Category Archives: 1940s mystery

Research Follies

1940s mystery, Amberoid, Boston, Boston Public Library, Great Fire of 1947, Joyce Butler, massachusetts, Memories of You, mystery, Mystery writing, Surprise!, Vicki Westlake, Wildfire Loose, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
I recently saw this meme in my feed on FaceBook and said to myself, “Oh, how painfully true!”
You may plot out the most deliciously intricate and logical outline for your masterpiece.  Every piece may seem to interconnect beautifully in your initial set up; but, darn it, not only the devil is in the details but Belial, Beelzebub, Moloch, Asmodeous, Lucifer, and the whole gang are too!
Case in point, my current project, a sequel to Surprise! with the ironic working title Memories of You.  I knew where I wanted to move my main characters, scene to scene, but creating those scenes, developing them, dealing with new and tempting possibilities once I got started, that was another kettle of guppies – sometimes sharks, hammerheads!
For example, I knew Vicki Westlake would clue in to some important information about a dangerous man from her veteran husband’s past while she was doing research in the Boston Public Library for a new mystery novel that she was planning.  Simple, then, kind of.  If I plunk her down in the library, I have to describe the library to create a genuine sense of place – except I hadn’t been doing research at the BPL for many years.  Field trip!
Off Yang and I went to that gorgeous receptacle of knowledge to take pictures and just drink in the impressive architecture as we explored the layout – part of which led me to a side room that would help me develop a new part of the story.  Problem solved.

Um, not exactly.  I was visiting the library in 2025; my story takes place in 1947.  Things change over the years.  So, off to the internet to find architectural plans and photos of the library that would work for the time period of Memories.  I even found a floor plan of the first and second floors! Side note:  I’m now really enjoying the FB group Boston Mass. Vintage.  It’s a great site to help me with future mid-century writing projects.

 

Another vital part of my outline hit a little bit of a “roadblock” as I moved to the end of “Memories,” where the two main characters journey to Maine in October 1947 in order to learn vital answers about the husband’s past in the war from his retired commanding officer.  Did you know that 1947 was known as the fall Maine burned, as massive wildfires swept through much of southern Maine, as well as other parts?  Can you get any more exciting than having your denouement occur in the midst of devastating, inexorable flames?
Piece of cake to write?  Um, no!  My heroine and spouse have to travel to a more northern part of Maine, so I have to figure out how they can get through southern Maine without being caught by fire but end up at their destination just as another blaze is heading for them, then be able to get out without being incinerated.  Fortunately, I have Joyce Butler’s Wildfire Loose, The Week Maine Burned, a brilliantly thorough and exciting recounting of when and where the fires started, how they progressed with speed and almost omnipotence, how they were fought, and how people escaped by the skin of their teeth (sometimes not).  So, in order to time my main characters’ journey from Boston to Maine, I created a chart of where the fire was each day, as well as whipping out a road map of Maine and blocking off in pen the areas where the fires blazed through, based on Butler’s citing the towns affected.  I also had to factor in the time their trip would take considering the lower travel speeds of the 1940s, as well the routes available.  Fortunately, I passed fourth grade math.
Of course, I also had to use a roadmap to chart my characters’ route from Boston to their destination in Maine, which creates problems of its own.  Today, we can shoot straight up Interstate 95 and save scads of time.  Unfortunately, no  95 in 1947.  I had to look over the routes listed on the map, determine if they were state roads, and find out if they existed in 1947.  Joyce Butler’s book provides plenty of helpful references to routes in existence, as well as does  the internet on history of specific routes.  The internet was surprisingly unhelpful in providing road maps from the time period – unless I wanted to shell out to ebay or some other source.  Thanks to Yang for looking over routes, sharing research, and discussing driving.
So, all I need to do now is pick a town near a fire and away we go – um, not quite.  For reasons related to the plot, the town couldn’t be southern Maine – not isolated enough.  Some further north or west?  Well, the time frame wouldn’t work.  When those fires got going my characters would have been stalled  by the big blazes across the southern part of the state.  Anson almost made it as guest star town.  My solution?  The same  that many other authors choose:  make up your own town and date for its threatening forest fire.  Just make it fit the general setting where you locate it.  So, Amberoid, Maine was born.  How do you like the name?  An amberoid is actually synthesized gemstone containing crushed amber.  It’s also the name of the first horse I picked in the Triple Crown races.  He did not run in 1947.  I’m not that old.
So, anytime you think all a writer has to do is sit down and write – Ho boy, have you got another thing coming!
Intrigued?  Well, first, you should read Surprised!  Check it out here.

Images: Every effort has been made to ensure there is no copyright infringement in the use of images.  These images are for education and entertainment only.  If you feel your copy right has been infringed, let me know and I will remove the image.  syang@worcester.edu

Hammerhead shark:  Hammerhead Shark (28776238172).jpg:  Wikki Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scalloped_Hammerhead_Shark_Sphyrna_Lewini_%28226845659%29.jpeg

Modern Photos of BPL: author’s collection

Floor Plan of BPL: The Urban Imagination https://hum54-15.omeka.fas.harvard.edu/items/show/672

Older photos of  Bates-Mckim Reading Hall in BPL  https://lostnewengland.com/2016/07/bates-hall-boston-public-library/

Image of Maine 1947 fire from https://www.maine.gov/dacf/mfs/forest_protection/1947_fire.html (origin Guy P. Gannett Newsletters in Maine)

Casting Shadows, Part Two

1940s mystery, character development, Claude Rains, Film Actors, Film Noir, Gothic, Horror films, Murder, mystery, Shadows of a Dark Past, Sharon Healy Yang, Sharon Yang, supernatural, suspense, Val Lewton, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Casting Shadows,  Part Two”

 

Philip Carlyle –  The master of the Carlyle Estate where the Wellstone Mystery Hour is making its remote broadcast, Philip Carlyle has opened his home and the secrets of its past to answer the mystery behind the disappearances of Felicia Blasko and his brother Bill Carlyle.  An engineer and businessman by profession, Philip still nurses the soul of a poet and musician, while holding secrets of his own concerning Felicia.  Embodying Philip requires a man of power, incisive wit and vision, as well as a sympathetic sense of artistry ‒ someone whose fascination with Jessica Minton rings more sad than creepy.  Claude Rains is my choice.  Think of the urbanity and authority of his Victor Grandison in The Unsuspected and the sly, mordant humor in Casablanca’s Inspector Renault.  Then there’s his incisive and forthright authority as Now Voyager’s Dr. Jaquith, tempered by his wry humor and genuine, though never soppy, compassion. Also think about the vulnerable passion of Paul Verin in The Man Who Reclaimed His Head, a quality that burns beneath the wall of authority in Job Skeffington of Mr. Skeffington. That’s the complexity of Philip Carlyle.

 

Jeanne Rivers and Madame Wanda are two ladies who may or may not be whom they seem.

