Moontide (1942)

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Ida Lupino and Jean Gabin (and Claude Rains and Thomas Mitchell!) in a strange piece of borderline noirishness!
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US / 95 minutes / bw / TCF Dir: Archie Mayo, Fritz Lang (uncredited) Pr: Mark Hellinger Scr: John O’Hara, Nunnally Johnson (uncredited) Story: Moon Tide (1940) by Willard Robertson Cine: Charles Clarke, Lucien Ballard (uncredited) Cast: Jean Gabin, Ida Lupino, Thomas Mitchell, Claude Rains, Jerome Cowan, Helene Reynolds, Ralph Byrd, William Halligan, Victor Sen Yung, Chester Gan, Robin Raymond, Arthur Aylesworth, Arthur Hohl, John Kelly, Ralph Dunn, Tully Marshall, Vera Lewis, Tom Dugan.

On Amazon.co.uk a commenter called Now Zoltan (I assume that’s not his real name) has complained that I omitted this movie, which he regards as quintessential to the genre (“a cornerstone noir, one of my favourites”), from my A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir. He also complained about a typo as if it were an error of fact, which I thought was a bit unfair: 675,000 words of information-dense text? Of course you can expect a few typos—though hopefully not very many!

Anyway, I checked my entry for this movie in my personal catalogue and saw that I’d given it the NSH (noirish) rather than the NOIR classification. Since it stars Lupino, Gabin and Rains, three of my all-time favorite actors, and since Fritz Lang was involved, in the ordinary way I’d have bent over backward to include it in the book—i.e., to persuade myself it was sufficiently noir that it oughter go in.

An enigma on the back of a conundrum, and puzzling too.

It had been yonks since last I’d watched the movie, and to be honest I could remember little about it, so I decided to give it another whirl to see if I could work out why I’d decided to omit it. Here goes.

Jean Gabin as Bobo.

Bobo (Gabin) is a longshoreman, and ostensibly a good one, but he has a penchant for hard drinking. Tonight in the saloon called The Red Dot he’s well and truly hammered, to the dismay of his sidekick Tiny (Mitchell), who wants to

Fat Man, The (1951)

US / 77 minutes / bw / Universal International Dir: William Castle Pr: Aubrey Schenck Scr: Harry Essex, Leonard Lee Story: Leonard Lee Cine: Irving Glassberg Cast: J. Scott Smart, Julie London, Rock Hudson, Clinton Sundberg, Jayne Meadows, John Russell, Jerome Cowan, Emmett Kelly, Lucille Barkley, Robert Osterloh, Harry Lewis, Teddy Hart, Robert Roark, Ken Niles.

California dentist Dr. Henry Bromley (Niles), visiting NYC for a conference, is hurled from a high window of his hotel; the only thing missing from his room is a set of dental X-rays. His assistant Jane Adams (Meadows) discovers the body, the theft and a note in the dead man’s diary that he has made an appointment to see PI Brad Runyan (Smart). Accordingly, she goes to see Runyan herself.

Jayne Meadows as dental assistant Jane Adams.

He’s initially uninterested but, when she feels she’s being tailed and is frightened someone might try to knock her off in NYC, at least tells his fey assistant Bill Norton (Sundberg) to escort her to the airport. Bill is sapped by an unknown assailant, which persuades Runyan—an obsessive gourmet who well merits his nickname of The Fat Man—that there may be something in Jane’s fears after all. Runyan and Bill go with her to California.

J. Scott Smart in the eponymous role.

There they discover that the duplicate of the set of dental X-rays purloined in NYC has

A Quartet of Shorties

Although I’ve been charged with including too many borderline noirs in the Encyclopedia  (odd for an encyclopedia to be accused of encompassing too much rather than too little!), in fact quite a few of the entries I wrote I decided later to reject. Some of those then got stuck back in again. In the absence of the usual collegial team you expect to be able to draw on when constructing an encyclopedia of this size, I had to be, as it were, my own collegiate: I conducted many internal debates over what to keep in and what to kick out, and often there were second thoughts.

