MURDER, MY SWEET: Tough Guys Don’t Sing

The hard-boiled 1944 mystery Murder, My Sweet (MMS) forever changed the career of its star Dick Powell (not to be confused with William Powell from my recent After the Thin Man post). Arkansas native Powell began his career as a singer with Charlie Davis’s orchestra before Hollywood grabbed him, eventually steering Powell’s career path from juvenile crooners in such musicals as 42nd Street, Dames, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Flirtation Walk (read Classic Filmboy’s post about it here!) to hard-boiled detectives, ex-cons trying to resume their lives only to find themselves in deeper trouble, and other noble tough guys in such suspense thrillers as Cornered (1945), Johnny O’Clock (1947), Cry Danger, and The Tall Target (both 1951). (Dick Powell did some nifty comedies, too, but that’s a blog post for another time.)

Although Howard Hawks’ film version of The Big Sleep (1946) is still my favorite adaptation of author Raymond Chandler’s novels about the tough yet noble L.A. private detective Philip Marlowe, MMS is a darn close second. How close? Thisclose! I like Powell’s portrayal of Marlowe as a noble and essentially decent man, insouciant yet soulful, and nobody’s fool. In certain ways, it seems to me that in Humphrey Bogart’s portrayal of Marlowe in The Big Sleep, he has a better shot at getting the best of the bad guys, as well as getting the girls (especially in a Hawks film!), though his heart eventually belonged to Lauren Bacall’s Vivian Rutledge. In MMS, by contrast, Powell’s Marlowe comes across to me as a likable, determined underdog who keeps on pitching without losing his wry sense of humor.

Dick Powell witnesses film history as Claire Trevor
performs film noir's first facepalm!

When I think about Powell’s metamorphosis from crooner to tough guy, I’m reminded of Mel Brooks’ The Producers, of all things—specifically the scene where Christopher Hewett, as director/choreographer Roger DeBris, complains about the creative rut he’s been in: “Dopey showgirls in gooey gowns! Two-three-KICK-turn, turn-turn-KICK-turn! It’s enough to make you puke.” Well, Powell was equally eager to change his image! Come to think of it, after MMS, he had another hit in Cornered (1945) as a Canadian Royal Air Force veteran, foiling hidden Nazis and avenging the death of his French war bride. But I digress….

Despite the doubts voiced by Powell’s fiancée June Allyson, he was determined to go out for hard-boiled roles. No doubt Powell also realized that at the age of 40, he was a tad long in the tooth to play a juvenile anything. But Powell jumped right in, looking for the right role. For starters, he seemed to be the only leading man in Hollywood eager to tackle the role of antihero Walter Neff in Double Indemnity, bless him! But Double Indemnity was a Paramount production, and Powell was under contract to RKO, so Powell had to wait until MMS to repurpose himself as a big-screen tough guy. It was well worth the wait, as Powell turned out to be one of the finest actors to play Philip Marlowe. Even June Allyson approved of the finished product! (Powell and Allyson wed and had a long, happy marriage until his death in 1963 from complications of the cancer the entire cast eventually suffered after filming The Conquerer. But that, too, is a story for another time.) For more about the fascinating life and times of Dick Powell, click this link to Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings and her awesome birthday salute from last November!

Marlowe goes “grouse-hunting,”
and finds out it’s Moose season!

Director Edward Dmytryk (The Falcon Strikes Back, The Caine Mutiny, Mirage, and more) and Director of Photography Harry J. Wild (Oscar-nominee Army Girl, His Kind of Woman, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) truly captures the moody visuals and emotions. The opening credits are noir all the way, with cops sweating our man Marlowe — not that Marlowe can see them, since his eyes are heavily bandaged, for reasons that will become clear later. Is this what they mean by blind justice? Well, at least with the bandages, Marlowe won’t get smoke in his eyes. The story is told primarily in flashback, but the script by screenwriter John Paxton (who, in addition to MMS, wrote Cornered; Fourteen Hours; The Wild One; Crack-Up; How to Murder a Rich Uncle; and On the Beach) is tight, suspenseful, and brimming with great dialogue that does Chandler’s source material proud.

