I WALK ALONE (1947) with Burt Lancaster & Lizabeth Scott

 

ONCE I TRUSTED A DAME... NOW I WALK ALONE!

Fourteen years ago, Frankie Madison (Burt Lancaster) and Noll ‘Dink’ Turner (Kirk Douglas) were small time bootleggers making a reasonable living running whiskey to supply their little speakeasy bar. But, when one fateful run goes bad, the two split up over a handshake promise to get the other a good lawyer and a guaranteed 50% stake in their business if one of them gets caught & sent up the river.

Now it’s 1942 and prohibition has been over for nine years. Frankie's released from prison and goes looking for the 50% cut of his 14 years of accrued profits, plus interest. But times have changed. Dink has parlayed the speakeasy into a respectable, high class joint, The Regent Club, which he has no intention of splitting with his old partner. Frankie’s Age of Bootleggers & Gangsters has now been replaced by a slick, post-war Brave New World where illegal activities don't use Tommy guns, just a fountain pen entry in a ledger book. Can Frankie’s old school strong arm tactics be enough to trump Dink’s savvy brand of legalized corrupt capitalism? 

A showdown is coming and the only wild card in the scenario is, of course, a dame – Kay Lawrence (Lizabeth Scott).

I Walk Alone (1947) is based on the play The Beggars Are Coming to Town by Theodore Reeves, with a an adaption by Robert Smith (99 River Street, 1953) & John Bright (The Public Enemy, 1931), and a screenplay by Charles Schnee (Red River (1948) and The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)). The ‘I’ in the title seems to be directly referring to the nation of disoriented WWII veterans who had fought a war where the strength of their hands and spirit, derived from generations of rugged pioneer life, was enough the win the Big Prize. But, like Frankie, they’ve came home to find their former reality erased and replaced by a capitalist system based not on success by hard work, but rather by manipulating the rules and red tape that can conceal and legitimize any criminal activity.

When Frankie pulls together a new gang to force Dink into giving him what he believes he deserves, the film shifts into what amounts to a cold-hearted lecture aimed squarely at the ex-servicemen in the audience about how the new post-war America actually works. The always boring to watch Wendell Cory channels his own bland personality playing Dink’s accountant, Dave, as he dryly explains the tangled shell game of dummy corporations that leaves Dink in charge of his operation, but only owning a small percentage of it. Frankie’s gang slowly realizes that there is nothing to muscle in on and drifts away – how do you threaten a bunch of intangible laws and regulations? They even apologize to Dink on their way out, probably hopeful for future work with his winning side.

Can Frankie rally his now outdated skills to beat Dink at a game he doesn’t really understand? Fortunately he has two things on his side – the love of Kay who’s just been dumped by Dink as he sleeps his way up the social register, and the finally pushed-too-far Dave, whose illegal second set of ledgers for The Regent Club could end Dink’s high life career.

In the fateful final showdown, it boils all down to this statement by Frankie to Dink,  

“When it comes to stocks and papers, and books that don’t balance, you’re better than me. But, when it comes to guns, you’re down on my level.” 

The last act of the film shifts into high gear after the steady build up of its first two-thirds, making the audience hold on through multiple sharp turns that will leave them guessing (well, maybe not too hard) as to the final resolution.

Three main stars of the film – Burt, Kirk and Lizabeth – were only one or two years into their careers at this point, but they already had the charisma and acting chops would carry them on to their varying degrees of stardom.

Burt Lancaster plays Frankie as a man uncomplicated by any deep understanding of his world – does a fish even notice the water it's swimming in? Some reviewers have criticized Lancaster’s two note performance – dumbfounded or rageful – as lacking depth, but I don’t see any other way that the character could have been portrayed. What Frankie wants he takes by the strength of his hands and a willingness to take big risks – easy to do when you have nothing to lose. Lancaster would specialize in characters who didn't like to be pushed around.

