominated the film without a word. Talk about silent movies!”

Shot at the same time was another Hammer horror, Rasputin the Mad Monk with Christopher Lee has dialogue in a more colorful, lurid role, as the mad mesmerist in contrast to his silent, blood-eyed fiend. Shelley falls under the spell of Rasputin. While not willing to do a nude scene in Blood of the Vampire, she was however up to laying bare a seduction scene with Christoper Lee. “That scene was in the script when I read it. The scenes I refused to do was when they would suddenly say to me ‘Oh, you take your clothes off here’ The answer to that was always no” – From an interview with Fangoria Magazine 2010.

One of her beloved roles is her last Hammer feature in Roy Ward Baker's adaption of writer Nigel Kneale's (The Quatermass Experiment 1955, First Men in the Moon 1964, The Witches 1966, The Stone Tape 1972 TV movie) Quatermass and the Pit 1967.

In Quatermass and the Pit, Shelley portrays scientist Barbara Judd who along with paleontologist Doctor Roney (James Donald) and a team of scientists discover an ancient alien race whose spacecraft is found buried in the underground station at Hobbs End during an expansion of London's Underground transport system. Shelley develops a psychic link to the aliens and is taken over by the inhabitants of the alien spacecraft.

She is subjected to images of green gooey decomposing locust-like alien carcasses that in the process of being removed from the tunnels cause her brain to succumb to the electromagnetic influence of the spacecraft, causing her to writhe in pain. She is so totally reasonable as an actress that she brings credibility to her character. Shelly had claimed that director Roy Ward Baker was her favorite of all the filmmakers she worked with.

The way he felt about her goes like this. He told Bizarre Magazine in a 1974 interview that he was "˜mad about her. "Mad in the sense of love," he said. "We used to waltz about the set together, a great love affair. It puzzles me about her. She should be much bigger than she is, but I don't think she really cares whether she is a star or not. She can act, God, she can act!"

In The Avengers 1961 image: Studio Canal

Barbara Shelley would eventually do guest appearances on popular television shows including the British television series Doctor Who playing Sorasta in the episode "Planet Of Fire," starring Peter Davison as the fifth incarnation of Doctor Who. She would also appear on The Saint, The Avengers, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, and Route 66. Later she would play Hester Samuels in "EastEnders."

Shelley's final role in horror films was in the old dark house mystery Ghost Story 1974 directed by Stephen Weeks and co-starring Marianne Faithful.

Her final role on screen was in the Uncle Silas mini-series in 1989. A sinister character brought to life on screen by Derrick De Marney in 1947 with Jean Simmons in the role of Caroline.

Although Shelley ultimately felt framed within the horror genre by the late 1960s, retiring two decades later, she always embraced her devoted fanbase and left behind a substantial legacy. “I realized that my work had been appreciated and that I had – through those horror films – actually reached a far bigger audience than I would ever have done if I’d stuck to the theater.”

The actress was modest about her achievements but happy with her legacy, as she conveyed with typical aplomb to Marcus Hearn: "There's a lovely saying "“ we're given memories so we can have roses in winter. When I look back over my various rose gardens, I'm only sorry I didn't enjoy them more".

"No one told me I was beautiful. They said I was photogenic but no one said I was beautiful. If they had I would have had a lot more fun!"

In an interview with the Express newspaper in 2009, she said she was told at a convention by female fans that they loved her for her strong roles. "Which I thought was a brilliant thing to have said about one. I never thought of it in that way. The fact that I'm still getting mail from my horror fan base really touches me."

TRIVIA

While making the 1961 TV film, A Story of David, she met Hollywood star Jeff Chandler and they began a relationship. Chandler died suddenly the following year. Shelley is later reported to have said that he had been the love of her life

So convincing was Shelley's violently realistic struggle against the stake, she swallowed one of her stuck-on fangs.

With no spares at the ready and a tight shooting schedule, it is reported that she kept drinking salt water until she puked it up.

After the scene in Dracula: Prince of Darkness where she struggles with the monks at the end with her demise, it was so physically demanding on Shelley, that she suffered from chronic back pain.

Barbara Shelley would recall how she and Lee, prided themselves on being "un-corpseable", and would compete to make one another laugh during takes.

Cat Girl 1957, Blood of the Vampire 1958, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED 1960 THE GORGON 1964,  DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS 1966, RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK 1966, QUATERMASS AND THE PIT 1967

Continue reading “BRIDES OF HORROR – Scream Queens of the 1960s! – Part 1”

Chapter 2 – Queers and Dykes in the Dark: Classic, Noir & Horror Cinema’s Coded Gay Characters:

THE LAND OF MORAL AMBIGUITY: HOLLYWOOD & THE HAYS CODE

"Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex Relationships are the accepted or common thing…"

Prior to the Production Code, LGBT characters were somewhat prevalent, if heavily stereotyped and exploited, in a number of major films. The 1920s especially were a time of shifting societal norms and expanding artistic experimentation. As women rode the first wave of feminism and prohibition was increasingly challenged, filmmakers began to expand their boundaries and feature more controversial plotlines. – Sophie Cleghorn

Pre-Code was a brief period in the American film industry between the dawn of talking pictures in 1929 and the formal enforcement in 1934 of the Motion Picture Production Code (MPPC) familiarly known as the Hays Code. Pre-Code was a glorious time in the history of cinema. It was during the Depression Era before the cultural politics of Clergy and reformer organizations came in and initiated the need for moral governance over the film industry. Their interference evolved into the Hays Code created to oversee silent and talking pictures.

In the late 1920s before the Hays Code, films began to speak becoming audible and more realistic as Hollywood recognized that many Americans knew all about sex. In the early era of talkies during the gutsy cinema of the Depression era, there was nothing stopping the studios from producing daring films. Hollywood movies weren’t afraid to show gay characters or reference their experiences. Ironically, queers were pretty visible onscreen at this time in American cinema. These characters left an impression on trade papers like Variety which called this phenomenon – “queer flashes.”

Also in the early twenties, there were notorious scandals on and off-screen. Hollywood’s moral ambiguity was literally in the clutches of the Hays Code which the MPPDA used to wage a moral battle against Hollywood that they perceived would eventually lead to cultural ruination. The priggish William Hays was a deacon in the Presbyterian church, a former chair of the Republican party, and postmaster general before he was picked to lead the war on decadence in the movie industry. William Hays was appointed chairman of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) from the year it was established in 1922 to 1945, but the Hays Code was not overturned until 1968. Hays and his code regulated film content for nearly forty years. The little worm.

W.C.Fields and Franklin Pangborn- Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941)

The Hays Code became a series of self-imposed, perceived-to-be-moral guidelines that told filmmakers and the major studios what was permissible to do in their movies. The Code was established in 1930, and the MPPC set forth censorship guidelines that weren’t yet strictly enforced. And states had their own censorship boards and so their individual standards varied. Hays tried to contain his guidelines without the intrusion of government censorship, so he created his own Production Code that was for all intents and purposes optional for studios.

They felt that the liberal themes of films in the 1920s were contributing to the supposed debauchery infiltrating society. They championed government censorship as the solution to return society to its traditional moral standards (Mondello).

In June 1927, Hays publicized a list of cautionary rules. A construct of ‘Don'ts and Be Carefuls'. The document and empowering legislation spelled out guidelines for propriety on screen in classic Hollywood that became known as the Production Code. It was co-authored in 1929 by Martin J. Quigley, a prominent Catholic layman, editor of the journal Motion Picture Herald, and Reverend Daniel A. Lord, a Jesuit Priest. Their collaboration reflected a ‘Victorianism’ that would tint the freedom of Hollywood’s creative license. “The Production Code was a template for a theological takeover of American cinema.” “No picture should lower the moral standards of those who see it.”