Guilt’s written all over Lindsay Marriott’s face—and coat!

Marlowe starts out with two clients. The first one is a mountain of a man, Moose Malloy (wrestler-turned-actor Mike Mazurki), fresh out of jail and determined to find his long-missing girl Velma Valento. There’s been an awful lot of water under that bridge since Moose was in the jug, but he’s a persistent guy, to say the least. Marlowe’s second client is Lindsay Marriott (Douglas Walton, whose films included The Count of Monte Cristo; the 1935 version of Mutiny on the Bounty; The Picture of Dorian Gray—no relation!—and Bride of Frankenstein, playing Percy Shelley!). A foppish fellow, Marriott hires Marlowe to accompany him to a woodsy “petting spot” (complete with a deer for petting, but the critter scrams when danger rears its head) in order to get a valuable trinket belonging to an unspecified lady friend. Instead, Marlowe is knocked unconscious by an unknown party, in classic film noir style:

“I caught the blackjack right behind my ear. A black pool opened up at my feet. I dived in. It had no bottom. I felt pretty good—like an amputated leg.”

Our man Marlowe wakes up to find Marriott beaten to death in the car, and a young woman shining a flashlight in his face, asking if he’s all right. Clearly the pretty young interrogator was expecting someone else, because she hightails it outta there but quick! Marlowe wants to get to the bottom of this: “I’d like to know who, besides me, might have killed Marriott. He gave me one hundred dollars to take care of him and I didn’t. I’m just a small businessman in a very messy business, but I like to follow through on a sale.” Soon Marlowe is up to his eyeballs in violence and suspense, wrapped in a case involving:

• A missing jade necklace valuable enough to kill for;
• Kidnapping Marlowe, including drugging him to keep him quiet or make him talk, as needed;
• Lewin Lockridge Grayle (Miles Mander in a poignant performance), the rich, elderly jade expert who really owns the missing jade necklace;
• Jules Amthor (Otto Kruger), a distinguished-looking gent who airily admits, “I am in a very sensitive profession, Mr. Marlowe. I am a quack. Which is to say, I’m ahead of my time in the field of psychic treatment.”
• Romance with two very different women: the wholesomely lovely Ann Grayle (Anne Shirley), and Helen Grayle (Claire Trevor), the hot “big league blonde” stepmother who Ann loathes and Grayle loves practically to the point of obsession.

The coaster is clear!

Every performance is perfect, for my money. Mike Mazurki was one of film noir’s most memorable tough guys, and he and Powell play off against each other well. Ironically, the filmmakers made the already-tall Mazurki look even more intimidating, thanks to the magic of forced perspective. But don’t let Mazurki’s fearsome looks fool you; he was a Manhattan College grad and a witty conversationalist. Compassionate, too: in the 1960s, Mazurki founded the “Cauliflower Alley Club,” a non-profit organization that awarded scholarships and financial assistance to retired or injured wrestlers and their families.

In their TCM Web site articles, Frank Miller & Felicia Feaster noted that Powell wasn’t the only actor to chafe against typecasting in MMS: “Anne Shirley and Claire Trevor both conspired to do a little acting-against-type of their own, and petitioned for the proverbial good girl Anne to play the scheming fatale and for Claire, used to playing molls and floozies, to play the ‘good and dull’ (as Anne put it) nice girl. But to no avail: conventional typecasting was followed and the actresses delivered expected versions of their usual screen personas…As a consolation prize, Shirley demanded that her heiress character at least get to wear a mink coat, a bit of glamour missing from her usual run of working-class characters.” Personally, I thought Shirley and Trevor were perfect in their roles—a classic case of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” What’s wrong with playing to your strengths?

