Stubs - Her Man

Her Man (1930) Starring Helen Twelvetrees, Marjorie Rambeau, Ricardo Cortez, Phillips Holmes. Directed by Tay Garnett. Screenplay by Thomas Buckingham. Produced by E. B. Derr. Run time: 83 minutes. USA Black and White. Romance, Drama, Pre-Code.

It is sad to consider how many films have been lost over time. Sometimes, when you look up some older actors on Wikipedia, there are usually one or two films from the silent era or early sound that will be listed as a Lost film. Either because they were made and stored on highly flammable nitrate film, or through plain neglect or because the negative was destroyed in the name of censorship (Convention City), a survey of American films will often times have holes that cannot be filled.

Stubs – Cause For Alarm!

Cause For Alarm! (1951) Starring: Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan, Bruce Cowling. Directed by Tay Garnett. Screenplay by Mel Dinelli, Tom Lewis. Based on a short story by Larry Marcus. Produced by Tom Lewis.  Run Time: 75 minutes. U.S. Black and White. Film Noir, Drama

I have made no secret of the fact that I like film noirs. Their dark plots of murder and conspiracy played out in the shadows have always fascinated me. But not all film noirs take place in the shadows of a cityscape. Case in point, Cause For Alarm! from MGM in 1951. Instead of unfolding at night in some back alley, Cause For Alarm! takes place during the day on a suburban Los Angeles street, showing suspense can happen anywhere and at any time.

But Cause For Alarm! which Ellen (Loretta Young) narrates, begins long before that fateful afternoon back when Ellen and her husband George (Barry Sullivan) met. Like many young couples at the time, they met during World War II. Ellen was dating George’s friend, Lieutenant Ranney Grahame (Bruce Cowling), at the time, but Ranney, a young military doctor, had little time for her. When George, a pilot, met Ellen, the two fell in love and got married.

Before she meets George, Ellen (Loretta Young) is dating Lr. Ranney Grahame (Bruce Cowling), a doctor.

Hollywood movies would lead you to believe that they’d live happily ever after, but sadly, that is not always the case. By the time of our movie, George is ill, bedridden with heart problems, and Ellen spends most of her time taking care of him. But George is suspicious of Ellen and thinks she’s having an affair with his doctor, and her ex-boyfriend, Ranney. George thinks his old buddy is not doing all he can and is in fact, conspiring with Ellen to kill him.

George (Barry Sullivan) suffers a heart attack and is bedridden.

The couple is childless, something that Ellen wishes they could change. She finds a surrogate child in a neighborhood boy, Billy (Bradley Mora), who dresses like movie cowboy Hopalong Cassidy and rides the range of his suburban street on his tricycle. Ellen gives him some cookies and he gives her a toy television and asks her to give it to George.

But unbeknownst to Ellen, George is writing a letter to the district attorney outlining how Ellen and Ranney are trying to kill him.

When George suffers an attack, he begs Ellen to call another doctor (yes, doctors used to make house calls), but George has mistreated all of them to the point that only Ranney will come and so Ellen calls him. Ranney dismisses George’s concerns and suggests that perhaps he should seek psychiatric help.

When they're alone, Ranney tells Ellen that George should go to a hospital to prevent his depression from worsening. But Ellen worries that George will be violent if she doesn’t attend to him personally. She promises to talk to George.

After speaking again to Billy outside, Ellen is startled to see George standing at the window. She rushes upstairs, but he denies that he’s even gotten out of bed and accuses her of being in love with Ranney and wanting him dead. Ellen is naturally hurt by her husband’s accusations, but puts it down to his illness making him distrustful. When she goes downstairs to make him lunch, George continues his letter to the DA, adding details to further implicate Ellen.

After lunch, George gives Ellen the letter and asks her to mail it for him. Ellen thinks the thick letter contains insurance papers he’s worked on for his office. Ellen gives the letter to their mailman, Mr. Carston (Irving Bacon). He tells Ellen that he’s just seen George at the window and she hurries upstairs, again, and asks George to stop risking his health and to stay in bed. But George insists the mailman is mistaken.

George then tells Ellen a disturbing story about how as a child he beat a neighbor boy with a rake after the boy tried to touch one of his toys. When his mother made him apologize and give the boy his toy, George deliberately broke it rather than let the boy have it. This story, an obvious allegory for what George will do about Ellen and Ranney, frightens her.

George tells her that the letter she sent was actually to the DA and reveals some of the incriminating information he put in it, such as her re-ordering a prescription too soon. He leaves out that it was because he’d deliberately spilled it the day before. He then threatens to kill her, revealing a gun that he has hidden under the blankets. As she pleads with him, George suffers a heart attack and dies, with the gun still in his grip.

Weak George pulls a gun on Ellen and threatens to kill her.

Ellen is stunned by the sudden turn of events and considers George’s death to be “one of those awful dreams.”  When the pharmacist calls inquiring about the prescription, Ellen doesn’t tell him that George has died. She is now in full panic mode.

Worried that everything she has done will seem incriminating to the DA, she leaves her husband’s dead body on the bed and hurries off to catch the mailman. She manages to catch up to the gregarious Carston, still making his deliveries. She tells him that she had mistakenly given him a letter to mail that was not yet finished and begs for him to give it back. Initially, Carston is willing to do so until she lets it slip that her husband had written the letter. In that case, Carston is compelled to give the letter back to George personally. When she pointedly refuses that offer, he tells her that only the supervisor in the downtown office can give it to her.