“Just Ten of the Thous Shalt Nots”

Homosexuality

While the Code did not explicitly state that depictions of homosexuality were against the Code, the Code barred the depiction of any kind of sexual perversion or deviance, which homosexuality fell under at the time. -Wikipedia

The convict

"The courts of the land should not be presented as unjust"¦"

Prostitution and fallen women

"Brothels and houses of ill-fame are not proper locations for drama. They suggest to the average person at once sex sin, or they excite an unwholesome and morbid curiosity in the minds of youth"¦"

Bad girls

"Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing"¦"

Musicals

"Dancing costumes cut to permit indecent actions or movements are wrong"¦ Dances suggesting or representing sexual actions or indecent passion are forbidden"¦"

Adultery and the sanctity of marriage

"Adultery as a subject should be avoided"¦ It is never a fit subject for comedy. Thru comedy of this sort, ridicule is thrown on the essential relationships of home and family and marriage, and illicit relationships are made to seem permissible, and either delightful or daring."

NOT TO MENTION: GOD COMPLEXES-

Boris Karloff is Dr. Henry Frankenstein’s creation. Make-up by Jack Pierce.

By the time the sequel Bride of Frankenstein was released in 1935, enforcement of the code was in full effect and Dr. Henry Frankenstein’s overt God complex was forbidden. In the first picture, however, when the creature was born, his mad scientist creator was free to proclaim “Now I know what it feels like to be a God.”

‘Don’ts’ included “profanity,” “sex hygiene,” “miscegenation,” and "ridicule of the clergy." There was a much longer list of "˜Be carefuls' which indicated it was offensive to “show sympathy for criminals,” “arson,” “surgical operations,” "excessive or lustful kissing” and of course “HOMOSEXUALITY.”

Hays appointed Colonel Jason S. Joy to be in charge of the supervisory agency, the Studio Relations Committee. Once the first talky The Jazz Singer (1927) starring Al Jolson was released a newly fired-up rebel cry was heard from the hoity-toity do-gooders who raised objections against Hollywood’s immorality. What was once suggestive in silent pictures was now committed to sound, with all its risque humor and wicked context.

In 1934 censorship was tightening its stranglehold. Under pressure from the Catholic Church and other religious groups, the Motion Picture Production Code made it so that any marginal gay characters became masked in innuendo, relying on queer symbolism instead. Several grassroots organizations were founded in order to pressure the film industry, the most influential of all was the Catholic Legion of Decency.

So, between the Code and state censorship boards, one might expect that films produced after 1930 would be exemplars of wholesomeness and purity. In practice, the men who enforced the Code on behalf of the MPPDA (Jason Joy and James Wingate) were wholly ineffectual, primarily due to the very small staffs they were allotted to keep up with the work of reviewing scripts, treatments and finished films while battling studios that weren't especially thrilled by the bottleneck caused by the whole operation. The combination of bureaucratic sclerosis and the economic, political and cultural crisis brought about by the Great Depression ushered in a vibrant era of filmmaking and the introduction of many stars whose personas would forever be rooted in their pre-Code films.- Mike Mashon

The Code set in place in 1930 was a turning point in the history of self-regulation. With the strict enforcement of the Production Code, they attempted to influence the discourse in American film without coming out and definitively stating which contexts were strictly forbidden. Instead, they issued phrases like "should be avoided" and "should not suggest." Though a variety of controversial topics weren’t vigorously banned by the Production Code, gay characters WERE strictly prohibited. 

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) directed by Alfred Hitchcock- Peter Lorre

When the Hays Code was adopted in 1930, they articulated that, “though regarding motion pictures primarily as entertainment without any explicit purpose of teaching or propaganda, they know that the motion picture within its own field of entertainment may be directly responsible for spiritual or moral progress, for higher types of social life, and for much correct thinking.”

When the MPPDA formally ratified The Code, they demanded that it be followed to the letter but it “lacked an effective enforcement mechanism” – and the studio heads openly defied its frame of mind and its puritanical spirit.

The movie studios had other pressing issues of concern. It was the Great Depression, and studios were barely making it, on the brink of ruin due to low ticket sales. They were quite ready to fight with states over censorship because sex and violence sell. They wanted to draw in audiences that would be titillated by gangsters, vamps, and racy subject matter. Popular musicals could entertain with disparaging racial clichés and glamorous, intoxicating imagery, with hints of queerness. You could also watch languid prostitutes on screen — everyone seems to long for Shanghai Lil, in the film that has it all, Footlight Parade (1933)

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Filmmakers tried to switch around controversial subject matter that would not only push the boundaries but would promote ticket sales, with films that would attract a more sophisticated audience. Breen perceived these films to be less ‘dangerous’ a word he often used. They focused on the ‘gangster’ film with its violent content, and when they put their foot on that genre’s neck, Hollywood rolled out the ‘fallen woman‘ films. They tried very hard to get around the scrutiny and so they delved into making horror pictures, and racy comedies. These fare better as they fell under the heading of being ‘unrealistic’ which rendered them as innocuous material to the censors.

During the Great Depression, movies were an escape for audiences in dire need of distraction. The morally-charged stranglehold that was beginning to challenge filmmakers forced them to experiment with movies that were audacious and candid in different ways. Pre-Code actually challenged audiences to watch real-life issues on screen. Pre-Code cinema offered some titillating truths coming out of the dream factory. Depression-era cinema exhibited gay characters, but generally in small parts and often used for comic purposes that managed to cue audiences in, with roles that were codified and readable as queer. ‘Queerness’ was railed against because it subverted traditional masculinity which was under attack by the new socioeconomic crisis in the country. Yet somehow, Hollywood found it to be a viable trigger for ideological gossip.

These films illustrated narratives that were thought-provoking, worldly, and subversive. Movies dealt frankly or were suggestive of sexual innuendo, sexual relationships between races, mild profanity, drug use, promiscuity, prostitution, infidelity, abortion, intense violence, and of course, homosexuality.

William Wellman’s Safe in Hell (1931) stars Dorothy Mackaill as a call girl in hiding. Prostitution is a no no!

Filmmakers took risks delivering a portrait of America with a punishing realism, and creative freedom to portray taboo themes like crime (gangs and guns, violence), and social dilemmas (drug abuse, poverty, and political unrest). And sexual relationships (adultery, promiscuity, deviance = homosexuality). In the 1930s filmmakers also sought to stir up controversy by screening queer characters, in order to shock audiences and drive up their ticket sales. As a result, movies became more lewd, ruthless, and vicious between 1930 and 1934. And Hollywood was its MOST queer from 1932-1934.

Yet during the silent era to the mid-thirties, gay characters were illustrated as stereotypes showcasing the popular tropes established by conventional hetero-normative gender bias. These archetypes were styled to be gender non-conformists. Queer men were fussy, effeminate, and flamboyant. With high-pitched voices, the air under their feet, and waving hands. Essentially, ‘fairies’ were deployed as comic relief on the periphery of the drama. Real-life queers of the Depression era and later periods were exposed to cinematic images, the vast majority being caricatured in which gays and lesbians were often presented as targets of ridicule and contempt for their divine decadence. ‘Entertainers play with gender ambiguity in Broadway thru a Keyhole (1933).‘ (Lugowski)

Lesbians were at the other end of the spectrum. They were ‘masculine,’ demonstrating deep voices, cross-dressing in male attire, and were installed in male-dominated professions. They were often invalidated by the straight male characters and were either played for the uncomfortable humor or shown as baffling to men. The PCA in its Hollywood’s Movie Commandments specified that there could be no comic characters “introduced into a screenplay pantomiming a pervert.” (Lugowski)

Gender Reversals, Queerness, and a Nation in Crisis.–

In Michael Curtiz’s The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932) Suddenly, queer imagery in film, typically in the form of comical representations of gay men, lesbians, and ambiguous sexuality, did not seem so funny any-more, least of all to those charged with applying Hollywood’s Production Code to film content. By “queer” imagery, I am focusing particularly on situations, lines of dialogue, and characters that represent behavior coded, according to widely accepted stereotypes, as cross-gendered in nature. As played by such prominent and well-established supporting comedy character actors as Franklin Pangborn, Edward Everett Horton, Grady Sutton, Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore, and Ernest Truex, queer men tended to appear as one of two types.

