The Palm Beach Story (1942)

Directed by Preston Sturges; produced by Paul Jones (associate producer)

Living beyond their means is starting to wear on the wife (Claudette Colbert) of an inventor (Joel McCrea) in need of money to pursue his ambitions; she decides the best thing for both of them is a divorce. She can then marry a millionaire and satisfy her desire for the good things in life while simultaneously securing her soon-to-be former husband the funding for his inventions. Surprisingly, her scheme works rather easily – but not in the way anyone expects.

Only in a farce can such a premise be carried off successfully, and maybe only in a Preston Sturges comedy. The movie begins unconventionally; in fact, in a manner that may be unique in films. The opening sequence is a hectic montage of quickly-cut scenes depicting the frantic and bizarre prologue to McCrea and Colbert’s wedding, five years before: the groom, late for the ceremony, is changing into his suit in a taxi, with the help of the best man; the bride rushes from her apartment in her gown, wildly flagging down a taxi; somewhere, a bound and gagged woman (who looks like Colbert), dressed only in her underwear, is kicking down a door in her effort to get free; a sinister shadow falls upon a maid, who faints – all to the accompaniment of the William Tell overture. The sequence ends with the overlaid text “…and they lived happily ever after – or did they?”

Then the narrative that is The Palm Beach Story begins…

The frenetic first few minutes bears only marginally on the plot of the picture, and actually seems like bits salvaged from a work that wasn’t finished, and to which The Palm Beach Story is the sequel. Yet I suspect that it was filmed solely to provide puzzling amusement to the audience, and was never meant to be part of anything larger. It was probably just writer/director Sturges having fun, which he imparts to the audience.

The writing is first-rate, with many of the author’s trademark witticisms being spoken as if they are unfinished sentences, which the next wise crack completes. The comedy is interwoven with serious themes, as many of Sturges’s movies are. The Palm Beach Story examines the solemnity of marriage, suggesting that Colbert and McCrea, especially the former, for all her worldly wisdom and sophistication, hasn’t a clue as to the importance of the institution. Yet Colbert’s exposition on the part sexual attraction plays in relationships, and in a woman’s effect on men, is well-considered, a treatise written by the experiences of a beautiful woman’s life. There is also a foray into the effects of riches; witness Colbert’s reaction to being bought an immense wardrobe of clothes: the ease with which it comes makes the acquisitions almost anti-climactic.

All this is, as stated, mixed with comedy, some of it farce, as in the opening montage, and in the homicidal good nature of the drunken Ale and Quail Club (the consequences of money, alcohol and loaded firearms might be too obvious for what Sturges really intended to say). Much of the fun is quieter, and the viewer must be a listener, too, to catch the lines that provide the true value of the movie.

The acting is perfect. While McCrea is fittingly bemused and outraged by his wife’s behaviour, and Colbert determined but sweet, applause must be given to Rudy Vallee as the immensely rich J. D. Hackensacker (read ‘John D. Rockefeller’). He gives sympathy and pathos to a well-written character who knows that he is largely humourless, realises that he has too much money, and yet is a good and decent man all the same. Some of his lines hint at the absurdity that lie in the duality of Americans’ love of wealth and proclamations of equality: Vallee declares that “state-rooms [private compartments on trains] are un-American”, yet owns without qualms a yacht and a house the size of a hotel.

Mary Astor plays Vallee’s sister, an unrepentant society-woman, married five times, divorced thrice (“she’s been annulled twice”). Her latest name – Princess Centimillia (“hundred thousand”) – suggesting why she wed (or perhaps why her husbands wed her) but, as she is as rich as her brother, her real motive for marriage appears simply the fun of it. Her relationship with Vallee is touched on enough to show that they think each other to be silly and wrong-headed, but love each other nonetheless.

Lesser characters are portrayed well, and several, as much as the main characters, display a depth of personality that is unexpected (eg. the ‘Wienie King’ (Robert Dudley), who recommends that McCrea not eat his product: he’ll live longer).