The entries here on Noirish are in general far longer than I had space for in the encyclopedia. Here, just for interest, are my original entries for a few movies that got thrown out and stayed out; all the entries are very short because, of course, I already regarded the movies as borderline. That’s not to say these movies, especially The Velvet Touch, may not get fuller coverage here in due course.

The movies concerned are:

Sweet Revenge (1976; vt Dandy, the All American Girl)

There’s Always a Woman (1938)

The Unsaid (2001)

The Velvet Touch (1948)

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Sweet Revenge (1976)

vt Dandy, the All American Girl

US / 89 minutes / color / MGM Dir & Pr: Jerry Schatzberg Scr: Marilyn Goldin, B.J. Perla, Jor [sic] Van Kline Story: B.J. Perla Cine: Vilmos Zsigmond Cast: Stockard Channing, Sam Waterston, Franklyn Ajaye, Richard Daughty, Norman Matlock.

Vurrla Kowsky (Channing) is a career car thief whose primary motive is to make enough money to buy herself a Ferrari. Lawyer Le Clerq (Waterston) believes he’s saving her from herself, but so do the other men in her life and she’s running rings round all of them. Although the movie’s determinedly comedic, its portrayal of the addiction that auto theft can become is (reportedly) very authentic.

On Amazon.com: Sweet Revenge

There’s Always a Woman (1938)

US / 81 minutes / bw / Columbia Dir: Alexander Hall Pr: William Perlberg Scr: Gladys Lehman Based on: story by Wilson Collison Cine: Henry Freulich Cast: Joan Blondell, Melvyn Douglas, Mary Astor, Frances Drake, Jerome Cowan, Thurston Hall, Rita Hayworth (uncredited).

Of strictly ancillary interest, There’s Always a Woman (1938) was intended by Columbia as first in a series to rival The THIN MAN. Joan Blondell and Melvyn Douglas star as husband-and-wife sleuths solving a society crime, she trying—and succeeding despite her husband’s sexism—to be a PI, while he acts for the DA’s office. It’s easy to see why the series never took off: while Blondell does wonders for an ordinary script, Douglas is insipid and, among the rest, only an uncredited Tom Dugan as a knucklehead cop stands out.

On Amazon.com: There’s Always a Woman (currently unavailable, but with luck might return soon)

Unsaid, The (2001)

Canada, US / 111 minutes / color / New Legend, Mind’s Eye, CineSon, Eagle Dir: Tom McLoughlin Pr: Tom Berry, Matt Hastings, Kelley Reynolds Scr: Miguel Tejada-Flores, Scott Williams Story: Christopher Murphey Cine: Lloyd Ahern II Cast: Andy Garcia, Vincent Kartheiser, Linda Cardellini, Chelsea Field, Teri Polo, Sam Bottoms, Trevor Blumas.

Psychologist Michael Hunter (Garcia) treats troubled teenager Tommy Caffey (Kartheiser) while haunted by memories of his own teenaged son’s suicide. The son, Kyle (Blumas), killed himself after sexual abuse by a therapist; Tommy was a victim of sexual abuse by his mother and then saw his father, Joseph (Bottoms), beat her to death. When Tommy hooks up with Michael’s daughter Shelly (Cardellini) he learns from her which of Michael’s buttons to press in order to exploit the similarities between the two cases. A trite ending undermines an otherwise interesting, thought-provoking piece.

On Amazon.com: The Unsaid

Velvet Touch, The (1948)

US / 97 minutes / bw / RKO Dir: John Gage Pr: Frederick Brisson Scr: Leo Rosten, Walter Reilly Story: Annabel Ross Cine: Joseph Walker Cast: Rosalind Russell, Leo Genn, Claire Trevor, Sydney Greenstreet, Leon Ames.

Broadway comedienne Valerie Stanton (Russell), during a tussle with producer and dumped lover Gordon Dunning (Ames)—over her desire to take the lead in a revival of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and over her new boyfriend, Michael Morrell (Genn)—hits him with a statuette and inadvertently kills him; the body’s discovered by fellow-actress Marian Webster (Trevor). While the latter’s hospitalized with shock, cop Captain Danbury (Greenstreet) concludes Marian must be the killer, ignoring Valerie as even a suspect; she has, unwittingly, committed the perfect crime. A witty screenplay and fine performances raise this mystery above the average level of the pack.