 

Jeanne Rivers is the housekeeper for Philip Carlyle in the mansion that Felicia haunts.  She’s a top sergeant making the place run like clockwork, even managing to banish the indomitable Liz Minton from kitchen gossip fests with the help. Her wit can be acerbic, but she can show warmth and good humor when she’s helpful ‒ a woman of practical advice.  She also has ties to the mansion’s tragic past that could open up its secrets. ­A fine choice to inspire Jeanne is Jean Brooks, leading lady of the RKO B-division.  Brooks has demonstrated a dry and clever wit in such films as The Leopard Man, The Falcon in Hollywood, and The Falcon and the Co-eds. Falcon Tom Conway can’t get by without her popping up somewhere! Further our Ms. Brooks is no stranger to a cinematic world of shadows.  A veteran of Val Lewton’s dark tales, in addition to playing a smart-talking gal in The Leopard Man, Brooks also portrayed the haunted Jacqueline in The Seventh Victim.

 

Madame Wanda – Wanda Hendrix brings more than a first name to Shadows’ medium.  Apple-cheeked and merry-eyed, Hendrix played comedy deftly in films like Miss Tatlock’s Millions and The Admiral Was a Lady.  Thus, Madame Wanda shatters the stereotypes of film mediums as otherworldly, mysterious, and at times even sinister.  Our stylishly outfitted Madame Wanda is quick with a quip to challenge and defeat skepticism about her capabilities, especially from the suspicious Liz Minton and Gerry Davis.  Still, Wanda’s description of her powers and her conjuring of a voice from beyond the pale demonstrate her bona fides for connecting with the supernatural.  Preparing her for the darkness of Shadows, in My Own True Love and Ride the Pink Horse  Hendrix moves through a post-war world now darkened by bitterness, vengeance, and corruption.

Next entry, a look at more of Jessica’s colleagues from the Wellstone Mystery Hour.

Casting Shadows, Part One
Shadows of a Dark Past
Jessica Minton Mysteries
Home
Images

-Claude Rains  Photo from John Engstead. Star Shots: Fifty Years of  Pictures and Stories by One of Hollywood’s Greatest Photographers. New York:  EP Dutton, 1978. p. 185.

-Jean Brooks in white trenchcoat:  Wikipedia public domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Brooks#/media/File:Jean_Brooks_1940s_fan_photo.jpg

-Jean Brooks in plaid jacket public domain:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean_Brooks_in_The_Falcon_in_Danger_1943.png?uselang=en#Licensing

-Wanda Hendrix photo, Author’s collection

 

October Thrills and Chills with Shadows of a Dark Past!

1940s mystery, book signings and readings, Jean Grant, Jessica Minton, New England, Shadows of a Dark Past, Sisters in crime New England, , , , , , , , , , , ,

October Thrills and Chills with Shadows of a Dark Past!

I had quite the busy Halloween month meeting people and getting the word out about my latest Jessica Minton novel, Shadows of a Dark Past.  October kicked off  when I joined authors Jean M. Grant and Janet Raye Stevens at the Horseshed Fair in Lancaster, MA.  Some friends showed up expressly to get their copy of Shadows hot off the press.  I also sold copies to new readers as well. It was a beautiful sunny and warm day, setting Jessica and Company’s ghostly adventures off to an exciting start.  Here I am with one of my friends from the Shakespeare Club of Worcester, Becky Spanagel.  It was great of Becky and her husband David to drop by to say hello.  By the way, Yang made that purple blouse with the stars and moons that I’m wearing!

Next on the agenda was a Sisters in Crime New England Mystery Making Night at the West Boylston Library, also in Mass.  I had the privilege of working with two good buddies, Janet Raye Stevens and Carol Goodman Kaufman.  I joked to them that with me (Sharon Healy Yang) joining them, it looked as if it was a requirement to have three names to be on the panel .  We had a ball weaving the suggestions of our audience into a tale of murder on a cruise ship involving an ice pick, secret identities, and ice cream.  You had to be there.  I decided to combine the holiday ambience with my 1940s fashions to wear a black and white pin-striped suit, autumn gold blouse, and peaked chapeau that is two-parts wicked witch and two parts 1943 fashion!

I traveled south of the (Mass,) border to Connecticut to do another Sisters in Crime Mystery Making event, this time with Kate Flora.  It ended up just the two of us; however, you can see from the picture that our audience inspired us to a complex and exciting tale.

Later in the month, I joined Janet Raye Stevens and three other writers of the supernatural for “Tales Told in Darkness” in a Lowell Library sponsored event.  We had a good audience, including two of my best buddies from as far back as grammar school, Mary Lou and Kathy.  We all did a reading and I had the thrill of seeing people put down their phones and listen when I read of Jessica’s night time peregrination to a haunted room in the Carlyle manse. Did she dream or did she wake?

 

 

Probably my favorite event was the Book Launch and Reading I did at TidePool Books in Worcester.  It was the night I’d been waiting for!  Would you believe that people from all aspects of my life came?  My teaching years, my writing colleagues, my church, the Shakespeare Club, my old friend from years back!  I was so happy.  And I got to talk about the  films and books from the first half of the 20th century that influenced me with  imagery and atmosphere that was dreamy, eerie, haunting and their tales of obsession, vengeance, and sometimes forgiveness.  People were really interested in the three readings I did:  Jessica’s meeting in a cemetery with the husband of the alleged ghost; the reading I also did in Lowell; and a séance gone horribly wrong. My audience also had great questions about writing, about my characters and research, my writing process.  It was a dream.  One of my former students said that it was like being back in the classroom – and she meant it in a good way!  And it did feel like the good parts of teaching:  sharing ideas, getting people to think,  hearing what they thought.  You can see that I definitely dressed for the occasion.

 

So, this positive note is where I will wrap up.  On to November and December are a little less harried.  If you haven’t already dropped by to say hello and catch Jessica, Liz, and James’s latest adventures, you can come see me at the Narragansett Craft Festival at Narragansett Middle School, Baldwinville, MA on 11/9; the Auburn Holiday Craft Fair at Auburn High School, Auburn, MA (12/14); or Tatnuck Bookseller, Westborough, MA (12/15),  Check my web site here for deatils.  See you then!

Click here for the Shadows web page to see more details on the book and some fun bonuses!