Indeed, depth of character and depth of story, hallmarks of Sturges’s movies, are present here. Perhaps if they had been less prominent, the laughs would have been harder, but such a trade-off can hardly be measured. Suffice it to write that The Palm Beach Story is a fun, thought-provoking comedy/farce with serious overtones. And if that description doesn’t make a prospective viewer curious, nothing else I write will.

The Blue Dahlia (1946)

Directed by George Marshall; produced by John Houseman

A U.S. Navy flyer, Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd), newly returned from the war, finds some unpleasant surprises upon his arrival at home. His wife, Helen (Doris Dowling), has a bad drinking problem, an apathetic attitude toward her marriage and at least one boyfriend. Willing to work through their problems, Morrison walks out when he learns that his spouse was responsible for the death of their son, whom he thought had perished from an illness. The couple’s arguments – not to mention a service pistol left at the scene – are reasons why the police start looking for Morrison when Helen is discovered dead.

The Blue Dahlia has some high-powered advantages: George Marshall had been directing in Hollywood for thirty years by this time (and would continue directing for almost thirty more); producer Houseman would later head the Julliard School’s Drama Department; the original script was by mystery-writer Raymond Chandler, and the stars were the popular duo of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, who had already made two hit films together. Next to these, the problems are small, though significant.

The mystery is a good one, with several suspects and red herrings. Ladd is led on a trail by clues that send him in circles, reinforcing his conviction of one party’s guilt in particular. The dialogue is even better, especially when between Ladd and Lake, as in their first meeting.

The actual story falters a bit, relying on the unlikely coincidence that Lake – playing the wife of the man having an affair with Ladd’s wife – meets Ladd entirely by chance. Coincidences in dramas are acceptable, if they are rarely and cleverly used; in mysteries, they border on cheating – but Chandler wasn’t a fan of the British-style of mystery and its rules about playing fair. And the ending, though satisfying, could have been better.

Another problem is that Ladd’s is not as interesting a character as he should be. His is well written, and the performance is, as usual with the actor, convincing, in an understated manner. But Lake’s is a slightly more complex personality; a house detective (Will Wright) is annoying but fully three-dimensional, and I found the principal suspect, played by the versatile Howard Da Silva, the most intriguing, as he could be a real villain or just a rather sad man trying to stay ahead of his mistakes.

Nonetheless, The Blue Dahlia works. It captures the flavour of Los Angeles in the immediate post-World War Two era, its crowded hotels (due to returning servicemen), the carefree hedonism, and the kind of ‘now what?’ mood that must have struck many in those anti-climactic days.

The characters, though some, as described above, are better written than others, are no less involving for that, and the story, despite its flaws, carries the viewer through to its conclusion without allowing for distraction. The Blue Dahlia is typical of the higher-grade film noir produced by a higher-grade team in 1940s Hollywood.

Plunder Road (1957)

Directed by Hubert Cornfield; produced by Leon Chooluck, Laurence Stewart

Five men stage a precise and successful train-robbery, making off with $10,000,000 in gold. They know that any elation over their achievement would be premature, however, for they have eight hundred miles of public highway to cover to their intended destination, and every policeman and private citizen along that distance will be looking for them. The robbery was the easy part…

Like an old-fashioned murder mystery set in a secluded location, the premise of a caper film is often very much like that of every other. The appeal of the story is usually in the details: how the crime is committed, the scheme involved, the get-away, the dangers faced by the felons. In this, Plunder Road does pretty well, though it has its flaws.

The principal advantages to the film are the characters, the performances and the direction. The criminals are reasonably appealing: they act professionally, intend not to hurt anyone during their crime and want to make clean escapes with no trouble to police or by-standers. Several are hardened crooks, but not murderous. When a murder is committed, the viewer feels more disappointment in the character than loathing for him.

The performances are capable, if not outstanding. Gene Raymond makes a tough boss, though his hard edge is due to the need to get things done properly; he must constantly keep his men focussed. Elisha Cook and Wayne Morris give good support. No actor is out of place in his role. Steven Ritch’s nervous driver is often annoying, though it is in keeping with his character.

The direction is quite good. There are some tense moments as the criminals encounter road blocks set up to capture them, sometimes meeting each other on the route as they drive separately to their destination.

The script lets the movie down, if anything does. There are interesting elements to it. Cook gives a rambling synopsis of what he wants to do with the money he will make from the robbery, while his comrade, Morris, laconically responds. There is a brief glimpse of possibilities in the immediate attraction a waitress has for Raymond, while the latter remains fittingly mysterious as to his background.

But one of the disadvantages is the incredible use - or misuse - of time in the script. The robbers appear to have all that they need to unload heavy boxes of gold ingots from the train. The shipment belongs to the U.S. government; I find it hard to believe that even a few minutes’ delay in arriving at a scheduled station would not result in at least an inquiry from authorities as to the train’s location. Similarly, what the gang does with the gold to ready it for secret transport must surely take longer than the opportunity allowed, especially considering that only a third of the stolen gold is so treated, the plan being for much more to undergo the process.

There is also the inclusion of voice-overs from each character in the opening scene, a technique not repeated elsewhere in the film. I dislike the availability of omniscience to the viewer given at one point then abandoned at others. It makes for an inconsistent point of view.

While Plunder Road could have been better, its low budget and lack of stars certainly don’t make it less entertaining than it is. It is a decent caper flick, if the viewer doesn’t think about it too much.

D.O.A. (1949)

Directed by Rudolf Maté; produced by Leo C Popkin

Frank Bigelow (Edmond O’Brien) is an ordinary man, an accountant with a moderately prosperous business, a loving girlfriend (Pamela Britton) to whom he isn’t sure if he’s committed, and not an enemy in the world. On a trip to San Francisco, however, he is poisoned. He doesn’t know why, and he doesn’t know by whom. With only a few days of life remaining, Bigelow has little time and even fewer clues with which to solve his own murder.

The scenario of the innocent man caught up in crime and mystery is a staple of film noir; usually, the protagonist is accused of a crime, or even sentenced for one, that he didn’t commit. It’s a scenario we’ve seen often before. Here, the unique premise gives the movie not only a new angle but an urgency that pushes the action.

For such a movie to work, the direction and the performances - especially of the lead - are vital, and they are what contribute to D.O.A.’s success. Maté was best known as a cinematographer, but here he appears to be in his element as a director. The pacing is deliberately pedestrian at first; after Bigelow learns that he has been poisoned, though, it becomes hectic. There is a scene in which the panicky main character, having just been persuaded of his imminent demise, runs through San Francisco, going nowhere, just running, and the velocity of his running and his fear come off the screen at the viewer.

O’Brien is easily up to the task of portraying the doomed man. Not well-known today as a leading man, he nonetheless filled that role several times. This part is probably his best work. He convincingly shows us at first a man who has a decent life but is feeling pressured in a relationship and, perhaps, a little weighed down by mundanity. His horror at the revelation of his impending mortality is realistic. But then we see a transformation, a grief-stricken man walking down a sidewalk who slowly becomes his own avenging angel, filled with anger at the theft of his life. The rest of that life is lived with determination and purpose.

Of the other actors, Britton does well with the little she is given, the loyal girlfriend who doesn’t understand what’s going on with her man. And Neville Brand, in his first credited role, is a psychopathic gunman whom the viewer very, very much wants to see get his. Frank Gerstle may be notable as a doctor with a curt bedside manner: he confirms that the hero has ‘luminous toxin’ poisoning with the almost accusatory phrase, “Yeah, you got it, Bigelow.” A young Beverly Garland (billed as Beverly Campbell) has a substantial part for her first movie role.

The story’s premise is original and intriguing, though the bulk of it is the usual film noir mystery, with red herrings and a number of suspects. The names of characters come fairly fast at one point, but Bigelow sorts things out for the viewer (he could have been a detective, if he hadn’t gone into accounting.) The tale is compacted by time, however, which is running out for the protagonist; it was wise for the writers to give him anywhere from a day or two to a week. He - and the viewer - has no idea if he has even a few hours in which to solve his killing.

D.O.A.’s innovative premise and opening scene introduce an exciting and energetic crime story that doesn’t let up until the end.