Ellen cannot convince postman Carston (Irving Bacon) to give her back the letter.

When Ellen returns to the house, George's indulgent aunt, Clara Edwards (Margalo Gillmore), is already inside, having unlocked the door with a key that she found with a neighbor's, Mrs. Warren (Georgia Backus), help. Ellen is extremely agitated and Clara only agrees to leave without seeing George after Ellen tells her that her visits upset him.

Ellen then changes clothes so she can be presentable at the post office and decides to get the gun out of George's hand. It is stiff and she has to pull it out, discharging a bullet, which gets Billy’s attention. As she is about to leave, Mr. Russell (Don Haggerty), a public notary, arrives and tries to force his way in to see George. He tells Ellen that George had demanded he come see him that day, no matter what his wife said. But Russell does finally leave and Ellen now fears that he will be another witness against her.

In her hurry to get to the main post office, Ellen nearly runs over Billy, who rides his tricycle daredevil like behind her car, which Mrs. Warren observes. (The woman is always outside in her garden.)

At the main post office, the superintendent (Art Baker) says he can give her the letter back, but policies about forms and other types of scrutiny which would require George's signature upset Ellen so much that she is forced to leave empty-handed. When she arrives home, Ellen remembers that Ranney was supposed to stop by again and calls his office to stop him. But because he is out making house calls, his office can’t get a hold of him and he arrives almost immediately.

Ellen tries to make him to leave by saying that another doctor has already been there, but he guesses that George is dead. After Ellen breaks down and tells him everything, Ranney finds the gun and the bullet hole in the floor. He then tries to calm Ellen down and tell her that George's mind was going. When the front door bell rings, Ellen fears that it is the police, but it is only Carston. He has come to return the letter, admonishing her that there was postage due on the thick letter and it could not be delivered.

Ellen cries hysterically after Carston leaves and is comforted by Ranney, who burns the letter. Calm now, Ellen hopes that someday she can forget what has happened.

Even though the film has some great film noir credentials; it is helmed by Tay Garnett, the director of The Post Man Always Rights Twice (1946), and co-stars Barry Sullivan, one of the leads from the excellent Tension (1949), there are real problems with the movie.

Unfortunately, they seem to lie with the main character around which the movie revolves. To begin with, she is not a very sympathetic character. True she is haggard and bullied by George while he is alive, but she is more concerned about a letter than the fact George has just died. She doesn’t behave like a rational person would. No doubt an autopsy would clear her of murder and the prescription issue could be explained away. The fact that she leaves her husband’s dead body hunched over and tries to lie her way into getting back a letter seems like odd behavior to me and seems more suspicious than simply calling the authorities.

As far as getting the letter back, she seems to be her own worst enemy as she messes two chances to get it back. Carston catches her in a lie and her behavior ruins any chance the superintendent will cooperate with her.

When Cause for Alarm! opened, Loretta Young was nearing the end of her film career. She’d been in movies since the age of four, when she appeared, uncredited, in the now lost, The Primerose Ring (1917).  She would also appear four years later, again uncredited, in The Sheik (1921). She is perhaps best known for her Academy Award winning role as Katrin ‘Katy’ Holstrum in The Farmer’s Daughter (1947) and as Julia Brougham in The Bishop’s Wife (1947). After retiring from films in 1953, she went on to star in her own TV Series, The Loretta Young Show, which ran for eight seasons on NBC.

Cause for Alarm! lost money during its initial theatrical run which indicates that the story didn’t connect with audiences back then either. Even though the film received decent reviews, the film, which was made in 14 days at the cost of $635,000, recorded a loss of $174,000. MGM must have thought so little of the film that they let the copyright expire and the film fell into public domain.

While I will give the creative team credit of Cause for Alarm! for trying to make a different type of film noir, ultimately, they failed to tell a good story, which is a movie’s job one.

Stubs – Stand-In

Stand-In (1937) Starring: Leslie Howard, Joan Blondell, Humphrey Bogart, Alan Mowbray, Maria Shelton, C. Henry Gordon and Jack Carson. Directed by Tay Garnett. Screenplay by Gene Towne and Graham Baker. Produced by Walter Wanger. Run Time: 91 minutes. U.S. Black and White. Comedy

While it might seem that movie stars are born full cloth, they take time to develop. Such is the case with one of my favorite film actors, Humphrey Bogart. While he appeared in over 75 films in a career that spanned 30 years, he was not always a star.

Bogart made his stage debut in 1921 in the play Drifting, with one line of dialogue, in the part of a Japanese butler. Between 1922 and 1935, he would appear in 17 Broadway plays, usually cast as a juvenile or a romantic second lead in what have been described as drawing room comedies. Reports are that he was the first actor to say the line “Tennis, anyone?” on stage. Critic Alexander Woollcott (the basis for the character of Sheridan Whiteside in the play and movie The Man Who Came to Dinner) once described Bogart’s acting as “inadequate.” Personally, Bogart disliked these types of roles, referring to them as “White Pants Willie” roles.

The stock market crash of 1929, led to a curtailment of stage productions and many actors, including Bogart, started to make films, though he had made one film in 1928, a Helen Hayes two-reeler, The Dancing Town, now one of the many lost films from this era. He would also appear with Joan Blondell in the Vitaphone short, Broadway’s Like That (1930).