The queer in his more subdued form appears as the dithering, asexual “sissy,” sometimes befuddled, incompetent,and, if married, very henpecked (Horton), and sometimes fussy and officious (Pangborn). Pangborn, however, was one of the actors who (along with the unsung likes of Tyrell Davis and Tyler Brooke) also played or suggested the other type, the more outrageous “pansy,” an extremely effeminate boulevardier-type sporting lip-stick, rouge, a trim mustache and hairstyle, and an equally trim suit, incomplete without a boutonniere. Although a number of actors played or were even typecast in such roles, one generally doesn’t find a circle of prominent supporting actresses whose personas seemed designed to connote lesbianism (the closest, perhaps, is Cecil Cunningham) lesbian representation occurs frequently as well, and in perhaps a greater range of gradations. At her most overt, the lesbian was clad in a mannishly tailored suit (often a tuxedo), her hair slicked back or cut in a short bob. She sometimes sported a monocle and cigarette holder (or cigar!) and invariably possessed a deep alto voice and a haughty, aggressive attitude toward men, work, or any business at hand. Objections arose because she seemed to usurp male privilege; perhaps the pansy seemed to give it up. -David M.Lugowski: Queering the (New) Deal-Lesbian and Gay Representation and the Depression-Era Cultural Politics of Hollywood’s Production Code

Filmmakers were encouraged not to promote lifestyles of a ‘morally questionable’ nature, so queers remained as humorous detours away from the central story. It was a subtle defiance that filmmakers were determined to feature queer characters in their films in spite of the ban. Because of the threat of boycotts, this created some maneuvering around the scrutiny. Queer identities were not portrayed with depth or realism, this marginalized group was relegated to one-dimensional stereotypes. They were never shown to be in romantic relationships and filmmakers relied on visual cues to signal the character’s identity.

Censors at the PCA, for example, were very worried about the three female characters in William Dieterle’s Dr. Monica (1934) starring Kay Francis. The film is the story of three women, an alcoholic, a nymphomaniac, and a lesbian. In October 1935, Joseph Breen wrote a letter to RKO’s head B.B. Kahane concerned about Follow the Fleet (1936) starring Fred Astaire who gives a dance lesson to all male sailors. “We are assuming of course that you will exercise your usual good taste in this scene of the sailors learning to dance. There will be no attempt to inject any ‘pansy’ humor into the scene.”

Due to a new, stricter Motion Picture Production Code, gays were being swept under the rug in movies. In the late 1930s and 1940s the only way to circumvent the Code was by painting homosexuals as cold-hearted villains (The Celluloid Closet). Now it appeared that gays were committing terrible crimes because of their sexual orientation, implying that homosexuality leads to insanity. In a society where being homosexual was synonymous with being sinful, it is no surprise that Hollywood made the leap to correlating a homosexual orientation with malicious crimes and wicked urges (Weir).

Alfred Hitchcock is a visual magician who rolls out the answers gradually while deconstructing what is explicit in the narrative. He is one of the most measured auteurs, whose eye for detail links each scene together like a skillful puzzle. He has been studied, tributed, and –in my opinion–unsuccessfully imitated. Rigid to conform, he danced around the Hays Code like a cunning acrobat indulging his vision while deflecting the lax regulations. There are arguments that Hitchcock insinuated homophobic messages in some of his films. The queer characters were all deviants and psychopathic predators, who were the ones responsible for some of the most heinous murders on screen. For example, in his film Rope (1948) the two Nietzschian murderers are intellectual companions who get off on trying to perpetrate the perfect murder. They exhibit a romantic friendship with no sexual contact on the screen. Yet there are cues that they are sexually aroused by each other’s mutual pleasure at killing a young boy. The Hays Code inhibited the depiction of a queer couple so Hitchcock had to subtly suggest their sexual relationship by dropping metaphors and visual clues. Though, it might be interpreted through a homophobic lens, and their homosexuality might be at the core of their cruel and immoral nature.

According to David Greven, Hitchcock’s homophelia ‘was through a larger conflict that Hitchcock’s cinema that filmmakers conducted their investigation of American masculinity, one that focused on fissures and failures. Homosexuality emerged as representative of these and also as potential new direction for American masculinity to take, not without serious risk but also treated with surprising, fascinated interest… Hitchcock’s radical de-centering of heterosexual male dominance, devising contemporary narratives of heterosexual male ambivalence that allowed for, at times depended on, an investment in same-sex desire as well as an awareness of its dangerous, pernicious seductions. Homophobia in both Hitchcock and the New Hollywood’s informed by an attendant fascination with the homoerotic that emerges from scenes of gender crisis and disorganization that are rife in both the Cold War and New Hollywood eras. 

Any illicit sexual behavior on screen considered perverse would be demonized and exploited as immoral. Queers were shown as villainous, dangerous deviants who were fated for ruination and/or death.

There were several broad categories the Code was not vague about. Any movies depicting criminality had to essentially illustrate that there would be consequences. The message was clear, any flagrant criminal behavior is abhorrent and audiences should NOT feel sympathy, primarily through the implicit edict of “compensating moral values.”

Authority figures had to be treated with respect, and the clergy could not be portrayed as comic characters or villains. Under some circumstances, politicians, police officers, and judges could be villains, as long as it was clear that those individuals portrayed as villains were the exceptions to the rule.

Clearly, there were some productive strategies for circumventing the Motion Picture Production Code. They enabled characters that performed behind the veil, under the radar of social acceptability, while dancing a step closer to the fringe. It allowed for ‘queering the screen’. I find it feasible to consider how Alexander Doty points out that ‘queering’ something implies that you are taking a thing that is straight and doing something to it. Rather it should be considered that it’s less about co-opting or subverting films – making things queer, and more about how something might be understood as queer.

It might be easy to read Zasu Pitt’s and Thelma Todd’s relationship, the brilliantly paired comedy twosome, as lovers. While they perform humorous heterosexual man-hunting, they sure seem to be most interested in each other and sure look adorable in their pajamas! I wonder, as Big Daddy says if there’s ‘something missing here’. Below, they are in the film short directed by Hal Roach – On The Loose 1931, with bobbed hair, leaning into each other in bed together, looking awfully intimate.

To be ‘queer’ is also to deconstruct existing norms and ‘destabilize’ them, making it harder to define, so that it is a clear picture of non-normative straight masculinity/femininity.

What was perceptible to those ‘in the life’ were expressions, and gestures, of the term often used by the Hays Code, ‘deviancy.’ One of the things that the Code banned in Clause 6 Section 2 on "Sex" was that "sex perversion or any inference to it is forbidden."

Not that films during the reign of the Code were ripe with queer love stories, of course. There were none to be found beyond the foreign offerings of Oswald’s Different From the Others and Mädchen in Uniform. The most prevalent allusion to being gay was the flamboyant man who was the ambiguous bachelor or fussy asexual husband. If there was anything close to a butch woman, she could be an earthy farmer’s wife, a Marjorie Main or Patsy Kelly type (Both lesbians in real life). A tough-as-nails prison matron, a tyrannical madame, or a risque nightclub owner. Perhaps she’s an embittered heavy drinker or just one of the guys who is a faithful friend to the female lead. Maybe she never gets the guy or hasn’t met the right man. Perhaps she was married to a no-good bum and is off men for good!.. And just sometimes, sometimes it’s because… well some of us would know why!

Thelma Todd joined up with Patsy Kelly in comedy series. Here’s a lobby card for their Babes in the Goods. The two became very good friends during their collaboration.

Patsy Kelly had started in Vaudeville and appeared in Wonder Bar 1931 centered around a Parisian club. Kelly played Elektra Pivonaka and sang two lively songs.

She is known for her ballsy, straight-forward, no-nonsense persona, be it her tough-as-nails nurse Mac in Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss (1964) or as Laura-Louise, attending to Rosemary (Mia Farrow) in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Kelly played very non-feminine roles, injecting a bit of her ‘in the life’ energy into the characters in every one of her roles. More often than not she had an unglamorous reputation as a funny spunky, brassy, wise-cracking gal who played a lot of maids. She was outspoken about being an uncloseted lesbian, which hurt her movie career in the 1940s. But she had been a very successful actress on Broadway, returning to the stage in 1971 winning a Tony Award for No, No Nanette and Irene.

