Crime Without Passion (1934)

One of the great unheralded organizations of Chicago is the Northwest Chicago Film Society which works in conjunction with the Patio Theater to program a series of rare and interesting films. Tonight they showed the rarely seen 1934 proto-noir CRIME WITHOUT PASSION.

This is one hell of a movie. It's famous in film geek circles as the first film that was co-directed by the famed screenwriters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur and the cinematographer Lee Garmes, but I have to admit that I wasn't prepared for how good it would be.

It tells the story of an attorney named Lee Gentry (Claude Raines) the self-style "Champion of the Damned" who is infamous for getting his clearly-guilty clients off the hook for all manner of awful crimes. But Gentry has one weakness: women. He's caught between two women as the story begins--an earthy dancer named Carmen Brown (Margo) and a society blonde named Katy Costello (Whitney Bourne). He tortures Brown, unsure if he wants to string her along or crush her for loving him too much. The opposite power balance seems to be in place with Costello--he loves her precisely because she seems unsure if she loves him.

Without giving too much away, I'll say that after an argument with one of these women, Gentry finds himself in trouble. His analytic lawyer side takes over, quite literally, in a special effect in which Gentry's ghostly image is superimposed onto scenes to give him advice.

The film is fantastically entertaining. There's a freaky opening sequence by the brilliant montage expert Slavko Vorkapic in which we see the birth of the Three Furies that will bedevil mankind. It's a surreal sequence, all the more effective for being inserted without any overt connection to the plot. The rest of the film is gorgeous--a testament to the enormous talent of cinematographer/co-director Lee Garmes (probably best known to noir fans for his work on NIGHTMARE ALLEY). It's full of askew angles and moody effects. In the broadest outlines of its plot it's just another story of a cocky bastard who gets his ironic comeuppance, but visually it's noir with a surreal bent.

The cast is a mixed bag. Claude Raines was as good an actor who ever worked in movies. Here we find him in only his second starring role, and he's already got the charisma that would make him famous in pictures like MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON and CASABLANCA. Smart and self-satisfied, he makes a perfect foil for the Furies. As the objects of his affection, however, neither Margo nor Whitney Bourne manage to burn up the screen. Making matters worse, neither have particularly rich roles. Hecht and MacArthur fail to inject as much personality or consistency into either of these parts as they do into the lead role.

Still, CRIME WITHOUT PASSION is a real achievement, an odd and ambitious film that was a harbinger of the dark noir tide that would overtake crime films in the forties.

For more on the making of the film, check out this excellent piece by Kyle Westphal, a film historian who works with the NCFS.

A Voice From The Dark: Frank Lovejoy's Journey Into Radio Noir

Note: This article first appeared in the Spring 2013 issue of the film journal NOIR CITY.

Before he got drafted into the movies (particularly film noir) in the fifties, Frank Lovejoy had a successful decade-long career in radio. He was a workhorse, appearing in thousands of broadcasts across a range of shows, and by the time Hollywood came calling he was already a star on the east coast.

           

He’d started out in the radio business as an announcer for the popular station WLW in Cincinnati, sometimes known as the “cradle of the stars” for all the on-air talent (Rod Serling, Red Barber, Doris Day, and Rosemary Clooney among them) who started there before springing into the big time. Like many others, Lovejoy made a name for himself in the Midwest and used it as a way to get to the larger stations in New York.

Once there, he quickly became a sought after voice man. Distinctive without being overly mannered, his work began getting noticed on crime shows like GANG BUSTERS, MR. DISTIRCT ATTORNEY, and THE SHADOW. He originated the title role on the superhero show THE BLUE BEETLE, portraying a young cop turned masked crime fighter. After 13 episodes (with titles like “The Opium Ring” and “Smashing the Restaurant Racket”), he passed on the mantle of the Blue Beetle to another, uncredited and anonymous, actor.

He stayed busy on the radio all through the 1940s. His weathered baritone made him a particularly good fit for crime shows: MR. AND MRS. NORTH with Alice Frost and Joseph Curtin, BOSTON BLACKIE with Chester Morris and Mel Blanc, THE MOLLE MYSTERY THEATER with Richard Widmark, MURDER AND MR. MALONE with Jack Webb. In 1945, he narrated the series THIS IS YOUR FBI and like virtually everyone else in radio he did work on the hit mystery series THE WHISTLER. When he wasn’t bringing his talents to bear on crime stories he did everything else on the dial from soap operas like BRIGHT HORIZON, MODERN ROMANCES, and BRAVE TOMORROW to war dramas like WORLDS AT WAR and westerns like DESTINY TRAILS.