That same year, Bogart signed a contract with Fox Film Corporation, starring with Spence Tracy, another Broadway actor, in Tracy’s film debut, Up the River (1930) directed by John Ford. The next year, he had a minor role in the Bette Davis film, The Bad Sister (1931).

Between 1930 and 1935, Bogart travelled between the Hollywood movie set and the Broadway stage, but often times not working. Things began to change in 1934, when he starred in the play Invitation to Murder (1934). This led to him being cast in the play, the Petrified Forest, opposite Leslie Howard. When Warner Bros., bought the film rights, they cast Leslie Howard, Bette Davis and Edward G. Robinson, the latter playing Duke Mantee. But Howard was adamant about them casting Bogart in the role and Warner Bros. relented.

While The Petrified Forest was what they used to call an “A” picture and Bogart received great reviews, he was signed to Warner Bros. and began a long career playing in “B” picture crime dramas.

Stand-In (1937) was a bit of a departure from his screen persona. Loaned out to producer Walter Wagner in exchange for Henry Fonda, The Stand-In reunites Bogart with Howard and Blondell. The film was an independent production and released through United Artists.

Wagner had been in motion pictures, having started at Famous Players – Lasky (later  Paramount) with the film The Sheik (1921) which starred Rudolph Valentino. He also produced the Marx Bros.’ first film for Paramount, The Cocoanuts (1929). Other films to his credit include: The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933); John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939); Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940); Scarlet Street (1945); Joan of Arc (1948); the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956); I Want to Live! (1958) and Cleopatra (1963) with Elizabeth Taylor.

A take-off on Hollywood, Stand-In opens with cranky old Fowler Pettypacker (Tully Marshall), head of the banking firm of Pettypacker & Sons, deciding to disregard the recommendation made by his vice-president, Atterbury Dodds (Leslie Howard), not to sell Colossal Film Company, which has been losing money, to the Hollywood Cinema Finance company, headed by well-known shyster Ivor Nassau (C. Henry Gordon), for half its $10 million value to get rid of it.

Atterbury, considered to be the most brilliant brain developed by Wall Street in the past ten years, this per Nassau, wants to protect the investment of the firm's 30,202 stockholders and he offers to go to Hollywood to investigate and correct the problems at Colossal.

Pettypacker agrees, but warns Atterbury that they are dealing with people, not just a business, but Atterbury insists that business is business. His confidence comes from mathematics. Pettypacker puts Atterbury in charge, but tells him if he fails to save Colossal not to come back.

In Hollywood, Nassau, who is infamous for making money by closing and selling studios, plots with star Thelma Cheri (Maria Shelton), her fiancé, Russian-born director Koslofski (Alan Mawbray) and press agent Tom Potts (Jack Carson) to drive the studio under through expensive retakes on their current picture. The four plot to pull a fast deal over on Atterbury.

Enter Douglas Quintain (Humphrey Bogart) who is less interested in their plotting than getting Cheri and Koslofski to finish the picture they’re currently making. When Cheri reminds him that she has final cut, Quintain recalls that he’s the one who gave her such approval. He blames the fact he was in love with her and admits, even though she’s engaged to Koslofski, he still is.

Douglas Quintain (Humphrey Bogart) tries to motivate Thelma Cheri (Maria Shelton) to finish the movie she's making.

Arriving wide-eyed at the sights of the film capital, many of which are no longer there, like the Brown Derby, Atterbury fortunately meets Cheri's stand-in, Lester Plum (Joan Blondell), when she jumps into his limousine, the Colossal Picture’s limo, at the corner of Hollywood and Highland. She’s tired and asks the driver to take her home. Making herself more comfortable, she takes off her shoes.

Stand-in Lester Plum (Joan Blondell) invites herself into new studio head Atterbury Dodd's (Leslie Howard) limo.

She tells Atterbury that she’s a stand-in for Cheri, but he doesn’t know who Cheri is and what a stand-in does. She jokes that since he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the motion picture business he should do fine. When she gets out of the limo at Mrs. Mack’s Boarding House, she accidentally leaves one of her shoes inside the car.

When Atterbury checks into the hotel, is he shocked at how much the room is, $100 a day, and that it is being charged to Colossal Pictures. Everyone, including Potts, is very carefree with Colossal’s money and Atterbury starts taking notes about expenses. Potts is sent to distract Atterbury, but he is not interested in the date Potts has arranged for him.

Barely in town for an hour, he is confronted by a stage mother, who drags her Shirley Temple wannabe into his suite for an audition. Welcome to the picture business, Atterbury Dodd. However, Atterbury is unimpressed and castigates the mother for how she’s raising her daughter.

Later, Atterbury goes to Mrs. Mack’s to return the shoe Lester left behind in the limo and is immersed in the hams, wannabes and has-beens who live there. He asks Lester where there’s some place he could live without being tricked and lied to and Lester tells him there is a room in her building. Lester knows the business intimately, having once been a child star, and having graduated from secretarial school, offers herself to be the naïve and shy Atterbury’s secretary, but Atterbury is non-commital, saying he’s always had a male secretary.

The next day, Atterbury arrives at Colossal Pictures by bus to see Quintain and is at first refused entrance by the security guard. But Atterbury does get in and tells Quintain, he wants to immerse himself in the business so the books will make more sense. Quintain warns him about Nassau’s plans for Colossal while showing Atterbury around the studio.

Quintain shows Adderly around Colossal Pictures.