Casting Shadows, as It Were

1940s mystery, Bela Lugosi, Dracula, Film Noir, Gail Russell, Gothic, Halloween, Horror films, Jessica Minton, Murder, mystery, New England, radio, radio drama, radio dramas, Shadows of a Dark Past, supernatiral films, supernatural, suspense, The Black Cat (1934), The Uninivted, Vitus Werdegast, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Casting Shadows, as It Were”

In the past, I’ve posted on how “casting” characters as if they were played by (mostly) classic era actors in my earlier Jessica Minton mysteries helped me  flesh out their characters.  Now  that Shadows of a Dark Past is out, I thought you might enjoy reading about the inspirations for the folks Jessica, Liz, and James encounter on the mysterious Birdsong Island.  So, let’s begin!
When you’re writing a ghost story à la Val Lewton/Edgar Ulmer/ Joseph Lewis, it only makes sense that some of your characters be inspired by star players from those films.  So, with whom to start?  Why not the inspiration for the haunted scientist/widower of Shadows, Vitus Blasko?
Who is a prime prospect to play a man whose obsession with his work cost him his wife and child many years ago?  My choice was one of the premiere players of 1930s/40s horror, especially at Universal:  Bela Lugosi.    “What?!” you exclaim.  “The guy who played those Machiavellian vampires in Dracula (1931) and Return of the Vampire (1945), as well a plethora of sinister scientists?” “You bet!” I reply.  Lugosi also played the tortured and highly sympathetic Dr. Vitus Werdegast in 1934’s The Black Cat.  Here, he’s a doctor who had been sent to a death camp at the end of WWI, costing him his wife and daughter, through the betrayal of Boris Karloff’s Hjalmar  Poelzig.  (Now those are names!)  His intellectual battles with Poelzig may seem sinisterly to threaten a young married couple caught in the middle at Hjalmar’s Frank-Lloyd-Wright-on-LSD designed mansion.  However, Werdegast’s grief over what he has lost and his protection of the couple reveal a sympathetic tenderness in Lugosi’s acting.  In honor of the sensitivity of Lugosi’s performance, I opted to select Vitus for the first name of my haunted scientist from Lugosi’s character in The Black Cat and the last name from Lugosi’s actual family name.

Jamie Blasko:  Jamie, Vitus and the ghostly Felicia’s daughter, has terribly suffered through her mother’s murder (or abandonment?), a broken engagement, and living in a shadow-shrouded manse looking after a father broken by the mistakes of his past.  With a cast member of The Wellstone Mystery Hour offering her the life saver of romance, Jamie has a chance for happiness.  Dare she take it?  The radio program will broadcast shows focusing on that most terrible time: the mystery of her mother’s disappearance.  Can Jamie bear a revival of that scandal and pain?  Will the program provide the answers she needs?  Will she and her father be able to bear those answers?
Soulful-eyed Gail Russell is the natural inspiration of my creation, Jamie Blasko.  In such roles as the haunted daughter determined to embrace the ghostly touch of her mother in The Uninvited or the young woman struggling against the psychic prediction of her death at a fast approaching appointed hour in The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Russell’s gentle demeanor threaded with flashes of piercing anguish embodies the spirit of the Blasko girl.

 

Gerry Davis:  A WWII vet who lost a leg at Anzio, Gerry is a true radio trouper on The Wellstone Mystery Hour, not only playing most of their romantic leads but a host of other parts as the need arises.  Handsome with wavy blondish brown hair and a twinkle in his eye, Gerry’s kind heart and impish wit may be just the ticket to save Jaime Blasko from the darkness shadowing her life.  However, Gerry must overcome the antipathy between Vitus Blasko and the Carlyle family sponsoring these broadcasts of a past tearing apart both families.  For Gerry, I’ve turned to a more modern player for inspiration: Geraint Wyn Davies.  The humor, passion, and intelligence Davies has brought to roles ranging from Shakespeare to the conscience-stricken vampire detective of Forever Knight makes him an ideal choice to inspire Gerry’s good nature and passion  to protect Jamie Blasko.
If you haven’t already, check out my blogs on casting characters in the first three novels of the Jessica Minton Mysteries
Bait and Switch
Letter from a Dead Man
Always Play the Dark Horse

Image Credits
Bela Lugosi images screen shots from The Black Cat (1934), © Universal Pictures.
First Gail Russell Image:  Screen Shot from The Uninvited (1944) © Paramount Pictures.
Second Gail Russell Image Public Domain from Wikkipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gail_Russell_postcard_photo_circa_1950s.jpg
Geraint Wynn Davies image a portion of Lady Vamp’s Forever Knight Site, http://www.foreverknight.org/LadyVampKnight1228/home.html

If any violation of copyright has been inadvertently committed by my posting or re-posting these images, let me know and I will remove them.
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Live! And on the Air!: Shadows of a Dark Past!

1940s mystery, Always Play the Dark Horse, Autumn, Bait and Switch, Fall, Film Actors, Film Noir, Gothic, Halloween, Jessica Minton, Joan Bennett, Letter from a Dead Man, mystery, New Hampshire, radio, radio drama, Sharon Healy Yang, Sharon Yang, supernatural, suspense, The War of the Worlds, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
In my first novel, Bait and Switch, heroine Jessica Minton starts out as a moderately successful stage actress.  So why did I switch her from the stage to the radio as I continued the series with  Letter from a Dead Man?  Well, there are two reasons.  First of all, radio work gave Jessica more free time to join her sister Liz in unraveling mysteries.  However, the second reason is far more interesting.  I’ve always been fascinated by the imaginative entertainment radio provided Americans for almost five decades. The more I delved into how shows were written and produced; what made some actors excel and others bomb when playing to an audience over the airwaves; the way audiences were engaged, even enthralled, by the “theatre of the mind,” the more possibilities I could see this environment inspiring in a mystery.

My first awareness of radio entertainment of the classic 1920s-50s came from old movies of the ’30s through ’50s that I watched on TV as a child – a very young child.  I loved the excitement of actors and musicians, quiz contestants, and newscasters performing before live audiences.  I was so influenced by what I saw that I was close to six or seven before realizing that the music I heard on the radio was not being performed live at the local radio studio. Until that epiphany, I had been dearly puzzled by how the Beatles and Supremes could get from Lowell to Lawrence, MA in a matter if minutes! 

As I got older, read more, and watched movie and TV portrayals of radio with a deeper understanding, I learned more about the intricacies of production – including writing, directing, acting, and sound effects creation, which made me even more fascinated.  Books such as The Great American Radio Broadcast, Terror on the Air, Suspense, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, and The I Love a Mystery Companion  revealed to me the behind the scene creation of programs such as Inner Sanctum, Lux Radio Theatre, Suspense, and I Love a Mystery, to name a few – from initial inspiration and pitching of a show to sponsors, to the intense schedule for writing and rehearsing, to actors’ perspective on radio performing, to audience reactions.  I was especially intrigued by how special sound effects, combined with an audience’s willing imagination, were such a powerful force in creating reality:  coconut shells became pounding hooves, a stabbed melon was transformed into a fatally impaled human, a flushing toilet could be modified to become space invaders’ horrific weapons, or a heart beat might be created with a rubber sponge, a turn table, and a stylus (Maltin 108)!  Of course, there were also the ultra realists like Jack Webb whom Leonard Maltin reveals created the sounds of passing cars on Los Feliz Blvd. at 2:30 a.m. by having a sound man go out and record passing cars at 2:30 a.m. on Los Feliz Blvd. (Great American Radio Broadcast 100).