In director/screenwriter Sam Fuller’s sensationalist The Naked Kiss (1964), Patsy Kelly plays Mac the nurse, a hard-edged pussy cat. A no-nonsense nurse who lives for helping children with disabilities, but there is no visible sign that she has the slightest interest in men, aside from a smart-alecky comment about Grant bringing her back a man from Europe. Kelly might have wanted her role as an independent woman with a more offbeat way of stating that she is a tough dyke and expected Fuller to write her into the script that way. Knowing Kelly that’s a good assumption. The film is audacious in its scope for dealing with more than one theme, as taboo as prostitution, abortion, and pedophilia.

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The Catholic Legion of Decency used their influence to label gays as ‘sexual deviants’, not be depicted on screen. ‘Deviancy’ was used to refer to any behavior deviating from what was perceived to be normal in terms of romance, sex, and gender. Hays even ordered all ‘Nance’ characters to be removed from screenplays.

The Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Hays Code tried to make symbolic gestures to maintain decency in films. The Legion of Decency was getting pressure from the Catholic Church. So in 1934 came up with A-acceptable B-Morally Objectionable and C-Condemned. Hollywood promised to observe the rules. The various subject matter was restricted to screen-open mouth kissing, lustful embraces, sex perversion, seduction, rape, abortion, prostitution, white slavery, nudity, obscenity, and profanity.

But all this unsolicited attention caused the studios to be watchful of their off-screen personnel, and they also had to be certain that the Los Angeles Police Department received payoffs to keep their mouths shut. Though the lurid and shocking subject matter was no longer tolerated on screen, the studios tried to continue to release their films without the intrusion of the Hays Office, even though from a commercial standpoint, sex sells.

Warner Bros.’ lack of cooperation with the Code until the bitter end and how Paramount, which was cooperative under B. P. Schulberg, decided to be “as daring as possible” under Emmanuel Cohen in 1932 and 1933. At MGM, Irving Thalberg’s resistance only really ended with his heart attack and journey abroad to recover in 1933. As James Wingate, Breen’s SRC predecessor, put things that same year: (Lugowski)

In 1934 Jack Warner ignored Breen’s letter and phone calls about a scene in Wonder Bar (1934) that explicitly demonstrates homoerotic desire. In it, one man cuts in to dance with another man, interrupting a woman who is dancing with her male partner. “May I cut in?”  she responds, “Why certainly,” as the man’s suitor grabs her chaperone to dance instead. The film stars Al Jolson who exclaims, “Boys will be boys!” Breen would later write, “It is quite evident that the gentleman [Warner] is giving me the runaround. He evidently thinks that this is the smart thing to do.” Wonder Bar may have added a flash of queer diversion as part of the entertainment, but it is an incredibly offensive and racist film using a cast who are in Black face.

During the ongoing Depression era, sissy and lesbian characters of the period continued to be screened as effeminate and mannish with one change. They became progressively sexualized between 1933-34. As the Depression moved forward, the Code needed to establish a “suitable” masculinity in film that would satisfy the morality police. They wanted this accepted masculinity to mirror the public art imagery that was now being federally funded by the New Deal in the mid-and late 1930s.

Before 1934 the studios were able to ignore the Code’s denouncement and endeavor to censor the movie industry but Hollywood filmmakers could no longer disregard the regulations issued by the Hays Code. The Legion of Decency forced the MPPDA to assert itself with the Production Code and formed a new agency, the Production Code Administration (PCA). The Hays Code was formed in 1930 but it only began to have a profound impact on Hollywood when the Production Code Administration (PCA) began strictly enforcing it in 1934. The crusade to save America’s purity and squash the filth mongers began a cultural war.

It was a system of moral oversight, conservatives lobbied to enforce, using the PCA to compel the industry to drastically adhere to it. PCA is strongest in explaining how the Code tried to at once repress and enable discourse to appeal to the broadest possible spectrum of viewers and to offend the fewest. (Lugowski)

And in 1937, the Production Code Administration (PCA), handed down Hollywood’s Movie Commandments that decried “No hint of sex perversion may be introduced into a screen story. The characterization of a man as effeminate, or a woman as grossly masculine would be absolutely forbidden for screen portrayal.”

The Code was detailed in two parts that reflected the foundation of Catholic principles. The moral vision and "particular applications a precise listing of forbidden material.”

The code was divided into two parts. The first was a set of “general principles” which prohibited a picture from “lowering the moral standards of those who see it”, so as not to wrongly influence a specific audience of views including, women, children, lower-class, and those of "susceptible" minds, called for depictions of the “correct standards of life”, and lastly forbade a picture to show any sort of ridicule towards a law or “creating sympathy for its violation.

The second part of the Code was a set of “particular applications”, which was an exacting list of items that could not be depicted. Some restrictions, such as the ban on homosexuality or on the use of specific curse words, were never directly mentioned, but were assumed to be understood without clear demarcation. Homosexuals were de facto included under the proscription of sex perversion.” — Wikipedia

The second part of the Code was a ban on homosexuality. Though it was not specifically spelled out, queers were the subject under review of ‘sex perversion.’ Though the Hays office would not stand for "more than a dash of lavender" as long as the representation (especially a non-desirable depiction of homosexuality) was fleeting and incidental. Thus, “Pansy comedy" was tolerable in Pre-Code Hollywood. "Despite the watchful eyes of the Hays Office, the trade paper Variety remarked that Hollywood continued what was called "queer flashes" and “mauve characters" who sashayed through Cavalcade 1933, Our Betters 1932, and Sailor's Luck 1932.

The industry moguls and business offices finally had to follow the rules, clean up the ‘sinful’ screen and adopt a symbol of moral righteousness, that came along with a seal. The Code would be certified by a Code Seal printed on the lobby cards of each Hollywood film. And the seal would be an emblem that would appear on the motion pictures themselves. Any film without a Code Seal would be fined $25,000.

After some revisions, they agreed to the stipulations of the Code. … negotiated cuts from films and there were definite"”albeit loose"”constraints, a significant … against homosexuals, all in clear violation of the Hollywood Production Code.

Any sexual act considered perverted, including any suggestion of same sex relationships, sex, or romance, was ruled out.

Thus, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the PCA scrutinized and censored, everything coming out of Hollywood and put its seal on each movie released. The Hollywood executives preferred to call it “self-regulation” and feared that censorship by the PCA would be even worse if they tampered with the creative ‘source’ of their product. Because of the studios’ defiance, Roman Catholics formed the National Legion of Decency, which became an influential group that would put Hollywood’s transgressions through the ordeal, of boycotts, picketing theaters, urging Catholics not to patronize these immoral movies or fall “under the pain of sin”, being met by hoards of angry protestors at the gates of the studio. Now religious groups and other moral traditionalists began a warlike campaign for the government to regulate what was shown on the screen.

Mae West: She Done Him Wrong 1933

Also, government officials were bent on making gay people invisible from cinematic narratives and the United States Supreme Court handed down the ruling that filmmakers were not protected by the First Amendment in the matter of free speech. They considered Hollywood to be a powerful mechanism that to exploit ‘sinful’ behavior on the screen and influence American audiences. This laid the groundwork for local governments that could weigh in and ban films from their theaters if they considered them immoral. Hollywood could not afford to lose money at the box office from governmental authorities, by negative publicity, or from the threatening boycotts by rabid church groups.

Motion pictures could be regulated and run out of town by cities, states, and by ominous extension, the federal government.