Atterbury seems to be overwhelmed by the activity and the jargon of the film productions he watches. He also sees Lester in action, standing in while lights and cameras are set up for Cheri. Quintain takes Atterbury to meet Cheri and Koslofski in the actress’ dressing room. Cheri invites Atterbury to a party in his honor and when he tells her he doesn’t like parties, she agrees with him, but still tries to flirt with him, which only chases him away.

Lester though doesn’t give up on the idea of working for Atterbury and bugs him until he hires her as his secretary. The first order of business is to send a telegram back to the home office. Atterbury wants to delay selling the studio until the success or failure of Sex and Satan, Cheri’s newest film can be determined.

Lester becomes Adderly's secretary through persistence.

Oblivious to Lester's flirtations and charms, Atterbury takes her advice to get out of the office to have fun and asks Lester to teach him to dance, which she does. Atterbury meticulously draws out every step on the floor of his office and uses math, of course, to remember each move. Lester calls the boarding home to tell them not to wait dinner for her or Atterbury, but then finds Atterbury isn’t going out with her, but rather to a dance thrown by Cheri. This provokes Lester's jealousy and ire.

At the party, Atterbury dances by the numbers while Cheri continues her flirtation, but she leaves him to take a call from Quintain, who wants to see her. When Atterbury finds that plates belonging to Colossal are being used by Koslofski, the director gives his boss a black eye. No sooner does Atterbury make his exit than Potts makes fun of his dancing, only for Atterbury to return to retrieve something he’s forgotten.

Back that boarding house, Atterbury hears Lester crying in the next room. When he checks on her, she is concerned about his black eye. She shows him some jujitsu he could have used to protect himself. Atterbury gets carried away with the lessons and throws Lester across the room before he realizes what’s he done.

Lester tends to Adderly's black eye back at back at the boarding house.

After a preview screening of Sex and Satan, producer Quintain calls the film a "turkey" and urges Atterbury to "junk it, and forget it" rather than try to save it with retakes. Koslofski advises expensive retakes and blames the problems on Quintain's drunkenness on the set.

Even Quintain's editing wasn't enough to save Sex and Satan.

When Cheri tells Atterbury that Koslofski's accusations are true, Quintain quits, leaving Atterbury to run the stuido alone. Cheri tries to apologize, but Quintain is not in the mood to forget. He blames himself for making her an applause addict and leaves to go get drunk.

But an audience preview proves Quintain was right. Comments are negative about both the story and the lead actress. Atterbury fears the film leaves him no choice but to sell the studio to Nassau. At Lester’s insistence, he tries to find Quintain in a last ditch effort to save the studio and the livelihood of its 3000 employees.

When Adderly finds Quintain he's protesting being cut off by the Cafe Trocadero.

Attenbury finds Quintain at the Café Trocadero where he’s protesting them from keeping him out. Using the jujitsu he learned from Lester, Atterbury gets Quintain into a taxi. On the ride, Quintain drinks a case of beer and sobers up by the morning. The two men agree that the only way to save the studio is to recut the picture, eliminating some of Cheri’s performance, but Cheri's contract stipulates that she has final cut approval. Realizing that Cheri's contract will be considered breached if she is caught in a scandal, Atterbury takes her drinking. She willingly goes, but in the early morning hours, she slips under the table of a club, and when Atterbury joins her, their "romance" makes headlines.

Quintain uses beer to sober up.

Pettypacker reads the news and, fearing ruin, calls Nassau, who plays hard to get and has to be talked into buying Colossal Pictures. Atterbury, soon after sending Cheri a breach of contract notice for the scandal she caused, is then fired by Pettypacker. Lester berates Atterbury for being unconcerned about the studio employees who will lose their jobs. In a last ditch effort, and knowing Quintain needs 48 hours to finish the recuts, Atterbury, who is at first literally run over by leaving and disgruntled employees, manages, over Pott’s heckling, to convince them to work for no pay to remake the film as a comedy, rather than lose their jobs if the film is scrapped and the deal with Nassau is consummated.

Nassau is then unceremoniously thrown over the studio wall, and after Atterbury dictates to Lester a telegram informing Pettypacker of his plan to fight the sale, he consults his checklist of things to do and sees "Propose to Miss Plum," and asks her to marry him. She accepts and they hesitatingly kiss.

There is too much talent involved in this film for it not be better than it is with Leslie Howard, Joan Blondell and Humphrey Bogart in front of the camera and Tay Garnett and Walter Wagner behind it. But the obvious problem seems to be the story. For a film about Hollywood made in Hollywood, the story seems to have been written by people with no idea how things really work from the business-side of the equation. The big issue set up in the movie is whether or not Colossal Pictures can be saved, but that never really gets resolved.

And while it seemed all along that Atterbury was immune to the many and abundant charms of Lester Plum, some of which she enumerated for him, including her eyes and her legs (this was the 30’s, after all), his proposal seems to be a little out of left field. And that’s supposed to be our happy ending, because the film needed one. To be fair, romances in movies of the 30’s and 40’s seemed to develop rapidly or come to sudden happy conclusions, especially between people who seem to have a great dislike for each other. In Stand-In, Atterbury and Lester are not at each other’s throats, but for most of the film he only seems interested in her mind if he’s interested in her at all.

A studio the purported size of Colossal would be most likely cranking out a movie a week rather than putting all their eggs into one film. Now a single film can sink a studio, see United Artists and Heaven’s Gate, but back then a studio the size of Colossal would have many stars, many producers, directors and executives, not one of each. It just doesn’t ring true.

