Nightmare Alley - Film Noir And The American Dream

by Mark Osteen

  28. Originally the film was to be titled Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright (Eyles 16).

  29. Watching this scene, it is difficult not to recall that Garfield and Lee both died after being stigmatized and hounded by red-baiters. Here, alas, art adumbrates life.

  30. Rossen and Polonsky disagreed about the ending. Rossen wanted to conclude with Charlie being shot by Roberts’s thugs and falling into a barrel of trash but finally accepted Polonsky’s more positive ending, which jibes more smoothly with the film’s fable-like tone. For further details see Neve, “Red” 194–95, and “Abraham Polonsky” 486.

  31. For other versions of this argument see Polonsky, quoted in May 226 (“gangsterism is capitalism or the other way around”); Mason 74; Andersen 259.

  32. Munby notes that Leo’s “perception of himself … as hopelessly anachronistic in the face of new forms of ‘organization’ is shared by a whole host of protagonists in the postwar gangster-syndicate film” (130), such as those in The Gangster, I Walk Alone, and New York Confidential. The syndicate film constitutes a significant sub-genre of 1950s crime films; unlike red noir, however, most of these films are exposés or pro–law enforcement vehicles.

  33. There may be an allusion here to The Communist Manifesto’s comparison of modern bourgeois society to a “sorcerer” (Marx and Engels 478).

  34. Polonsky observes, “I don’t ask myself ‘Now what are the social issues I have to realize here?’ There’s a Marxian world view behind my films, not because I plan it that way. That’s what I am” (qtd. in Kemp 268). Marx’s analysis of the four forms of alienation appears in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. See Tucker 72–77.

  35. The agents overheard and transcribed a conversation between Polonsky and Wolfert in which the two acknowledged that the phone was probably tapped. Polonsky sardonically reminded Wolfert, “You know, we’re not living in a police state. … We’re living in a free democracy.” See Buhle and Wagner, Dangerous Citizen (235–38) for a transcript of this conversation.

  36. Polonsky hated David Raksin’s music for this scene. The piece, “Regeneration,” rises to a triumphant major-chord conclusion, seeming incompatible with the degradation and remorse pictured (“Abraham Polonsky” 489).

  37. Stuart Kaminsky notes that the heist film derives from stories of “communal quests requiring cooperation of men with special powers” (qtd. in Telotte, “Fatal Capers” 164). For helpful analyses of the heist picture see Telotte, “Fatal Capers”; and Mason 97–105.

  38. Huston’s film shares the distinction as the first true heist film with the B picture Armored Car Robbery, directed by Richard Fleischer: both films were released on the same day, June 8, 1950. The two films constitute the dexter and sinister arms of the subgenre. Whereas Asphalt explores the lives and motives of its humble criminals, Fleischer’s film presents a police detective (played by Charles McGraw) as its protagonist and paints its criminals, especially leader Dave Purvis (William Talman), as psychopaths and selfish weasels.

  39. Tropes of gaming and gambling appear in almost every heist picture, regardless of its politics. For example, Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing depicts a race-track robbery; Kansas City Confidential (Phil Karlson) uses four playing cards as identifying marks and depicts many card games; 5 against the House (also directed by Karlson) concerns a casino heist; Johnny Ingram, in Odds against Tomorrow, is a compulsive gambler. These tropes not only reflect the idea that the gangs are playing a game but also indicate the risks involved in their left-handed endeavors.

  40. The name of the hotel thus predicts and sardonically comments on Dix’s final pilgrimage back to Kentucky. As Mason suggests, the gang—consisting of two Italian Americans and a WASP southerner, and headed by two men with German names—constitutes a miniature American melting pot (138).

  41. May asserts that the gang members display a “communal spirit” that contrasts favorably with the corruption of officials such as Ditrich (243). But he goes too far in claiming that they embody “family values”: although they do come together, their solidarity is fragile and ephemeral.

  42. Joshua Hirsch outlines three strategies by which red noirs deconstruct divisions between crime and legitimate society. If Force of Evil uses what he calls “simile”—juxtaposing criminals and noncriminals to show their similarities—Asphalt Jungle relies more on “antiphrasis”—reversing values to depict criminals as honorable and the “legal” world as dishonorable (85).

  43. Hayden, who plays the rock-solid Dix, ironically became one of the first “friendly” witnesses in the second round of HUAC hearings, not long after Asphalt Jungle was released. Tormented by guilt for naming names, he spent his later years apologizing and condemning the blacklist. See Ceplair and Englund 364, 391; and Navasky 129–30, where Hayden speaks of his self-contempt after testifying. In the latter, Hayden tersely summarizes the predicament of all the witnesses: “Cooperate and I’m a stool pigeon. Shut my mouth and I’m a pariah” (130).