One source that especially galvanized my interest was Rupert Holmes’s Remember WENN (the real first original AMC series).  This delightful program traced the adventures of a Mid-West small-town girl who makes it to the big city (sort of), Pittsburgh, and starts as writer but soon finds the hectic demands of the station moving her swiftly into the roles of director; producer; business manager; and, occasionally, actress.  With humor that is sometimes whimsical, but always clever, Remember Wenn joyfully captures the seat-of-your-pants spirit at a radio station that characterized how this medium entertained and delighted audiences.

Whether in Remember Wenn or in the books I read, I especially loved learning how actors had the pleasure of playing an enormous catalogue of roles because we created their characters in our minds on the inspiration of their voices.  That’s how a short, chubby chap could become a strapping western marshal or a middle-aged man could mentally materialize as a kindly old grandmother in the theatre of our minds!  Or we got to “see” our favorite actors playing roles they never had a chance to have a crack at on the screen.  For example, as a Joan Bennett fan, I was delighted to catch her deftly cracking wise in Rosalind Russell’s part in Hired Wife or seductively manipulating Burt Lancaster in Barbara Stanwyck’s role in Double Indemnity. 

And short stories or novels were brought alive for us as well – especially Orson Welles’s infamous trick more that treat, War of the Worlds.  Both situations inspired me to think about what fun it would be to take some of my favorite horror or mystery stories or even movies and imagine them as venues for Jessica to strut her thespian stuff.  So, in Dead Man, Jess gets to talk about doing “A Rose for Emily” and “The Dunwich Horror”; in Dark Horse, we have reference to her playing in “The Horla.”

 

In Jessica’s most recent adventure, Shadows of a Dark Past, I’ve centered the story around her work on a remote broadcast in a haunted New Hampshire mansion (somewhat inspired by Charlie Chan in the Wax Museum). Attempting to drum up ratings, her director/producer Scott plans to reopen the tragedy of a woman’s tragic disappearance, and likely murder, in this mansion twenty years before.  The owner of the mansion, the husband of the woman reputed to be the ghost, her daughter, and others in the town who remember the event have dangerously mixed emotions about the broadcast.  And Jessica finds that she has a disturbing connection to the woman in question.  Then there’s the Hound of Hell. The topper is when things go horribly wrong in a séance recorded for later transmission.

In a book still in the outline stage, the plot revolves around Jessica’s work in the studio with some members of the writing team who are dangerously not what they seem. It’s Dusty who sets the plot in motion! So, don’t change that station!  I plan to bring you more exciting installments of the adventures of Jessica, Liz, James, and Dusty in and out of the studio!

 

If you’re looking for some films to give you a flavor of radio at its most exciting and mystery-inspiring, check out Charlie Chan in the Wax Museum (1940),  Abbott and Costello’s Who Done It? (1942), Danger on the Air (1938), The Hucksters (1949), That’s Right, You’re Wrong (1939), The Big Broadcast of 1938, Playmates (1941) The Frozen Ghost (1945), Radioland Murders (1994 – George Lucas directing, no less), and The Scarlet Clue (1945).  For a sardonic look at the effects of Orson Welles’s broadcast of War of the Worlds, have a chuckle at Hullabaloo (1940); and for a (mostly) more serious look, watch The Night That Panicked America (1975).

Image of Orson Welles directing:  Broadcasting play:  https://musingsofamiddleagedgeek.blog/2022/10/07/the-night-that-panicked-america-1975-is-a-little-seen-tv-movie-about-the-greatest-halloween-prank-ever-played/

Screen shot of  soundman and toilet from The dvd The Night That Panicked America,CBS Studios, (c) 2014

Image of Melinda Mullins from AMC Movie Magazine.

Image of Joan Bennett, Dusty, and Jessica Minton, author’s collection

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King of Noir Anti-Hero: Part 2

1940s mystery, Film Actors, Film Noir, Hugh Beaumont, Murder, mystery, poverty row studios, PRC, , , , , ,
Beaumont didn’t always play a homicidal, narcissistic maniac in his noir career.  In two low-budget series he actually played a detective.  Still, even in this role, he wasn’t exactly on the side of the angels.  When PRC took over the Michael Shane series from Twentieth-Century Fox, Beaumont replaced Lloyd Nolan in the title role.  Nolan’s Shayne, though nobody’s fool, was something of a lovable lug.  Beaumont’s Shayne was much too acerbic to be lovable, much less a lug of any kind, tossing off such gems as, “C’mon, look at the girl.  Don’t be afraid of waking her up.  She’s dead.”  He tackles two spoiled children of a recently murdered father by telling the girl to “shut up” her lip, shoving around the son, then turning back to the daughter and calling her a  “spoiled, brainless brat.”  Not exactly the reasoned chats with Wally or the Beaver in the study (Murder Is My Business, 1946).

This Mike Shayne certainly isn’t as lawless as the Steves, Kennys, and Scots in Beaumont’s psychotic repertoire, but he’s not exactly playing according to Hoyle when it comes to dealing with the law.  His Shayne enlists his newspaperman pal to help him move the body of a murdered girl left in his apartment on a frame job so the police will find the body elsewhere and include him out of any pesky investigations (Murder Is My Business).  This guy just doesn’t want to be bothered and certainly has no respect for the cops. For example he warns the lead detective to “back your monkeys off me,” then warns those monkeys, “Don’t stick you nose outside the door unless you want to get it shot off” (Larceny in Her Heart, 1946).

In Hugh Beaumont’s other PRC detective series, about the only thing Dennis O’Brien has in commonwith Ward Cleaver is that they both smoke a pipe.  That said, Denny would rather snuggle up to a bottle of bourbon in a seedy bar with his souse helper, The Professor (more on him later).  If Beaumont’s Mike Shayne was somewhat left of the law, this character barely peeks in as he passes its room.  Even a seedy guy says to O’Brien, “Anybody’s a bum at the right price.  I hear yours is $200” (Roaring City, 1951).  O’Brien confirms this assessment at the beginning of each of the three films in the series when he says while lounging in front of the run-down, two-room shack he shares with The Professor on Pier 23 (aka a “crummy layout,” Danger Zone, 1951), “[A]s long as I get paid, I can’t be responsible for the guys who hire me” (Roaring City).

O’Brien’s cases bear out his less than sterling self-appraisal as he repeatedly gets himself into hot water by agreeing to front a crooked manager’s bets against his own fighter; playing escort for a young woman under the pay of an unsavory lawyer he knows is up to no good; and taking money from a priest to help an escape convict elude capture after blowing Alcatraz, amongst other unsavory cases (Roaring City, Danger Zone, and Pier 23 (1951), respectively.

Additionally, where Beaumont’s Shayne might have done some looking but was basically loyal to secretary/girlfriend Phyllis, O’Brien pretty much tom-catted his way through three films, containing two stories each.  Eyeing some chicks in bullet-bras, he comments, “Yes, sir, the town [San Francisco] has some good points” (Danger Zone).  In every film, he’s sucking face with at least one gal per story – that’s at least six gals per series.  His lips must be mighty tired of puckering!  June would not approve.  Watch out Gwen Rutherford!

