Forgotten Film: Phantom Lady (1944)

Cornell Woolrich's Phantom Lady is an engaging mystery film, just not a great one.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 155th in my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

I really love the novels of Cornell Woolrich, whether writing under that name or William Irish or George Hopley. For a while, I had a very nice collection of first editions of his work including a beautiful copy of Phantom Lady. But I took the money and ran a long time ago.

Woolrich was a master of suspense and tension, particularly in his novels, though some also comes through in his films. Check out my review of Jacques Tourneau’s The Leopard Man which was based on Woolrich’s novel Black Alibi. It features one of the most terrifying scenes ever put on screen and that scene is straight out of the novel.

But, let’s talk about Phantom Lady. Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis) is a successful engineer in a bad marriage. On his anniversary he and his wife have a fight and he storms out of the apartment. He goes to a local bar where he meets a lonely woman with a gaudy hat. They make small talk and he invites her to go to a show. When he asks her name, she demurs, saying that they should enjoy the night with no names and no history. They take a cab to the show where a drummer tries to get her attention and the headliner Monteiro (Aurora) is seen wearing the same hat. Monteiro is obviously furious.

Henderson returns home to find police Inspector Burgess (Thomas Gomez) waiting. Henderson’s wife has been strangled with one of his neckties. Henderson isn’t worried about being arrested for the crime because he didn’t do it. But when the police question the bartender (Andrew Tombes) he says Henderson was alone. So does the cab driver. And when Monteiro is questioned, she remembers nothing about the Henderson’s companion and the hat the argued about isn’t even among her costumes.

Henderson finds himself on trial for murder and, with no alibi, he is quickly convicted and sentenced to die. The only one convinced he’s innocent is his secretary, Carol “Kansas” Richmond (Ella Raines), who is in love with him. She cannot find any other way to help him, so she shadows the bartender. When he makes a casual slip about being paid, he tries to attack her and ends up getting killed in traffic. At that point, Carol suspects she is on the right trail.

She begins to track down the drummer (Elisha Cook, Jr.) who admits that he was paid $500 to forget what he saw. Carol calls Burgess, but by the time he gets there the drummer is dead. At this point, the film gives away the identity of the real killer, something which was not disclosed in the book until the very end.

Scott’s friend, Jack Marlow (Franchot Tone) has been in South America and when he returns he agrees to help Carol solve Scott’s problem. Together they find the Phantom Lady and the hat, but the murderer is still about and Carol is in deep trouble.

This was a good film, just not the great film which might have been made from the book. In glorious black and white, it has many of the features of a good noir film but somehow falls flat. The tense moments just don’t quite come across that way, until the point at which Carol confronts the killer. Part of the problem is the source material. Woolrich novels sometimes rely on coincidence and, as in this case, you have to buy that people are willing to let a man die after being paid to forget something. Somehow I tend to have a better opinion of people than that. Of the four, one should have broken down.

When reading the books, the breakneck pacing gets you through. With the film, that pacing isn’t there and the flaws emerge.

I still like this film, though, and I still love the work of Woolrich. I’m hoping you do to. TCM runs this film fairly regularly and you should check it out when you can. It’s not Out of the Past or Double Indemnity, but it’s still worthwhile.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: Night of the Jabberwock by Fredric Brown (1950)

Nick of the Jabberwok is fast, fun and full of surprises.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 171st in my series of Forgotten Books.

As I mentioned in the last Forgotten Book column, I recently discovered a cache of old Unicorn Mystery Book Club books at the local Half Price. I bought six volumes while I was there. The Memoirs of Solar Pons was in one of the volumes. But the one that really pushed me over the edge was Night of the Jabberwock by Fredric Brown — not that it took much of a push.

There was a time when I had a very nice collection of Fredric Brown’s work. I had hardback firsts of all his science fiction, including a nice, signed Space on My Hands and much of his mystery work. I believe I had all the mystery novels and most of the short stories. I did not have The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches, but I did have the original pulp that the story had appeared in. And I had read most of his work. Somewhere along the way, I did an article about Ed and Am Hunter that appeared in a non-fiction work about 100 great detectives, and I had read all those novels.

At his worst, Brown was always worth reading. And at his best, he was fantastic. Here, in Night of the Jabberwock, he was at the top of his form.

It’s a novel with a lot of stuff going on. The hero is Doc Stoeger, the editor and publisher of a small town weekly newspaper. He has a PhD and his dissertation was on Lewis Carroll. He is nuts for Lewis Carroll. But no one in the town really cares. He has one or two friends he can play chess with, but no one to really discuss the things he loves most. And after 23 years running the paper, he is down. Just once, he would love something to happen on Thursday night so that when the paper came out on Friday morning it would have real news.

Well, Doc soon discovers you should be careful what you wish for. In the course of one night, he has many adventures. There’s a messy divorce case, the bank is broken into, several men are murdered, Doc and his friend Smiley are kidnapped by gangsters, there’s an explosion in the Roman candle department of the local fireworks factory, there’s an escapee from the local loony bin. Oh, and Doc is the prime suspect in two of the murders and is involved in a manhunt in his small town. Doc sees and witnesses all of these and yet, he cannot write about them.

