THE OTHER WOMAN (1954)

One of the joys of cultivating an interest in film history lies in the discovery of a marvelous yet forgotten film or filmmaker, such as Hugo Haas and his 1954 film noir The Other Woman. The Jewish-born Haas was an established comedic actor in his native Czechoslovakia who also successfully wrote, produced, and directed his own films. In 1938 he fled the Nazis for France, then finally settled in America and spent the war years doing stateside radio broadcasts in his native language. (Haas’ brother Pavel, a well-known composer, would die in Auschwitz.) Haas worked to improve his English and resumed acting in the mid-forties, and although he worked regularly in Hollywood, and even gave acting lessons, he couldn’t achieve the fame he had enjoyed in Europe. He was an ardent admirer of Chaplin, and envisioned himself succeeding in the same writer-director-star mold as the famous comedian. Wanting desperately to regain his status as a filmmaker, he used his life savings to launch his own company, Hugo Haas Productions, through which he brought to the screen a fascinating string of ultra low budget crime pictures. From 1951 – 62 he wrote, produced, directed and starred in a dozen features, many based on Czech source material, which he considered cinematic calling cards. The “written, produced, and directed by” title board of most are emblazoned with his signature. Yet in the case of The Other Woman, ostensibly a crime thriller but really a movie about the movie business, Haas’ deep-rooted frustration with his status (or lack thereof) in Hollywood bubbles to the surface in moments where he castigates the industry establishment and its collective failure to embrace his talents.

Haas’ American films are remembered today primarily for his R. Crumb-like obsession with casting buxom blonde bombshells. He directed and starred alongside Cleo Moore in seven pictures, including The Other Woman. Moore was a Louisiana girl of epic proportions who worked as a cover model for men’s magazines and, in the wake of Marilyn Monroe’s success, made her mark as a B-Movie vixen. She and Haas are inexorably linked in collective memory, and while Moore wasn’t a terrible actress she also wasn’t a strong lead, and it’s worth considering how differently Haas’ films might be received today if he hadn’t so slavishly cast her in them. In Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward’s brief analysis of The Other Woman they actually claim, quite erroneously, the pair were married. Yet surely it’s unfair to dismiss Haas as a from-hunger purveyor of drive-in cheesecake. The Other Woman demands otherwise. Despite its obviously low budget production values and cast, it’s a polished, highly personal film with a nuanced, clever script that doesn’t compromise its own dark underpinnings — even if the story of blackmail and murder is hackneyed. What elevates The Other Woman over similar potboilers is how Haas uses the story and visual tropes of film noir to comment about his personal life in Hollywood.

The story is routine: Sherry Steward (Moore) is working on a film set when she gets a shot at a fill-in part. Although the role only calls for three lines, she blows it. Humiliated and seething, she blames her failure on director Walter Darman (Haas), and decides to gets revenge. Sherry eventually drugs Walter and convinces him they enjoyed a night of raucous sex, which resulted in a pregnancy. He never believes her, but is terrified that a scandal will ruin him. Sherry demands $50,000 to stay mum, but doesn’t realize Walter hasn’t got the money — his career is in a shambles. His pictures are deemed too hopelessly “artistic” to make a profit and his studio chief father-in-law wants to cut him loose. Walter reckons it makes more sense to simply murder Sherry, and does. The police see right through his alibi, and Walter soon confesses.

While there’s nothing outwardly special about the premise, it allows Haas essentially to play himself on screen — a struggling émigré film director trying to create art in a shallow town where the bottom line is all that matters. The cleverest aspect of the setup is Walter’s marriage to the boss’ daughter. The relationship allows Haas to not-so-subtly allude to the nepotism inherent in Hollywood (don’t forget David O. Selznick’s marriage to Irene Mayer), while at the same time creating a filmic relationship that allows for on-screen arguments about the nature of the movie business. The entire arc of the film, in which Haas’ character moves from one sort of prison to another, is also telling. Along the way he falls prey to Sherry, who symbolizes everything bad about Hollywood. In spite of Walter’s efforts to appease her, he never fully understands why she is trying to destroy him — and because of this he eventually finds himself in a prison that he desperately wants us to believe is not of his own making.

Hugo Haas intended The Other Woman to serve as a parable of his own life. The first scene sets the stage as Sherry and a coworker watch Darman coaching an actor on how to properly play a crucial prison scene. Sherry remarks about the harried director, “He’s quite a ham.” The savvy coworker expresses surprise that she isn’t hip to Darman’s background: “Are you kidding? He was a big star in Europe. Here he played bits — just nothing — guess you have to know the right people.”

Yet Darman does know the right people. He’s the producer and director of the film only because of his marriage to the daughter of studio production chief, Charles Lester (Jack Macy). He remains in perpetual disagreement with his father-in-law about what constitutes good filmmaking however — the older man is emblematic of the cookie cutter efficiency of the studio system, while Darman is portrayed as the intellectualized ‘continental,’ more interested in art than profits. The pair tangles over the status of Darman’s current directorial project: “Look Walter, I ran the whole picture twice … I even talked it over with the projectionist — everybody’s opinion is valuable. I admit, there are some artistic shots, but in general it’s a dull picture. I’m sorry, but there’s no beating about the bush when big money is involved. Every time we have these arguments Walter, you put on the expression of a martyr; you’ve been in America long enough to catch onto the public’s tastes.” Offended, Walter lashes out at Lester, at the same time suggesting how Haas really feels about the movie industry’s pandering status quo: “The public’s taste is much higher than you might expect … but it seems to be easier to make pictures for kids and imbeciles — making little delinquents of a whole generation, and the poor adults have to sit through it and suffer. Always the same story, the same characters, the same happy endings, it’s just ridiculous.”