“After all, censorship had been a fact of creative and commercial life for motion picture producers from the very birth of the medium, when even the modest osculations of the middle-aged lovebirds in Thomas Edison's The Kiss (1896) scandalized cadres of (literally) Victorian ministers, matrons, and other variants of a sour-faced species known as the “bluenose.” By common consent, the artistically vital and culturally disruptive spectacle of the motion picture – an entertainment accessible to all levels of society and degrees of moral temperament, including unassimilated immigrants,impressionable juveniles, and other menacing types – required editorial supervision from more mature, pious, and usually Protestant sensibilities” -from Archives Unbound

Hollywood was in the grip of the Code that saw the ‘dream factory’ movie machine as a Hollywood Babylon. While the powers that be were busy policing the murmuration of taboos, Pre-Code was a brief moment in history, a fruitful period between 1929 to 1934. Hays then appointed someone who could intercede between studio moguls and anti-Hollywood groups, Joseph I. Breen. “The vulgar, the cheap, and the tawdry is out!”

The PCA had been known as the Hays Office but to those in Hollywood, once the oversight became an operation with teeth, it became known as the Breen Office. Breen came in to take over the weak Studio Relations Committee (SRC). The Code consisted of thirty-six rules that informed Hollywood filmmakers to limit the representation of or normalization of subject matter considered by religious groups to be “unsavory or morally corrupt.” The SRC and the PCA were the inner mechanisms within the film industry, shaping the content of the film and heading off any ethical problems the film might encounter before it reached the local censors.

Dorothy Mackaill’s Safe in Hell (1931)

Many scenarios disappeared from the movies by mid-1934: for example, audiences would no longer see women’s navels, couples laying in bed together, murderers going unpunished, an illustration of a bedroom that isn’t merely recognized as a bed chamber. The normalization of drug use, the glamourization of criminal behavior, or not following the law, and of course any overtly revealed gay or lesbian character. After 1934, women would not be sporting short haircuts and tailored suits, confidently smoking cigars. Men toned down the gushy gestures that would be interpreted as flamboyant. Gay men and women were transformed into dowdy spinsters and high-strung bachelors.

What we started to see was an ambiguity, a narrative uncertainty that took the burden of responsibility off of the filmmakers and dropped the perception of the content into the laps of the audience. Since the Code asserted that no picture should lower the moral standards of those who saw it, it was a law that bound Hollywood’s accountability for their plots. Ruth Vasey calls the antithesis of this “the principle of deniability” which refers to the ambiguity of the textual vaguery that shifted the message to the individual spectator. Lugowski cites Lea Jacobs, “Under the Code ‘offensive ideas could survive at the price of an instability of meaning… There was constant negotiation about how explicit films could be and by what means (through the image, sound, language) offensive ideas could find representation.” The studios would have to come up with a structure of ‘representational conventions’, that could be understood by a more sophisticated audience yet would fly over the heads of more inexperienced spectatorship. Though producers felt the sharp sting of the Code as a mechanism of restraint, in terms of ‘queerness’ on screen, film studios could use the leverage of deniability to argue about the interpretation of certain scenes.

Once the limits of explicit “sophistication” had been established, the production industry had to find ways of appealing to both “innocent” and “sophisticated” sensibilities in the same object without transgressing the boundaries of public acceptability. This involved devising systems and codes of representation in which “innocence” was inscribed into the text while “sophisticated” viewers were able to “read into” movies whatever meanings they were pleased to find, so long as producers could use the Production Code to deny that they had put them there. Much of the work of self-regulation lay in the maintenance of this system of conventions, and as such, it operated, however perversely, as an enabling mechanism at the same time that it was a repressive one.-(Documents from the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc., 1922 – 1939)

… by assuming that the social crisis over cinematic representation in the early 1930s was caused by the content of motion pictures. The institution of censorship in Hollywood was not primarily about controlling the content of movies at the level of forbidden words or actions or inhibiting the freedom of expression of individual producers. Rather, it was about the cultural function of entertainment and the possession of cultural power. (Tino Balio: Grand Design Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise 1930-1939)

Geoff Shurlock was appointed as acting director of the Production Code in the 1940s and as permanent director in 1954. Over the years, Shurlock would straddle the conflict, appeasing both movie producers, and morality mongers trying to persuade the Association Board that introducing more liberal thinking could protect the PCA from fading away. There were attempts to ease up on the Code, in 1954 he introduced an amendment that would eliminate various taboos, for instance, miscegenation, liquor, and some profane words, but producers felt that there weren’t enough considerations to the amendment and the Catholic Legion of Decency felt that even that much went too far. Shurlock had a tough time making everyone happy.

The 1950s witnessed a weakening of the Production Code to restrict specific representations such as adultery, prostitution, and miscegenation. By the beginning of the 1960s, the only specific restriction left was homosexuality = “sex perversion.”

In the 1960s, filmmakers pressured the Production Code Administration. In the fall of 1961, two films went into production that would deal with homosexual subject matter. William Wyler, who had initially directed Miriam Hopkins and Merle Oberon in These Three (1936), revealed that he was working on a more faithful treatment of Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour; that dealt overtly with the love that dare not speak it’s named. Around the same time director Otto Preminger began to adapt Allen Drury’s political novel Advise and Consent 1962, which delves into the lives of Senatorial candidates that uncovers controversial secrets, including Don Murray’s homosexual encounter.

Throughout Preminger’s career, he challenged the restrictions of the Code and eventually influenced their decision to allow homosexuality to be shown on screen. Also fighting to change the stifling rules was Arthur Krim, president of United Artists, who threatened to ignore the Code and release the film without the mandatory “seal of approval” forcing them to amend it’s ideological strangle hold.

On October 3, 1961, the Production Code Administration backed off: “In keeping with the culture, the mores and values of our time, homosexuality and other sexual aberrations may now be treated with care, discretion, and restraint.”

In order to maintain control of the Administration’s power at least in terms of how homosexuals were portrayed on film, they insisted that the subject be infused with medical overtones, to show it as an ‘illness’. Sympathy or illness in psychological terms, were two key factors. The Code’s changed the use of the word “sex perversion” and replaced it with “homosexuality.”

Don Murray –gay bar scene in Advise and Consent 1962

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Another interesting shift was that they owned up to the fact that “mores and values of our time” were changing whether they liked it or not, people were becoming more in touch with the freedom to express their sexuality, society was becoming more permissive, the love generation was upon them and sexual representation was a fearless exploration reflected by a new generation of filmgoers.

Otto Preminger was the only major producer able to successfully release films without the Production Code’s Seal of Approval. He defied the Code (Hadleigh) with movies like Advise and Consent (1961) The Man with Golden Arm (1955) Anatomy of a Murder (1959) Wendell Mayes said “Look at the record–you’ll discover that many of the changes in the Code were a result of Otto Preminger breaking the rules”

Though the Code had been revised in 1961 to open up the door for portrayals of gays on screen, the sissy effete and predatory dyke took on a more sinister role. Because they had been hidden in plain sight using symbology that hinted at either failed masculinity or women performing masculinity. When the MPPA rating system was established in 1968 gays on screen were starting to kick the doors open but what was awaiting them was an even crueler denouement than during the reign of the Code. Queers were now portrayed as suicidal, predatory, or homicidal maniacs. And much like the coded gay characters under the Production Code, things moved very slowly in terms of progress for positive representations of being ‘queer.’

Dirk Bogarde and Dennis Price in Basil Dearden’s brave film Victim (1961)

Between January and June 1962, five films were released that dealt with homosexuality, almost as many as in the previous three decades. One did not receive a seal of approval from the Production Code Administration but was released nonetheless. Even without the seal of approval, British director, Basil Dearden’s Victim (1961) was reviewed in all the publications being considered. The liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal even disagreed with the Production Code Administration’s claim that the film made pleas ‘for social acceptance of the homosexual.’ “63 Still, the consensus among reviewers was that of the Production Code Administration and society at large: films should not and, for the most part, did not condone homosexuality. (Noriega)

This ban applied to all characters attracted to the same gender or characters who differed in their gender presentation or identity. While nudity and violence were quickly reintegrated into film canon following the abandonment of the Production Code, LGBT characters remained taboo. For decades after LGBT characters were allowed to appear in films, their sexuality and gender was shrouded in thinly-veiled innuendos and visual cues. If a character was to be openly same-gender attracted or transgender, they would be gruesomely killed or presented as morally corrupted. (Cleghorn)

Like the Code’s authors, film critics tend to examine the film itself, and not the discursive acts that surround a film and play a sometimes central role shaping its meaning(s). Contemporary gay and lesbian film criticism of Production Code era films operates on the same principle, with the added limitations that historical evidence and homosexual “images” censored. Thus, in order to ensure “the survival of subcultural identity within an oppressive society,” gay and lesbian film critics have employed a wide range of interpretive strategies to recuperate a history of homosexual images from the censored screen. The emphasis, therefore, has been on “subtexting” censored films from a singular presentist perspective. (Sophie Cleghorn)

Sources:

*Mike Mashon & James Bell for Pre-Code Hollywood Before the Censors-BFI  Sight & Sound Magazine (April 2019)

*Archives Unbound (1http://gdc.gale.com/archivesunbound/)

*Sophie Cleghorn: The Hollywood Production Code of 1930 and LGBT Characters.