The series of events begins with a man named Yehudi Smith who asks about the Vorpal Blades, a Lewis Carroll appreciation society. That society wants Doc to meet them at a nearby haunted house to discuss the possibility that Lewis Carroll was writing about real worlds in the Alice books.

This is fast paced like a Cornell Woolrich novel and, at times, just as unbelievable. But the prose is lean and clean, and the reader has the adventure of a lifetime.

I read this book many years ago and had forgotten most of it, so it was wonderful to sit back in my reading chair and renew my friendship. I ran across a passage that I loved on the original reading and again last night:

“Two walls of my living room are lined with them (books) and they overflow the bookcases in my bedroom and I even have a shelf of them in the bathroom. What do I mean, even? I think a bathroom without a bookshelf is as incomplete as would be one without a toilet.”

Can I get an “Amen”?

It’s a quick and wonderful read and, while it used to be impossible to find when I first started looking, there are plenty of editions and copies around online or in eBooks now. You have no excuse. Go forth and slay the jubjub bird and have some fun.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Films: The Leopard Man (1943)

Val Lewton's The Leopard Man is all about the noir scares.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 136th my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

The other day Sanford Allen, the owner of this blog, and I were talking about last week’s film The Robot Vs. the Aztec Mummy. Sanford is fond of the Aztec Mummy films, particularly Wrestling Women Vs. the Aztec Mummy. The conversation turned to other films and we got talking about Val Lewton and his time in Hollywood. Sanford had just re-watched I Walked with a Zombie. I told him that I thought I had reviewed once before. I just checked and I have not, so beware.

One of my favorites from Lewton was one he produced and oversaw. The Leopard Man was directed by Jacques Tourneur, who lensed several films with Lewton producing.

And this one is amazing.

This is your early noir film on steroids. It is based on Black Alibi, a novel by one my favorites, Cornell Woolrich. Short, moody, black, white, shadows and weird sounds. The movie is set in a sleepy New Mexico town that faces terror when Jerry Manning (Dennis O’Keefe) obtains a black leopard for his client/girlfriend Kiki (Jean Brooks) to use in her nightclub singing act to upstage her club rival Clo-Clo (a Latin dancer played by the singular-named Margo). The leopard escapes when Clo-Clo frightens it with her castanets.

The escape makes the news and people are slightly worried. None more so than Theresa Delgado (Margaret Landry), a young teenage girl sent out on an errand at night by her mother. In one of the most chilling scenes ever put in black and white, Teresa tries to escape the leopard while her mother disbelieves her and refuses to open the door. When the screams turn very real and the leopard growls, Mama finds the door is tough to open. Before she gets it open, the sounds have stopped and blood begins to seep under the door. Little is seen, but the mind fills in all the blanks most vividly. Everybody who sees this film remembers that scene.

Soon other young women are killed – Consuela waiting for her boyfriend in a cemetery that has been locked. (Old joke: You know why they lock cemeteries? People are dying to get in.) There are others too.

The owner of the leopard, Charlie How-Come (actor and later director Abner Biberman), wants his cat back or for Jerry to pay him money. Jerry feels responsible for everything, as does Kiki. A Posse is organized to try to find the leopard, but they have no success.

But Jerry keeps thinking about the deaths. Something doesn’t seem right. A local expert, Dr. Galbraith (James Bell), proves to be a good sounding board. The leopard seems to be hunting, rather than hiding, as Charlie says a normal cat would be doing. Perhaps this isn’t a leopard at all, but rather a man intent on killing young women.

The trailer and poster straight up tell you there’s a man involved. He is a serial killer, though that term had not even been conceived in 1943.

The film is somewhat straightforward. There are no major twists, but the direction and the actors make it wonderful. One of my favorites is the delightful fortune teller, Maria (Isabel Jewell), who tells Clo-Clo’s fortune. Clo-Clo keeps cutting the cards and the ace of spades continues to turn up. Not a good card in fortune telling, apparently. Maria keeps saying that she’s making mistakes.

Isabel Jewell reminded me a lot of Gloria Grahame in both looks and attitude. Although Gloria didn’t make her Hollywood debut until the following year. Jewell had a long career in Hollywood including parts in some great films, like Gone with the Wind, Lost Horizon and High Sierra. She ended up being typecast into smaller roles as gang molls, prostitutes and dumb blondes. Eventually she ran afoul of the law with bad checks and drunk driving.

The music for the film was by the great Roy Webb who had done Cat People for Lewton and would soon do Out of the Past and The Body Snatcher. His work alone was worth the price of admission.

This film is part of the Val Lewton box set which includes Cat People, Return of the Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie, among others. It is well worth searching out, either as a full set or for the individual film. Scott says Check this out, but stay out of the shadows.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.