Later, after Walter’s film fails dismally with a sneak preview audience, the two men’s relationship implodes and Lester berates Darman: “In all my thirty years of picture-making I never saw anything like it … I never felt so terrible in my life — I should’ve taken the scissors myself, instead of arguing with a stubborn, art-stricken genius — and cut all the dragging meditations and psychological nonsense … and deep ideas.” When Walter accuses the older man of sabotaging the preview, Lester storms out, telling his son-in-law, “I’m through with you.”

In The Other Woman’s final moments, as Darman finds himself behind a real set of bars, he laments his situation, putting a new spin on Lester’s formula for profitable moviemaking: “How did it happen? How did it happen? Movies. Take a handful of sex, mix it with violence, give it some comedy relief … and a happy ending.” Then, as the end music begins to swell, he lifts his eyes, stares directly into the camera and says, “I’m sorry, no happy ending for this one.” It’s a wonderful moment in the film, and a slickly layered piece of cinema that bookends the opening, when Darman naïvely advised the young actor how to play the very scene he is now relegated to. One is left with the overwhelming conviction that the pretense between fiction and reality has been dropped, and we are no longer certain whether the spoken lines and the prison setting are more relevant to the character, the actor playing him, or the director of the film — all of whom represent different parts of Hugo Haas.

It’s clear that Haas indeed envisions himself as a tragically exiled and underappreciated artist — which he was. It also seems that he suffered, as most artists do, from self-loathing and guilt — it’s essential to remember that he was also a survivor horribly affected by the War. In spite of his personal demons, or maybe because of them, what he accomplished in The Other Woman is meaningful: he gives us an enthralling low-budget film that is part crime thriller, part Hollywood exposé, and part anguished parable of his perplexing Tinseltown odyssey.

The Other Woman is Hollywood.



The Other Woman (1954)
Director: Hugo Haas
Cinematographer: Eddie Fitzgerald
Screenplay: Hugo Haas
Starring: Hugo Haas, Cleo Moore
Released by: Twentieth Century Fox
Running time: 81 minutes

LOOPHOLE (1954)

Take it easy. If you’re innocent you’ve got no worries.

Yeah? Well, I am innocent. I got plenty of worries.

Allied Artists’ Loophole is one of the numerous exercises in “it could happen to you” storytelling that surfaced in the noir films of the McCarthy era. With obvious parallels to the red baiting of the day, it served to remind 1954 audiences that not all was well in the world, and that innocence didn’t immunize any citizen from persecution. Even in its final moments, after order has presumably been restored to the world, it irresistibly subverts the “happily ever after” endings of mainstream Hollywood films. Yet Loophole’s noir ethos doesn’t begin and end merely with the theme of fate dealing its hero a rotten hand — in this case a bank teller wrongly suspected of grand theft. As a film that brokers in the attainability of the American Dream, much of its conceptual darkness comes not from the unfair circumstances thrust upon the hero, but instead from its depiction of the man responsible for the hero’s misfortune. He is neither a bank robber nor a police officer, but a sociopathic insurance investigator long since bereft of his judgment. One can argue that this man, played vividly by the iconic Charles McGraw, is the real noir protagonist in Loophole.

On the surface it’s a pleasant-enough B movie, with a good cast, fair production values, and strong story concept. Barry Sullivan is Mike Donovan, teller at the Hollywood branch of the Capital National Bank. Mike’s a regular guy if ever there was one: he fought the war, married the girl next door, and then settled down in one of those post-war bungalows in the city where the sun always shines. As Loophole opens, Mike is happily ensconced in the American Dream. One Friday, a team of federal auditors gives the bank its annual checkup. However, a thief named Herman Tate (Don Beddoe, looking as dowdy as a character named Herman ought to) is posing as one of the examiners; with the help of his sexy girlfriend Vera (Mary Beth Hughes), he manages to swipe almost fifty grand while Mike’s back is turned. When his end-of-the-day numbers refuse to add up, the terrified teller leaves for the weekend without informing his supervisor. He comes clean Monday morning, but it’s too late — he already looks guilty. If the missing cash isn’t found, the insurance company will have to make good. They dispatch ex-cop Gus Slavin (McGraw) to investigate, and he’s dead certain Mike is at the center of an inside job. The FBI and LAPD are brought in, and although they eventually come to believe his story, Slavin remains unmoved, convinced that if he can keep Mike unemployed he will eventually have to use the stolen money to pay his bills. Since he really is innocent, Mike is forced to sell his house and take a menial job as a cab driver. As the insurance company’s payoff deadline approaches, Slavin increases the pressure, until Mike realizes that in order to get out from under, he has to nail the crooks on his own.

We often forget that the characters of classic film noir survived not only the Second World War, but the Great Depression as well. Although the postwar years were characterized by growing prosperity and wealth, those enjoying it were intimately familiar with dire circumstances. If nothing else, Loophole shows us how two men with diametrically opposed outlooks cope with life in these supposedly better times. Films such as this one quietly whispered to audiences that the American Dream isn’t guaranteed — that our happiness can be taken away in the blink of an eye. Mike Donovan isn’t the Swede or Jeff Bailey— he doesn’t have it coming. Yet unlike those characters he staves off morbidity and cynicism, maintaining his sense of optimism throughout the film. Mike is part of the system: married to a faithful wife, working steady, and making payments; he’s not on the run from some inescapable past. And when the going gets tough Mike and his wife Ruth (Oscar winner Dorothy Malone) stick together — and eventually triumph. Years later they will most likely remember their ordeal as a bump in the road, something to chuckle about over roast beef with Ed Sullivan. Looking at Loophole from this perspective, it hardly rates as a film noir. It even seems opposed to some of the notions that we consider definitive. Yet it is a noir, achieving that status through the more subtle characterization of Gus Slavin, who, unlike Mike, has not been able to successfully conform to the fifties status quo.