  44. In another of the blacklist era’s grotesque ironies Marc Lawrence, who plays Cobby, became a “friendly” witness during the second round of HUAC hearings. Lawrence told Lee Server that testifying was “like a stab in the back. You’re still breathing, but you … can’t get the thing out of your back” (Server, “Marc Lawrence” 53).

  45. Henry Blankfort, Underworld’s coscreenwriter, was the cousin of fellow radical writer Michael Blankfort, who named him before HUAC. Afterward, Henry Blank-fort left the movie business (Buhle and Wagner, Radical 365–66).

  46. Bowing to pressure from distributors, the filmmakers cast a white actress, Mary Anderson, as Molly (Neve, Film 178). Close scrutiny of key scenes reveals that all words referring to Molly’s race were overdubbed in postproduction (the actors’ lips form other words). The MPA censor board reports that the word nigger was removed from the film for screenings in Massachusetts, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The Breen office had earlier recommended that the filmmakers remove the word: see letter from Breen to Forrest Judd of Allied Artists.

  47. As Buhle and Wagner observe, the liberals leading the defense committee “look a lot like the real-life Civil Rights Congress—as many in the noir audience would have recognized—at that moment frantically pursued by the FBI, baited by [HUAC] and finally destroyed after several dramatic campaigns for southern African-American defendants” (Radical 344).

  48. Similar media lynchings were occurring at that moment in Hollywood, led by right-wing columnists such as Westbrook Pegler and George Sokolsky of the Hollywood Reporter (Humphries 235).

  49. This critical stance probably explains certain newspaper reviewers’ antipathy for the film. See, for example, Bosley Crowther’s review in the New York Times of Sept. 27, 1950.

  50. The film’s ultimate title was a last-minute decision: the picture was first submitted to the censors for approval under the title The Whip, and later versions were entitled The Whipped; even its first reviews (e.g., by the Hollywood Reporter and Variety of March 1950), call it by that name. It was finally submitted for certification in May 1950 under its current title (PCA File, The Underworld Story).

  CONCLUSION

  1. Endfield didn’t want to cooperate with HUAC (doing so seemed to him “seedy”) or to plead the Fifth, so he immigrated to England and rebuilt his career there (Neve, Film 180). His recollection, in 1989, is clear-eyed about how the Hollywood Left was deluded by Stalinism and communism. But the witch hunt, Endfield claims, was mostly just publicity-mongering. He concludes that in the end “it’s hard to say who was more wrong,” the witch hunters or the Communist apologists (qtd. in Neve, Film 181).

  2. Naremore writes that the film is such a “thoroughgoing indictment of capitalism and liberal complacency that it transcends the ameliorative limits of the social-problem picture” (More Than Night 127): that is, the problems do not merely stem from corruption but inhere in the institutions themselves.

  3. Against Endfield’s wishes Stillman insisted on including these preachy scenes (Neve, Film 179).r />
  4. Although these words sound like bland liberal pieties, to include them, the filmmakers had to ignore the Breen Office’s warnings that the movie should include no “philosophizing” that “might seem to relieve your murderers of the blame for their crimes and put it on society generally” (Breen to Robert Stillman).

  5. To produce the fine performances in this film, Losey rehearsed his actors for almost two weeks, then shot the film in a spare nineteen days (Ciment 99).

  6. Even Garwood’s car testifies to this history: the Cadillac automobile was named for the French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, who founded the city of Detroit. Cadillac embodied both the Dream and the fraud: not a nobleman, as he claimed, he actually emigrated to America to escape debtors, then reinvented himself as a dandy and aristocrat (ehow.com).

  FILMOGRAPHY

  Asterisks indicate blacklistees.

  The Accused. Dir. William Dieterle. Scr. Ketti Frings. Paramount, 1949.

  Act of Violence. Dir. Fred Zinnemann. Perf. Van Heflin and Robert Ryan. Scr. Robert L. Richards. MGM, 1949.

  Anatomy of a Murder. Dir. Otto Preminger. Music by Duke Ellington. Columbia, 1959.

  Appointment with Danger. Dir. Lewis Allen. Paramount, 1951.

  Armored Car Robbery. Dir. Richard Fleischer. RKO, 1950.

  The Asphalt Jungle. Dir. John Huston. MGM, 1950.

  The Best Years of Our Lives. Dir. William Wyler. Perf. Dana Andrews, Fredric March, and Harold Russell. MGM, 1946.

  The Bigamist. Dir. Ida Lupino. Scr. Collier Young. Filmakers, 1953.

  The Big Combo. Dir. Joseph H. Lewis. Music by David Raksin. Allied Artists, 1955.

  The Big Night. Dir. Joseph Losey.* Scr. Hugo Butler,* Dalton Trumbo* [uncredited], and Joseph Losey. United Artists, 1951.