Kirk Douglas was establishing himself as an actor who could smoothly inhabit any cool & ruthless crime boss who always has an angle to play. Douglas’s role as Noll (always 'Dink' to Frankie, but nobody else) is just a slightly different take on the part that he had just played opposite Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer in Out of the Past (1947). Aspects of this character would be a hallmark of the rest of Kirk’s career.

Lizabeth Scott’s unusual beauty and husky voice made her a natural for the film noirs that she would become noted for. Groomed as a Lauren Bacall clone, she and Bacall had one defining difference that would always separate the two. No matter how down on her luck Bacall’s character may have been, she could never help but radiate sophistication and class. In contrast, Scott was always a ‘dame’ – and we loved her for it. Always on the wrong end of bad deal, you knew that no matter how hard Scott tried, she was always going to end up unhappy (e.g., Pitfall, 1948).

I always enjoy watching the supporting actors with small parts in these old films. Among the notables here is fan favourite, Mike Mazurki (Dan) (above), one time member of the Frankie-Dink Gang, now holding down a job as Dink’s Doorman/Bouncer/Muscle. Mazurki was sort of the Dwayne Johnson of his day. A former wrestler, the 6’5” Mazurki was a busy actor almost always playing a beetle-browed heavy. He was likely hired for this part because he would have been the only actor in Hollywood who could have been believable in taking Burt Lancaster out with one punch. Also watch out for Former World Middleweight Boxing Champion, Freddie Steele, as a member of Frankie’s short lived gang. He may be best remembered for starring alongside Robert Mitchum in The Story of G.I. Joe (1945).

The number one reason to watch this film is for the storytelling skills of director Byron Haskin. Every shot is perfectly composed and lit for maximum noir-like effect. Normally I’d credit this to the cinematographer  – Leo Tover, the highly regarded lensman behind a number of terrific films from the 40’s & 50’s – but Haskin’s strong hand makes what is frankly an average, oft told story, compelling. Every scene is a master class in how to have your characters interact for maximum audience engagement, even when the dialogue seems more theatrical than real.

Haskin’s early career began with him directing in the 20’s before becoming a cameraman and special effects expert. From 1937 to 1945, he headed up the Special Effects Dept. for Warner Bros, earning four Academy Award nominations. I Walk Alone was his first credited directorial role in the talkie era, a career that lasted into the late 60’s. He was a frequent collaborator with producer, George Pal (e.g., directing War of The Worlds, 1953), and is responsible for directing arguably the two best Science Fiction stories ever filmed, The Outer Limits episodes Architects of Fear (1963) and Demon With A Glass Hand (1964).

Is I Walk Alone Worth My Time? Definitely. While not a true Noir (as I would interpret the genre), it pulls no punches in its depiction of ruthlessness and treachery that end up getting their requisite karmic sting in the end. At 97 minutes, it’s a nicely streamlined, if not original story, featuring three great actors at the dawn of their careers and peak of their beauty.

Availability: I Walk Alone (1947) finally got a nicely cleaned up DVD release from Warner Archives in 2018, having gone missing since being in heavy rotation on television in the 60’s and 70’s.

THE HAIRY APE (1944) –William Bendix is King Kong!

"NO DAME'S GONNA CALL ME THAT!"  

Bestial steam ship coal-stoker Hank Smith (William Bendix) is insulted by cruel, self-serving Mildred Douglas (Susan Hayward) and seeks either revenge or self-understanding— maybe both! Warning – spoilers head.

Hank Smith is a brutal, non-thinking animal of a man who only lives to feed the furnace of the dilapidated steam freighter he thinks of as his own, berating his fellow workmen to shovel ever harder & faster. On rare shore leaves, he carouses with his only two companions – the older, philosophical Paddy (Roman Hohnen) and beer-money providing Long (Tom Fadden) – who both care for Smith despite his abdominal behaviour towards them and the world.