Denny has two regulars in the film.  There’s side man, The Professor, who as O’Brien puts it, “prefers glasses to classes,” and the former filled with bourbon, scotch, or whiskey.  Then there’s Inspector Breugger, his nemesis on the police force, who’s always suspecting O’Brien of murder – mostly because he’s always finding Denny unconscious in the near vicinity of a corpse –whom he never turns out to have killed.  You’d think the inspector would have learned before he got through six stories in three films.

You’d also think Dennis would learn, too.  Every time he turns his back – often while he’s smooching some deceptive dame – he gets cracked on the noggin and sent to la-la land, only to wake up next to a corpse and a freshly arriving Inspector Breugger.  This photo is just a day in the life of O’Brien, Breugger, and the corpse du jour.

Now, our detective still isn’t a complete dope.  He always gets his man ­– or dame, as the case may be.  He even is quick with a quip.  When Breugger asserts, “I got an idea,” Denny cracks, “Did it hurt?”  Or there’s his cynical assessment of his part of San Francisco where  “[a] set of morals won’t cause any more stir than Mother’s Day in an orphanage.”  Beaumont gives us a private dick who may be on the seedy side, but his trenchant cynicism establishes that he knows he lives in a world that’s amoral to the core.

So, low-brow, psychotic, or somewhere in between, Hugh Beaumont is a champ at playing the noir anti-hero deeply engrained in the world he inhabits.

What noir performances by Beaumont would you add to this list?

 

– Images 1 & 2 of the Mike Shayne films from the Classic Flix dvd covers, copyright 2019, ClassicFlix.com

– Screen Shots from Danger Zone, Pier 23, and Roaring City from the Kit Parker Collection of Film Noir, vols. 7-9., Copyright VCI Entertainment, 2008.  author’s Collection

 

Check out “King of Noir Anti-Heroes, Part 1”

King of Noir Anti- Heroes: Part 1

1940s mystery, Apology for Murder, Film Noir, Hugh Beaumont, Money Madness, poverty row studios, PRC, Sam Neufield, Sig Neufeld, The Lady Confesses, , , , , , , , , ,
People argue over who’s the toughest, grittiest, most acerbic, maybe even most psychologically damaged, of film noir anti-heroes.  Is it Alan Ladd of the tight jaw and cold eyes?  The coolly sarcastic and sharply violent Humphrey Bogart?  Robert Mitchum,  sleepy-eyed, drawling voiced, and deadly? Maybe Robert Ryan with his violent psychosis seething beneath a tautly charming exterior?  How about Dick Powell and John Payne, who exchanged careers as fading singing romantic leads for playing opportunistic, quick-fisted, and switchblade-tongued types? Naaugh – The most sardonic, amoral, dark, or even psychotic of them all was, yeah, you guessed it – Hugh Beaumont!

Hugh Beaumont?!

“What?!!!” you say.  Wally and the Beave’s staid, gentle-humored, reasonable dad?  You bet your blackjack, Baby.  In the late 1940s and early ’50s, Beaumont turned in a rogues gallery of noir baddies that would have sent June Cleaver running for the hills – if Hugh let her live that long!

A busy supporting player through the 1940s and ’50s, Beaumont did play his share of good guys.  However, even some of them were a bit left of center.  Consider the justifiably nerved up pal of John Garfield, afeard of fifth columnists in The Fallen Sparrow; The Seventh Victim’s staid and steady (ironically last-named Ward) husband of the tortured Jacqueline whose “normal” qualities made him useless to face her demons; or Army Air Force buddy of William Bendix and Alan Ladd in The Blue Dahlia, whose cool skepticism betrays a healthy dose of contempt for the Law.

Still, it was the films that Beaumont made at Sig Neufeld’s Poverty Row studio PRC that were one of the best showcases of his ability to shine, or more accurately glower, as characters on the dark, even monstrous, side.  Apology for Murder (1948), directed by Sam Neufield (né Neufeld, Sig’s brother), is particularly interesting. Beaumont’s amoral Kenny Blake is a smart-talking reporter whose editor chides that he would make a great writer except all he “could write about was a good lookin’ pair of gams.”  Case in point, the slick chick whose strategic flipping down the hem of her skirt draws his attention to her shapely pins and away from the wealthy business man in the room he’s supposed to be interviewing.  In no time flat, Kenny and this babe are running around in her fast car, locked in passionate clinches, and sucking face – until her revelation that she’s not the businessman’s daughter but his wife puts the skids on things,  but only momentarily.  Before you can say “double indemnity,” the femme fatale (Anne Savage of Detour fame) has played on Kenny’s libido and greed to plot and carry out the husband’s murder and let an innocent guy take the rap – while later making a sucker out of Kenny when she no longer needs him by playing footsie with a lawyer she’s using to break her husband’s will.  Needless to say, it does not end well for the three in the hail of bullets in the penultimate scene.

Do the misadventures of the amoral, weak Kenny and his seductive paramour sound familiar?  They should.  Apology is a blatant rip-off of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity: from the tempting via sexy gams early on to the adulterers’ secret meetings and murder plans, to murder by wrench to the noggin while the camera focuses on the wife’s face to the avuncular/adversarial relationship between mentor (editor/insurance investigator) and mentee (writer/insurance salesman) to the near finale shootout and finally to mentor/mentee discovery of the crimes’ recorded history at the very

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end.  But the choices that Neufield and his writer Fred Myton make don’t innovate on, often only weaken, the original.  Kenny make crack wise, but there is no dialogue between him and his leading lady or his mentor that comes close to the crackle of Walter Neff with Phyllis or with Barton Keyes.  The tension when Phyllis gently pulls on the door that hides her to signal to Walter that he mustn’t give away her presence to Keyes standing before him dissipates into Steve hopping into the bushes by the femme’s front door when she lets out an important character.  Notable switch up in this film from the original? Neufield and Myton reverse  who can light a cigarette and who can’t from mentee to mentot– oh, and we move from matched to lighters.

Apology for Murder isn’t a bad movie.  It would just look better if there weren’t an original with which to make a comparison.  Then again, without the original, there’d be no Apology, or a need for one.  Still, we can clearly see why Neufield was working at PRC and Wilder was at Paramount.

Two other PRC gems in Beaumont’s noir resumé reveal him as a player of not only the louche but the downright monstrous.  In The Lady Confesses (1945), he’s Scot, a personable fellow happily engaged to Vicki, until his first wife shows up after having disappeared almost seven years ago.  Next thing you know, the ex is found strangled with wire, Steve’s alibi of sleeping one off in a nightclub singer friend’s dressing room doesn’t convince the investigating detective, and Vicki has signed on undercover at the night club to find evidence to clear him.  Genial and protective of his fianceé, Steve comes off as the typical beleaguered and framed noir hero (The Dark Corner, I Wake Up Screaming, The Blue Dahlia) – until about three-quarters into the movie:  he emerges from the shadows of the nightclub singer’s apartment to finish her off when she tries to blow town and leave a confession busting his alibi.  The cinematographer’s use of shadows and Beaumont’s coolly menacing voice in concert with his determinedly pitiless expression are a shocking transformation from the regular guy we’d come to believe in.