  Black Angel. Dir. Roy Neill. Universal, 1946.

  The Blue Dahlia. Dir. George Marshall. Scr. Raymond Chandler. Paramount, 1946.

  The Blue Gardenia. Dir. Fritz Lang. Story by Vera Caspary. Warner Bros., 1953.

  Blues in the Night. Dir. Anatole Litvak. Warner Bros., 1941.

  Body and Soul. Dir. Robert Rossen.* Scr. Abraham Polonsky.* Perf. John Garfield.* Enterprise/United Artists, 1947.

  Brute Force. Dir. Jules Dassin.* Prod. Mark Hellinger. Scr. Richard Brooks. Universal, 1947.

  Caged. Dir. John Cromwell. Scr. Virginia Kellogg and Bernard C. Schoenfeld. Perf. Eleanor Parker. Warner Bros, 1950.

  Caught. Dir. Max Ophuls. From the novel Wild Calendar, by Libbie Block. Enterprise/MGM, 1949.

  Champion. Dir. Mark Robson. United Artists, 1949.

  The Chase. Dir. Arthur Ripley. United Artists, 1946.

  Cornered. Dir. Edward Dmytryk.* Scr. John Paxton. Story by John Wexley.* Prod. Adrian Scott.* RKO, 1945.

  Crack-Up. Dir. Irving Reis. Scr. John Paxton, Ben Bengal,* and Ray Spencer. RKO, 1946.

  Criss Cross. Dir. Robert Siodmak. Scr. Daniel Fuchs. Universal, 1949.

  The Crooked Way. Dir. Robert Florey. United Artists, 1949.

  Crossfire. Dir. Edward Dmytryk.* Prod. Adrian Scott.* RKO, 1947.

  “Crossfire: Hate Is like a Gun.” DVD featurette with Crossfire. Turner Entertainment, 2005. DVD.

  The Damned Don’t Cry. Dir. Vincent Sherman. Perf. Joan Crawford. Story by Gertrude Walker. Warner Bros., 1950.

  Dark City. Dir. William Dieterle. Scr. John Meredyth Lucas and Larry Marcus; adapted by Ketti Frings. Paramount, 1950.

  The Dark Corner. Dir. Henry Hathaway. Scr. Jay Dratler and Bernard Schoenfeld. 20th Century–Fox, 1946.

  Dark Passage. Dir. Delmer Daves. Perf. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Agnes Moorehead. Warner Bros., 1947.

  The Dark Past. Dir. Rudolph Maté. Perf. Lee J. Cobb and William Holden. Scr. Philip MacDonald, Michael Blankfort,* and Albert Duffy. Columbia, 1948.

  Dark Waters. Dir. André De Toth. Scr. Joan Harrison and Marian Cockrell. Benedict Bogeaus/United Artists, 1944.

  Dead Reckoning. Dir. John Cromwell. Perf. Humphrey Bogart, Lizabeth Scott. Columbia, 1947.

  Desperate. Dir. Anthony Mann. RKO, 1947.

  Detour. Dir. Edgar G. Ulmer. Perf. Tom Neal and Ann Savage. PRC, 1945.

  The Devil Thumbs a Ride. Dir. Felix Feist. RKO, 1947.

  D. O. A. Dir. Rudolph Maté. United Artists, 1950.

  Double Indemnity. Dir. Billy Wilder. Paramount, 1944.

  The File on Thelma Jordon. Dir. Robert Siodmak. Scr. Ketti Frings. Paramount, 1950.

  5 against the House. Dir. Phil Karlson. Columbia, 1955.

  Force of Evil. Dir. Abraham Polonsky.* Perf. John Garfield* and Thomas Gomez. Enterprise/MGM, 1948.

  From Here to Eternity. Dir. Fred Zinnemann. Columbia, 1953.

  Fury. Dir. Fritz Lang. MGM, 1936.

  The Gangster. Dir. Gordon Wiles. Allied Artists, 1947.

  Gilda. Dir. Charles Vidor. Prod. Virginia Van Upp. Perf. Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, and George Macready. Columbia, 1946.

  Gun Crazy. Dir. Joseph H. Lewis. Scr. MacKinlay Kantor, Millard Kaufman, and Dalton Trumbo.* United Artists, 1949.

  High Wall. Dir. Curtis Bernhardt. Scr. Sydney Boehm and Lester Cole.* MGM, 1947.

  The Hitch-Hiker. Dir. Ida Lupino. Perf. Edmond O’Brien, Frank Lovejoy, and William Talman. RKO, 1953.

  Hollow Triumph. Dir. Steve Sekely. Scr. Daniel Fuchs. Perf. Paul Henreid and Joan Bennett. Eagle-Lion, 1948.

