Evelyn Venable 4/5

Note: This week we are looking at some movies with Evelyn Venable. She was considered a "poetic" type of actress with exquisite features and a beautiful speaking voice. Her voice is genuinely warm, friendly and assured in an educated way – she came from a family of teachers. Venable had a gentle, wholesome, and somewhat demure on-screen persona, which stands in contrast to her being cast as bit of a go-getter in this B-comedy.  Her aura of intelligence and dignity might have worked against her in the cashbox minds of producers who wanted  “independent women” like Kay Francis or “sex bombs” like Jean Harlow.

Hollywood Stadium Mystery
1938 / 1:06
Tagline: “Ringside seats for a crime!”
[internet archive]

Let’s be honest: the screwball elements are tepid, and the mystery is strictly by-the-numbers. But what elevates this Thirties B-picture above the usual studio filler is its leads - Neil Hamilton and Evelyn Venable - who bring unexpected sophistication to a noisy genre that usually leans on pratfalls and punchlines.

Hamilton plays Bill Devons, a District Attorney with no patience for pulp fiction nonsense. Venable is Pauline Ward, a mystery writer who’s clearly read her share of Havelock Ellis and Bernard Shaw. Both characters are articulate, ambitious, and refreshingly adult - like they’ve just stepped out of a grad seminar with Cyril Connolly on The Taming of the Shrew. It’s a welcome break from the usual B-movie archetypes: the lunkhead guy and the wisecracking dame.

Hamilton toggles between suave and smug with ease, even when saddled with clunkers like, “Marry me and then I'd have a legal right to box your ears in.” Venable, meanwhile, is a revelation. Her performance is precise and expressive, her voice cultured without being affected. You get the sense that her intelligence may have been a liability in an industry that preferred its leading ladies either glamorously vacant or sassily streetwise. At 5’8” with a her own face that defied the studio mold, Venable may have been too much herself for the system.

Barbara Pepper steals her two scenes as Althea Ames, a brassy actress caught up in the murder of a boxer. She delivers zingers like, “You liked it enough last night,” with the kind of timing that makes you wish she had more screen time. Her resigned line - “All you men ever think about is eating” - lands with a sigh and a wink to all women.

Clocking in at just over an hour, the film moves briskly. The sets - especially the offices and boxing arena - feel surprisingly authentic for a Republic Pictures production, a studio not exactly known for lavish realism.

For fans of 1930s cinema, this film is a time capsule of cultural quirks: brass bands at boxing matches, comic relief via mouth noises (thanks, Smiley Burnett), and yes, the regrettable appearance of blackface as a disguise - an uncomfortable reminder of what passed for humor in the era.

As a bonus for us Perry Mason fans, both Hamilton and Pepper would later appear in the classic TV series - he as the uptight male that thinks he’s got the bead on life, she as the salt-of-the-earth type.

Evelyn Venable 3/5

Note: This week we are looking over some movies with Evelyn Venable. After her really hot period in 1934 and 1935, dimwit producers got it in their minds she wasn’t star material so the remainder of her career was in B-movies whose mere titles are turn-offs (North to Nome, Female Fugitive). She retired to raise a family and later became a Latinist at UCLA.

The County Chairman
1935 / 1:18
Tagline: “He Knew Every Family Skeleton by its First Name”
[internet archive]

In the 1930s, Hollywood occasionally indulged in nostalgia for the Gay Nineties and rural life, evoking a simpler time before urbanization, industrialization, and economic expansion reshaped American society. This light comedy, set in rural Wyoming, captures that sentiment. It’s a world where people laugh at automobiles and their drivers - much like how folks chuckled at cell phones and their early adopters in the 1990s (see Twister, 1994).

Will Rogers stars as Jim Hackler, a seasoned lawyer and political operator. His young law partner, Ben Harvey (Kent Taylor), is running for county district attorney. Hackler touts Harvey’s qualifications with dry wit: he’s never been jailed, he’s an orphan, and he once won an oratory contest.

The film portrays old-fashioned campaigning as a tedious grind. Harvey trudges through the countryside, kissing grubby children and courting low-information voters. Hackler, meanwhile, schmoozes ornery yokels who refuse to commit either way. The campaign leans into the charm and flirtation of politics - Harvey even woos a quirky young woman to win her influential father’s vote. Hackler mocks political clichés, advising Harvey to “just point with pride and view with alarm.” When their opponent starts pontificating, Rogers mutters, “Same old sheep dip.” And if Harvey loses? Hackler’s advice: “Call fraud.”

The rival candidate, Elias Rigby (Berton Churchill), is a classic crooked politician. Complicating matters, Harvey is romantically involved with Rigby’s daughter, Lucy (Evelyn Venable). Harvey tries to keep the campaign civil, but when Rigby publicly attacks Hackler, Harvey retaliates by airing rumors that Rigby swindled a disabled man out of a railroad settlement. Lucy, disillusioned, breaks things off and turns to a smug newspaper editor - the guy with the car.

Venable, from a family of educators, convincingly plays a primary school teacher. She exudes warmth, intelligence, and integrity. In one standout scene, Lucy struggles to reconcile Hackler’s manipulative use of truth with her idealism. Hackler subtly accuses her of hypocrisy for teaching “to err is human, to forgive divine” in the penmanship lesson yet refusing to forgive Harvey. With gentle condescension of the old and treacherous, Hackler suggests that wealthy men with automobiles are more appealing than poor country lawyers, using psychological sleight of hand to sway her.

Among the schoolchildren is Mickey Rooney, whose energetic presence has long divided audiences. At 15, he still convincingly plays a grade-schooler, though his over-the-top personality and small stature raise questions about possible hormonal or chromosomal issues.

Comic relief also comes from Sassafras, played by - steel yourself, dear movie-goer - Stepin Fetchit. The film’s climax hinges on his inability to count votes - a gag rooted in outdated humor about cognitive disabilities. One joke lands: when Rogers wakes him from a nap near a sheep farm, Sassafras says, “I started counting them sheep being dipped and done dozed off.” Still, Fetchit’s stereotyped portrayal - shuffling gait, mumbling speech - has aged poorly. Listening via Bluetooth, I found his monologues are more intelligible, but not necessarily more enjoyable.

Despite its political setting, the film doesn’t feel like satire. It doesn’t aim to expose the absurdities of campaigning or critique democratic processes in our free and happy country. Instead, it presents political rivalry as a natural part of life. For example, in 2024, many lamented how politics divides families, as if that were new. But in this film, such divisions are simply accepted. The tone is grounded, not exaggerated.

The writers maintain a subtle undercurrent of Division Street America. Older voters dismiss young Harvey as a “squirt.” Rural folks distrust town merchants. Sheep farmers and cattlemen openly dislike each other. Hackler and Rigby embody long-standing small-town feuds. Hackler quips, “He's been talking like that 20 years and he hasn't said anything yet.” Their mutual hatred is frank and enduring.