Vicki is no safer when Steve starts to think that she may know about the letter revealing his culpability. The tender, protective fiancé drops his mask – again beautifully, horribly revealed by lighting paired with Beaumont’s eyes and facial expression  The horror of such villainy in a trusted ally crushes both Vicki’s and our own faith in any capability of recognizes what lurks beneath the disguise of feigned virtue.

Money Madness must be Beaumont’s most unnerving performance.  The writing and the player enacting it keep us as off-kilter as the female lead, Julie, in understanding who the real Fred Howard (aka Steve Clarke) really is.  We first see Beaumont’s Howard/Clarke get off a bus a stop before he was originally ticketed, deposit some dough in a bank strong box, and grab an advertised job as a cab driver – all with the arrogant attitude of someone with a mission, but with something to hide.  However, next thing we know, he’s saving Julie from a masher, wooing her with kindness and humor, and charming the possessive harridan of an aunt with whom she lives.  Ah, so he’s not a bad guy after all.  Maybe he’s just been misunderstood or framed for something.  He marries Julie in a whirlwind courtship.  How romantic – except we see Steve carefully set up Julie’s deception that he’s the victim of an invalid divorce so they can’t tell the old girl that they’re married just yet.   Oh, and he starts to  poison the aunt secretly, after he’s withdrawn his money from the safety deposit box to hide it in the old gal’s attic so everyone will think the money is hers, which Julie will then “inherit” to share with her hubby.  Julie only finds out about the murder when she can’t do anything about it; next thing you know, he’s bound her up as his unwilling conspirator after the fact – revealing they are married after all and warning her, “What I have, I keep.”  That Steve repeats this threat while promising to kill Julie when the police have him cornered in her house marks him as a text-book psychotic abuser for sure! The body of the movie repeatedly asserts his inescapable abusive control.  Steve alternately slaps and threatens Julie, then offers tenderness and pleas for her love to save him.

       

One shot where Julie talks to a supportive lawyer in a restaurant sums up Steve’s sadistic, overwhelming power over her.  Steve has made a phone call to Julie at this table, while he is hidden in a nearby phone booth.  An unnerved Julie has not properly replaced the receiver in the cradle, so he can hear every worry she grudgingly shares with the lawyer.  The set up of the shot powerfully over-inscribes his inescapable predominance.  In these two photograph, you can see that the scene is shot over his shoulder, rendering Steve’s head enormous and overpowering he while listens in on Julie and the lawyer.  In contrast, those two are seen at a distance, ­ small, insignificant figures in comparison beneath his gaze.  This image and Julie’s accidentally leaving the phone off the hook establish that no matter how careful she tries to be, she is under Steve’s vicious power, as well as how ineffective the Law(yer) and friendship are to save her.  This film is Beaumont at his most horrific.

To read “King of the Noir Anti-Heroes, Part 2,”  click here for   Beaumont’s left-side of the law detective series.

-Hugh Beaumont Image from The Lady Confesses screen shot, Alpha Video public domain video (author’s collection)
-Image from Apology for Murder screen shot, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY7q2fbEbuo&t=29s
– Lighter image:  Photo by alexsandro on Freeimages.com
-Images from The Lady Confesses same as above
-Images from Money Madness, screen shots from Alpha Video’s public domain video (author’s collection)

Background on the Neufeld’s and PRC at imdb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0626892/

Christmas Noir Four: Lady on a Train

1940s mystery, Christmas film, Christmas Noir, Dan Duryea, David Bruce, Deanna Durbin, Holiday Noir, Jacqueline DeWitt, Lady on a Train, mystery, New York City, New York films, Patricia Morison, Ralph Bellamy, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , ,
Lady on a Train is more comedy than mystery; however, it possesses some nice dark touches that give its holiday setting a noir flavor.  The opening title cars starts us off with the blacks and greys, stark lines, and and dusky darkness of falling night so characteristic of noir. The essential plot gives us Nicki Collins (Deanna Durbin), a sassy San Francisco heiress, witnessing a murder from her compartment window as her train pauses before chugging into New York’s Grand Central Station shortly before Christmas.  The image through her window is perfect noir.  An old man arguing with a  overcoated and fedored form lowering over him.  When the old man angrily turns his back, the menacing figure spots a crow bar on the table, pulls down the window shade without facing the outside, and then bludgeons his victim, visible only through  silhouette  on the drawn shade.  All just before the train pulls out and rushes toward the station.

 

 

Of course, no one really believes Nicki when she tries to sound the alarm, not fussy factotum Edward Everett Horton sent to meet her at the station and definitely not the  crusty desk sergeant (William Frawley at his crustiest best) – especially when the latter sees that Nicki is holding a sensational novel by her favorite mystery writer.

 

 

So, what is our undaunted heroine’s next step? Why, track down that mystery author, Wayne Morgan, to help her solve the crime.  Played by David Bruce, the author does not appreciate her throwing this strange tale in his lap and expecting him to solve the murder – especially since she hounds him by interrupting his meeting with his fiancee and then tracking the writer and fiancee to a movie theatre – where Nicki sees in the newsreel that the famous wealthy man recently found dead from “falling while decorating his tree” is the same guy she saw murdered!  Our poor author ends up really up against it while trying to fend off Nicki’s insistence he help her while he is under the gimlet eyes of a formidable fiancee ( the elegant but indomitable Patricia Morison) and a secretary (Jacqueline DeWitt), whose dry cracks and skepticism over the writer’s capabilities would do Eve Arden proud.

 

Even with Nicki’s feisty and cheery determination to get to the bottom of things, Lady on a Train has some deliciously noir moments:  Nicki’s incursion on the murdered man’s mansion through sharp contrast of black night shadows with stark white snow; the mansion itself’s cobweb of shadows and hazy grey lighting, twists and turns of its interconnecting rooms, and the startling contrast of double doors opening from a  foyer’s gloom into a brightly lit room  filled with relatives listening to the dead man’s will – themselves an disconcerting mixture of charm and menace.  A noir staple of mistaken identity comes into play when Nicki is taken for the old man’s gold-digger girlfriend, the singer in a downtown night club that itself will contain a two-way mirror for spying, dark and twisted corridors leading to shadowy basement rooms of hidden threats.  Of course, there’s no forgetting the estate’s caretaker, who also seems to run the nightclub and have master-minded a plot to con and murder the old man – a smoothly sinister sort who slides snakelike through back ways and hidden doors, bearing a white cat – I guess I mixed a metaphor there with the cat and snake thing.