All we know about Slavin’s past is that he “resigned” from the LAPD, but we never learn why (though early on when he coldly remarks that “What [Mike] needs is a taste of rubber hose,” we get an idea). Although Slavin resembles the noir protagonist (neurotic, obsessive, anti-social, alienated) more closely than Mike does, he isn’t the hero of the film. He pursues his suspect as implacably as any single-minded protagonist from T-Men or Appointment with Danger, but unlike them he fails to “get his man” in the end. Why not? The answer lies in Slavin’s great flaw: his inability to differentiate between the guilty and the innocent, brought about by his failure to conform to societal mores. We know that Mike is innocent — after all we witnessed Herman’s crime — and yet, while the FBI and LAPD officers working the case can plainly see his innocence, Slavin can’t. It’s this pathological presumption of guilt that undoubtedly cost him his police job, and Slavin is incapable of learning from his past mistakes. He is a stubborn man who has fallen from the razor’s edge, and has lost that part of his self that allowed him to function in a rational world. The film’s most fascinating moment is it’s final one, when an exonerated Mike, restored to his job at the bank, looks up from his orderly column of figures to see Slavin inexplicably lurking outside his window — as the narrator confides that once again “Mike Donovan’s sitting on top of the world …… or is he?” It’s in this moment, when we recognize that there will always be Gus Slavins in the world, that we begin to wonder if it’s possible to ever truly be safe.

Loophole (1954)

Directed by Bud Schuster

Produced by Warren Douglas 

Story by Dwight V. Babcock and George Bricker

Screenplay by Warren Douglas

Cinematography by William A. Sickner

Starring Barry Sullivan, Dorothy Malone, and Charles McGraw

Released by Allied Artists Pictures

Running time: 80 minutes

One last note: The image on the film’s poster is a sham. At no point in the film does Barry Sullivan ever hold a satchel full of money. 

CRIME WAVE (1954)

Noir 101. The Essentials. Crime Wave.

Really?

If this little policier from Warner Bros. (filmed in 1952, released in ’54) isn’t part of your vocabulary then it needs to be; and considering it was finally released on DVD a few years ago, there’s no excuse not to see it. Crime Wave doesn’t stand out from a narrative point of view (despite a bucket of writers); the plot is routine, like a million other second features cranked out during the fifties. Although the story and characters are heavily steeped in noir tropes, it’s André De Toth’s sharp direction that sets it apart from other low budget crime pictures and demands that it be seen by any enthusiast. It can be argued that no other film noir is as influential as it is unknown.

The story is old hat: Ex-con tries to go straight. His old crew breaks out of the Q and comes knocking. When he refuses to help, they hold his fresh new wife in order to force him to take part in one last caper. All the while, the cops are along for the ride, except they don’t believe for a second that our boy is on the up and up.

The cast here is special, and although Sterling Hayden isn’t (necessarily) the protagonist, he dominates the film. This is the sort of role the movie gods had in mind when they placed Hayden in front of a camera: LAPD Detective Lieutenant Sims, bigger and tougher than any of the hoods in the mug book. For my money this is the role of Hayden’s career — not the meatiest or the most well known, but the one in which he leaves the impression of having been the part, rather than merely having played it. (Put it this way: during the DVD commentary, author James Ellroy asserts that Hayden in Crime Wave simply is Bud White.) There are those that prefer him in The Asphalt Jungle or The Killing, but Hayden has a distinct vibe as a cop that isn’t there when he’s playing a crook: you can cross to the other side of the street and dodge a hoodlum (and it isn’t like you won’t see Hayden coming a mile away) but you can’t avoid the police. With the force of the law behind him, the prospect of cop Hayden looking for you is scary as hell.

At a beefy six-and-a-half feet tall, Hayden towers over everyone else in the film. André De Toth and cameraman Burt Glennon keep the camera low, catching the big fellow from underneath but look down on all of the other actors, as if from Hayden’s point of view. He has to slouch, unkempt, a toothpick in his mouth, scruffy hat, tie perpetually twisted backwards — almost too big to be allowed. The film has numerous stellar sequences, but for Hayden one in particular stands out; it begins at around the eleven-minute mark and finds the cop in his homicide division office, interviewing an eyewitness about the Quentin breakout suspects. The scene opens with him at his desk, then it follows him around the bureau, hovering shark-like over a half-dozen routine interviews going on around the office. Ostensibly the purpose is pure semi-documentary storytelling, providing audiences with an up-close look into the inner workings of the LAPD: A middle-aged couple is extolling to one cop about how she and her guy (replete with bandages head) don’t really fight — she didn’t mean to conk him, they were just kidding around. At the next table, a hang dog B girl dripping with mascara and dime-store jewelry sobs about some chucklehead boyfriend from her past, while at yet another a career stool-pigeon chastises a junior man about bracing him in front of his neighbors. What makes the whole thing work is the extraordinary authenticity: pay attention to what is going on in the frame away from subject, almost as if the extras forgot for a moment the cameras were rolling. And this ain’t no soundstage — most of the scenes in Crime Wave, interiors and exteriors alike, are filmed in real Los Angeles locations. And if Hayden wasn’t so utterly believable as a LAPD homicide detective, circa 1952, none of it would work — he’s the glue that holds the entire movie together. If part of the allure of these old films is seeing things as they actually were way back when, this is a scene (and a film) that will keep you in goose bumps.

