Don’t Bother to Knock.

In her first dramatic role Marilyn Monroe plays an emotionally disturbed babysitter, Nell Forbes who unbeknown to the child’s parents, Ruth and Peter Jones, is suffering from a traumatic psychoneurosis brought on by the death of her fiancé. When Nell invites Jed Towers, who reminds her of her dead pilot to the Jones room, they are at a convention downstairs in New Yorks upmarket McKinley Hotel, he is happy to oblige this beautiful young woman. Until the child’s safety becomes an issue he is unaware of her fragile mental state.

 

The babysitter....

....reads a bedtime story.

Roy Ward Baker, best known for A Night to Remember (1958) and The Singer Not the Song (1961) which featured a delightfully camp performance from Dirk Bogarde, directed Monroe in her 13^th credited film at a time when she was trying to prove her dramatic acting skills. Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) was her first starring role and to be honest she is the main reason to see this rather forgotten movie. She gives a very believable performance as a mentally deranged person and it is alleged that she based her character on how her mentally troubled mother behaved.

 

Nell Forbes gets to know her neighbour.

This melodramatic noir type thriller was based on a novel entitled Mischief written by Charlotte Armstrong and published in 1951, the screenplay was written by Daniel Taradash. Along side Monroe it starred Richard Widmark as the pilot Jed Towers, Anne Bancroft, in her first feature film as Lyn Lesley, Towers love interest and the bar singer at the Manhattan hotel.   

 

But Jed Towers is in love with ....

....the hotels singer.

The studio gave it a tag line that tried to cash in on both her looks and her acting skill ‘Every inch a woman, ever inch an actress’ they also described her as ‘a wicked sensation as the lonely girl in Room 809’ not sure if they really knew how to market the ever improving star.  It was bookended by a rom-com We’re not Married (1952) and the screwball comedy Monkey Business (1952). Even in what was regarded as her breakthrough role, Niagara (1953) 20th Century-Fox still treated her like a sex object , at least in Don’t Bother to Knock they allowed her to act without the sexual connotations that had accompanied her career to date.

Perhaps Nell was not cut out for babysitting? 

During the filming in early 1952, the revelation that Marilyn had posed nude for a calendar five years earlier hit the media. Although the studio tried to persuade her to deny the story she would not, explaining that she was broke and needed the money. She also admitted that she was not ashamed of it. Her truthfulness and the beauty of the photo turned a potential career-ruining act into a great deal of public sympathy and publicity for MM.

The Pumpkin Eater.

Harold Pinter was responsible for some quite literal British screenplays in the sixties including The Caretaker (1963), Accident (1967), The Quiller Memorandum (1966), The Servant (1963) and of course The Pumpkin Eater (1964) for which he won a British Academy Film Award.  Pinter had adapted it from a 1962 novel by Penelope Mortimer. Although the novel had been written in the first person, from the prospective of the leading female character, Pinter changed it to be more about the relationship between a man and wife.

 

Mr and Mrs Armitage share a word or two.

It was Jack Clayton's third feature film and was described as an intellectual soap opera but there's much more to this study of a middle class marriage between the fertile Jo (Anne Bancroft) and her husband Jake Armitage (Peter Finch).  Jo was the casualty of two marriages and has a brood of children before she marries Jake, a successful screenwriter. She has all the trappings of a ‘happy life’ including a beautiful home and an affluent lifestyle and with her children tidied away in nurseries and boarding school plenty of free time to socialise with other’s of the moneyed generation (I mean how many people can afford to have a breakdown in Harrods, a luxurious Kensington department store?) But her life is turned upside down when she discovers that her successful husband is having affairs with other women and to make it worse he treats this as normal behaviour for a man in media! This drives Jo into the care of a psychiatrist.

 

Who loves you baby?

It's similarity with European art movies of the time was made all the more apparent by Anne Bancroft's European looks, even though she was American, also by the French New Wave type soundtrack by George Delerue although Clayton handling of the subject matter can know be seen as typically British. The acting is first rate; Anne Bancroft won the award for Best Actress at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival and the BAFTA for Best Foreign Actress as well as being nominated for Best Actress at the 37th Academy Awards. Peter Finch suits the role of the philandering scriptwriter like a glove with James Mason ideal as the slimy deceived husband who’s wife is having an affair with you know who. My only problem with this intense drama is that it is perhaps a little to long, other than that it’s highly recommended for connoisseur’s of intelligent British movie making in the sixties.