 

One particular sequence squarely fits the noir motif when Durbin inadvertently lets slip as she rides a car up an elevator in an urban garage a clue she may be wise to the killer – who likely is her companion, the murdered man’s nephew Dan Duryea (a noir stalwart if there ever was one).  What follows is a pursuit through chiaroscuro shadows and interconnected rooms, people framed or trapped in doorways, people being pursued or unknowingly spied upon, even through the dunes of sand waiting to be used against the snow outside.  Another scene finds the other nephew, played by Ralph Bellamy, addressing her with a creepy smile and revealing that  that old stiff Aunt Sarah used to visit him at night and . . . we never find out what?! Brrrrr!!!!!

 

 

The mystery author does arrive on the scene to save our heroine; however, his doing so brings chuckles as well as anxiety over the result.

So, how is this playful take on noir a Christmas movie?  Well, we did see that Nicki arrives near Christmas Eve, and there are trees all over the place in this one – including the one that allegedly did in our murder, correction, our first murder victim.  Lots of snow as well.  Maybe the best connection is the lovely version of “Silent Night” that Durbin sings to her Dad over the phone.  Check it out here. Anyway, it’s a nifty noir to drive away the holiday blues.  If you want to see Durbin do full on Christmas Noir (more noir than Christmas, though), check out her and Gene Kelly  playing against type in Christmas Holiday.

Screen shots by author from the film Lady on a Train, Universal films, copyright 1944.

Check out my other Holiday Noir blogs:

The Lady in the Lake

Beyond Tomorrow

Coverup

She Can Do It! And so Can Janet and I!

1940s mystery, A Moment After Dark, Always Play the Dark Horse, Bait and Switch, Bait and Switch, Dark Passage, Film Actors, Film Noir, Janet Raye Stevens, Jessica Minton, Joan Bennett, Letter from a Dead Man, Lisa Lieberman, Long Time, Lynn Bari, Lynnfield Library, massachusetts, My Sweet, mystery, Nocturne, Sharon Healy Yang, Sharon Yang, Smart-Talking Gals, suspense, Time Cop, World War II, writing, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I first met sister-author Janet Raye Stevens when my friend Lisa Lieberman (another mystery author) asked me to join her and Janet to do a ZOOM program on the importance of clothing and fashion in the development of our mid-century mysteries.  This was my initial chance to read Janet’s Beryl Blue time cop series and her stand alone, A Moment After Dark.  I was hooked.

Janet and I both love the 1940s, especially the era’s sharp and challenging mysteries, which inspire our own writing.  We are especially taken by the “smart-talking gals” populating 1930s-40s mysteries, neither femme fatale not babyish innocent:  a woman who has been around, learned the ropes, but has not lost her integrity.

We loved the sharp wit and clever cracks of the likes of Joan Bennett, Claire Trevor (when they were playing on the side of the angels), Lynn Bari, Lauren Bacall, Ella Raines and many others.  We especially loved how they were usually the ones who set the noir’s anti-heroes straight, pulled together and made sense of the disparate threads of clues, and weren’t above skirting conventions and the law to see fairness prevail.  So, it should come as no surprise to anyone who knows us and our smart talking heroines Jessica Minton (me) and Beryl Blue and A Moment After Dark’s Addie Brandt (Janet) that we put together our heads and came up with a presentation:  “She Can Do It!  Real/‘Reel’ Women and Mid-Century Mysteries.”

We did our initial run at the Lynnfield Library, thanks to the go-ahead from Assistant Library Director Marita Klements. Our space was a loft area in the former schoolhouse, now library, where we set up a multi-media show.  We started by introducing the fact that with the war, women now had opportunities to put their considerable talents to work in factories, in the air, in battlefield hospitals, etc.

However, you can’t talk about the influence of movie smart-talking gals without showing some clips, can you?  For fun, we showed a clip from a 1938 Nancy Drew movies, where a teenage Nancy not only recognizes a kidnapping and tracks kidnappers in her car, only thwarted when her car has a flat – which she changes herself without missing a beat. Sisters were doing it for themselves in 1938, and we talked about how the wave of independence continued through the 1940s, in real and reel life.

Janet and I broke down the presentation into three sections, first showing a clip (talking about it a little), then showing its influence on our development of our heroines by each doing a related reading from her own text that reflected what went on in the scene.  Murder suspect Lynn Bari’s snappy but cool exchange with detective George Raft in Nocturne illustrated a woman with substance, unintimidated by authority. Dark Passage’s Lauren Bacall revealed a gal resourcefully rescuing Humphrey Bogart from persecution by unjust law.  Finally, Anne Shirley, in Murder, My Sweet, showed our gal calling out both men and women who misjudge or threaten her. After reading related, short excerpts from our books, Janet and I explained how these smart-talking gals influenced our heroines

We had a lot of fun, watching our audience get into our writings as we read. (It’s always great when people laugh in the right places!)  It was just as neat to see them enjoy the smart-talking gals tell it like it is, be unflummoxed by adversity – on the screen or on our pages.  We also got thoughtful questions about our research, background on the films and the actresses, and the influence of these films on women’s changed roles during and after the war.

So, if you think this evening sounded like fun, get in touch with Janet (janetrayestevens@gmail.com) or me (syang@worcester.edu) and maybe we can make an appearance at a library, senior center, or other venue near you.

(P.S. Yang made my suit based on an actual 1940s suit that I own!)

 

 

 

 

Christmas Noir three: Cover Up

1940s mystery, Christmas cats, Christmas film, Christmas Noir, Cover Up (1949), Dennis O'Keefe, Film Actors, Film Noir, mystery, suspense, William Bendix, , , , , , , , ,
Set in December, with all the holiday trimmings in view, Cover Up is definitely a Christmas movie.  Yet, its title clearly implies a noir universe where ulcerous secrets are smoothly skinned over by patterns of social respectability.  In the film, Dennis O’Keefe plays an insurance investigator sent to a small town at Christmas time to investigate whether the death of a policy holder was truly suicide. O’Keefe’s his repertoire of skeptical, somewhat hard bitten, though sometimes sympathetic noir protagonists (The Leopard Man, Raw Deal,T-Men, Walk a Crooked Mile), sets us up for a symbolic stripping away holiday cheer hiding dark secrets.

On the surface, the holiday season seems to characterize this small town as an embodiment the idyllic. Right off the bat, we’re immersed in Christmas cheer and fellowship, as the investigator helps a young woman, Anita Weatherby, returning to her family, so packed with presents that they burst from her arms and off the train.  His Christmas good will in helping her is rewarded by her friendly, joking family inviting this helpful stranger to their house.  He accepts their invitation to visit and share in the brightness, warmth, and humor of their home, filled with cheery Christmas decorations.  Still, the family is not cloyingly saccharine, instead, kidding him and one another pointedly but good naturedly. In the same mood, Doro Merandes plays their housekeeper, Hilda, in Margaret-Hamilton-style – not as a Wicked Witch of the West but with salty comments delivered in perfect dead pan.  That Mr. Weatherby, the pater familias, carries the authority of bank president seems to indicate that his warmth, tempered by dry humor, is the characteristic mode of the town.