Then there’s Gene Nelson, of nimble feet and Oklahoma! fame, who plays Steve Lacey, ex-con. It’s on the plus side how Nelson underplays his part. His performance doesn’t offer much beyond matinee good looks and rolled up shirtsleeves. Like I said, this is Hayden’s movie, and Nelson keeps his character plenty quiet. Whether it was his idea or De Toth’s, Steve Lacey is Lieutenant Sims perfect foil. From a noir perspective, Lacey is a protagonist in the classic mold: trying to make good after doing some hard time: employed, married, and with a permanent address. Crane Wilbur’s story puts him in the classic fix: when his old cellmates come looking for help, he knows that refusing them puts everything he’s worked for at risk, while anything short of dropping the proverbial dime puts him squarely on the wrong side of the law. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t: the rock and the hard place of classic film noir, with only fate to decide whether or not a man comes out clean on the other side.

The wife is model-turned-actress Phyllis Kirk. Kirk did most of her work on television, but if you remember her at all it’s probably as the damsel in distress in André De Toth’s most famous picture: House of Wax. Kirk and Nelson are well matched — and the mature depiction of their relationship is surprising for a film noir, and rather progressive when we consider typical gender depictions in similar crime films. Ellen Lacey wears the pants in the family; her assertiveness perfectly balances her husband’s diffidence — yet she’s neither a nag nor a shrew. Steve Lacey’s time behind bars has wrecked his ability to function outside the walls. He needs this strong woman to prop him up and constantly assure him that better days lie ahead. That he had been, of all things, a fighter pilot during the war especially heightens the unusual nature of their relationship. Gone is the recklessness and bravado typically found in screen characterizations of such men, while the wife is equally surprising — a strong, modern woman who is neither a femme fatale nor June Allyson clone. The film gives us an ideally matched couple, each possessed of what the other needs.

The crooks. Ted de Corsia: Eddie Muller says he looks like he was born in a boxing gym. James Ellroy: he “oozes Pomade.” Iconic in The Naked City, de Corsia shines reliably here as the brains behind the breakout. Crime Wave’s theatrical audience was familiar with him in heavy roles dating all the way back to The Lady from Shanghai. De Corsia’s screen persona was as hard-boiled as they come, think of him as an old-school Raymond Burr. His young partner is Charles Buchinsky, who also worked for De Toth in House of Wax. Of course Charles Bronson would go on to be one of the icons of seventies crime films, and one of the biggest movie stars in the world. It’s always jarring to see him this young, his face somewhat lined, but nowhere near as weather-beaten as it would soon become. Crime Wave offered the young actor one of his best early roles: he actually gets to act a little here, and even has a few moments where his physicality is on display. The juxtaposition of a studio era character actor as old school as de Corsia with someone as contemporary as Bronson is yet another reason to examine this film. Then there’s Tim Carey, one of the wild men of the American movie scene. There’s not enough room in any film review to dig into the strange case of Tim Carey, though on the strength of his appearance alone this one is worth the price of admission. His few brief moments of screen time are so bizarre — whether he’s at the center of the shot or mugging from the corner of the frame — that Crime Wave would be notable if for no other reason.  

Enough about the cast, as good as they are, there are more worthwhile reasons to watch this, especially if you appreciate how a film looks, even more if you can feel a film. Usually when a noir essayist digs on cinematography, they’ll discuss the lighting and composition of individual shots — I’m not going to do that. From top to bottom, Crime Wave is a beautifully and thoughtfully staged movie, yet it’s not a one-trick-pony when it comes to visual style (dig, Witness to Murder). Instead, it’s a movie that employs a variety of techniques depending on what individual scenes call for. The sunlit exteriors are pure documentary naturalism: showing LA locales (Burbank, Glendale, downtown) in a blunt, “this is the city” fashion. It’s difficult to follow the movie during these scenes; one’s inclination is to instead focus on signs and landmarks, trying to get a feel for the way the streets, the people, and the cars looked during those spectacular post-war years. At night, Glennon goes for drama, placing klieg lights in off kilter spots to create a chiaroscuro effect that seems as contrived as the day shots seem real, yet somehow it works, and the transitions barely register.

However the scenes are staged, the greatest thing about Crime Wave is where they are filmed: on location all the way through — and not just the exteriors. De Toth somehow swung access to city hall; the homicide bureau scenes are the real deal. Crime Wave is a superlative example of the way in which a low budget feature could be extraordinary: without money to build sets or dictate production values, De Toth was forced to find locations for the film, and it’s clear after just a single viewing that he had a peculiar talent for doing so: Crime Wave is one the most attractive, maybe even exhilarating, film noirs ever made. Hit the pause button on almost any frame, and you’ll find something to linger on. De Toth successfully captured all of the content tropes and moviemaking techniques that had become germane to film noir in this tiny little film. It’s astonishing that he did it with only half of his promised budget, and in a shoot of only thirteen days. The location work of The Naked City, the backseat point of view from Gun Crazy, the tones of John Alton, the jittery handheld cameras, semi-professional actors, and the quagmire of the ceaseless urban landscape. This a mean, unglamorous movie — populated with Dudley Smith cops ready to shoot a suspect in the back, hard-boiled killers, damaged goods, floozies, stool pigeons, strongarms, and professional losers. The good, the bad — even the insane —  all trying to claw their way through a world that no longer gives a damn. It’s a cheap, but delicious buffet of everything noir buffs hunger for — and the final few frames make for one hell of a dessert. It should be on many of those ubiquitous top-ten lists, but the guy beside you probably still hasn’t seen it.