But I know this is not a documentary on Hollywood in the 1930’s, but I guess I expect more out of the film than explaining everything away with the tag “that’s the movie business”. Also, it’s hard to think of any star under contract who had as much control over her films as Cheri does in Stand-In. Usually, you hear about complaints about the studio abusing their stars, not the other way around.

There is character growth in that Atterbury comes to see the studio employees as people rather than units or line items on an account ledger. And while the premise of an accountant running a studio might have seem farfetched at the time, it is more the reality now.

The film’s humor is mostly verbal, but speed of speech more often than not supplants wit. There are the occasional physical comedy bits, such as Atterbury being run over and Nassau being thrown over a wall, but they seem to be a little out of place with the rest of the film.

The script overall seems to be very haphazard. Characters seem to act against their own best interest, such as Quintain’s love for Cheri, a woman who is ruthlessly only looking out for herself. Their relationship, while unresolved in the film, seems destined for failure.

There are several problems with the story. Who sobers up drinking beer the way Quintain does in the movie? Wouldn’t he wake up with a wicked hangover after adding beer on top of the drunk he already had going on? I’m pretty sure that they knew in the 30’s that a bender was not a cure for a bender. This isn’t the hair of the dog, it’s more like a pack of them.

While the character of Quintain has problems, Potts is downright annoying, with his hyena laughter. I have usually liked Jack Carson in other films I’ve seen him in (ex. Mildred Pierce), but whenever I see him on screen in Stand-In, I can’t wait for him to get off. And I honestly think he would be amongst the workers leaving Colossal when it’s sold, since he was working with Nassau throughout, is that the writer needed him to be there to heckle Atterbury. It’s the only reason that makes sense and still it doesn’t.

I had high hopes in watching Stand-In, but I came away very dissatisfied. Humphrey Bogart and Joan Blondell were not enough to save this film. While I know I’m coming at this film from a modern perspective, I don’t think my opinion is too far off the general reception the film received when it was first released. The film, budgeted at over $523,000 only made a profit of $9,274.

If you want to watch a good movie about Hollywood, I would recommend that you keep looking; Stand-In isn’t it.

Stubs – The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) Starring: Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway, Hume Cronyn, Leon Ames, Audrey Totter, Alan Reed. Directed by Tay Garnett. Screenplay by Harry Ruskin, Niven Busch. Based on the novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain. Produced by Carey Wilson. Run Time: 113 minutes, Black and White. U.S., Drama, Film Noir

For those of you who regularly read Trophy Unlocked, and hopefully, there is someone (comments always welcomed), you know that Double Indemnity (1944) is one of my top ten films. As a would-be novelist, I am always jealous of any writer who has had four books made into movies. James M. Cain, the author of the novella this film is based on, also wrote Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce and The Butterfly. And with the exception of the latter, the notorious Pia Zadora Golden Globe Award-winning Butterfly (1982), the first American films based on his novels are considered classics.

The book the movie is based on.

I know from having read what I’ll call his big three, the films based on his work have been re-written significantly and the films were the better for it. (If you need proof, watch the Mildred Pierce mini-series (2011) which is very faithful to the novel and as a result is plodding, slow, and dull. The Joan Crawford starrer from 1945 is a tight film noir about murder.)

Of the three, Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice seem to have the most in common with each other. Both deal with murder for love and financial gain, both feature blonde-haired femme fatales, Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity and Lana Turner as Cora Smith in Postman. The male leads are easily led astray by the women in their lives, who are both married to older and more successful men. Even the murder scenes are very similar in execution.

But while Postman didn’t make my top ten, it is by no means a bad picture. The novel was originally published in 1934 and the film rights were purchased by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer soon afterward. But based on the themes of the film, adultery, and murder, which ran counter to the Motion Picture Production Code, the studio held off putting the film into production. It took the success of Paramount’s Double Indemnity, which dealt with the same moral issues, to finally convince MGM to move forward. While the story would be told more than once, and this movie would be remade in 1981 starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, this is considered the definitive film treatment.

It is interesting to note that the MGM movie is not the first film based on the story. Pierre Chenal directed the first version, Le Dermier Toumant (1939), a French-made film. Filmmaker Luchiono Visconti directed an Italian version, Ossessione in 1943. Ossessione was Visconti’s first film and made working under the censorship of the Fascist Italian Government.

The American The Postman Always Rings Twice opens with drifter Frank Chambers (John Garfield), who, hitchhiking on his way to San Diego gets a ride from a man who turns out to be the District Attorney, Kyle Sackett (Leon Ames). They stop at Twin Oaks, a rural diner outside Los Angeles because they have a help wanted sign up. Nick (Cecil Kellaway) is anxious to hire Frank, who for his part has itchy feet. That is until he gets a look at Cora Smith (Lana Turner). Suddenly, Frank wants to stick around, even after he finds out that Cora is married to the much older Nick.

Frank sees this help wanted sign at the very beginning of the film.

There is an attraction between Cora and Frank that they both fight against and in turn fight against each other. Frank crosses a line and kisses Cora, which both thrills and repels her. Cora pulls away from Frank until he proves that he can help her with Nick, convincing the owner to get a new neon sign for the restaurant after the old wooden one was destroyed in the wind.  She is still uncomfortable with Frank around, knowing her attraction to him. Then he joins her, with Nick’s approval, on one of her night time swims in the ocean. They kiss again, but this time the feeling is mutual.

