Nightmare Alley - Film Noir And The American Dream (52 page)

36
. Pagano also wrote the screenplay for
Try and Get Me
(discussed in this book’s conclusion) and the film’s source novel,
The Condemned
.

37
. The film lacks flashback narration and the violence typical of noir. However, its nightclub scenes and multiple betrayals justify Gabbard’s description of it as a “
film noir
with musical characters” (269).

38
. San isn’t the only troubled male in this film. Almost every male character is damaged (Sally’s husband, Roy, suffers from war-induced PTSD; neighbor Johnny has a disabled hand), weak (Joey is an ephebe trying to prove himself to his boss), or despicable (Nicky).

39
. This song was so well-known, having been a hit in several different versions, that many filmgoers at the time would have “heard” its lyrics even during instrumental versions.

40
. In addition to being a dynamic actress, accomplished screenwriter, and the only female director in Hollywood at the time, Lupino was a composer and capable pianist. But she had a singing voice that one contemporary likened to a “nutmeg grinder” (qtd. in Donati 141–42). We hear the grinder again in
Private Hell 36
(a film she cowrote for her company, Filmakers); her character, Lily Marlowe, seems to be a reincarnation of the
Road House
character.

1
. Cowie similarly writes that noirs “afforded women roles which are active, adventurous and driven by sexual desire” (135), and she lists a few of the female-authored films I discuss in this chapter (136). For a list of female noir protagonists and writers see Martin 222–25.

2
. According to D’Ann Campbell, between 1940 and 1947 women held more than half of all clerical jobs. Clerical work was more secure, more traditionally feminine, and less physically demanding than factory work; it also encouraged relationships with educated coworkers. In short, clerical work was “classy” (108).

3
. Molly Haskell distills the “woman’s film” into four types: the sacrificial story, the tale of affliction, the romance of choice between lovers, and the narrative of female competition (163–64). Doane offers somewhat different categories in
The Desire to Desire
(36): the medical case study, the maternal melodrama, the love story, and the Gothic.

4
. Helen Hanson notes, however, that noir deals with “the investigation of the female, the female Gothic with the investigation of the male” (42).

5
. Martin lists thirty-three noirs on which women worked as producers, writers, or directors and which also highlighted central female characters (223–24). She lists twenty-seven more involving women writers but not featuring female protagonists.

6
. For more background about the negotiations between Breen and the studio see Biesen 141–42.

7
. According to the IMDb entry on
Mildred Pierce
, seven other writers also worked on the film, including three additional women: Margaret Gruen, Louise Randall Pierson, and Margaret Buell Wilder.

8
. In Cain’s novel Mildred’s first business is wholesaling her home-baked pies, which become a pungent symbol of her effort to bring the kitchen into the business world: Cain,
Mildred Pierce
, 74–78, 99–100.

9
. The film’s buildings represent Mildred’s shifting identities: the modest Pierce home shows her initial petit bourgeois status; Monty’s cabin manifests her buried sexual desire; the restaurant embodies her social mobility; the Beragon estate represents her class aspirations.

10
. See also Krutnik,
Lonely
62. Grossman points out that the Warner Bros. promotional materials recast the film’s “representation of female struggle and agency as malevolent” (57).

11
. The films are
Phantom Lady, Nocturne, Ride the Pink Horse
, and
The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry
.

12
. Hanson writes that Carol’s investigation enables her to “ascertain the suitability of the hero as marriage partner” (26), but it’s hard to see how she ascertains anything about Henderson, who remains in jail, unchanged and unable to help himself, until the conclusion.

13
. Another of the other five was Anita Loos. By 1944 no woman was on the list.

14
. According to Ford the actors “discussed all possible sexual permutations … including a homosexual attachment” between the male characters. Ford also recalls that the actors didn’t know how the film would turn out: “Sometimes we would all be on the set in the morning and Virginia would come in with the script and hand it to us” (qtd. in Martin 215). For a more extensive discussion of the homosexual elements in the film see Dyer, “Resistance” 117–22. For background about the negotiations between the filmmakers and the Production Code Administration see Stokes 30–35.