Crime Wave (1954, filmed 1952)

Directed by André De Toth
Screenplay by Crane Wilbur
Adaptation by Bernard Gordon and Richard Wormser
Original Story by John and Ward Hawkins
Produced by Brian Foy
Cinematography by Burt Glennon
Art Direction by Stanley Fleischer
Starring Sterling Hayden, Gene Nelson, and Phyllis Kirk
Released by Warner Bros. 
Running time: 74 minutes

LAPD Prowl Car

Skid Row service station, opening heist

Daily life in the detective bureau

Looking up at Hayden

Phyllis Kirk

Typical shot of Hayden crowding the frame

Nelson cuffed, Kirk looks on

Ted de Corsia and Charles Bronson

Glennon’s creative lighting

Tim Carey

Gene Nelson

Great lighting

Classic film noir imagery

Naturally lit, beautifully framed

Crosstown car chase

HIGHWAY DRAGNET (1954)

I have a great deal of affection for Poverty Row film noirs, but more often than not I wish big stars would treat them like Kryptonite. 1954’s Highway Dragnet is a case in point. Richard Conte is reliable as ever, but Joan Bennett is done a great disservice, and devotees of hers would do well to stay as far away from this as she should have.

The film’s “man on the run” premise is a cliché, but it’s the sort of cliché that got that way because it’s such great film fodder. Conte’s character has just drummed out of the Marine Corps after a rough stint slogging a flamethrower up and down hills in Korea. With a few bucks in his pocket and plenty of time on his hands he heads for the Vegas strip for a few laughs with a pal (who we oddly never see or meet). They plan to hit the town before heading west to renovate Conte’s dilapidated home on California’s Salton Sea. While waiting on his buddy, Conte gets bored with the penny slots and enters the casino bar — wood-paneled like a basement rec-room and strewn with lounge lizards and greasy pompadours. He spots an empty stool and falls into it, right beside a peroxide blonde, Mary Beth Hughes, dolled up but cheap-looking, two sheets to the wind and working on three. The stage is set for the best sequence in Highway Dragnet — too bad it happens so early on.

Bar scenes are a useful narrative device in cheap filmmaking, and a noir staple. They also resonate with me, as I spent more than a decade standing at the doors of shitty dives with my arms crossed, trying to make like a tough guy — and occasionally having to be one. I’ve seen some unpleasant things in the thousands of hours I’ve spent eyeballing barrooms, and I have an understanding of, and maybe even some affection for those sad souls who rot away on barstools — perhaps that’s why I’m so drawn to the losers that populate crime films. The bar offers filmmakers a convenient place to set characters on a collision course, particularly those of the opposite sex. What better symbolizes the seedy urban milieu than the bar? What could be a more emblematic of recklessness, danger, and the allure of easy sex? What better place to be noticed, or to go unnoticed; to conduct nefarious business or an illicit affair? And then there’s the booze itself, our most expedient gateway to sex, violence, or oblivion — in life, as in art. Bars are used often to such purpose in film noir, so it’s hardly surprising that Highway Dragnet, a 70-minute chase picture, opens with a man and a woman sparring over drinks. The scene is brief, spectacular, and best of all: absolutely authentic — so I’m going to slobber over it. If you are anxious for a summary, just go watch the movie — it’s available for free and plenty short enough.

The scene gets moving after Conte does the polite thing and offers Hughes a drink in exchange for the vacant seat, currently occupied by her handbag. She hungrily accepts, but not before making a floozy’s feint at good-girl morality: “I’m not here for that.” Sure she is. They chit-chat their pasts, how they each arrived at the then-and-now, with both actors coming over as only casually interested in one another, or maybe scrupulously disinterested. Here are two performers who understand the way that life-hardened souls interact in a bar, nursing secret little hopes just as they nurse their liquor. Men and women let their guards down over drinks, sitting side-by-side instead of across from one another. They relax when looking up doesn’t mean looking at, and lighting a cigarette has more to do with connecting than it does with foreplay. Conte and Hughes intuit all of this, and their performances take on the unexpected air of truth.

Conte’s good, but Hughes is great, playing tipsy just right, her head not quite steady as she smiles in his direction, her brassiere showing under her dress as she shifts unsteadily on her stool. The pair share the easy banter of those who believe that sex is either impossible or inevitable, and their certainty is what makes this scene so good: Hughes thinks she’s hooked him while Conte is just wasting time. She tells him she’s an ex-fashion model — her glossy is hanging on the wall, just over there, on your right — yet he blunders when he says, “Hey, you were really beautiful then.” There are few creatures more perilous than the woman sitting alone at the bar: her vulnerability makes her dangerous, and Hughes reacts like a classic mad drunk: she gets aggressive. Conte grabs her, pinning her arms behind back, but to his surprise she smiles — she’s finally getting what she wanted the whole time: human contact. Hard or soft, it doesn’t matter. Her body relaxes and she leers into a kiss, just like she planned it that way, and the scene fades out. It’s a moment that reminds us why we love B-pictures: sometimes, because of their meager budgets and lowbrow subject matter, these cheap movies get it exactly right.