Watching Rogers again after many years - my last memory being the excellent State Fair - I was struck by his natural style and distinctive voice. His portrayal is unmistakably rural, but not gruff like Ward Bond, smarmy like Buddy Ebsen, or volatile like Walter Brennan. This was the second film Rogers and Venable made together. On the set of David Harum, Venable met her future husband, Hal Mohr, an Oscar-winning cinematographer known for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) and The Phantom of the Opera (1943). They married, had two daughters, and remained together until his death in 1974..

Evelyn Venable 2/5

Note: This week we are examining some movies with Evelyn Venable. She and her agent somehow got the studio to agree not to assign her bit parts so in 1934 and 1935 so she appeared in substantial roles. In the opening scene in this movie, Venable in a wedding dress is breathtakingly up there with Ann Harding in a wedding dress in Paris Bound.

Double Door
1934 / 1:14
Tagline: “She'll make your flesh creep and your blood run cold”
[youtube no ads]

This suspense movie opens with a wedding held by one of Manhattan’s old money families. Two spinster sisters are seeing their half-brother Rip married to Ann, a nurse from humble origins. Older sister Victoria, a domestic tyrant, looks down on Ann as an upper servant. The younger sister Caroline, though dominated by Victoria’s demands, welcomes Ann as a breath of life in the gloomy mansion furnished with late Victorian monstrosities.

Mary Morris reprises Victoria whom she played on Broadway for 140 performances. She is a portrait in horror, looking eaten up by hard prejudices and old money. Starting with having The Wedding March cut off in the middle, Victoria is determined to spoil the lives of the newlyweds as thoroughly as she has fouled her own and Carrie’s lives. Victoria’s cruelty to Ann seems especially malicious, as deliberate studied unkindness always is.

It is no surprise that after only a couple of months in the ghastly mansion, Ann is at the edge of her reason. She sees an old boyfriend for comfort and advice. This innocent meeting is exploited by Victoria to drive a wedge between Rip and Ann. She calls a family meeting so that a private detective can report on his surveillance of the movements of blameless Ann. The climax of this short movie is a rocker, with the last fifteen minutes presenting almost unbearable tension.

We movie-goers may wonder why the oppressed have never protested or rebelled against Victoria’s yoke. Raised with Victoria, Caroline has from the time she was a little child been intimidated and coerced by her older sister. Raised by Victoria when his mother died when he was seven, Rip’s spirit was broken a long time ago. He is so demoralized that it is inconceivable for him to crawl out from under his own cowardice and shame at not protecting his own half-sister in the past and his wife in the present. Rip is afraid of gossip and scenes nor can he imagine living any other way, i.e. on his own two feet.

Victoria is nice to the portly poodle but awful to people. New to psychological warfare, Ann makes excuses for the tyrant because Victoria is old and lonely so it’s understandable that she's mean and hateful. Miser Victoria argues that her tyranny is a price family members have to pay for wealth they all live on. With a menacing look on her face, Victoria looks at people the way a king cobra looks at a mongoose, thus imposing her will through sheer stubbornness and killing the victim’s initiative to run or resist.

This Pre-Code movie is based on stage play, but suffers no staid staginess that mars early talkies based on plays like Holiday (1930). Microphones, lighting, and shots from unexpected angles had gone a long way in only four years. This effort definitely looks like a movie. For instance, the lighting and the camera angles on Mary Morris’ face make her look particularly feverish and sinister.  As for Pre-Code themes, I wonder if Rip’s chronicle to Ann of his sleeping in the same room as Victoria as a boy would indicate possible – ugh, it doesn’t bear thinking of, even for those wild Pre-Code days.

Venable’s fine performance brings out Ann’s changing attitude from hope that Victoria will reconcile herself to the marriage to certainty that Victoria’s malevolence will never change. Anne Revere, also reprising Caroline from the stage, overacts here and there but makes us see that Caroline’s warmth has somehow remained indomitable despite Victoria’s incessant browbeating. Carrie’s compassion is a miracle, a tribute to the human spirit. Kent Taylor as Rip conveys that he really loves Ann. His tenderness with her is sweet, but overall like a lot of male actors back then he doesn’t have much going in the pizazz department.

This performance was Mary Morris’ single work for Hollywood. Morris returned to the stage where she felt more at home. She may have felt uneasy with or contemptuous of Hollywood’s plans to typecast her in horror roles. One wonders if she noted Hollywood’s treatment of Maria Ouspenskaya, a genius and teacher of acting.

Evelyn Venable 1/5

Intro: Evelyn Venable was born on October 18, 1913 so this week let’s take a look at her movies. The movie reviewed below gained her much attention at the time and dreamy Grazia is the role she is remembered for today among the hardest of hardcore buffs of classic Hollywood. She was perfectly cast and made the most of her chance. That this movie ever got made in the first place is hard to figure out, since it is pitched an extremely narrow market: folks of above average intelligence (i.e. half the movie-going public) that are interested in spiritual matters (whoa, that takes in only about 30% out of the half we had*).

Death Takes a Holiday
1934 / 1:20
Tagline: “No one died! Because Death was busy making love!”
[internet archive]

From the play by Alberto Casella (1891 - 1957), Fredric March plays the Grim Reaper and Evelyn Venable plays the Spiritual Girl.

March crashes a carefree house-party hosted by expatriate English people in Italy for their American friends. The Grim Reaper conceals his identity by dressing in the height of fashion and adopting the suave manner of a European aristocrat. He obligates his host to keep his identity a secret because he wants to plumb the mystery as to why, given the sorrows and trials of life, people fear and abhor death even more than being alone.

The Reaper tries gambling, ping pong, the ponies, boating, dancing and socializing. He finds no answer in these time-filling activities as why people cling to life. Then an elderly baron suggests love and romance. Luckily the Spiritual Girl, on the lookout for the ineffable, has not yet discovered sitting on the meditation cushion or the usual snares for the unwary called mysticism or occultism or politics.

They fall in love.  

Thus, the Grim Reaper finds the answer to his question as to why people cleave to life though they piss away their precious time with mindless scrolling. For once, Hollywood does not give in to its usual nervous anticipations as to what the folks in Pottsville or Zenith will think of the ending.

The line, “Has it ever occurred to you that death may be simpler than life and infinitely more kind” provides grist for conversation during, say, a third date for a well-read but cute couple in that 15% of the audience that will like this picture. Fredric March makes the human charm believable, but he makes the remoteness, the detachment of the character from human concerns plausible too. March’s Death has an agenda that is not the agenda of us among the quick, his when and how are not our when and how.

March plays his part so as to give us movie-goers the impression that for all the sinister reputation, Death is not a complete bad hat. We are not taken in by the awkward magnetism and tidy attire so much that we want to meet the Grim Reaper before we absolutely have to. But we may become more willing to grant that Death is a part of the necessity of life, the cosmic order of things, so it had better be accepted with grace and bravery, not ferocity or fear. In other words, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” is just exactly what we shouldn’t do.