Nick (Cecil Kellaway) doesn't see that he's in between two lovers,
his wife, Cora (Lana Turner) and Frank (John Garfield).

The next day, while Nick is in Los Angeles on business, Frank and Cora sneak off together. But they don’t get far before Cora gives up. She knows leaving Nick would mean they’d both have to start over at the bottom and she doesn’t want that for either of them. She wants to go back and try to find another way. They hurriedly return to Twin Oaks before Nick can find her farewell note she left in the cash register.

Cora and Frank run away together but ended up going back to the Twin Oaks.

But soon after they return, they watch as a drunk Nick nearly drives head-on into a semi-truck. Frank speaks out loud that he wishes Nick was dead. They plot to kill Nick and almost do. While Frank stands guard outside the diner, pretending to clean the car, Cora prepares to kill Nick by knocking him unconscious and pretending his death was a bathtub accident. She plans to lock the bathroom door and then sneak out the bathroom window and down a stepladder, Frank’s left by the side of the building. Frank is a little unnerved when Blair (Jeff York), a motorcycle cop, stops by the diner as the plan is unfolding, but everything goes awry when a cat’s electrocution trips the power lines just as Cora strikes Nick.

With nothing better to do, L.A. District Attorney Kyle Sackett (Leon Ames)
and motorcycle cop, Blair (Jeff York), investigate Nick's apparent bathtub accident.

Fearing the motorcycle cop will become suspicious since he’s seen the stepladder, Cora and Frank call an ambulance and rush Nick to a hospital. Sackett, along with the motorcycle cop, comes to the hospital. Sackett is suspicious and both Frank and Cora are questioned by the police. When they return to the Twin Oaks, Sackett follows them there, too, but there is not enough evidence to prove there was a crime.  Nick does regain consciousness, which is a great relief to both Cora and Frank. But Nick will remain in the hospital for a week, which Cora and Frank take full advantage of.

Nick is touch and go for a few hours, but pulls through after the first murder attempt.

While she is off picking up Nick at the hospital, Frank decides the time is right to leave. But after a couple of weeks in Los Angeles, he misses Cora. Hanging out a farmer’s market he knows Nick and Cora frequent, he does finally run into Nick, who drags him back to the Twin Oaks, telling him there’s some big news he needs to tell him. Cora is not that happy to see Frank back. Things get worse for her, when Nick announces that he plans to sell the Twin Oaks and move back to Northern Canada to live in his family homestead and take care of his sister, who is paralyzed and needs a woman’s care. Cora is so depressed she considers suicide. The two lovers plot once more to kill Nick.

On the night they’re supposed to drive to Santa Barbara so that Nick can complete the sale the next morning, Frank and Cora get Nick drunk. With Sackett as an unexpected witness, they act out their part that Nick is too drunk to drive. Frank and Cora take Nick for a drive, on which Frank knocks him out and the two lovers stage an automobile accident at Malibu Lake, unaware that Sackett has been following them since they’d left the Twin Oaks. Though Sackett arrives on the scene too late to save Nick, he is certain that Cora and Frank are the killers. Without any concrete evidence to convict them, Sackett tries to pit Frank and Cora against each other. He visits Frank in the hospital and tricks Frank into signing an official complaint against Cora. Sackett knows, but neither Frank nor Cora do, that Nick had taken out an insurance policy only a couple of days before running into Frank in L.A. that would pay Cora $10,000.

Nick is about to get knocked out by Frank in a scene reminiscent of one from Double Indemnity.

Frustrated by what she sees as Frank’s betrayal and her own attorney Arthur Keats (Hume Cronyn) railroading her to prison, Cora wants to make a full confession. Keats tries to talk her out of it, but she is adamant that she wants to tell her and Frank’s story. After her preliminary hearing and with Frank in the room, she confesses to everything. Unbeknownst to her, the confession is typed up by Ezra Liam Kennedy (Alan Reed) who is actually working for Keats.  But Kennedy is not an official from Sackett’s office, but rather a private detective in Keats’ employ. This lets her get the story off her chest but allows Keats to persuade Cora to settle for a manslaughter charge, and she is later released on probation.

Frank looks on while Arthur Keats (Hume Cronyn) advises his client, Cora.
Would a defendant and an alleged victim ever be in the same room like this?

Keats and Kennedy take Frank and Cora back to the Twin Oaks. Once there, Keats gives Cora the insurance money. He’s not looking for payment, though. He is happy with the check Sackett had to write him for $100 after losing a bet that Keats could get Cora off. The couple runs the Twin Oaks together and with her notoriety and the addition of a beer garden, the place is a success. Even Sackett and Keats come by for a beer. Keats tells the couple that Sackett is still watching them and the fact that they are living together as an unmarried couple could be trouble. (Back in the day unmarried cohabitation was frowned on by society and by the Production Code).

Cora’s solution is a quickie marriage to Frank, who isn’t really thrilled with the idea, but goes along. But as soon as the knot is tied, Keats gives Cora a letter that arrived for her. Her mother has taken ill and Cora must go to her. She asks Keats to give her a lift to the train station. Frank goes, too. But no sooner is Cora on the train than Frank starts a week-long affair with Madge Gorland (Audrey Totter), a woman he meets at the station.

The just married Frank takes off with Madge Gorland (Audrey Totter) as soon as Cora is on the train.