*Wikipedia-Pre-Code

*David Lugowski-Queering the (New) Deal)

*Chon Noriega

During the period of Pre-Code, queer humor appeared in films such as Just Imagine (1930) and The Warrior’s Husband (1933). The male characters were feminized because of their affinity for writing poetry. This asserted that they must be queer.

The Warrior’s Husband directed by Walter Lang, is a film primarily cast with women. Yet the air of queerness permeates throughout because the women, featuring a butch Queen, are Amazons. Gender is inverted and several other female rulers cross-dress and exude a lesbian vibe. It is inhabited by independent women and swishy men who camped it up as ‘queens’ amusing themselves by flirting with all the good-looking men.

The Warrior’s Husband image courtesy Peplums Blogspot.com

Like so much self deemed culturally aberrant, the homosexual appears with greater frequency and readier acceptance in Pre-Code Hollywood cinema "The thirties was surprisingly full of fruity character comedians and gravel-voice bulldyke character comediennes" film critic Andrew Sarris observed in his touchstone study The American Cinema "but it was always played so straight that when ((character actors) Franklin Pangborn or Cecil Cunningham went into their routines, it was possible to laugh without being too sophisticated." Maybe in the later thirties the homosexual was played straight but in the Pre-Code era, he and she was playing queer. No sophistication was needed to read the same sex orientations as gender disorientations.- Pre-Code Hollywood; Sex, Immorality and Insurrection in American Cinema 1930-1934 by Thomas Doherty.

Miriam Hopkins got the part of free-spirited Gilda in Ernst Lubitsch’s Design for Living 1933. This original Noël Coward play actually featured a Ménage à Trois between the three Bohemian lovebirds in Paris in the decadent thirties. The film also starred Gary Cooper as artist George Cooper and Fredric March as playwright Tom Chambers. The liberated Gilda becomes the girl both men fall in love with. The three make a pact to keep their mutual attractions platonic, but that doesn’t last too long, and they each begin a sexual relationship. When George comes back from a trip to Nice, he finds that Tom has taken up with Gilda. “I can’t believe I loved you both.”

Ben Hecht's screenplay didn’t have a trace of any of Coward’s romantic relationship between George and Tom. Ernst Lubitsch, known for his sophisticated style, directed memorable witty interactions between all four players. Edward Everett Horton as Max Plunkett plays Miriam's bland suitor. Horton is, as usual, a whimsical idiosyncratic delight to watch. And Franklin Pangborn Mr. Douglas, Theatrical Producer is a perfect theatrical queen who is thoroughly annoyed when Gilda approaches him in the restaurant about Tom’s (Fredric March) play “Good Night Bassington”, as she leaves him with this thought, “There, read it, I’m sure you’ll adore it, it’s a woman’s play…”

Al Jolson “Boys will be boys” Wonder Bar (1934)

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Any portrayal of on-screen “sex perversion” or homosexuality, even those connected with various tropes of ‘deviant’ sexual behavior were restricted after the enforcement of the Production Code in 1934.

Lending the Code moral authority even within the limits of pure love, asserted the Code delicately certain facts have been universally regarded by lawmakers as outside the limits of safe presentation Father Lord and Mr. Quigley saw no need to defile the document by typesetting long lists of "pointed profanity" or "vulgar expressions" Likewise, the prohibition against homosexuality dared not speak the name, but it didn't need to spell it out. "Impure Love" the love which society has always regarded as wrong and which has been named by divine law"¦ must not be presented as attractive or beautiful."-Pre-Code Hollywood; Sex, Immorality and Insurrection in American Cinema 1930-1934 by Thomas Doherty.

Different From the Others (1919) Conrad Veidt and Fritz Schulz two musicians in love — during the period of Pre-Code.

But, outside of the United States, films were a little more adventurous. Austrian director Richard Oswald’s film bravely shows two men in love. The “third sex” was eventually mocked. One of the earliest films to feature two men in love was the 1919 silent film from Germany,  Different From the Others. Director Richard Oswald's story of two male musicians in love had a typical unhappy ending, but it depicted gay people in a positive light. The film condemned the German law known as Paragraph 175, which outlawed gay behavior. Different Than the Others was censored soon after it was released. Starring Conrad Veidt it is considered the first pro-gay film.

Joseph Breen viewed any meaningful treatment of queer cinema as perverted. Conrad Veidt also gave an emotionally evocative role in The Man Who Laughs 1928, playing a violinist who falls for his student and is then blackmailed for it. The rising Nazi party in Germany attempted to erase these films from the screen, and this made Oswald flee to America.

But, the Hays Code made certain that no films of this type would be seen in the United States. Even books and plays with gay, lesbian, or bisexual narratives were reworked and any content related to the subject was erased in order to meet the social code of the time.

Other non-American films included Dreyer’s Michael (1924) and Mädchen in Uniform (1931) directed by Leontine Sagan and again in (1958) with Lilli Palmer as Fräulein Elisabeth von Bernburg and Romy Schneider as Manuela von Meinhardis. And Viktor Und Viktoria (1933) directed by Reinhold Schünzel.

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Mädchen in Uniform (1931) was directed by Leotine Sagan, and starred Dorothea Wieck and Hertha Thiele.

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William Dieterle’s Pre-Code German film Sex in Chains (1928) stars the director as Franz Sommer a man sent to prison for manslaughter who, though longing for his wife, develops a close relationship with his cellmate. A fellow inmate informs Franz that he’s “lived to see someone unman himself, just so he could finally sleep.”

In 1927, during the Pre-Code period, director William Wellman’s Wings won an Academy Award for Best Picture, and it also depicted the first gay kiss between two men in American cinema.

Wings follows two Air Force pilots in World War I, Jack (Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers and Dave (Richard Arlen) who at first rivals for the affections of the beautiful Mary (Clara Bow) before they discover the underlying love they begin to feel for each other. During a boxing match at training camp gets too rough and Jack knocks Dave bloody and silly. Dave gazes up at Jack with an epiphany and the two walk off arm and arm as close ‘buddies’. The relationship is referred to as friendship, but the film paints a picture of two men falling in love.

Dave is mortally wounded in combat at the end of the picture, Jack embraces his dying ‘friend’ with a tender yet impassioned kiss while Mary looks on, framed with her on the outside looking in. Wellman humanizes the men's close relationship in this scene when Jack leans into Dave to embrace him as he dies. He lets him know that nothing has meant more to him than their relationship. The moment feels sympathetic instead of exploitative, yet he mourns Dave’s death. And though it is tinged with homoerotic elements, the case can always be made that it is a story about war, which brought two men closer together.

The Knocking Knees dance. Horton’s homosexuality – comedic, subtle, and acceptable in The Gay Divorcee (1934)

In The Gay Divorcee (1934) crossing the threshold is the archetypal ‘Sissy’, Edward Everett Horton. Marginalized audiences were looking to the movies for any indication of the familiar, any little crumbs left as a trail to be picked up. For instance, there is a moment in Johnny Guitar, the fiercely burning with sensual brawn, Joan Crawford. Bigger than life up on that screen, androgynous in her black cowboy shirt, strides down the stairs, gun in her holster waiting to confront coded dyke, Mercedes McCambridge. Many women’s chests, mine included, heaved a little with delight. That flutter of excitement hit us again when Doris Day sings the sentimental “Secret Love” in Calamity Jane (1953).