Evelyn Venable is perfectly cast because she has the ethereal air of a searcher who feels far away from other people, even from those they love, because they are hunting for an indescribable something. Inward and young, she feels the miraculous is nearby, a knowledge and serenity that she can understand only on her own. Movie-goers who are also seekers will enjoy her in this part because her performance may remind them of themselves. Many years ago. As Jobeth Williams cajoled her husband in Poltergeist, “Now just stand, okay? Now, just be calm. Okay. Now reach back into our past when you used to have an open mind. Remember that? Okay. Just try to use that for the next couple of minutes. Okay?”

And we’ll regret that loutish producers didn’t know what to do with actresses who had that otherworldly aura, spiritual oomph like Ann Harding and Evelyn Venable nor did they assign writers to come up with stories about our search for meaning, a topic hot among The Folks only in dire times (see The Razor’s Edge, 1944, i.e. during WWII).

* According to a study published in iScience, the number of Americans who read for pleasure every day has nosedived from 28 percent in 2004 to just 16 percent in 2023.

Extro: In her collection of reviews of movies from the early Sixties, The Private Eye, the Cowboy, and the Very Naked Girl: Movie from Cleo to Clyde, Judith Crist writes, "… we assuaged our guilt with the conviction that nothing in the outside world could provide the intellectual and emotional equivalent of Fredric March, his holiday over, enfolding Rochelle Hudson in his Death's cape …." Memory problems are understandable since Crist had seen the movie reviewed here 30 years before, when she was only 12 years old.  Plus, Hudson and Venable are easily confused, both young, brunette, and both known for their fresh-faced looks and a gentle presence that become unfashionable in lead actresses and stars as the Thirties went by.

The Ides of Perry Mason 96

Note: Before the Perry Mason TV series, in almost all his movies Raymond Burr played an outlaw. With his heavyset stature, deep commanding voice and expressive eyes, he was the brightest light in forgotten film noir outings such as Walk a Crooked Mile (1948), FBI Girl (1951), They Were So Young (1954), and A Cry in the Night (1956). This movie too - worth it but forgotten. 

The Whip Hand
1951 / 1:29
Tagline: “Foreign Scientist Spies in Vast Germ-Murder Plot!”
[internet archive]

The film opens with a blunt ideological hammer stroke: Kremlin apparatchiks, speaking in grating, caricatured Russian, plot the downfall of America. It’s a Cold War nightmare, rendered with the kind of paranoia that turns Winnoga, Wisconsin - a town whose very name evokes a simpler pastoral Land of the Free - into a focus of realpolitik dread. The choice of setting is no accident; it’s a deliberate inversion of the heartland mythos, a place where the soil is poisoned not by foreign agents but by the complicity of its own citizens.

Enter Elliott Reid, a journalist on a fishing vacation, whose arrival in Winnoga fulfills Tolstoy’s dictum that all stories are either about a journey or a stranger’s arrival. Reid is the latter, and his presence is met with the kind of guarded hostility that suggests not just small-town insularity but something more sinister. The lake, once teeming with trout, is now dead - an ecological mystery that doubles as a metaphor for the moral rot beneath the town’s surface.

Reid’s investigation leads him to Mr. Peterson, a landowner whose opportunism - buying up property after the fish die-off marks him as a man not in simpatico with the rhythms of big nature and cozy community. The townspeople’s evasions, their forced laughter, and their long, appraising stares evoke a kind of Midwestern noir, where the menace is not in shadowy alleyways but in the bright daylight of Main Street.

Raymond Burr plays a hotelier whose joviality is so forced it curdles into menace. His laugh is a performance within a performance, a signal to the audience that the town’s surface charm is a mask for something darker. His henchmen - Peter Brocco’s rodent-like presence and Michael Steele’s Aryan brutality - are less characters than archetypes, personifications of a violence that is both personal and political.

The cinematography captures the piney woods and sandy soil with a documentary-like authenticity, but the close-ups - tight, accusatory - render familiar American faces as foreign, uncanny. It’s a visual strategy that suggests to the movie-goer that the threat is not external but, like contaminants in soil, filth in drinking water, already existing in the nation itself.

The film’s thematic core - biomedical experimentation on unwilling subjects - echoes the darkest chapters of 20th-century science, such as the Tuskegee syphilis study, CIA mind-control programs like MKUltra, and human radiation experiments conducted by government agencies. It’s a narrative that brushes against the ethical abyss, evoking the unease of Oliver Sacks’s Awakenings and the moral inquiries of Deborah Blum’s Ghost Hunters. The horror here is not supernatural but systemic, a reminder that the machinery of progress often runs on the bodies of the powerless.

Critics may dismiss the film as melodramatic, but its sincerity - its willingness to confront the moral compromises of Cold War America - renders it a document of its time. It’s a film that doesn’t just entertain; it indicts, implicates, and ultimately unsettles.

As for the connection with the Perry Mason TV series, Carla Belenda went back to her birth name Sally Bliss by the time she was cast in TCOT Playboy Pugilist. Lurene Tuttle, Burr’s distant and cold mother, was the defendant no fewer than six times in TCOT Substitute Face, TCOT Artful Dodger, TCOT Loquacious Liar, TCOT Shoplifter's Shoe (with Margaret O’Brien and Len Nimoy), TCOT Grinning Gorilla and TCOT Avenging Angel.

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Station West (1948) [my review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
The Whip Hand (1951) [internet archive] [my review]

Everybody is Under Suspicion

Note: Gail Patrick moved beyond ingenue parts when she played Cornelia the mean (albeit breathtaking) sister in My Man Godrey. After 60 or so parts, often as the bad girl, retirement from acting drove her batty. With her husband, Gail Patrick Jackson she formed the company that produced from 1957 to 1966 the greatest courtroom TV series in the history of Creation. She was the soul of the series, said Raymond Burr. One wonders if it was due to Jackson that the writers so often returned to serious themes such as the long row women have to hoe in a world ridden by the lust, anger and greed of men; friction between the social classes; sharp practices in the business world; the dark side of the entertainment industry; and the harsh treatment of vulnerable groups.

Wives under Suspicion
1938 / 1:09 minutes
Tagline: “…THAT JEALOUSY feeds strongest on the heart of a wise man!”
[internet archive]

In this gritty courtroom drama set in a large, unnamed city, a district attorney becomes consumed by his role as a prosecutor, taking disturbing pride in sending convicted murderers to the electric chair. His desktop features a macabre abacus made of skull-shaped beads, tallying the lives he's ended - a detail that unsettles both his secretary and his wife, who fear he’s lost touch with his humanity.

Despite promising his wife a long-overdue vacation, the DA is drawn back into work when a distraught college professor is brought in for questioning. In the pre-Miranda era, the professor is interrogated without legal counsel, and the DA coerces a confession to the murder of the man’s unfaithful wife. The DA’s cold mockery of the professor’s emotional breakdown reveals a chilling lack of empathy, especially given his disdain for an educated man succumbing to mindless violence.

