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]