In the harsh light of desert mornings and hangovers, we next find Conte at an arid crossroads thumbing his way west. Too bad for him that the first car by is rocking its springs with law enforcement, not surprisingly on the lookout for our boy. A certain peroxide blonde is splayed blue-in-the-face on the floor of her bungalow, and everyone from the bar remebers her and Conte’s fireworks. The uniforms put him in bracelets and haul him to the scene of the crime, where the script contrives to make Conte look guilty as hell. For the sorts of reasons that only make sense on Poverty Row he has a bloody shirt in his suitcase, and when the detectives check his alibi by trying to call the no-show buddy’s hotel, Conte suddenly recalls that his pal is on a “top secret” assignment and isn’t traveling under his real name. Why the film puts us through all of this rubbish is unclear, there’s never a moment where we believe Conte to be guilty — he’s got a Silver Star for Pete’s sake (they are always war heroes) — though it’s possible the writers want to keep us guessing. After all this is a picture with four producers and six credited writers (including Roger Corman), so some confusion is inevitable. (We never do get an explanation for the bloody shirt.) With his chances at freedom fading fast, Conte makes with the judo and busts out. He dives into one of the idling prowl cars and skedaddles. Believe it or not, at this point the film is only ten minutes old.


The rest of the picture takes place on the run. Conte dumps his khakis and the police car, and then stumbles upon two women broken down by the side of the highway. Joan Bennett is a magazine photographer; Wanda Hendrix (you might know her from Ride the Pink Horse) is her model. Conte gets their pistons firing and they pay him back with a free lift. The remaining reels are concerned with a series of near misses at various roadblocks and diners — all full of donut chomping cops — and the unfolding group dynamic when the girls finally discover that their passenger is a murder suspect. Eventually he’s compelled to hold them in check at gunpoint, but as the minutes go by the vivacious (and horny!) Hendrix is more and more in his corner, while Bennett has a different idea. There are a few twists and turns along the route, though nothing — not even the film’s payoff — will come as a big surprise. What is surprising, however, is poor Joan Bennett.

Bennett was still a household name in 1954, though she was a decade past the vibrant sexuality of Scarlet Street, and the old-gal stability of Dark Shadows wasn’t yet on the horizon. Like Barbara Stanwyck she had transitioned to mature roles, having scored with critics as the determined mother in The Reckless Moment and then successfully partnered Spencer Tracy in the highly commercial Father of the Bride pictures. But in 1951 she veered into career hell. Her big-shot husband, producer Walter Wanger, shot her agent, Jennings Lang, in a Beverly Hills parking lot. Wanger thought they were having an affair, and attempted to settle the issue like a character from one of his pictures. Lang survived the shooting, and rehabilitated while Wanger did a few months at the honor farm. The real victim was a scandalized Joan, suddenly a scarlet woman and a chief subject of Hollywood gossip mongers. By the time she landed Highway Dragnet her career was in purgatory. She looks — and it’s painful to write this — awful. Severe and shrill, she seems angry to even be in the picture, forced to play second fiddle to someone as impossibly young and perky as Wanda Hendrix. Bennett’s role is important, but Highway Dragnet’s final scene is excruciating. It’s the sort of thing that must have pained her in the years that followed, and were she still with us she’d undoubtedly be upset that this film has become available.

Highway Dragnet is a watchable B-thriller, a thematic film noir with very little style (cinematographer John Martin only did westerns) and a few cringe-inducing moments — unmistakably Poverty Row — but should still be of interest to noir enthusiasts. But give the woman in the window a break. She deserves it.

Highway Dragnet (1954)

Director: Nathan Juran
Producer: Roger Corman, Jack Jungmeyer, and A. Robert Nunes
Story: U.S. Anderson and Roger Corman
Screenplay: Herb Meadow and Jerome Udlum
Cinematography: John J. Martin
Starring: Dick Conte, Joan Bennett, and Wanda Hendrix
Released by: Allied Artists
Running time: 70 minutes

Edward G. Robinson and BLACK TUESDAY (1954)

(Note: this is a two-part essay. If you'd just like to read about the film, scroll down to the lobby cards.)

When I first discovered Edward G. Robinson he wasn’t chewing the butt of a cigar in a crime picture. He was employing his other screen persona in a light comedy called Mr. Winkle Goes to War. The delightful little film (to my youthful sensibilities) finds Robinson drafted into the army; and to the astonishment of everyone, especially his terror of a wife, he returns from the war a hero. The actor became an immediate favorite, and my opinion of him only grew when I discovered his more fearsome side. Robinson made Mr. Winkle in 1944, between his two most famous noir pictures: Double Indemnity and The Woman in the Window. Since then I’ve managed to see all but the rarest of his films and become quite conversant in the details of his life. My most recent Robinson film was the very difficult-to-find Black Tuesday, made exactly ten years after Mr. Winkle Goes to War. What a difference a decade can make. Robinson’s life when he appeared in Black Tuesday would have been unrecognizable to the high-flying star of the thirties and early forties. Yet throughout his troubles Robinson remained an admirable man as well as a great professional actor. Black Tuesday is a low budget thing, yet Robinson cared enough about his craft (or needed catharsis so badly) that he was able to channel all the bitterness and pain from his private life into his work — resulting in a terrifying new take on the very same screen archetype he practically invented. His work in Black Tuesday is so good, so focused, and so angry it practically hurts to watch.