During the trial, the DA’s wife pointedly remarks that he’s treating the proceedings like a “Roman Holiday”—a spectacle enjoyed at the expense of someone else’s suffering. This comment sparks a slow realization in the DA: he and the professor are not so different. The film ultimately suggests that justice must be tempered with empathy.

The opening sequence features a haunting look at the electric chair’s machinery - mid-century technology rendered terrifying through close-ups of switches and turbines. Surprisingly, the film’s visual style is restrained, especially considering it was directed by James Whale, known for the iconic sets of Frankenstein.

Warren William delivers a compelling performance as the DA, balancing dedication with arrogance and cruelty. His shift toward compassion feels slightly stiff, though it’s unclear whether that’s a flaw in the acting or the character’s emotional repression. Gail Patrick stands out with her poised presence and a particularly powerful scene reacting to the professor’s recorded confession. Ralph Morgan plays the stereotypical absent-minded academic, while Lillian “Billy” Yarbo provides comic relief as a maid - a role steeped in racial tropes but given a rare moment of agency.

Though critics at the time have dismissed the film as melodramatic and moralistic, it offers a sincere attempt to entertain and provoke thought. Its message - that justice should be guided by fairness and mercy - is one worth hearing, especially in a system where conviction often overshadows compassion.

Other Gail Patrick Movies: Click on the title to go to the review

·         If I Had a Million
·         The Phantom Broadcast
·         The Murders in the Zoo
·         Death Takes a Holiday
·         The Crime of Helen Stanley
·         Murder at the Vanities
·         The Preview Murder Mystery
·         My Man Godrey
·         Murder by Pictures
·         Artists and Models
·         King of Alcatraz
·         Wives Under Suspicion

The Nones of Perry Mason 95

Note: Who to cast as Donald Lam? Cagney - too pugnacious, not smart enough. William Powell - too old. Alan Ladd - too young. Dick Powell -  perfect in his 30s, yes, but older, no. As Bertha Cool? Marie Dressler had a commanding presence, but too matronly. Thelma Ritter - too small. Lucille Ball - only after 1960, hard to picture her smacking somebody, but possibly.... Geraldine Wall in her 40s - about perfect.

Give 'em the Ax - A. A. Fair aka Erle Stanley Gardner

In this 1944 mystery Donald Lam returns Stateside from duty in the Pacific. The hardcore reader trusts the Navy got a lot of milage out of Lam’s sharp legal mind – which got him disbarred when he talked too much to a gangster about how to get away with murder. Suffering from malaria sequelae, he's been discharged from Navy Intelligence with symptoms such as decreased appetite and unpredictable onsets of sudden fatigue. The sharp legal mind is subject to brain fog like memory problems, difficulty focusing, and slower less efficient processing.

He finds in a precarious state the detective agency that before Pearl Harbor he ran with partner Bertha Cool. Cool and Lam had attracted complex cases with serious money, headlines, and the enmity of the cops involved. But after Lam’s deployment, business fell back to the penny-ante insurance and cheating spouse stuff, though the professional animosity from Sgt Sellars of the authorities continued. Paradoxically, Sgt Sellars has a thing for Bertha because she is what he looks for in a woman: tough and practical.

And that’s Bertha’s problem when she’s client-facing. Bad-tempered Bertha is smarmy when she attempts charm. Her obvious faking of care and concern turns potential clients off. The office manager Elsie Brand, target of Bertha’s acting out, tells Lam that the only reason she stayed on was to try to hold the business together. Another reason is that Elsie is in love with Lam. Manipulative monster Lam pretends not to know her feelings for him though it would a tough lift to find somebody as loyal, smart, and kind as Elsie, an ideal Gardnerian woman like Della Street.

Lam is a client-pleaser because he’s such a good listener. So on his first day of popping into the office, a new case comes their way. It’s hardly a lulu. Admitting to being a home-wrecker, a woman wants a private detective agency to get something on her boss’ new wife. The woman says she and the boss were very “close,” but when she returned from a long vacation, the boss, pining and bereft, married a woman he had met when the two had a car accident together. Angry and hurt, the woman wants the goods on the new wife. Ho-hum, nothing to get excited about here.

Eager to get back in the saddle, Lam luckily finds the wife in the Rimley Rendezvous. This is a nightclub that has tapped the afternoon market of bored married women who are looking for afternoon delight. The operator of the club, a hard case named HJH, recognizes Lam and throws him out since a PI on the cheating side of town is “as welcome as smallpox on an ocean liner.”

Pressed to time, Donald calls Bertha. He describes the owner and tells Bertha to tail him when he leaves the club. The tail job ends in an auto accident, which will be followed by an ax murder. Lam finds himself involved with a cigarette girl with legs up to here, who's way close to the murder.

Highly recommended.

The Kalends of Perry Mason 94

Note: Sure, everybody wants an honest, loyal and efficient lawyer that will fight like the devil when the going gets rough. But even more, everybody wants a supporter, an advocate who knows their weaknesses and understands their messed-up choices but pleads their case eloquently and shrewdly anyway.

The Case of the Negligent Nymph – Erle Stanley Gardner

This 1959 mystery starts with the usual working girl – pretty, naturally; full of moxie, certainly – needing super-lawyer Perry Mason when she finds herself in a jam. Perry is in a canoe scoping out a millionaire’s island on behalf of a client in a real estate case. The naked nymph, pursued by a savage dobie, swims up to the canoe so Perry saves her and takes her to her own battered yacht.

The next day Perry finds out that the game and canny beauty he rescued is wanted by the cops on suspicion of stealing $50K worth of gems from the millionaire’s island mansion. She is apprehended and bound over for trial for grand theft. In an exciting courtroom scene, Perry sets off legal fireworks during a cross-examination and gets her bail whittled down to a manageable $2,500.

Things start looking up for the accused, but, self-reliant to a fault, she makes errors in judgment, the worst of which are not following Perry’s legal advice and then lying to him. Perry ends up defending her on the inevitable murder charge.

He finds his back up against the proverbial wall yet again since he faces as many legal woes as his client does if he doesn’t find out the truth. Perry kicks himself for letting impulse rule him and helping the fibbing brat in the first place, but he defends her with all he’s got. Perry acknowledges his own fallibility and is thus compassionate about the short-comings of others.

Usual. Of course. Inevitable.

Why return again and again to the Perry Mason stories that invariably feature damsels in distress, the powerful exploiting the vulnerable, and the cunning and resourceful hero who combines wise tactics and swift action to exonerate the innocent? Because these irresistible elements, the essentials of heroic myth and folktales, exert a magical appeal over our senses of fairness and courage, shared senses that come easily to us because we are human beings hard-wired with the same nature.