15
. Doane remarks of this scene that Mundson is the “stability against which Gilda is measured. He is predictable and does not deceive the eye” (
Femmes
106). But Mundson is the one who changes position in the scene and thereby alters the triangle, and his opacity resists penetration by the viewer’s eye.

16
. The song was written specifically for the film by Doris Fisher and Allan Roberts (Stokes 35–36). Doane asserts that Gilda’s striptease offers a metaphor for the entire narrative, which peels away “layers of Gilda’s disguises in order to reveal the ‘good’ woman underneath” (
Femmes
107). I would add that Farrell is just as much in disguise as she is; her striptease also unveils his nature.

17
. Doane, for example, writes that the “image of volatile sexuality attached to Gilda is too convincing” for the rushed ending to undo (
Femmes
108). Andrew Spicer (103) claims that this ending was added at Van Upp’s insistence, but in support he quotes only Martin, who is merely speculating (214–15). Stokes also makes this claim but provides no evidence (29).

18
. Walker had previously worked on several B pictures for Poverty Row studios PRC and Republic. One of her early scripts (1943) was for a film called
Danger! Women at Work
, about three gals who try to run a trucking company, a slight comedy that reflects the postwar concern about women in the workforce. Three of her Republic pictures were crime dramas; one of them,
End of the Road
, is a noirish story about a man falsely accused (a crime writer helps to free him: “Gertrude Walker”). Walker reused the wrong-man device in her original story for
Railroaded!
(adapted by John C. Higgins and directed by Anthony Mann), a frame-up tale in which beauty operator Clara Calhoun (Jane Randolph) falsely testifies about a robbery of her establishment organized by her boyfriend, Duke Martin (John Ireland). The sister of the framed man, Rosie Ryan (Sheila Ryan), becomes (like Carol in
Phantom Lady
) an amateur sleuth, meanwhile juggling the attentions of Martin and Detective Mickey Ferguson (Hugh Beaumont). Clara’s moral crisis and Rosie’s determination provide much of the film’s interest. Walker’s last film work was the screenplay and story for a 1951 Republic picture called
Insurance Investigator. The Damned Don’t Cry
, adapted from her story “Case History,” is the best film made from Walker’s writing.

19
. The scene in which Ethel is interviewed by an employment agency closely resembles two scenes in Cain’s
Mildred Pierce:
both women want higher-class jobs than their qualifications allow; both turn down jobs as housemaids. It seems likely that Wald, who produced both films, borrowed the scene from Cain’s novel. See Cain,
Mildred Pierce
43–50.

20
. The slapping scene drew the attention of the censors, who insisted that the beating be softened and shortened (“
The Damned Don’t Cry
” PCA file).

21
. Frings also authored the original story for
Hold Back the Dawn
and the screenplay for the Gothic
Guest in the House
(1944) before moving to Paramount. Her most celebrated cinematic work was the screen adaptation of William Inge’s play
Come Back, Little Sheba
. After retiring from movie work, she wrote for television and then returned to theater. Her adaptation of Thomas Wolfe’s
Look Homeward, Angel
enjoyed a successful Broadway run in 1958–59 and won her the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Drama (“Ketti Frings”).

22
. Frings’s other noir,
Dark City
, also depicts complicity. In it Dan Haley (Charlton Heston) is complicit in the suicide of a tourist named Arthur Winant because he fails to stop his associates from cheating Winant in a card game.

23
. The trial scenes were drastically shortened in the course of script revisions. Frings’s first draft (dated Nov. 18, 1948) does not depict Cleve and Thelma discussing her testimony, as in the finished film; this material was introduced in the version dated Jan. 4, 1949.
File on Thelma Jordon
script files.

24
. This gambit went through various versions. In the first drafts Thelma cuts the car’s lights to cause the crash. Apparently feeling that wasn’t sufficient, in the draft of Feb. 7, 1949, Frings has Thelma both cut the lights
and
burn Tony with the lighter! The lines about the chameleon appear in the first draft, dated Nov. 18, 1948 (Frings,
File on Thelma Jordon
script files).