Robinson was born Emmanuel Goldenberg (hence the “G”) in 1893 in the Romanian capital of Bucharest. He immigrated to New York City with his family at age ten. He became fascinated with acting as a youth, eventually landing on Broadway after paying his dues on the road and in stock. Following a successful theatrical career he signed on for his first significant screen role, as Enrico Bandello in Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar. The success of the film cemented Robinson’s future in Hollywood, and over the next fifteen years he enjoyed as much of the American Dream as any man could ask for, with a parade of hit movies and a salary to match.


In contrast to Robinson’s tough-as-nails screen image, the man himself couldn’t have been more different. He was sensitive, educated, and enjoyed the lofty pursuits of the cultural elite: music, theater, literature, and most importantly: art. He and wife Gladys began purchasing paintings during the Depression, and twenty years later their collection was legendary — renowned not only for its numbers but for its good taste. Robinson himself described it as the single greatest collection of Impressionist canvases in America. He was as astute and respected as any art enthusiast in the world — able to start trends and influence market prices by merely contemplating the purchase of a particular work. In today’s market his collection would bring more than a billion dollars.


Robinson was also known for his generosity, if not for his caution — and like the fictional character Mr. Winkle he was a war hero. He donated time, talent, and truckloads of money to the war effort. He was the first Hollywood actor to perform for the troops in France following the Normandy landings, and he lauded the American way of life on the radio. The US and British governments were quick to employ his famous name and astonishing gift for languages (he spoke as many as eight) for a series of propaganda messages disseminated in central Europe. Eddie was also quick to help a friend — just ask Dalton Trumbo. When Trumbo was indicted as one of the Hollywood Ten, he wrote to Robinson asking for financial help for his wife and children. Robinson kept them afloat with a loan of $2,500. His soft spot for those in need coupled with a lack of scrutiny regarding his charitable giving was enough to land him in the infamous Red Channels tract of June 1950, linked to a dozen alleged Communist fronts. He had already spoken before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, and would appear three more times, usually by his own request, following the publication of Red Channels. He was finally cleared in 1952 when he famously said, “Either snap my neck or set me free. If you snap my neck, I will still say ‘I believe in America.’” HUAC considered the screen star a schmuck — committee chair John Stevens Wood of Georgia chastised him as “…a very choice sucker. I think you are number one on the sucker list in this country.” Robinson left Washington as damaged goods. His ordeal with the government was finally over, but Hollywood was reluctant to welcome him back.


Robinson would do very little acting in the early fifties — his life was in shambles. Although he narrowly avoided the Blacklist he was still tainted by it — the job offers dried up, and he entered what he himself called his B-Picture, or “has-been” period. His longtime marriage to manic-depressive Gladys was forever on the rocks — she was prone to bouts of severe despair and was often institutionalized. Gladys was so unstable that she sued Eddie for divorce almost every time she was hospitalized, but would inevitably back off when released. They would eventually formally break when he realized he just couldn’t stand the trauma any longer.

His son was a constant source of anxiety. Edward G. “Manny” Robinson Jr. always seemed to be in trouble. Unable to sustain either a caring relationship with his famous father or endure outside his shadow, teenage Manny began to drink and was a full-fledged alcoholic by the time of his twentieth birthday. He eloped south of the border and was quickly divorced in the midst of an abortion scandal. He wrote bad checks and got probation. He spent weekends in the drunk-tank. He couldn’t hold down a job. In the summer of 1954, around the time his father was filming Black Tuesday, Manny was arrested on suspicion of armed robbery — two cabbies claimed he cold-cocked them with a flashlight and made off with their fares. He was tried in Los Angeles in October of ’54 on armed robbery charges but dodged prison when the jury couldn’t agree. The district attorney eventually decided to let it drop.


With Gladys gone Eddie was so lonely he often stayed with friends rather than sleep alone in a big, deserted mansion. Following the collapse of the marriage and unable to come to amicable terms regarding the art collection, Robinson was forced to sell it off to pay for the divorce settlement. Shortly thereafter Manny was took a DUI rap and did a two-month stretch at the honor farm. Edward G. Robinson had reached rock bottom. 


But he didn’t stay there. He found his way back to the screen, though modestly, in low-budget crime pictures such as Nightmare and A Bullet for Joey. Cecil B. Demille of all people — the conservative patriarch of Hollywood, acting against studio advice, would restore Robinson to studio credibility by casting him in the role of Dathan in his sweeping religious epic The Ten Commandments. From that moment until the end of his life Robinson worked steadily in Hollywood, and even managed to buy back a few of his beloved paintings. He died in 1973, just after finishing the manuscript for his autobiography All My Yesterdays, and completing work on another Charlton Heston project, Soylent Green. Gladys had died the previous year, and sadly, Manny’s day were likewise numbered — he would be found dead at the age of forty, gone less than a year after his father.


Though Robinson is one of the most memorable and recognizable actors in film history he was never nominated for an Academy Award. Considering he could have been honored for many of his films — just pick one, Oscar really blew it in 1944. Even with many of the brightest male leads in the industry away fighting the war, it was a great year for the movies. Going My Way, Gaslight, Laura, Wilson, Lifeboat, Since You Went Away, and Double Indemnity. In Billy Wilder’s landmark crime film Robinson delivers one of the most indelible supporting performances in motion picture history, yet he wasn’t even nominated — a stinging injustice considering Barry Fitzgerald, the winner for Going My Way, was nominated for his role in both the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories. The Academy finally decided to recognize Robinson with a lifetime achievement award, which delighted the aging star, but he died shortly before the ceremony.  The statuette that had eluded him in life was accepted by his second wife Jane. And though she remarked that Robinson had been thrilled with the award, it was in this writer and fan’s opinion, far too little recognition, offered far too late.