European Reading Challenge #9

The Generation of 1914 - Robert Wohl

This intellectual history was released in 1979, four years after the seminal book The Great War and Modern Memory (Paul Fussell) influenced historians to examine the idea that what people think happened was just as interesting as what really happened. Wohl explores the intellectual and cultural landscape of Europe before, during and after World War I. To study what young educated men regarded as “generations,” Wohl delves into the thoughts and writing of the intelligentsia who came of age during the tumultuous period running up the WWI, focusing on the middle-class elite of five European countries: France Germany, England, Spain, and Italy.

Readers like me who are not so up on European history in the 19^th century will appreciate Wohl's comprehensive approach. He examines briefly the events and how each country’s unique experiences shaped its intellectual climate. For instance, in the example most familiar to us hardcore readers because of Fussell’s book, in England, the concept of the "lost generation" emerged due to the significant losses suffered by the British upper class during the war who happened to be literary guys like Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden, and Wilfred Owen. In contrast, Germany's war generation became a driving force on the political right, emphasizing the supposedly “moral” strength gained through the hardships of the trenches. I had no idea that the war had damaged Ernst Jünger so severely as to drive him to such wrong conclusions about human nature, democracy, and the Weimar Republic.

The book is structured around separate chapters for each country, allowing Wohl to highlight the distinct generational concepts that developed in each culture. Wohl's use of primary sources, including novels, journalism, autobiographies, and political speeches, adds depth to his analysis. He skillfully connects these personal and collective experiences to broader historical trends, such as the rise of Communism and Fascism, and the decline of liberal and humanitarian values.

One of the book's strengths is Wohl’s decision to disregard the definition of a generation, in favor of analyzing what the figures such as Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset thought was a generation. Wohl is careful to point out that the thinkers themselves were well aware of the logical problems with defining what a generation is. Translating theoretical constructs like "generation" into specific variables or factors that can be studied in quantifiable research is a challenging intellectual task, for example, needing the statistical tools of sociology. Wohl captures the sense of disillusionment and sheer confusion that characterized the generation of 1914, making the book both an intellectual history and a poignant human story.

Overall, this is an engrossing study that offers valuable insights into the minds of young, more or less educated or well-read men who lived through one of the most transformative periods in modern history. Serious students of European history will get much from this book, even if they think that terms like ‘generation z,’ ‘boomers,’ and ‘millennials’ are the worst kinds of pseudoscientific horseshit.

Happy Birthday Marcia Muller

Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller

A reader with some pretentions to taste would expect, after a dozen installments in a series, to hear the gears grinding in the thirteenth in a series. But not at all in this case because Sharon McCone, the baddest female PI in San Francisco, learns, grows, and changes from book to book.

This 1993 mystery deals with the issues of immigration and dolphin-protecting environmentalists. With her bosses going all corporate on her and pressuring her to accept sitting at desk and moving papers around, she proves herself to be the Coolest Toughest Girlfriend Ever and works on finding her missing boyfriend Hy Ripinsky who has gone missing.

As usual, the characterizations, even of the secondary characters, are very finely drawn, as are the settings. Nothing mars the elaborate plot but a couple of melodramatic scenes. Worth reading. 

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr 6/6

Note: September 21, 1957 was the date of the first episode of the classic Perry Mason TV series. So this past week we celebrated Raymond Burr’s performances in film noir. Burr built up quite a reputation playing movie villains in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Probably to stay sane and pay the rent, Burr took roles in comedies, too. In Casonova's Big Night (1954), he played Minister Bragadin, a minister in service to the Doge. I’ll watch Brother Ray in westerns if the first 10 minutes are tolerable, but I draw the line at Bob Hope’s silly goldang costume pictures, in beautiful Technicolor or not. 

Unmasked
1950 / 1:00
Tagline: “Smeared by Scandal that led to MURDER!”
[internet archive]

Raymond Burr puts in a turn as an unscrupulous publisher of a scandal sheet. A stoolie analyzes him, “You kinda like to hate in bunches, doncha.” The publisher murders a guy’s wife and then frames the guy.

This was produced by Republic whose competitive advantage was its ability to churn out slick movies to fill out the bottom of bills in the theaters. Clocking in at only 60 minutes, this movie does not have the time to feature well-rounded characters. The crime story script is fast-moving, full of chase and duplicity, with a twist that came out of the blue for me.

Burr, a true professional, puts in a very good account of himself, as he did in the many so-so movies where he played the beast that somehow learned to walk and talk among us humans. Despite the precisely tailored pinstripe suits, bulky Burr seems to loom just sitting behind his desk even without arty camera work. Imposing, menacing, but somehow graceful like the Graf Zeppelin at the end of a tether. When he ponders his next move into blackmail and murder, he seems to withdraw from our common mundane plane to a dark place where moral judgement no longer exists. That is, he makes his face toddler-like in its guile-free mercilessness so that on seeing it the parent or pet parent or movie-goer knows for all his seeming innocence, he’s cooking up nothing good.

This solid B picture also stars Robert Rockwell, who was to appear in the original Perry Mason series five times. Like Denver Pyle, Rockwell is another actor with a solid career with high points to be proud of, totally right that a handful of us fans remember.

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Station West (1948) [my review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive] [my review]

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr 5/6

Note: September 21,1957 was the date of the first episode of the classic Perry Mason TV series. So this week we will paradoxically demonstrate Raymond Burr didn't just come out of nowhere. Burr was a demon for work, appearing in more than 50 feature films between 1946 and 1957. He was typecast as the villain because his stoutness gave him a commanding menacing presence. "[Raymond Burr] tried to make you see the psychosis below the surface, even when the parts weren't huge," says film historian James Ursini. "He was able to bring such complexity and different levels to those characters, and create sympathy for his characters even though they were doing reprehensible things."

Borderline
1950 / 1:28
Tagline: “Two Undercover Agents Unwittingly Stalk the Same Target”
[internet archive]

The martial Dragnet-type music hints that in the offing is heavy-handed cheerleading in the fight of US Customs agents against dope smugglers along the US-Mexico border in 1950. However, the movie is not awkward PR. It is in fact a chase and action crime story with elements of romcom and mistaken identity.

Some but not much cinematography is interesting, especially reflections in window glass and mirrors. Otherwise, visually the movie is unexciting. Some scenes take place outside in what purports to be northern Mexico, which is a nice change from gritty urban dramas.  Sometimes the soundtrack is hard to square with the action. Funny, whimsical music plays in what a movie-goer would think is a frightening situation like when Claire Trevor wakes up in captivity after being knocked out with a slug to the jaw.

The humor is off beat. Claire Trevor gets a job as a dancer in a floor show in a Mexican resort. The dance act is so clodhoppingly, high-pitched bad that you wonder if director William A. Seiter was going for camp. We get banter between Trevor and MacMurray. He: Don’t talk to any strangers. She: I don’t know any strangers. But, as amusing as it is, light banter seems out of place in a crime movie about dope smuggling. The jokey treatment of Mexicans and their cute ways has not aged well, though the Mexican pilot was funny in his imperturbability when the plane ran out of gas.