The golden age of radio came to a close about the time Lovejoy packed up and moved out to California to go into the movie business. In the fifties, radio was hit even harder than movies by the rise of television. The days of the family gathering around the living room console to listen to stories was coming to an end. The smart money, everyone knew, was on the little box with the talking pictures.

Still, radio didn’t die overnight (though it declined steadily through the fifties) and, at least for a while, the practice of film-to-radio adaptation remained a lucrative business. Lovejoy already had practice at bringing movies to the air. He and Everett Sloane had starred in a 1941 adaptation of “Angels with Dirty Faces” for the PHILLIP MORRIS PLAYHOUSE, and after he became a bona fide movie star he was in even higher demand to do big name programs on the air. He starred in “The Deeper Shadow” with Ray Milland for THE FAMILY HOUR OF STARS in 1948. And for the LUX RADIO THEATER he did “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” with Bogart and Walter Huston in 1949, and “Strangers On A Train” opposite Milland and Ruth Roman in 1951.

From 1950 to 1952, he starred in his best series, the highly entertaining radio noir NIGHT BEAT. He played a reporter named Randy Stone who roamed Chicago at night looking for stories. In every episode (with titles like “Slasher” “Pay Up Or Die” and “Flight From Fear”), Stone met some new cast of characters, usually desperate souls in need of help. Sometimes Stone helped them. Sometimes he couldn’t.

What makes NIGHT BEAT such a treasure today is that it is a full on noir radio series. For one thing, it takes place in urban spaces devoid of daylight. In terms of style, the overall sound design is geared toward the insinuation of darkness. This means a strong emphasis on, of all things, silences. Odd moments play out in the dark when neither we nor Stone are quite sure what is happening. The show also makes inspired use of footfall, the clack of shoes conjuring the emptiness of city streets at two in the morning.

Perhaps even more importantly, NIGHT BEAT has a noir heart. Stone isn’t a hero or even a tough guy. He’s like a slightly more warm-hearted version of Weegee, the famous real life crime scene photographer who lived at night and chased his police scanner all over New York’s Lower East Side. In narration that Lovejoy reels off like a bleary-eyed David Goodis character, he recounts his “wanderings” through the city. And because Stone, even more than most noir protagonists, is a citizen of the night, his world of shadowy alleyways and late-night bars and all-night diners is inhabited exclusively by the distressed and the disturbed and the criminally inclined. 

There’s real pulp poetry here. In an excellent episode titled “Julie the Jukebox Girl” Stone begins by telling his listeners, “I cover the night, and my beat is eight square miles of darkness. Every evening I start walking into it and let it swirl around me and let it swallow me up. Part of me relaxes and part of me becomes tense and weary.”

Summing up the people he meets on his nighttime sojourns he says, “The night is filled with its own brand of people—the lonely, lost, mixed-up, screwy people of the night, drifting out of the darkness like fragments of a nightmare.”

Tying it all together is the wonderful voice of Frank Lovejoy, slipping effortlessly from narrating his adventures to being in scenes with a supporting cast that included, at various points in the show’s run, his wife Joan Banks, William Conrad, Jeff Corey, and Parley Baer. His style is emotive yet restrained, demonstrating that he was almost as subtle an actor on the radio as he was in film. As early as the second episode of the series—“The Night Is A Weapon” from February 1950—Lovejoy had created a voice for Stone that was crisp and authoritative when it needed to be but which also gave the character a certain thoughtfulness and gruff compassion.

After the show ended in 1952, Lovejoy played Randy Stone on television in an episode of FOUR STAR PLAYHOUSE entitled “Search In The Night.” The character didn’t get his own series (instead, Lovejoy starred in MEET MCGRAW, a series which had also grown out of an episode of FOUR STAR PLAYHOUSE). Fans of the character were probably disappointed that Stone didn’t get his own show, but since NIGHT BEAT lives on in various formats on the internet, Lovejoy can still be found out there in the dark, looking for a story and getting into trouble.