Directed by Hugo Fregonese, written by The Big Heat scribe Sidney Boehm, and photographed by A-Lister Stanley Cortez, Black Tuesday positively crackles. No pun intended. It’s a mean movie — cynical, cold-blooded, and hardboiled as hell. The title refers to the day when death row inmates are fated for their turn in the electric chair. In this particular case it’s a twin bill: the newspaper headlines reading, “Racket King and Bank Bandit Must Die!” The opening scene begins with a long, sweeping camera shot that closes in on the cellblock, then pans slowly from one cage to the next. Edward G. Robinson’s first impression is visceral; swathed in shadow, ‘Racket King’ Vincent Canelli paces from side to side behind the bars of his cell. He moves like a predatory animal, ready to lash out at anyone unfortunate enough to wander too close to the bars. One cell over Peter Graves does best impersonation, but the great man’s screen presence simply cannot be matched. In the background, Selwyn, a black inmate played by former professional wrestler Don Blackman, pounds a wooden stool and belts out the title song in the style of a woeful spiritual from a hundred years before.


Graves costars as ‘Bank Bandit’ Pete Manning, a cop killer who managed to stash his $200,000 haul before being caught, convicted, and sentenced to die. The money is the McGuffin in Black Tuesday — not just the money, but Manning’s abject refusal to divulge its whereabouts to anyone, even his fellow convicts. An early moment finds the warden offering Pete a ten-day reprieve in exchange for the cash. Manning says no dice: “Tell the governor it’s not the bank’s money, it’s mine. I earned it — the hard way.” Pete will give up the loot, but only in exchange for a commutation of his death sentence. But the governor won’t play ball: Manning must keep his appointment with the chair. One of the best things about this film is that it never compromises its dog-eat-dog worldview.


As the level of activity in the prison reaches a fever-pitch, Black Tuesday takes on a documentary tone — denizens on both sides of the law scramble through eleventh-hour preparations for the looming event. Canelli remains the center of attention. He antagonizes everyone from his cell — the guards, the warden, his fellow inmates, even the priest. It becomes clear that he has something planned, and eventually the audience is let in: Vince intends to bust out, and his crew has set an elaborate scheme in motion. The circumstances of the breakout are outrageous and implausible, but who cares? By this point you can’t wait to see what happens when Vince finally gets loose of his cell. Canelli plans to spring himself and Manning, fool the kid into giving up the loot, kill him, and then head for South America with his woman Hatti (Jean Parker) and the money. The thing comes off more or less as planned, though Manning takes a slug in the shoulder during the getaway, and Canelli finds himself babysitting a gaggle of hostages, including the priest, the death chamber M.D., a cub reporter, and the daughter of a prison guard.


The lone detail overlooked by Vincent was where Pete cleverly hid the $200,000 — in a safe deposit box at the First National Bank. A signature is required for access, so the wounded and all-too-recognizable bank robber is the only one who can get it. Canelli, along with the rest of his gang and the hostages hole up in a warehouse while Manning and Hatti attempt to retrieve the cash. They leave the bank with the money in a satchel, but the cops get wise and tail them to the warehouse after a light-headed Pete leaves a bloody fingerprint on the signature card. Black Tuesday quickly shifts gears from the prison break into a standoff set piece between the gangster and the cops.


The final twenty minutes are talky, but worth it — in the hands of a lesser screenwriter the film would have ended quickly and disappointingly under a hail of rote gunfire. Instead Boehm uses the claustrophobic tension of the warehouse to further develop his characters, and in the end offer one of them a sort of redemption. Most of the dialog involves Father Slocum, the prison chaplain, as he desperately tries to save the lives of his fellow hostages. Instead what is revealed is the depravity of Vincent Canelli. Robinson plays it to the bone though — Canelli engages in the conversation yet never softens — even after a ricochet kills Hatti. The film’s harsh milieu is relentless. The cops are equally as fierce in their determination to get their man at any cost, even if it means sacrificing the hostages — realized in one of Black Tuesday’s finest moments, as an anguished police inspector shouts to the captive priest, “I want you to know how it is with me Father. God forgive me, but I can’t help any of you.” It’s Robinson’s matter-of-fact performance that makes it all believable. His character is so authentically, irrevocably  corrupt and untouched by conscience that it’s easy to see how the police could weigh the balance of a few innocent lives in exchange for his. Gone are the nuances of the gangster-hero first brought to life in Robinson’s own little Rico and violently exploded with Cagney’s Cody Jarrett. In Vincent Canelli Robinson strips away the veneer of popular cinematic myth and reveals underneath the underworld figure as a cruel, vicious, and very real psychopath.


In the end, it’s the doomed younger man who sets things right, and achieves some small measure of redemption. As Pete comes to grips with his own destiny and the futility of the situation he makes the only choice that will save the lives of the hostages — he turns on the raging Vince and shoots him in the back. Pete steps through the warehouse door: “I’m coming out Hailey, with a gun in my hand!” and is met with a shower of bullets. The camera lingers on the half-lit doorway for a moment as the music begins to swell, then pans across the shadowy floor to Robinson’s outstretched hand, in death still clamoring for the gun.


Black Tuesday (1954)

Director: Hugo Fregonese
Cinematographer: Stanley Cortez
Screenplay: Sidney Boehm
Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Peter Graves, and Jean Parker
Released by: United Artists
Running time: 80 minutes