The great supporting cast includes Otto Kruger (Saboteur, Hitler’s Children, Wonder Man) as smooth, sinister quack Jules Amthor, who also has a racket in which pretty boys like the late Mr. Marriott take pretty women like Helen Grayle dancing and driving only to become hold-up victims, not taking lives. But Marriott’s death changes things, as our man Marlowe later explains to Police Lieutenant Randall (Don Douglas):

“Amthor’s a tough cookie. He works some kind of complicated (psychological) routine on gals with broken-down libidos. I think Marriott was his contact man…The jewelry Marriott was supposed to be buying back was a jade necklace belonging to one of Amthor’s patients, worth about one hundred thousand dollars. Marriott might have been crossing up Amthor, I don’t know. Anyway, he fumbled the ball…Amthor figured I must’ve picked it up. He figured wrong; I disappointed him. I didn’t have the jewelry, and I didn’t talk. But he has a little rest home where you learn to talk. It’s operated by a guy who calls himself Dr. Sonderborg. He’s a whiz with a hypo. He’s at 23^rd and Descanso.”

I bet Marlowe wishes he was in that romantic Spellbound door-opening scene instead of
Dr. Sonderborg's House of Horrors! Where’s Ingrid Bergman when you need her?

The nightmare montage in which Marlowe is drugged and tormented is worth the price of admission in itself, with truly compelling imagery courtesy of F/X whiz Vernon L. Walker and Douglas Travers. Interestingly, some of MMS’ imagery brings to mind Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, which came out sometime around that same year. However, I believe MMS came out first, and I’d go so far as to say it’s markedly more sinister (appropriately so), though I love both films.

At Florian’s, they don’t care what Semisonic sings;
it ain’t closing time until Moose says so!

Chandler’s original 1940 novel was actually titled Farewell, My Lovely, and that was its title in its initial theatrical release in New England and Minneapolis. But to those audiences, Farewell, My Lovely sounded like just another one of those sappy musicals that Powell was trying to leave behind. So it was farewell to the lovely original title, and a hearty hello to the gripping new title. In addition to Powell’s tough new screen image, the resulting smash hit revitalized Powell’s career big-time as he eventually added producer and director to his formidable list of accomplishments.

This particular Chandler tale was filmed three times over the years, and its first version wasn’t even a Philip Marlowe movie! The novel was first adapted into an entry in the Falcon series in 1942, namely The Falcon Takes Over, starring Suave Hall of Famer George Sanders. They plugged the plot of Farewell... into one of Michael Arlen’s Falcon adventures, packing as many of the characters as possible into its 65-minute running time. Heck of a cast, too: Ward Bond as Moose Malloy; Team B. fave Hans Conreid as Lindsay Marriott; and Turhan Bey as Jules Amthor! I’ve only seen it in bits and pieces, and I’d love to catch up with the whole film sometime. MMS was the next version of Chandler’s story. I also loved the third version, Dick Richards’ 1975 remake of Farewell, My Lovely with the great Robert Mitchum at his world-weary, sleepy-eyed best, and Sylvia Miles was deservedly nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Jessie Florian. (I saw it in our local bijou when I was 12; I forget whether I saw it with my mom or my older brother Peter, but to this day I’ve never forgotten the film itself!) Maybe I need to do another blog post sometime comparing all the different versions of the film!

 I dress up, I dress down...

Chandler had sold the MMS movie rights to RKO years before, and he considered it the best film version of his work—high praise indeed, considering the ornery Chandler had been difficult to work with in later years while adapting scripts with Billy Wilder for Witness for the Prosecution and Alfred Hitchcock for Strangers on a Train. Anyway, getting back to Chandler’s good side, he was delighted to note that MMS’ success had helped to make him a best-selling author, even outselling the hard-boiled mysteries of competitor Dashiell Hammett. In fact, Powell played Marlowe again in 1954, this time for a TV adaptation of The Long Goodbye for the anthology series Climax!
 