  I Wake Up Screaming. Dir. Bruce Humberstone. Perf. Victor Mature, Betty Grable, and Laird Cregar. 20th Century–Fox, 1942.

  I Walk Alone. Dir. Byron Haskin. Paramount, 1948.

  I Want to Live! Dir. Robert Wise. United Artists, 1958.

  “Jules Dassin Interview.” Thieves’ Highway. Criterion Collection, 2005. DVD.

  Kansas City Confidential. Dir. Phil Karlson. United Artists, 1952.

  The Killers. Dir. Robert Siodmak. Universal, 1946.

  The Killing. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. United Artists, 1956.

  Kiss Me Deadly. Dir. Robert Aldrich. Scr. A. I. Bezzerides. United Artists, 1955.

  La chienne. Dir. Jean Renoir. Braunberger-Richebé, 1931.

  Laura. Dir. Otto Preminger. Scr. Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, and Betty Reinhardt. Music by David Raksin. Perf. Gene Tierney, Clifton Webb, and Dana Andrews. 20th Century–Fox, 1944.

  Little Caesar. Dir. Mervyn LeRoy. First National, 1931.

  The Maltese Falcon. Dir. John Huston. Warner Bros., 1941.

  The Man I Love. Dir. Raoul Walsh. Perf. Ida Lupino. Scr. Catherine Turney. Warner Bros., 1947.

  The Man with the Golden Arm. Dir. Otto Preminger. United Artists, 1955.

  The Men. Dir. Fred Zinnemann. United Artists, 1950.

  Mildred Pierce. Dir. Michael Curtiz. Scr. Ranald MacDougall and Catherine Turney (uncredited). Perf. Joan Crawford. Warner Bros., 1945.

  Murder, My Sweet. Dir. Edward Dmytryk.* RKO, 1944.

  My Name Is Julia Ross. Dir. Joseph H. Lewis. Scr. Muriel Roy Bolton. Columbia, 1945.

  The Naked City. Dir. Jules Dassin.* Prod. Mark Hellinger. Scr. Albert Maltz* and Malvin Wald. Universal, 1948.

  New York Confidential. Dir. Russell Rouse. Warner Bros., 1955.

  The Night Holds Terror. Dir. Andrew Stone. Columbia, 1955.

  Nightmare. Dir. Maxwell Shane. United Artists, 1956.

  Nightmare Alley. Dir. Edmund Goulding. Perf. Tyrone Power. 20th Century–Fox, 1947.

  Nocturne. Dir. Edwin L. Marin. Prod. Joan Harrison. Perf. George Raft. RKO, 1946.

  No Man of Her Own. Dir. Mitchell Leisen. Scr. Sally Benson and Catherine Turney, from the novel I Married a Dead Man, by Cornell Woolrich. Paramount, 1950.

  Notorious. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. RKO, 1946.

  Not Wanted. Dir. Ida Lupino. Scr. Paul Jarrico* and Ida Lupino. Emerald/RKO, 1949.

  Odds against Tomorrow. Dir. Robert Wise. Scr. John O. Killens [Abraham Polonsky*]. United Artists, 1959.

  Out of the Past. Dir. Jacques Tourneur. Perf. Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas. RKO, 1947.

  Outrage. Dir. Ida Lupino. Scr. Collier Young, M
alvin Wald, and Ida Lupino. Filmakers/RKO, 1950.

  Phantom Lady. Dir. Robert Siodmak. Prod. Joan Harrison. Perf. Franchot Tone and Ella Raines. Universal, 1944.

  Possessed. Dir. Curtis Bernhardt. Perf. Joan Crawford. Scr. Silvia Richards* and Ranald MacDougall. Warner Bros., 1947.

  The Postman Always Rings Twice. Dir. Tay Garnett. Perf. John Garfield* and Lana Turner. MGM, 1946.

  Private Hell 36. Dir. Don Siegel. Scr. Ida Lupino and Collier Young. Filmakers, 1954.

  The Prowler. Dir. Joseph Losey.* Scr. Hugo Butler* and Dalton Trumbo.* Horizon/United Artists, 1951.

  The Public Enemy. Dir. William A. Wellman. Warner Bros., 1931.

  Railroaded! Dir. Anthony Mann. Scr. John C. Higgins. Story by Gertrude Walker. PRC, 1947.

  Ride the Pink Horse. Dir. Robert Montgomery. Prod. Joan Harrison. From the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes. Universal, 1947.

  Road House. Dir. Jean Negulesco. Perf. Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Richard Widmark. 20th Century–Fox, 1948.

  Scarface. Dir. Howard Hawks. United Artists, 1932.

  Scarlet Street. Dir. Fritz Lang. Scr. Dudley Nichols. Perf. Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, and Dan Duryea. Diana Productions/Universal, 1945.

  The Set-Up. Dir. Robert Wise. RKO, 1949.