In Myrt and Marge (1934) Ray Hedges plays the flaming stagehand Clarence Tiffingtuffer he’s told “Here put this in the trunk and don’t wear it” speaking about one of the show girls costumes. In his boldly effete manner “If we got the runs on the show, the way the girls got in their stockings, I could put the 2nd down payment on my Kimono.”

Clara Bow, Willard Robertson, and Estelle Taylor in Call Her Savage (1932)

From Call Her Savage 1932 purportedly the first on-screen gay bar.

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In director William Wyler’s These Three (1936) the relationship between Miriam Hopkin’s Martha and Merle Oberon’s Karen was delicately subtle and though to mainstream audiences might be seemingly obvious to interpret as two women attracted to the male lead, Joel McCrea. It revised Hellman’s play that centered around Martha’s love that dare not speak its name, for Karen. Sam Goldwyn bought the rights to Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour, a story depicting the supposed ‘carryings-on’ of two female teachers at a private school for girls. Though, These Three on its face is the story of a love triangle between two women and a man, it could read as Martha being more uncomfortable with the presence of Dr. Cardin (McCrea) because he is intruding on her closed relationship with Karen. The later screenplay adapted into the film, The Children’s Hour (1961) directed by William Wyler, was boldly more explicit and revealed the true nature of Martha’s predicament and her struggle with her love for Karen.

These Three (1936) Merle Oberon and Miriam Hopkins.

The Children’s Hour (1961) Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn.

Coded characters in the film were on the screen relaying messages and signaling to those of us who understand and who are “in the life: that movies can reflect the existence of a queer reality. These representations were not necessarily positive, but films showed evidence that we exist. You would see it in a revealing gesture, or an air of difference about them, though it would be inconspicuous to audiences that were unaware of the cues.

Continue reading “Chapter 2 – Queers and Dykes in the Dark: Classic, Noir & Horror Cinema’s Coded Gay Characters:”

70s Cinema: Runaway Trains, Racing toward oblivion, Psycho-sexual machinations, and ‘the self loathing whore’ Part 2

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

 

1:23 pm. Grand Central Station, New York. A packed commuter train is hijacked. A ransom is set – at one million dollars. The subway is a closed system. For the four hijackers, surely there is no way out. But they have a deadly plan.

Directed by Joseph Sargent  (Colossus: The Forbin Project 1970, White Lightning 1973, predominantly a director for television series and made for TV movies- Gunsmoke, The Fugitive, The Man from U.N.C.L.E, The Invaders) with a screenplay by Peter Stone (known writer Charade 1963, Father Goose 1963, Sweet Charity 1969) The iconic sneeze which leads to one of the most memorable endings in 70s films was actually conceptualized by Stone. And based on the best-selling American crime novel by John Godey.

Stunning visual auteur and cinematographer  Owen Roizman (The French Connection 1971, The Exorcist 1973, The Stepford Wives 1975, Three Days of the Condor 1975, Network 1976, True Confessions 1981) and driving score by David Shire (The Conversation 1974, All the President’s Men 1976, Saturday Night Fever 1977, Norma Rae 1979). Like the score, the film itself begins with the sense of dialogue and characterizations just as accelerated as a runaway train. The initial part of the film is completely immersed underground with its murky greens, grays, and shadows lit only by the subway lamps.

Director Joseph Sargent instructed Owen Roizman to shoot the picture on a Wide Screen, which would create the effect of not having a high ceiling, the overhead and bottom of the screen being cut off giving the film more of the closeness and claustrophobia of being in a subway car. They filmed the picture at The Spike in Brooklyn which was totally closed off at the time. Director Sargent referred to it as “hell on earth” and actor Robert Shaw dubbed it “Dante’s Inferno.” Like The French Connection and 3 Days of the Condor also filmed by Roizman, these were films that were at a defining time in history portraying a gritty New York lensed with a perspective toward realism. The camera’s were lightweight, moved quickly through the streets, and utilized natural lighting. The colors are muted browns, faded greens, and grays. The film demonstrates the alienation of the city and the urban nightmare.

One of the films from the seventies utilizes the subway as a symbol of the ‘changing nature of the city partly from the perspective of its citizens primarily its commuters.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) is one of the most definitive films of the seventies that features an all-star cast of great character actors with standout performances by Walter Matthau as Lt. Zachary Garber, Tom Pedi as Caz Dolowicz who only gives a damn about his trains running on time.

“Oh, come on. If I’ve got to watch my language just because they let a few broads in, I’m going to quit. How the hell can you run a goddamn railroad without swearing?”

James Broderick as Denny Doyle’s head motorman, Dick O’Neill as the foul-mouthed Correll, Jerry Stiller as Lt. Rico Patrone, Rudy Bond as Police Commissioner, Kenneth McMillan as the Borough Commander, Doris Roberts as the Mayor’s wife.

And of course, our four colorful criminals, Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw) Mr. Green (Martin Balsam) Hector Elizondo (Mr. Gray), and Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman ) match the primary tones of the film. Their faces are obscured by disguises that are caricatures.  An interesting note the color of the men’s hats corresponds with their pseudonyms. In contrast to the earthy tones of the film, Garber wears a banana-yellow tie. Quentin Tarantino paid homage to the titular nicknames in his ultra-violent Reservoir Dogs 1992.

There is no real set-up or background relationship between the four hijackers. After seeing Martin Balsam exit a yellow cab, and Shire’s dynamic score comes into play, the film has an immediate tempo of being out of control. The film opens with one of the most popular scores of the seventies, David Shires, driving aural waves of dissonant jazz. With military-type snare drum rolls and resounding trombones and electronica. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) is perhaps one of the most iconic action thrillers of the seventies era. Opening with the dynamic life force of a pulsing New York City. Cabs, bodies in motion, unique to the city with its dialect “Fifty Foist Street” And the mania of people rushing down below in the subways, hot, grimy, and anonymous.

When subway line Pelham One Two Three which is a subway car that begins from the Lexington Avenue station is hijacked by four seemingly random criminals Mr. Green, Mr. Blue, Mr. Gray, and Mr. Brown all dressed in hats to match the colors of their pseudonyms, overcoats, black-rimmed glasses, and phony mustaches it throws the New York City transit into chaos. The Transit Authority personnel as well as the subway’s passengers are portrayed as stereotypically New Yorkers, rough around the edges of various ethnicities.

The train’s passengers are represented as a row of assorted stereotypes including the wise-but-kvetchy Jew, the “fairy,” the Black pimp, the hysterical Hispanic woman, the disarrayed mother who has no control over her children, the long-haired hippie, the tough as nails whore and the clueless drunk who sleeps through the whole nightmare. What comes off with this device is that the ordeal of the story is just an everyday occurrence on the New York City subway.

And these passengers are actually listed in the credits as The Maid, The Mother, The Homosexual, The Secretary, The Delivery Boy, The Salesman, The Hooker, The Old Jewish Man, The Older Son, The Spanish Woman, The Alcoholic (who sleeps through the entire seizure), The Pimp, Coed #1, Coed #2, The Hippie and The W.A.S.P. One of my complaints of seventies cinema — though it is one of my favorite sub-genres of cinema– is the inherent misogyny and easily permissive racism and homophobia.

Mr. Blue calmly informs them that they want one million dollars or they will execute one hostage for every minute they don’t receive the ransom.

Dick O’Neill’s gruffness is delivered fluently as he grunts over the microphone at Mr. Blue “Keep dreamin’ maniac!”

Walter Matthau, who is the master of owning any picture he’s in, throws out more hilarious one-liners which bring the much-needed levity to the nervous tension. That is not to say that Tom Pedi and Dick O’Neill veteran stage and character actors don’t supply their share of snarky New York witticisms.

While the commuting passengers are concentrating on getting to where they need to go, one at a time the four hijackers board the train. Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw who plays a very composed and menacing British Mercenary). Accompanying Mr. Blue is Mr. Green, the continually sneezing Martin Balsam (who was fired from the transit department as a motormen suspected of trafficking drugs in the train cars) Later Garber figures out that one of the hijackers must have knowledge of handling a train, “Somebody down there knows how to drive a train. You don’t pick that up watching Sesame Street.”