Many of Powell’s noir films were written and/or produced by New Jersey native Adrian Scott, including the Oscar-nominated drama Crossfire; the aforementioned Cornered; Mr. Lucky; The Boy with Green Hair; and Deadline at Dawn. For a while, it was something of a family affair when Scott married MMS co-star Anne Shirley shortly before MMS was released. Unfortunately, both Scott and Dmytryk were blacklisted as two of the Hollywood 10, which didn’t do the marriage any good. Indeed, Shirley eventually left Scott with a “Dear John” letter. That said, Shirley ended up having a long, happy marriage to screenwriter Charles Lederer, whose many scripts included The Thing from Another World (1951) and Kiss of Death. Although Scott’s blacklisting kept him from working under his own name in Hollywood at that time, he still wrote as a front for the British television series The Adventures of Robin Hood with his second wife, Joan LaCour.

I'll show RKO I can too play slinky film noir dames!

Native New Yorker Anne Shirley had been born Dawn Evelyeen Paris in Manhattan. Little Dawn’s father died while she was still a baby. Money was tight, but Dawn’s photogenic cuteness soon became her family’s bread and butter. At the age of 16 months, the little tyke was working as a photographer's model under various names, particularly “Dawn O’Day.” As she grew into a lovely, wholesome-looking young lady of five-foot-two, auditions began for the 1934 film version of author Lucy Maud Montgomery’s beloved novel Anne of Green Gables (also one of my dear late mom’s favorites). Dawn won the title of spunky, spirited Anne over hundreds of young aspirants, and she officially became Anne Shirley—literally, when she changed her name to that of the beloved character she played. Hey, it worked for future Oscar-winner Gig Young (formerly Byron Barr) in The Gay Sisters (1942)! A few years later, Shirley earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for the role of Barbara Stanwyck’s daughter in the classic 1937 tear-jerker Stella Dallas. Shirley’s many other roles included Anne of Windy Poplars, the 1940 sequel to Anne of Green Gables; and The Devil and Daniel Webster, which won an Best Score Oscar for one of my favorite movie music composers, Bernard Herrmann, under the title All That Money Can Buy.

Moose thinks the price of cab rides is un-fare!

Anne Shirley wasn’t the only native New Yorker in the MMS cast: Claire Trevor came from the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. Her star rose after her Oscar-nominated performance in Dead End (1937) and John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939).  According to Dawn Sample of Noir and Chick Flicks, Trevor’s Bad Girl With A Heart Of Gold roles eventually earned her the title “Queen of Film Noir,” playing even more dangerous dames in films like Born to Kill (1947). Trevor had been working for years at 20th Century-Fox, but in Robert Osborne’s intro to a TCM broadcast of MMS, he revealed that at the time Trevor was cast in MMS, she was freelancing, making only one or two films a year, including Johnny Angel (1945) and Crack-Up (1946). Trevor was only 5-foot-1 in her stocking feet (again with petite people!), but her powerhouse presence made her bigger than life during her long, award-winning career, which also included her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Key Largo (1948) and her Emmy for the Producers’ Showcase telecast of Dodsworth (1956), as well as another Oscar nomination, this time for The High and the Mighty (1954). Anyone here know if any enterprising casting directors ever put Trevor, Alan Ladd, and/or Veronica Lake in the same movie? Now there’s a flick I’d like to see! But I digress…

In addition to being Dick Powell’s wildly successful transition from All Singing! All Dancing! All Comedy! movie roles, MMS also happened to be the first-ever movie in which Chandler’s iconic Marlowe was portrayed on the silver screen! In fact, according to the TCM Web site, MMS came out even before The Big Sleep, and it’s considered to be the most faithful to both the plot and the spirit of Chandler’s original novel. I wouldn’t be surprised if the success of MMS got my man Howard Hawks thinking “Hey, we could totally do a flick like that!” or words to that effect.

Aw, so romantic! Does that mean love really is blind?