But Frank is waiting for Cora at the train station and brings her back to the Twin Oaks. No sooner do they park than Kennedy is there. He is no longer employed by Keats and took with him Cora’s signed confession on the way out. He’s willing to part with it for $15,000 (the insurance money plus profits from the diner). They jaw him down to $12,000, but they don’t want to give him the money. Cora pretends that she could have seduced him, giving Frank the opportunity to catch Kennedy off guard and beat him up.

Frank and Cora turn the tables on Kennedy, who tried to blackmail the couple.

They force Kennedy to call his pal, Willie (Cameron Grant), to bring the letter out to him at the Twin Oaks. No sooner does he arrive than Frank knocks him out and they find not only the letter but Photostats (copies) and the negative on his partner. They had planned to continue blackmailing the couple. The two would-be blackmailers are chased off and Frank thinks everything is behind them. But it’s not.

While Frank was watching over Kennedy, Madge dropped by the Twin Oaks to return the tie Frank had been wearing when they met. The tie happened to be a wedding present from Cora. Even though her confession has been destroyed, she threatens Frank that she can still make another one to Sackett which would send Frank to the death house; she has already been charged and convicted in the crime.

They spend the day playing cat and mouse, each following and watching the other until late at night Frank hears Cora on the phone calling for a cab. Frank tries to convince Cora that the other woman meant nothing to him. He knows he and Cora are chained together by love. Cora has something to tell Frank. She was going to run away rather than go to Sackett. She confesses to Frank that she’s pregnant. They think in a weird way having a life might square them for taking one.

Cora then asks him to take her to the beach for a swim in the moonlight. She plans to swim far out into the ocean with Frank, and then tell him that he can turn back without her. When Cora is finally too exhausted to continue swimming, she tells Frank what she is doing and his reaction makes them both realize that they love and trust each other once again. After Frank helps Cora back to shore, the now happy couple drive toward the diner, but Frank loses control of the car while they’re kissing and the vehicle careens off the road and smashes into a post. Although Frank escapes unhurt, Cora is killed.

Frank has his eyes on Cora and not on the road, seconds before the crash that kills her.

Sackett prosecutes Frank for Cora’s murder and is successful; Frank is sentenced to death. (Makes you wonder about the state of justice in the ’30s and ’40s, when evidence doesn’t seem all that important.) Sackett comes to prison to tell Frank, who has been telling his story to Father McConnell (Tom Dillon). Sackett has just talked to the governor; his last chance at a reprieve has been denied, and thus his execution is now at hand.

Towards the end of the movie, we learn Frank is telling his story to Father McConnell (Tom Dillon).

Frank tells Sackett he didn't kill Cora and hopes that at the last second she did not think that he did. Sackett reveals that a note left by Cora the night she died, a note of farewell, which was recently found in the back of the diner's cash register, not only revealed her love for Frank. The note contained just enough details of Nick's murder that Sackett could get a conviction for that, so it’s either die for Cora’s murder or be back to die for Nick’s. Frank decides that his impending death is actually his overdue punishment for Nick’s murder and realizes that his situation is like that of someone who only receives the mail after the postman rings the doorbell twice (a show of hands from anyone who’s heard the postman ring your doorbell once, let alone twice, because you had a letter), Frank contently heads toward his execution asking the father to pray so that Frank and Cora can be together wherever that might be.

Legend has it that Lana Turner was discovered at the lunch counter at Schwab’s Pharmacy. In fact, the sixteen-year-old Hollywood High School student was in the Top Hat Malt Shop buying a Coke instead of attending her typing class. She was spotted there by William R. Wilkerson, the publisher of The Hollywood Reporter, who was attracted to the teenage girl’s beauty and physique (there is a reason she would be known as The Sweater Girl). He referred her to Zeppo Marx, former comedian turned agent, who signed her and introduced her to MGM’s Mervyn LeRoy, who cast her in They Won’t Forget (1937).

Lana Turner in her film debut and how she was discovered.

MGM head Louis B. Mayer saw Turner as a replacement for blonde bombshell and sex symbol, Jean Harlow, who had died only six months earlier. At the age of 19, Turner married bandleader Artie Shaw, the first of her eight marriages to seven husbands. She had one daughter, Cheryl with husband two, and three, Joseph Stephen Crane. Despite her marriages, Turner remained a popular pin-up girl during World War II. She appeared in such films as Ziegfeld Girl (1941), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), Johnny Eager (1941) and Slightly Dangerous (1943).

After Postman, Turner would replace Katherine Hepburn in the historical-drama Green Dolphin Street (1947). Other notable films Turner starred in include: Cass Timberlaine (1947); The Bad and The Beautiful (1952); Peyton Place (1957), for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award; and Imitation of Life (1959). In 1957, shortly after ending her marriage to fifth husband Lex Barker, she met Johnny Stompanato, an underworld figure with connections to Mickey Cohen. She and Johnny started a very volatile love affair. It got so bad that in 1958, Turner’s then fourteen-year-old daughter stabbed and killed Stompanato trying to defend her mother.

Her co-star in Postman, John Garfield, had a much shorter film career. A stage actor, Garfield was contacted by two different studios, Paramount and Warner Bros., but it was the latter that agreed to his contract stipulation that he be given time off to act on stage. His first film appearance was in Four Daughters (1938), for which he received a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. His first starring role was in They Made Me a Criminal (1939). Before and during World War II, he made the requisite war-themed films: Dangerously We Live (1941); Air Force (1943); Destination Tokyo (1943); Between Two Worlds (1944); and Pride of the Marines (1945).

John Garfield in his film debut in Four Daughters (1938)

Following Postman, Garfield would star in such films as Humoresque (1946); Body and Soul (1947); and Gentleman’s Agreement (1947). Called to testify, like many in Hollywood, in front of the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Garfield, a political liberal, denied any Communist affiliation and refused to name names. This led to him being blacklisted in Hollywood and some say the stress surrounding it contributed to his death at 39 in 1952.

There are some other very good performances from the supporting cast. Leon Ames, who played a lawyer in several films, gives a good performance as Los Angeles D.A. Kyle Sackett. While his part is mixed up with some of the film’s legal liberties, that’s the responsibility of the script and not the actor. Hume Cronyn plays a devious attorney, which seems to be a little out of character for the actor based on the work I’m familiar with. Also worth mentioning is Cecil Kellaway, the South African born character actor who appeared in dozens of films and on television in a career that spanned from 1933 to 1972. He portrays the likable, but the alcoholic owner of the Twin Oaks, who’s only real crime in life is that he’s in the way of two starry-eyed lovers.

Alan Reed, who plays P.I. Ezra Liam Kennedy is known by Baby Boomers as the voice of Fred Flintstone, patriarch of that “modern stone-age family” that headlined one of TV’s first prime time cartoons. Previously, Reed was best known as a radio actor and appeared in such classic series as Duffy’s Tavern, The Shadow (Shrevey, the taxi cab driver), Life with Luigi, The Life of Riley and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. He also appeared in several films, including Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) and Viva Zapata! (1952).

Alan Reed as he is best remembered.

Audrey Totter, who plays Madge Gorland, was a relative unknown in Hollywood in 1946. While she had appeared in eight films in 1945, she had only received screen credit in three. The Postman Always Rings Twice was her first film noir, a genre she would become the queen of, appearing in Lady in the Lake (1947), The Unsuspected (1947), High Wall (1947), The Set-Up (1949) and Tension (1949). She would move to work in television in the mid-1950s and while she would make the occasional feature, she did most of her acting on the small screen, appearing in Westerns, Anthology shows, and Dramas.

Tay Garnett is not a name that quickly comes to mind when you think of great Hollywood directors or even directors at all. Garnett began his career in Hollywood as a writer for Mack Sennett and Hal Roach and began directing films in 1928. I wouldn’t say that outside a few films he had a stellar career.

Tay Garnett, the director of the film.

That is not to say that he wasn’t involved in some interesting projects. One that caught my eye was S.O.S. Iceberg, which was a U.S.-German co-production for Universal Studios. Garnett directed the English-language version while Arnold Franck directed the German. This was what is referred to as a mountain film, a popular genre in German cinema at the time. The star of S.O.S. Eisberg was none other than Leni Riefenstahl, who would go on to become Hitler’s favorite propagandist filmmaker with Triumph of the Will (1934) and Olympiad (1938) to her credit.

Garnett’s own credits included Bataan (1943), Mrs. Parkington (1944), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949) as well as work on some popular television shows of their day, including The Loretta Young Show, The Untouchables, Rawhide, and the long-running Bonanza.

The Postman Always Rings Twice doesn’t reach the same heights as Double Indemnity or Mildred Pierce mostly due to the screenplay. It’s been a while since I’ve read the book, but I know Cain’s books need rewriting to work as movies. Some of the awkwardness may have to do with trying to write around the Production Code, the dialogue is kind of sappy, especially when it’s the two lovers, and the legal procedures are squishy at best. Sackett, the omnipresent DA for Los Angeles County, seems very unconcerned about things like evidence and truth and more about convictions. And things must be pretty slow at the courthouse to allow him to spend so much time worried about two people at a remote café.

I know that there is a belief, which used to be stronger, that the police don’t arrest innocent people, but it is hard to imagine how the accident that killed Cora could be turned into a premeditated murder case and conviction. Not that Frank was an innocent man by any stretch, but the odds of crashing the car just the right way to only kill her and also walk away seem slim at best. And Sackett’s promise to prosecute Frank based on Cora’s farewell note seems sort of hollow, too. You would think a good defense lawyer, like Keats, could rip that to shreds. And where was Keats when Frank was getting tried? If he could have gotten Cora off for killing her husband, you’d think a car crash would be a piece of cake.

The problems go on and on: The Twin Oaks is either overflowing with customers, too many for two people to serve, as when the beer garden opens or else it can be left for hours and days closed. Even when it was just Nick and Cora running the place, I can’t imagine two people would be enough to run a gas station and a restaurant. Do you really want the guy pumping your gas to fry your eggs right after filling your tank?

One last thing against the film is the title and the meaning it has for the film. I’ve seen this movie several times and it is only when I was doing some research for this article that the title finally gelled for me. Part of it may be how the post office worked in the 1930s and how it works now. I know they used to deliver the mail twice a day, so maybe the postman would ring the bell twice if you got a letter? But there is no reference in my life that sets me up to understand the double meaning of the title. Not that that was anyone’s concern at the time the film was made and I’m sure everyone got the reference at the time, but it does give modern viewers pause and makes you wonder if in sixty more years any audience will get it at all.

This film is good, but not great. While I would definitely recommend you watch The Postman Always Rings Twice, I can’t recommend it as highly as either Mildred Pierce or Double Indemnity. You should definitely watch both of those before you watch this one. To use racing terminology, you’ll want to watch The Postman Always Rings Twice to complete the trifecta of James M. Cain films, but this one ends up in Show rather than Win.