Mr. Green (Shaw) enters the conductor’s car and holds a gun on the head of motorman James Broderick. “I’m taking your train.”

They begin to set up their scheme. Hector Elizondo who plays Mr. Gray is an unstable psychopath whose infantile outbursts and uncontrollable belligerence show him capable of violence at any given moment. “I’ll shoot your pee pee off.” Later on Mr. Green tells Mr. Blue that he doesn’t trust Mr. Grey (Hector Elizondo who is playing to type) and to keep an eye on Mr. Gray “I also think that he is mad. Why do you think they threw him out of the Mafia.”

Lastly Mr. Brown enters with a box for long-stem roses. When the time comes, they pull out high-powered automatic weapons and announce their plans to the horrified New Yorkers.

George Lee Miles as the pimp and Mr. Green (Robert Shaw) exchange cutting remarks as commentary on the post-Vietnam weariness and racism. “What’s wrong dude? Ain’t you never seen a sunset before?”

While the takeover of Pelham One Two Three is underway, we are privy to the pressurized control room where the core of operations happens. Lt. Garber is showing a group of Japanese men who run the subway system in Tokyo, the works while throwing out wisecracks, “In the course of a normal work week, the average TA policeman deals with such crimes as robbery, assault, murder, drunkenness illness, vandalism, mishegas, abusiveness, sexual molestation, exhibitionism… “ means of mocking the four visiting Japanese executive’s assumed that they do not speak perfect English. Garber tells Rico- “Take these monkeys up to 13” Garber is enlightened after these very quietly polite men tell him that it was a most interesting tour.

The film boasts its built-in racism and visits its bias through a series of faux pas. Garber (Walter Matthau) has the privilege of his comedic traits and can get away with lines as when he meets Inspector Daniels who is black played by Julius Harris. Garber uncomfortable tells him, “I hadn’t realized you were… so tall.”

Kenneth McMillan veteran character actor adds his bellicose bluster to the film!

Of course, there are also the prevalent acceptable and misguided jokes in 70s films wielding homophobia. As seen in 70s films for example, the psychopathic drag queen in Freebie and the Bean (1974) and the flaming hitchhikers in Vanishing Point (1971) Garber assures the undercover long-haired hippie cop who’s been wounded and lying face down on the tracks, “We’ll have an ambulance here in no time, Miss.”

Along with his colleagues who assume they don’t speak English. Lt Rico ( Jerry Stiller ) adds his comedic genius for instance when he tells the executives, “We had a bomb scare in the Bronx yesterday, it turned out to be a cantaloupe!” 

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is not only a tight-moving tribute to the implicit action films that emerged during the seventies, but it is also dominated by some of the best dialogue of that decade’s action/thriller genre.

Once the hijackers have taken control of the subway train the command center tries to raise them on the radio.

“How come that gate isn’t locked?” “Who’s gonna steal a subway car?”

Once the control center realizes that something is wrong, they watch on the computerized board that tracks all the trains. The four men disconnected the last set of cars and released a group of passengers with the head motorman leaving the front car, the conductor, and 18 passengers.

“For Jesus Christ’s Sake, the dumb bastard is moving backward.”

Meanwhile, at the control center, they see that the train has stopped between stations. “Well stopped is better than backwards.”

They inform the passengers, “What’s happening is you’re all being held by four very dangerous men with machine guns.”

What the control center sees is that Pelham has powered off their radio and jumped its load. Mr. Green’s nose begins its trail of sneezes and eventual Gesundheits which will become part of the plot’s shtick.

Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw) in his usual chillingly sober manner tells Garber “Your train has been taken.” He informs Garber of three essential points. 1) Pelham is in our control 2) We have automatic weapons and 3) We have no scruples about killing. One of the most central forces of the suspense is how Robert Shaw’s unwavering voice sounds so wickedly, deliciously deadpan when he takes up that microphone to talk to Walter Matthau.

They want $1,000,000 for the release of the passengers. Garber asks “Who am I speaking to?”

Blue stiffly tells him, “I’m the man who stole your train.”

The old Jewish passenger asks Mr. Blue “Excuse me sir what’s gonna happen if you don’t get what you want?” “Excuse me, sir, we will get what we want.”

Earl Hindman as the more subdued Mr. Brown

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a pragmatic depiction of inured and balsy New Yorkers at that time in the city. One of the passengers, the prostitute tells the hijackers, “What do you mean you’re hijacking the train? I have an important appointment.” 

Mr. Blue doing the crossword puzzle while making his deadly serious demands…

Mr. Gray “Hold it right there, cowboy!”

Caz Dolowicz “Who the fuck are you?”

Mr. Gray “Well you’ll find out if you take one more step!”

Caz Dolowicz “I’m warnin’ you, mister, that’s city property you’re fooling around with!

Mr. Gray “Well that’s too fucking bad!”

Caz Dolowicz Why didn’t you go grab a goddamn airplane like everybody else?”

Mr. Gray “Cause we’re afraid of flyin’! Now get back or I’ll shoot your goddam ass off!”

Caz Dolowicz “The hell with you, I’m comin’ on board!”

Mr. Gray “I warned ya, stupid!”

It is immediately after Mr. Green warns Mr. Blue that Mr. Gray is mad, that he opens fire on Caz Dolowicz. When Fat Caz (Tom Pedi) goes underground and tramples the tracks insisting to get aboard his train, crazy Mr. Gray opens up on him with his machine gun.

Nathan George (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) as Ptl. James who is monitoring the siege down in the tunnel. Rico asks if Caz Dolowicz is dead. “Wouldn’t you be Lt.?”

Dick O’Neill as Frank Correll bellyaches throughout the entire film. He does not care that the subway is under siege. He is the epitome of the perceived typical attitudes of an older generation of New Yorkers who only see the hijacking as an inconvenience to him for keeping his trains scheduled on time. “Screw the goddamned passengers.”  “What do they expect for their lousy 35c – to live forever?!”

Garber hears Mr. Green sneeze and there begins the first Gesundheit” “Thank you” replies Mr. Green casually.

The mayor (Lee Wallace) laughably resembles Mayor Koch who wouldn’t become Mayor until 1978-1989, is portrayed as an incompetent bureaucrat surrounded by his nurse, tissues and a trudge of indecision, who needs advice from the real brains in Gracie Mansion his wife Doris Roberts.

Frank Correll (Dick O’Neill) tells Garber “You’re playing grab ass with a bunch of goddam pirates.”

Garber follows his hunch and has them start to go through the files for any motormen discharged for cause. In the meantime, they are told to restore power, turn all signals green, and remove all police from the tunnel. With all the details worked out and going their way, Garber figures they also have a plan to make their escape out of the subway tunnels.

Everyone is baffled when Pelham starts to move too soon before Command Central has everything set up, and everyone in the control room keeps asking — who’s moving? Garber responds, “What’s the matter with everybody? How many hijacked trains we got around here, anyway?”

With the green lights on the train will be able to continue on without being stopped, and this doesn’t trouble Garber at first because he knows there is a safety catch involved referred to as “Dead Man’s Feature” which is a handle the train is equipped with in the event the motorman dies while driving the train and they need to come to a stop. Pelham stops below 18th Street. They haven’t cleared the tracks yet. Garber orders cops at every point of the tunnel and exits. They figure that the four won’t be able to get off the train without being stopped. What they don’t know is that Mr. Green has constructed a makeshift metal bar that acts as an arm to hold down the Dead Man’s Feature and while they sneak off by an exit in the Village the train and its passengers are now speeding out of control with all the green lights go and no way to stop it from heading toward a crash.

“No one’s on the breaks!” “There’s nobody driving the fucking train!”

My favorite, is Martin Balsam as Mr. Green aka Harold Longman rolling in the cash…

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This is your EverLovin’ Joey saying hang on to your seats and stay tuned for Part 3!

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