Old Is The New New: TWIN PEAKS

Starting Monday, March 3rd, Criminal Element is going to be running my series of episode-by-episode TWIN PEAKS "rewatches"--something of a misnomer since, in fact, I've never watched the show before.

Here's part of what I wrote for the kickoff announcement over at Criminal Element:

How have I managed to go this long without seeing a series as heralded as TWIN PEAKS a show that pretty much defines the notion of “cult television,” a show by one of the oft proclaimed geniuses of cinema? Well, for one thing I was a kid when it first came out. When the pilot episode was broadcast in April of 1990, I was fourteen years old and, in all honesty, that year I was far more excited that The Flash had his own show.

Which, I admit, still doesn’t explain why I haven’t caught up to the show in the subsequent twenty-four years. The answer to that conundrum is that I’ve never been a huge David Lynch fan. Once I stopped watching television shows about superheroes and turned my attention to cinema, I went in pretty hard for the old stuff: noir, Westerns, sixties European art cinema. By the time I got around to Lynch, my taste had formed in other directions. That’s not to say that I don’t admire David Lynch. I like parts of many of his films, and I love all of MULLHOLLAND DRIVE and THE STRAIGHT STORY But that’s about as far as I’ve gone with him. Which makes me the perfect man for this job. I come to TWIN PEAKS as someone who likes, but doesn’t love the cinema of David Lynch. I come as an admirer, but not a true believer.

Over the years, I’ve gone out of my way to steer clear of TWIN PEAKS—for fear of learning too much and spoiling the discovery of the show itself. I could easily avail myself of the answers to its mysteries with the click of a few buttons, but, then again, I could also ruin the end of pretty much every novel ever written, if I wanted to do so. I’ve always suspected that TWIN PEAKS might hold far more enjoyment in its mysteries than in its questions. So come with me as I make my first trip to Twin Peaks, Washington. Let’s see what there is to see.

The Long Wait Of Norman Foster

I want to re-post a link to my piece on the director Norman Foster. Although Foster is best remembered today for being the director for JOURNEY INTO FEAR, the Orson Welles production most hacked apart by RKO, in recent years some film geeks have been rediscovering the director. Which is good news because Foster was a talented man who made significant contributions to classic film noir and Mexican cinema. 

I'm re-posting the article in honor of a showing of Foster's excellent Burt Lancaster noir KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS at the Patio Theater here in Northwest Chicago tomorrow night. I'm thrilled to finally be able to see this on the big screen. Watching it on scratchy bootlegs over the years, I've always hoped to see it projected. If you're in the Chicago area 2/26/14 this is the place to be. Only $5, and the Patio is a big, lovely old theater. 

Here's my article The Long Wait of Norman Foster over at Bright Lights Film Journal.

The Crimespree Interview

I did an interview with Tim Hennessy over at Crimespree Magazine. We cover a lot of topics including: HELL ON CHURCH STREET, THE POSTHUMOUS MAN, SAINT HOMICIDE, growing up in the south, the greatness of Bogart, and the terrible beauty of dying of a snake bite.

You can read it all here. 

Coop's Last Ride: THE HANGING TREE (1959)

I'm starting a new series of articles over at Criminal Element called The Cowboy Rides Away. I'll look at the final Western of each of the great stars of the genre. First up, my favorite cowboy of them all, the great Gary Cooper.

I've written about Coop before, but this is the first time I've written about his final oater, the dark and interesting THE HANGING TREE, directed by (the quite underrated) Delmer Daves. 

Give it a read and let me know what you think. 

SAINT HOMICIDE hits Kindle

My new novella SAINT HOMICIDE is now available on Kindle. You can also get the print version exclusively through the good folks at Crime Factory Publications.

Some smart people with good taste have had nice things to say about the book. I've quoted some of these folks in other places, but just to give you a taste: Jon Bassoff, author of CORROISON said, "Religious fanaticism intersects with the American underbelly in this stunning novella by Jake Hinkson. SAINT HOMICIDE is populated with wounded people, both physically and spiritually. In lesser hands, the reader would simply look away from the grotesqueness, but Hinkson is too good for that. He forces us to look, forces us to reckon with the desperation. A masterpiece."

I mean...hell, now I want to read it.