Raymond Burr plays Pete Ritchie, a narcotics smuggler operating from Mexico to the United States. He looks imposing in an ice-cream suit with black shirt and white tie. Remote, calm, and poised, his character is not given a chance to be more than cunning and ruthless. He does however get a movie-goer’s skin a-crawling when he embraces Trevor and promises in a voice so silky it’s terrifying, “You'll find me nicer when you get to know me better.”

Claire Trevor is the swizzle stick that stirs the drink. She is energetic, eye-catching, and as bright as a new penny. She is sensible and resourceful and is mercifully in almost every scene. A graduate of the George Raft School of Performing Arts, Fred McMurray plays his usual type, stolid and reliable if gruff and cross with no discernible personality.

To fulfill its mission to generate conversation on dates after the movie, the movie offers up this claim for lively philosophical talks: “All dames will stay in line if the payoff is big enough at the end.” Burr also urges would-be victims to clarify their values when he says, “I hope you haven’t got a good reason to live.”

As for the connection with the original Perry Mason TV series, Morris Ankrum plays Bill Whittaker, a Customs agent who runs Claire Trevor’s undercover agent. He played Da Judge no fewer than 22 times from 1957 to 1964.

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Station West (1948) [my review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive] [my review]

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr 4/6

Note: September 21, 1957 was the date of the first episode of the classic Perry Mason TV series. Let's mark that happy day this week by celebrating Raymond Burr’s many scary performances in film noir. Burr started his career in the late 1940s in bit parts. In Fighting Father Dunne (1948) he appears as an attorney in trial montage. Blink and you’ll miss him. But soon after Burr built up quite a reputation playing villains. His psychopathic private detective in Pitfall is a must-see.

Abandoned
1949 / 1:19
Tagline: “NO NAME FOR HER BABY...only a PRICE!”
[internet archive]

The introductory voice-over solemnly intones this is a true-to-life story that could be happening in our own cities as we speak. The movie describes how heartless scumbags promise the moon to young single expectant mothers. And then deliver nothing to the mother as they traffick the newborn baby to “nice people” who want to add that finishing touch to their middle-class lifestyle. The problem is that their purchase of a bundle of joy enriches a criminal enterprise that is run by racketeers who will kill mothers and babies – anybody - if they find it expedient.

The strongest point of this movie is simply its telling about the sorry system of illegal baby brokering. It’s a helluva story of how a black market thrived at a time when oversight was so loose that only about half of adopted children in the USA were placed through legitimate agencies.

I am not so credulous a ninny that I learn history through noir movies, but I’m willing to conclude that 1) baby selling must be bad because libertarians think it is good, and 2) this movie was on target in its portrayal of the kind of stone-cold criminals that would run such networks.

Mrs. Donner (Marjorie Rambeau) hands out Bibles and makes cynical promises to scared girls who are not being told what they are getting into: a baby is being sold to people who want to seem “people of unquestioned character” but don’t want to do what “people of unquestioned character” do. They simply want to avoid the “rigamarole” of investigations and “the bothersome details of a legal adoption.” When the head man of the syndicate (Will Kuluva) finds out an underling is stepping out of his domain, he remarks, “Rumors around town are that I’m getting soft so I’m going to have to cut a couple of throats.”

Raymond Burr, the shady private detective, is getting out of this lane, and knows a pin-stripe suit can be very slimming. As PI Kerric, he manages to look aloof and arrogant even as he skulks behind bushes like a goblin when he follows the good guys Dennis O’Keefe and Gale Storm. But Burr finds that kidnapping and murder get him in over his head and he wistfully remarks, “I was just thinking how nice life used to be when I stuck to blackmail and petty larceny.”

Dennis O’Keefe plays a newspaper reporter who is helping Gale Storm find her sister who has disappeared in the big bad city. O’Keefe is really obnoxious at first. Gale feels distraught and out of sorts over her missing sister, but he’s putting his hands on her and flirting and talking glibly. But he softens a bit when she reports about her father “He didn't want us back home but he didn't want to leave us alone” – isn’t it just like a noir movie to hint incest is more common than most people would think? And O’Keefe practices cognitive behavioral therapy without a license when he suggests to beat anxiety “Why don't you stop thinking about it.”

Camera work is effective and some cuts are startling and effective. The climax has a certain amount of cop porn – stakeouts, crackling radio, car chases, yadda yadda – but it doesn’t overwhelm the tension surrounding the saving of Gale Storm and ultimate fate of the characters, all of whom are under pressure. The film, directed by Joseph M. Newman, is considered a solid example of film noir, blending crime thriller elements with social commentary on black-market adoptions.

As for the connection with the original Perry Mason TV series, Sid Tomack plays a clerk but he is not given a chance to crack wise. Appearing three times on the classic Perry Mason, Tomack was especially great in a satirical scene in TCOT Envious Editor. Jeanette Nolan played a Salvation Army major who took care of single expectant mothers. A wonderful character actress, she was keen on accents and an array of clothing and accessories. She appeared no fewer than six times on Perry Mason. She was the perp three times, a loyal secretary once, and a sorely-tried ordinary woman twice. 

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Station West (1948) [my review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive] [my review]

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr 3/6

Note: September 21, 1957 was the date of the first episode of the classic Perry Mason TV series. Paradoxical, perhaps, to celebrate that happy day by examining Raymond Burr’s many performances in film noir. In the ten years after WWII, Burr had busy career playing villains in noir movies. He was cast as the thuggish minion (Walk a Crooked Mile, I Love Trouble) or, because he was hefty, he looked old enough to play big bad crime bosses (Raw Deal). Perhaps if syndication had not kept his Perry Mason in the public eye for half a century, only we hardcore movie buffs who know who Anthony Mann was would still remember Burr’s career as The Portly Prince of Noir. We’ll never know. Thank heaven.

Red Light
1949 / 1:23
Tagline: “It takes everything MAYO has to stop a guy like RAFT!”
[internet archive]

This crime drama opens with a convicted embezzler stewing in his prison cell. He blames the owner of a trucking firm for his imprisonment. So he hires a killer to exact revenge on the owner by killing the owner’s brother who is a priest. The owner then seeks revenge by going on a manhunt for the killer or killers of his brother. The owner and newly-released embezzler feverishly question people in order to locate a Bible which may contain evidence that points to the killer. The cops are working to find the priest killer and stop the owner from pursuing vigilante justice.

Fans used to Perry Mason may see as peculiar Raymond Burr as a vengeful brute but moreso is seeing Harry Morgan as a cold-eyed killer, he who was serious but colorful Bill Gannon and warm but crusty Col. Potter. Drafted by George Raft the owner to be a people-finding private eye is working-girl Virginia Mayo, full of her usual fight. The archetypal tough homicide detective, Barton McClane, warns George Raft not to go after the killer of his brother, employing noir sayings in support of communitarian ideals, “When you're playing solitaire, you can only beat yourself.”