Smith only has a dim understanding of women. Attracted to a bar waitress who he has just casually roughed up, he does not know how to deal with her come-hither response to his raw masculinity. The best he can do is unerringly flip a coin across the bar into her cleavage. Clearly, Smith’s only sexual outlet is his machine-like shoveling of coal into the insatiable furnace of the ship, his one true love.

Mildred Douglas is a spoiled rich beauty whose only use for people is manipulating them into giving her what she wants. We’re introduced to her as she is forced to book passage on Smith’s steam ship, captained by actor Alan Napier – Alfred to Adam West’s Bruce Wayne – when she is all but thrown out of Lisbon. Mildred had accompanied her childhood friend, Helen Parker (Dorothy Comingore), to Portugal to help in some unspecified way with war relief, but instead she partied as the city burned. When presented with her exit visa, Mildred laughs off the harsh words leveled at her, and turns an indifferent eye to the beaten down refugees whose place she is usurping on the ship. Once on board, she coos her way into the best accommodations – the cabin of Helen’s sweetheart, 2nd Engineer, Tony Lazer (John Loder). Tony becomes helpless clay in Mildred’s hands and throws over plain, but sincere Helen thinking that vivacious Mildred is actually sweet on him.

Mildred lies her way into getting a tour of the boiler room, leading to the iconic confrontation between filthy, shirtless Bendix in all his sweaty glory and the almost-virginal-in-white Hayworth. Locking eyes, the two are stunned into silence. Never has a woman been in the furnace room and never has Smith ever seen one so beautiful. The camera focuses and holds on the bewilderment expressed on Bendix’s face as his Smith tries to process what he sees – something that should not exist! Mildred is also stopped dead in her tracks. For once in her life she does not have a snappy quip to defuse the situation. She has never experienced anything like this primal fury inches away from her. Her eyes betray a dozen emotions in a flash - shock, terror, fear, and is that…? Yes! Pure carnal lust! Just as we saw in the abused, but aroused barmaid.

Mildred recovers in a second, hurls the title-generating insult, “Don’t touch me you ape, you hairy ape!” and bolts away. Both partners are left shaken by the event. Mildred broods on deck in perhaps the only self reflection she will ever do in her vapid life. But, she quickly recovers, dumps the now-unless to her Tony, who is left spinning in the knowledge of how cruelly he’s been exploited, and returns to her high society life of self-important meaninglessness.

Smith is more drastically affected. For the first time in his life he sees himself as others see him. With a growing glimmer of thoughtfulness, he struggles to understand what that means. We’re even shown him brooding in the classic Rodin ‘The Thinker’ pose in a call back to a scene from the Eugene O’Neill play that the film is based on. Mildred’s insult has eviscerated him to the point that he becomes too limp and impotent to shovel enough coal to keep the ship up to steam. With real consequences – the ship has fallen behind the protective convoy it was sailing back to the USA with, leaving it vulnerable to (unnamed) enemy attack.

Once in New York, Smith stalks Mildred in an attempt to get her to explain the meaning of her insult. This only lands him in jail where he’s humiliated by the police and left like a broken zoo animal in a cage. Sprung on bail by his friends, Smith ends up at a sideshow where he sees and acknowledges himself as being no different than the caged gorilla (played by frequent ape suit actor, ‘Crash’ Corrigan) in another call back to the play.

Smith eventually sneaks into Mildred’s luxury apartment. Neither the audience nor Smith knows what will happen next. Overpowered by Smith, Mildred displays the same range of emotions that she experienced at their first meeting. Riveting Smith with a look of confusion and lust, the bewildered Smith seems to actually believe in the possibility of some real connection with a woman. But, the moment Smith lets his guard down, Mildred bolts for the door. Smith catches her and throws her back on the couch. The scene crackles with expectation. What will Smith’s next move be? After a long pause, he pulls out a coin and flips it across the room, directly down Mildred’s décolletage. He exits a happy man, knowing that underneath whatever facades we might have, we are all just hairy apes. Whether Mildred has experienced any life-changing enlightenment is left hanging.

Based on the posters and press that I’ve seen for The Hairy Ape, it was not marketed to 1940’s bohemian intellectuals who would have bought tickets to the 1922 play, but rather squarely to an audience who were expecting a ‘gorilla abducts white woman’ film in the long tradition of such movies – The Gorilla (1921), Murders in the Rue Morgue (1931), The Bride of the Beast (1958) and dozens of others (for more on the history of this trope I recommend reading the paper Fremiet's Gorillas: Why Do They Carry off Women? by Zgórniak et al., 2006). The Hairy Ape even follows the plot of King Kong (1933); ‘hairy ape’ meets beautiful girl in exotic setting, followers her to Manhattan, gets imprisoned, breaks free & climbs skyscraper with girl in his arms. Fortunately our hairy ape realizes that the ‘dame ain’t worth it’ and sails away back home, happy with his new primitive understanding of the world and his place in society.

The Hairy Ape (1944) is based on an infrequently produced play by Nobel and four-time Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright, Eugene O’Neill. The original existential 1922 play is, as I interpret it, about the plight of uneducated, mostly immigrant workers trying to understand their place in American society where they only exist to run the soulless machinery that keeps the elite industrialists rich and their children spoiled (predating Fritz Lang's similarly themed Metropolis by five years). Our protagonist gains a sort of dim self-enlightenment as he tries to organize the workers to fight the capitalists, only to realize the futility of his actions. Accepting his fate, he meets his end in the arms of his mirror image – a gorilla that crushes the life out of him.

O’Neill specialized in painting unflinching portraits of broken and often petty individuals as they reflected what he saw in society. Much of his work – like Long Day’s Journey Into Night – was drawn from his jaundiced views of himself and this family, which he often held in low esteem. Was O'Neill perhaps projecting part of himself into the play's lead?

The screenplay by prolific novelist and radio show writer, Robert Hardy Andrews, and Decla Dunning is a rare example of a stage production that probably would have been a difficult movie to watch being turned into a gripping film portrayal of lives unexamined. Andrews and Dunning kept the basic outline of the play, but dialed down its big picture class struggle plotline to a more focused version played out on an audience-relatable human level. Although O'Neill lived for more nine years after the the release of the film, I can’t find any comments that he may have made about the it, good or bad.

Director Alfred Santell began his career in the Max Sennett and Hal Roach studios, making a mark with his own self-branded comedy shorts featuring a trained chimp—good experience perhaps for directing a movie called The Hairy Ape. The storytelling is more than competent, but the material deserved a director with a deeper appreciation of the source material.

The film is amply aided by cinematographer Lucien Androit who knew how to light and frame Bendix at his bestial best. Paris born Androit had directed dozens of silent films starting in 1909 before moving easily into the talkies where he added a touch of class to mostly B films. Perhaps his most notable work was for Edgar Ulmer, making Hedy Lamarr and George Sanders look gorgeous in The Strange Woman (1946). He also gave a slick edge to one of my favourites, Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936), where Warner Oland squares off against Boris Karloff. He even helped to make Peter Lorre look heroic in several Mr. Moto films for Twentieth Century Fox. Of note to this review is the Androit-shot film, Topaze (1933), where another dim (but gentle) soul (John Barrymore in a nicely nuanced performance) also has his eyes opened to the real world. But, unlike Bendix’s emotionally limited Hank Smith, Barrymore’s Topaze embraces the corrupt capitalist lifestyle, nabs Myrna Loy, gets filthy rich and lives happily ever after (gotta love them Pre-Code films!).

Is The Hairy Ape Worth My Time? Definitely. With an underlying story by Eugene O’Neil and powerful performances from always great actors William Bendix and Susan Hayward, this 92 minute movie only lags when one of them is not on the screen, which happily is not often.

Availability: Unfortunately, this public domain film does not seem to have a decent DVD release. However, a very watchable copy is on YouTube (embedded below).