On Amazon.com: The Velvet Touch [VHS] and The Velvet Touch [Region 2]

Fog Island (1945)

US / 71 minutes / bw / PRC Dir: Terry Morse Scr: Pierre Gendron Story: Angel Island (1937 play) by Bernadine Angus Cine: Ira Morgan Cast: Lionel Atwill, Jerome Cowan, George Zucco, Veda Ann Borg, Sharon Douglas, Ian Keith, Jacqueline DeWit, John Whitney, George Lloyd.

A creaky but enjoyable gothic noir, with secret passageways and skulls galore.

The miniature screaming skull given to Sylvia as her clue . . .

Embittered after five years in the pen for an embezzlement of which he was innocent, during which time his beloved wife Karma was murdered, Leo Grainger (Zucco)—rendered as “Grainer” in the credits—lives in his spooky, pirate-built mansion on remote Fog Island with his stepdaughter Gail (Douglas), who likewise seeks reclusion because of the shame of Leo’s supposed crime.

Leo invites to the island the people he believes were involved in the theft and set him up for the fall: phony seeress Emiline Bronson (DeWit) of the Emiline Bronson Psychic Research Laboratory, erstwhile colleagues Alec Ritchfield (Atwill) and John Kavanaugh (Cowan), Leo’s personal secretary Sylvia Jordan (Borg), and another business associate, Jackson Kingsley, who proves in the event to have recently died; his son Jeff (Whitney) comes in his stead, eager for the excuse to reunite with Gail, his old college sweetheart. Also on the island, having come clandestinely, is the company’s accountant, sent up the river at the same time as Leo: “Doc” Lake (Keith).

. . . . the full-size one she finds in a casket . . .

The night of their arrival, Leo tells his guests he has called them here for retribution, although he obfuscates about what the word might mean in this context; if any of them are innocent, for example, their retribution might be against him for having lost them money. Since he has introduced Kavanaugh to his home with “Strangely enough, it was built by pirates . . . but you shouldn’t find any difficulty in finding your way around, John”, we can guess this latter definition of the word is not the one foremost in Leo’s mind.

To each person he gives a clue/favor: to Gail a key (“Perhaps the key to your happiness, my dear”), to Emiline a pen with a note inside reading “Top Left of Mantle” (much later we discover a lever there opens a drawer containing another key), to Kavanaugh a book of elementary multiplication tables, to Sylvia a monkey skull, to Ritchfield a jemmy, and to Jeff a penknife.

As Gail plays the organ that evening, she and Jeff discover the Oboe stop controls a secret door; Ritchfield observes them; in due course everyone knows about the doorway and that it leads to a tangle of cellars. There’s a séance that stops in a hurry when the table levitates—to the mystification of supposedly pstchic Emiline. And then there’s the first murder, when Doc discovers the butler, Allerton (Lloyd), rifling through his master’s desk, exposes him as escaped lifer Al Jenks, and fights with him—a fight that ends with Allerton/Jenks plunging into violent seas. Later Ritchfield kills Leo, who has discovered he murdered Karma, then kills Emiline for the key to what they both believe is the treasure chamber, down in the cellars. The four remaining chiselers use their clues to find the supposed treasure, only to discover it’s just a note from Leo proclaiming his innocence; besides, the casket containing the note is rigged so that, on being moved, it seals the chamber and fills it with seawater . . .

. . . and the skeleton Ritchfield discovers in the cellar on hiding Leo’s corpse.

Meanwhile, Jeff and Gail discover the tabletop, when made to levitate, reveals a secret compartment with Gail’s mother’s jewels and a letter explaining where Leo’s company’s money really went: quite simply, he was an incompetent businessmen.

Atwill, Cowan, Zucco and Borg all deliver the sort of professional performances you might expect, and DeWit is excellent. This was one of very few movie appearances for Douglas, who was primarily a radio actress; she pulls the role off with considerable charm and aplomb, so it’s somewhat surprising the Hollywood studios didn’t offer her more of a career.

Bonus skull for dedicated craniophiles.

On Amazon.com: Fog Island