Raymond Burr sometimes looks rotund, wearing the waist of his pants at navel height the way men did up to the late Fifties. At other times, as stout as he is, he still wears a suit snappily. He plays the unstable embezzler as oleaginous and dangerous at the same time. Burr really knew how to use his eyes to give the oddest amphibian effect. He uses his wide froggy eyes that are quick to be wary but slow to be alarmed. Burr is well served with his underlit face, shot from low angle, with a light at the top, all in shadow, as he prepares to commit a murder. The black and white cinematography is wonderful in this movie, definitely the second reason to view this, after Burr.

The dramatic music by genius Dmitri Tiomkin is much needed to support the glaring and staring, stomping and clomping by George Raft. Raft’s acting style – oh, never mind, he was a dancer first. Running around impersonating a homicide detective, he yells, smacks people around, and breaks stained glass windows as if all this frantic movement will distract us movie-goers from suspicioning that Raft doesn't seem to have any zip or pizzazz or mystery to him. 

Trying to salvage a scene that could have been written better, feisty Virginia Mayo rebukes him with, “You can't take the law into your own hands - it's not the way things are done.” When she tells him the truth that he’s being selfish and egocentric by not dealing with difficulties that many other people handle daily, Raft hits her. Going out the door, she warns him that he'll end up in trouble with the law since the cops are after both the killer and him. Mayo gamely does the best she can with bad lines but Raft seems to be on automatic, not consumed by anything deep inside him.   

As movie-goers expect of films made in the late Forties, this picture has a dark look full of shadows. The settings include offices, hotel lobbies and cheap rooms, and barber shops with shoeshine stations. A lousy diner (“They serve bicarbonate for dessert”) is fantastic, with its ceiling fan, checkered tablecloths, wooden counter and stools, and walls covered in signs. The murder on a caboose is very well lit and shot. Also beautifully done was Burr stalking Raft’s colleague Gene Lockhart in the parking lot, all ominous shoes and scraping soles. Strangely beautiful cars - like the 1940 Chrysler Royal - look fine to me, who usually notices automobile design in the Forties only with disgust. The climax with the neon sign on the roof of the trucking firm is worth seeing.

To fulfill its mission to educate the public, the movie offers up claims for consideration such as “Liquor doesn't drown your troubles, it only teaches them how to swim,” and “There’re only two kinds of hotel guests: the ones that steal Bibles and the ones that steal towels.” Pop history buffs can pat themselves on the back when they recognize antique allusions that nobody under 70 could be expected to recognize: “as chummy as Leo Durocher with an umpire” means “not chummy at all” since baseball manager Leo the Lip always gave umpires crap.

As for the connection with the original Perry Mason TV series, Arthur Shields plays Father Redmond, the mentor of George Raft’s brother-priest. Shields reminds us of Barry Fitzgerald because Shields was Fitzgerald’s younger brother by ten years. In TCOT Screaming Woman Shields played Dr. Barnes who would have expectant mothers “confined under the name of the married woman who wanted the child,” so at birth the certificate would list the adoptive mother as the birth mother. As if private adoption were not fraught with enough ethical and legal peril, Dr. Barnes kept a notebook with the names of unmarried women with children and women who did not legally adopt. Naturally the book was stolen for the purposes of blackmail. This episode is one of the best noir episodes of the first three seasons, featuring that rarest of birds, the sympathetic perp.

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Station West (1948) [my review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive] [my review]

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr 2/6

Note: September 21, 1957 was the date of the first episode of the classic Perry Mason TV series. So this week we celebrate Raymond Burr’s performances in film noir to demonstrate that Burr didn't come out of nowheresville.  Burr built up a fearsome reputation playing villains in the late 1940s and 1950s. For instance, in They Were So Young (1955) he plays a felon who is involved in a human trafficking ring in which young women are tricked into traveling to Rio de Janeiro to join an elite modeling agency, only to find out it's a front for sexual slavery in brothels. An easily shocked moralist and prude, I’m not into exploitation movies so not even the yen to view Brother Ray’s film noir outings would induce me to watch a movie whose alternative titles are Violated and Party Girls for Sale.

 Station West
1948 / 1:18
Tagline: “She Was Sweet...and DEADLY AS POISON!”

Tolstoy said the elemental story begins with a stranger coming to town. In this noir western, Dick Powell is that stranger hitting town where the Chorus of the movie, hotel man Burl Ives, is singing a ditty about the short life spans of strangers in town. Powell plays an underground federal agent whose mission is to break up a ring that is robbing stagecoaches of gold, killing the soldiers guarding the consignment, and disrupting transportation and the smooth functioning of the economy.

The black and white cinematography is beautifully shot, especially an epic fist fight that a movie-goer can’t believe any fighter would walk away from. With stirring orchestral music, any western has a travel log aspect, with its views of big nature, open skies, and weird landscapes. But there are noir touches as well, such as cool shadows, light on faces in darkness, and warehouses burning down in the night. Noir influences the dialogue. Jane Greer: I think he secretly likes you. Powell: Well, he keeps it a secret. Powell also assures us, “Trouble and I are old enemies. We understand each other.”

Directed by Sidney Lanfield, the movie is considered a unique hybrid of Western and film noir, with a complex narrative and atmospheric tension. The screenplay, in fact, won the award Best Written American Western from the Writers Guild of America in 1949. It was based on a novel by Luke Short, a well-respected author I remember fondly from when I read westerns long ago.

Dick Powell could do anything, musicals, comedy, or noir. His chemistry with Jane Greer works as Hollywood works in the inevitable love interest. In fact, the exquisite Greer is so attractive even a tight-lipped noir hero would fall in love with her. Besides, she’s the richest woman in town, even wealthier than Agnes Moorehead who has a thing going with the local Army General. The three plug-uglies look the part, especially one that looks like George Atzerodt, one of the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination.

Raymond Burr plays Bristow, a cowardly and crooked lawyer in the town. He has a poker jones. Jane Greer, who inherited the saloon-casino-bordello from her father, uses Burr’s IOU’s to make lily-livered Burr fold like a card table. In his four scenes, duplicitous Burr has a skittish manner, jumpy voice, and spine of macaroni, thinking it terribly unfair that the bad guys would kill him when they had no use for him. He’s persuasive when we see him realize how exposed he is as he crosses the street between the casino and his office. Maybe he wanted to put in an excellent performance because he was so happy not to be playing the heavy for once.

As for the connection with the original Perry Mason TV series, a familiar face in noir movies, Steve Brodie was a young officer in one scene in this movie. Brodie was the perp in TCOT Garrulous Gambler and a PR man in TCOT Angry Astronaut. His best part was as a political fixer in TCOT Witless Witness, probably in my Top Three Favorite Episodes.