25
. Yet ads for the film presented Thelma as a femme fatale with lines such as “Nothing stops Thelma Jordon. … She’ll lie … kill … or kiss her way out of anything” (Paramount press sheets). Successive screenplay drafts show Frings softening Thelma’s character. For example, in the first two drafts Thelma herself suggests that Cleve hire Willis. In the “final white” version (Feb. 7, 1949), Cleve comes up with the plan (
File on Thelma Jordon
script files).

26
. The novel lacks this flashback, as do earlier drafts of the screenplay by Barre Lyndon and Jonathan Latimer. Lyndon’s initial version (dated Jan. 6, 1947) and Latimer’s draft (Jan. 15, 1947) begin, like the source novel, with the exam. Lyndon’s second draft (July 25, 1947) starts at the moment of Wilma’s near-rape. Lyndon’s first draft lacks the necessary hook—why is this woman acting so strangely?—and his second iteration risks undermining viewers’ sympathy for Wilma before the story even starts. Frings’s first draft (Feb. 18, 1948, under the title “Strange Deception”) cannily places the flashback where it stands in the film and thus thrusts the audience immediately into a dramatic situation.

27
. In the epigraph to the source novel,
Be Still, My Love
, author June Truesdell writes that Wilma “is the victim of
CONDITIONED REFLEXES
just as surely as the test animals in her own laboratory” (5).

28
. The near-rape scene, shot on May 28, 1948, was the final scene filmed, according to Hal Wallis’s script notes. As one might expect, the scene was a bone of contention between the studio and the Breen Office. Stephen Jackson, a PCA administrator, wrote to Wallis in February of 1948 that the film could not show any struggle preceding the near-rape; another letter of March 8 reiterates the complaint. After assurances from the studio the PCA approved the film in April. In May, though, Jackson wrote angrily to Wallis, protesting that he and director William Dieterle had refused to let the PCA representative on set as the scene was shot. In none of the screenplay drafts,
however, is there any indication that Wilma complies with the young man’s advances. In Truesdell’s novel she doesn’t resist but seems to grow passive as Bill (named Frank) kisses her: “She rested there, her lips slightly parted, her heart lost in the surging sound of his pulse” (25).

29
.
Cyclothymia
is an older psychiatric term for what is now usually called a bipolar disorder. The term does not exist in the source novel, which instead uses the term
parathyroic
(Truesdell 112, 165–66). “Cyclothymia” and its variations were added in early script drafts by Lyndon and the first writer hired, Allen Rivkin (
Be Still
108). Frings contributed the idea of showing Dorgan reading Bill’s exam (
Strange Deception
70).

30
. The two men rudely speak about her, in her presence, as if she weren’t there: “What do you do with her when she’s like this, Warren?” Dorgan asks. “Flowers, candy, a mink coat?” Dorgan’s attitude hints at the sexist assumptions female professionals faced at the time: a moody dame can surely be pacified with gifts.

31
. The boxing scenes, along with some clever ideas for “trick shots,” originated with Frings (
Strange Deception
).

32
. In the novel Wilma doesn’t hesitate to agree. Truesdell’s Tuttle, unlike the film’s, hates her job, loathes her students, and refers to her colleagues as “pigs” (135).

33
. Truesdell’s novel is much harsher in this respect, repeatedly suggesting that all academics are stuffy and boring and that Wilma willfully deludes herself. Frings’s screenplay tones down the novel’s anti-intellectualism.

34
. For
The Accused
, Frings earned $2,000 per week, whereas male writers Barre Lyndon, Allen Rivkin, and Jonathan Latimer earned $1,500, $1,500, and $1,250 per week, respectively. No doubt partly in recognition of her work on
The Accused
, after completing the first draft of
Thelma Jordon
Frings renegotiated her contract to receive $2,250 per week to complete that script (see Wallis, Contract with Ketti Frings, Dec. 21, 1948).

35
. As Pam Cook notes, Ann is repeatedly filmed “as if she is in prison” (for example, from behind her railed bedstead: 62).

36
. As Ronnie Scheib astutely observes, “it is his naming of the desired, feared, and repressed sexual relationship” with Bruce that “triggers the shutting off of his voice, and exaggerates and displaces the already multiply-displaced sexuality” (60).