Investigator Sam sees this family as not just a haven of goodwill but a magnet drawing out the generosity and friendliness he keeps hidden beneath a protective layer of sharp cracks and skepticism.  He shows up on the Weatherby doorstep, not merely planning to kibbitz and take out Anita on a date.  He is thoughtful enough to bring a compact as an early Christmas present for the younger sister so she won’t feel slighted. He even impresses skeptical Hilda as an acceptable addition to the family circle.  His attraction to the Christmas warmth of companionship is decisively conveyed as he approaches the house in the dark shadows of late December cold, bowed against the wind, then straightens up and smiles on seeing Anita reading in the window, the lit Christmas tree in the background. In fact their friendly banter marks them as embarking on romantic adventure typical of 1940s comedy/romance.

The imagery of the town itself abounds with Christmas warmth.  As the bus carrying Anita and Sam into town from the train station arrives, a Santa Claus is merrily ringing a bell over a pot where he collects donations of holiday charity.  The Weatherby house is bright with daytime sunshine; at night electric lights, Christmas tree bulbs, and flickering hearth light create a comforting contrast to the dark December night.  The rich, warming coats of fur and wool, as well as scarves and gloves, evoke a barrier against winter freezing. There’s even a lovely Christmas tradition of the whole town coming together in celebration when old Dr. Gerrow will light the enormous town Christmas tree and hand out presents to the children.  Light against darkness.

In this moment, though, we can see the corruption skinned over by good fellowship seeping through.  The doctor, at first, is mysteriously absent, then is revealed to be dead, discovered in his out-of-town home by the sheriff.  Significantly, this scene of camaraderie in solstice celebration ends with the faces of disappointed children and the pine tree’s lights flickering against almost enveloping darkness.  Furthermore, as light and warming as are the interiors of the Weatherby home, the night outside where Sam and Anita walk and romance is surrounded by dark shadows and implied cold.  The mansion where Philips died also encompasses Anita and Sam, later Sam, Sheriff Best, and Mr. Weatherby, in shadows that distort, conceal, isolate, and threaten.  In a telling scene, flickers of light in the darkness come to imply perfidy and corruption as the “lovable” maid Hilda resolutely undercuts Sam’s quest for the truth and order by burning a beaver coat that implicates Mr. Weatherby in Phillips’s murder.  Interestingly, the coat no longer suggests protection from hostile nature but implicates the “upright” in crime.  Now suicide is revealed to be murder, while the victim is, himself, revealed to be “a malignant growth strangling the town.”  So, where does justice rest concerning this death?

All the characters Sam faces in his investigation become almost impossible to pin down. The family that had seemed to offer him the warmth and stability he’d never had, he finds cannot be trusted, their dependability, at times even their morality, twisted and tangled by loyalties, fears, or ignorance.  Mr. Weatherby, supposedly a paragon of the town and representative of its order, becomes a major suspect in the murder of Phillips.

Anita, the smart young woman whose wit and warmth had led Sam to see her as a beacon of hope for belonging, betrays his trust in order to protect her father. In fact, the reflection of her in a mirror as she hides from Sam after obstructing justice to protect her father reverses the earlier image of her as the beacon guiding him to human relations.  Here, rather than being before him, she lurks behind him as he stands uneasily sensing something is wrong, threatening.  Though both images were linked to glass, where previously the clear panes revealed her as at peace and content, now she is both more distant, existing as only a reflection, and one step removed, hidden from him, the heavy door and the lines of the mise en scène reinforcing their isolation.

The salty but lovable maid, who had seemed to welcome Sam into the family in her own reserved way, also lurks unobserved and one step removed in the mirror where she hears of Sam’s threat to her family.  She also thwarts his search for truth to protect her clan when she  unabashedly destroys evidence that would lead him to the truth and lies to his challenge, looking him dead in the eye.

Maybe the most interesting of all is William Bendix’s Sheriff Best.  Is the name ironic?  The “best” at what, one wonders, watching him: Deception? Double-dealing? Murder, itself?  How should an audience read the town’s master of law and order when with affable obduracy he insists on his suicide verdict despite all the evidence that Sam demonstrates add up to murder? Casting Bendix keeps audiences guessing by playing on the concept of the availability heuristic. For Bendix is as well-known in the noir universe as much for his lovable tough guys (The Web, Race Street, Detective Story) as for his vicious thugs (The Dark Corner, The Glass Key, The Big Steal).

These two medium closeups of Sheriff Best  capture both incarnations of the Bendix noir personae.

 

 

 

 

Finally, Sheriff Best’s setting up subtle roadblocks to the investigator’s attempts to uncover the truth, as well as his tone of laid-back affability, just suggesting steely threat, then back to easy charm, heightens uncertainty over which noir Bendix holds the power of law controlling the town.

This image from the first meeting of sheriff and investigator, where they sit down to parry verdicts back and forth brings this point home.  They are seated on opposite sides of a desk, like opponents in a chess match.  The Christmas presents  between the two in the shot do not bond them in seasonal amity, but form a barrier between opposing forces – visually emphasizing a subversion of “Christmas fellowship” as much as the men’s amiable sounding but antagonistic verbal sparring and both refusing to face the other. A wreath above and between them, just out of shop, reinforces this point. Even more sinister, in the denouement, a tone of easy good will coats but does not hide the two men’s opposition.  When Sam pleasantly checks Best by pointing out that neither has ascendancy because both carry concealed guns, Best chillingly checkmates him with the easy and reasonable delivery of his assertion that if Sam shoots him it’s killing “a law man,” but “If I [the sheriff] get you with my gun . . .it’s just a lot of votes in the next election.”

Dennis O’Keefe’s place in the noir universe as hard-bitten outsider trying to belong without sacrificing integrity makes him an apt proxy for the audience looking for order and stability in an uncertain and corrupt world. His character’s confrontation with Bendix’s sheriff in the shadows of the murder mansion where he’d planned to lure the murderer into a trap creates a disconcerting, even haunting embodiment of the danger of noir uncertainty. All on Christmas Eve. Interestingly, when the sheriff first enters, the visuals throw us off balance by placing Best more in the light and shadowing Sam, the seeker of truth, in a threatening, sneaky pose in the shadows. Which of the two antagonists can we trust?  Is Sam literally and figuratively in the dark? Is he bringing darkness into the Christmas world or revealing what was there all along? This use of shadows enveloping the men as the scene progresses creates a space of confusion and doubt that mirrors the uncertainty of reality as Sam raises suspicions and presses for honest answers, and the sheriff seeks to control that truth for unclear ends, gradually unveiling indirectly what may or not be honest.

How does the film end?  Well, that would be telling.  I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you.  Let’s just say that things are not always as they seem, that the film looks for wiggle room in what the law demands and what is fair, in what you can expect of human beings.  “Merry Christmas” was never such an ironic closing to a movie – I think!