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Station West (1948) [my review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive] [my review]

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr 1/6

Note: September 21, 1957 was the date of the first episode of the classic Perry Mason TV series. To mark the happiest day in the history of television, paradoxically, this week we celebrate Raymond Burr’s performances in film noir before the role that made him immortal. Burr was a demon for work, appearing in more than 50 feature films between 1946 and 1957. He was typecast as the villain because his stoutness gave him a commanding menacing presence.

Raw Deal
1948 / 1:19
Tagline: “Bullets! Women! -- Can't Hold a Man Like This!”
[internet archive]

“Would any dame wait three years for a guy to get out of prison,” incarcerated individual Dennis O’Keefe asks Marsha Hunt, a social worker who is convinced he has some good in him. She read once that when a teen he saved kids from drowning at risk to his own young life. He shrugs off her faith in his better angels, and tells her not to wear perfume the next time she visits lest he ruin his run of good behavior. O’Keefe is realistic but hard-hearted and not real smart.

Meanwhile, Raymond Burr, who crossed O’Keefe and landed him in state prison, works an escape plot so that O’Keefe will be killed during the sneak-out. Minion John Ireland sarcastically sticks it to cowardly Burr by saying he’s good at getting the cops to pull the trigger for him. Bully and sneak Burr doesn’t like that and warns in a cold voice that he’s saving up something special, really special for Ireland. Burr is lensed from an angle that that makes him look massive and imposing but he also has a doughiness that minions and movie-goers don’t feel a need to respect.

O’Keefe beats the odds insofar as he escapes the pen with the help of his old GF Claire Trevor. She, in fact, provides important insights in voice-overs such as “Waiting…waiting… All my life it seems as if I’ve been waiting for Joe.” This narrative is spiced with theremin music, which gives an other-worldly sense that is not always suitable for a gritty crime drama directed by film noir demigod Anthony Mann. In a couple of scenes the music from the late swing era comes from a radio, giving a carefree contrast to the dramatic situation.

But staying alive while breaking out of prison exhausts his fortune. Bad luck and the inability to plan dog O’Keefe and Trevor as they drive around and find places to hide out. Bad luck takes the form of car trouble. Then, bureaucracy, which reaches into every corner of modern life, represented by a lone horseman, demands camping permits. Luck also determines if cops are going to be more or less prone to cognitive distortions like jumping to conclusions, mental filters, over-generalizing, and inability to see the forest for the trees. The cops are brought down on our fugitives by the bad luck of a runaway killer in a crime of passion running to the same remote hide-out as O’Keefe and Trevor flee to.

The cinematography, beautifully shot by John Alton, features amazing shadows, shots from various angles and striking images like pale faces surrounded by darkness; the climax is of San Francisco in fog and crackling fire. Also attention-grabbing are the sounds of the modern world such as train whistles, sirens, bells, and foghorns. As for indirect social critique, O’Keefe is not terribly bright though he's brave and resourceful. He understands in a dim way that he would be happier if he just lived an honest life supported with modest ranch or small business. But he’s still angry that he had to hock the bravery medal he won at sixteen to buy food because he lives in a society where teens go hungry from food insecurity.

Besides the empty promise of a society whose youth go hungry, betrayal is all over this drama. Claire Trevor’s moll realizes that O’Keefe has never told her clearly that he loves her. He does not listen to her when he gets lost in his own thoughts. He doesn’t listen to her advice or ultimatums either. The many slaps to the face in the movie signal a moment of revelation to the characters that they have been lied to or betrayed or they have been kidding themselves. For instance, Claire Trevor slaps Marsha Hunt, who replies, “Thanks, I probably deserved that” when she realizes she’s been working under an illusion.

It is indeed hard to feel sympathy for O’Keefe or Trevor since they are ready to kill people to get out from under the cops and they kidnap the social worker Marsha Hunt.  The social worker loses her illusions about O’Keefe when she sees how ready he is to kill the park ranger on horseback. She later remonstrates with him when he accuses her of living her life in fear, only seeking safety and security. She tells him that living life straight is what everybody does to get food on the table and maintain self-respect, that she doesn’t need safety so much as she thinks that she is living a life of decency. Ideas like “living an excellent life is the most important thing” are much more substantial than I was expecting from a noir crime drama.

All the acting here is plausible. Appearing in only three scenes as the mobster Rick, Raymond Burr dresses sharply in a pin-stripe suit but clothes don’t take away the cold remote look of a shark, especially in his eyes. Burr is shot from below to look very imposing, but his words, manner and actions are motivated by cowardice and wishful thinking. In a shocking scene famous among film noir buffs, he brings puerile acting-out to his sadism when he burns a waitress because he is angry at his minion John Ireland. Ireland is always persuasive as a heavy. He is later lambasted in the one of the three amazing fight scenes in this movie. The fog and fire of the climax with Burr’s deception is incredible. The crackles of the fire really pop.

This review grows long – I have only to finish by saying this gripping movie, directed by luminary Anthony Mann, is an example of perfect film noir, up there with The Maltese Falcon, Touch of Evil and Sorry Wrong Number. Keep an out for a keen 1948 Willys Jeep Station Wagon.

As for the connection to the classic Perry Mason TV series, Whit Bissel plays the killer on the run that brings legions of cops down on our runaways. Bissel was in four episodes, only once as an upstanding citizen. In one he was an embezzler and an office lecher-corporate spy in another, and in two he was the perp.

Pre-Mason Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive] [my review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my review]
Station West (1948) [my review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive] [my review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive] [my review]

Our Values are Disintegrating before our Eyes

Note: Last month TCM aired the movie version of Marquand’s H.M. Pulham, Esq., directed by King Vidor in 1941. He effectively used two devices that don’t often work, the voiceover as an interior monologue and the flashback. Like the book reviewed below, the movie is about the transience of values and groping for happiness while living an unlived life. A man from a well-to-do Boston family, now middle-aged and doing the quiet desperation thing, receives two calls that shatter his fragile tranquility. Only then does he – Robert Young - look back, grappling with the question “Hedy Lemarr or Ruth Hussey – did I make the right choice?”

The Late George Apley - John P. Marquand

One would expect that a Pulitzer Prize winner for 1938 would be merely picturesque and quaint in 2025. And it’s kind of harmless and genial, given Marquand was ambivalent about the people he was satirizing.

Basically, it is the story of a man whose upper-class ways and traditions have narrowed his life. George Apley says, “I have always been faced from childhood by the obligation of convention, and all of these conventions have been made by others, formed from the fabric of the past. . . . They were designed to promote stability and inheritance. Perhaps they have gone a little bit too far."

This novel is so smoothly written that its 400 pages fly by fast. Marquand sharpened his writing skills in magazine fiction and was later well-known for his detective Mr. Moto. Marquand tells the story of a blighted life mainly through letters, but also uses other genres such as meeting minutes and speeches. I like a writer who uses many devices.

This is for hardcore readers who think spending time immersed in novels by Willa Cather or Sinclair Lewis is an utterly ordinary thing to do or those interested in the best-sellers of bygone days like Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah.