I LOVE TROUBLE (1948)

I did not love the trouble of trying to follow the complicated, overlapping female characters in this B-movie film noir. One lady is responsible for all the confusion by assuming three different names. Not helping are three actresses who look similar. One female ends up dead, but it is not either of the other two. But it looks like one of them. I have made the screenplay less confusing by not including everyone who enters a scene and concentrating only on the females. With only a single viewing, your brain may still hurt. There are brief roles for the well-known John Ireland, Raymond Burr, and Eduardo Ciannelli. Leaving them out in this assessment simply provides more clarity.

Produced and directed by S. Sylvan Simon with a comedic and maybe too sophisticated screenplay by Roy Huggins, based on his novel, The Double Take. This ninety-five-minute Columbia Pictures release starts off light, breezy, and intriguing, but it is a long way to the end. I had to do a double-take with his twisty maze of characters. Huggins' typical mix of humor, action, and suspense was appreciated, however. I was so focused on the lead actor and the intertwined characters that I completely blocked out the innocuous score by George Duning.

With his novel, Huggins creates the character of Stuart Bailey, made famous later on the hit television show, 77 Sunset Strip. Ephrem Zimbalist Jr. played the character on the small screen, while Franchot Tone launched the private detective here. If this film is underappreciated, it is not Tone's fault. He excels in the Huggins tradition with a laconic behavior that would rather avoid a fistfight, yet cannot entirely escape it when abducted and knocked around during questioning. He is likable with an easy charm and ready smile. His glib remarks and tongue-in-cheek teasing give Dick Powell's Richard Diamond a run for the money. In a more serious film, Tone played an equally cool assistant D.A. in Jigsaw a year later. A huge benefit here is his savvy girl Friday, Glenda Farrell, who delivers a number of rapid-fire verbal zingers and astute observations. In the early going, there is a brief, effective car chase that indicates the Bailey character knows the capability of his Ford sedan, yanking on the rear parking brake to do a ninety-degree slide. This evasive maneuver allows him to switch places with the convertible following him.

Tom Powers hires Tone to locate his wife of seven years, played by Lynn Merrick. The detective's two brief encounters in the early part of the film are the last time he sees her alive. Merrick adopted the identity of another dancer at a nightclub, actress Janis Carter, and stole forty grand from a nightclub run by husband number one. Her complex web of deception is the crux of the film.

Enter Janet Blair (above), who seeks the detective's help in finding another missing person, her sister. As he approaches his office, her eyes follow him. He notices. He turns to face her from a distance, scrunches up one cheek, and sends her a hilariously obvious wink. I imagine she blushed at his “advancement.” This guy has a sense of humor. After she courageously enters his office, he quickly spots evidence that she is not telling the whole truth. After they exchange barbs, then clear the air, she invites him to dinner at her apartment. He places a photographic print of Merrick on an end table. He thinks it might be her sister. She does not recognize the person. The two grow romantically involved while his investigation turns up two murders, culminating in the revelation that the self-centered Powers planned the elaborate scheme to frame the detective. Merrick's multiple identities shock Powers and surprise everyone else. Carter drops her fake foreign accent once Tone figures out she really is the lost sister. Whew!

Note: One scene in the film is the funniest, and it concerns a cafe waitress, played brilliantly by the consistently uncredited 1940s actress Roseanne Murray, in her last film. Her Bronx accent is nearly incoherent, and she strangely (expertly) expels a puff of air before certain words. Murray's delivery is an art form. Tone's potential questions are delayed due to her personal affronts about her name. She is using the uniform of a former waitress, Millie. Tone addresses her by that name, and he is abruptly corrected. Her friends call her Fannie, but she hates it when people call her that. Setting him straight, her friends call her “Jee-ackie.” Then he addresses her by that name, and she curtly makes herself clear that he is not a friend. To him, she is Miss Phipps. She suggests he should learn how to “gita lawng” with people.

JIGSAW (1949)

This seventy-two-minute production by Tower Pictures Inc. and distributed by United Artists is a film noir with a title suggesting a puzzle and not the subject of a home-tooled horror movie. Its most distinguishing aspect is the brief cameo appearances of several major Hollywood stars in the film's early stages. But do not glance down to grab some popcorn or you might miss one. Considering the similarities of this film’s subject with Communism, their support of the film can be explained to the audience's delight. The producers thanked them for their goodwill at the very end. Each appears as inconsequential characters: John Garfield, Marsha Hunt, Everett Sloane, Henry Fonda and Burgess Meredith. Marlene Dietrich has the most clever appearance when she leaves the actual nightclub, “The Blue Angel,” the title of her early signature film.

An opening exchange between Franchot Tone and Myron McCormack is very telling about self-absorption. The insightful scene is apropos for the current century. McCormack is the tough newspaper editor who pulls no punches. When a local printer pays the ultimate price, he is convinced his death was not a suicide. The widow hysterically insists that fear can be a terribly effective weapon. Special prosecutor Tone argues these hate groups are just harmless lunatics. A hopeful guess, but no, says McCormack. "The murder was carried out by a neo-fascist organization calling itself the Crusaders. It is their dream of power or political success, and a financial scam to generate profits. Where he grew up, nobody cared what country each came from. They got along. Then hate gave them derogatory terms for their beliefs or ethnicity. Ignorance is the vehicle and hate is the avenue for attacking an individual’s ideology." McCormack wraps up by saying, “Americans do not understand why they are supposed to be different.” He finds out firsthand (above right) what hate can do when dictated by a short script.

Franchot Tone holds the film together with ease and a subtle coolness. He is very adept at delivering witty lines. He is an assistant district attorney determined to flesh out those responsible for hate crimes in his city. Tone is connecting all the pieces of the puzzle, but a few are not fitting properly.

Playing the widow of a prominent judge, Winifred Lenihan throws a dinner party for movers and shakers. Her tiny voice and snooty New England dialect with a syrupy delivery suggest she expects something in return. She makes it a point to introduce Tone to several influential men whom she believes can help his career. Nudge. Nudge. Foreshadowing a questioning Jack Webb on television's “Dragnet,” the camera abruptly cuts between Tone and the men as each looks directly into the camera. While conversing with Tone, one only sees their lips move in silence. Tone's sarcastic voice-over interprets each man and their ambitions. Jean Wallace, introduced as a singer at “The Blue Angel” nightclub, is also an invited guest. Tone is surprised yet pleased to see her. What is a nice girl like her doing at a creepy party like this? Tone and Wallace, recently divorced in real life, have some cat and mouse interaction before she asks him, ‘You’re a special something or other, aren’t you?’ Their scenes provide the only sparks in the film.

The ending takes a definitive noir turn with some nice elevated camera work, casting long shadows from tall interior columns in an art gallery. The Crusaders are there to retrieve incriminating papers hidden behind a particular painting. Gunshots echo through the marble halls, but only the bad die young in this one.

Note: Tone, Wallace, and Meredith would be together the following year in, The Man In The Eiffel Tower. A film that could have been a classic, but the elevator never made it to the top.

THE MAN ON THE EIFFEL TOWER (1950)

This American, eighty-seven-minute noir mystery released by RKO Radio Pictures was directed by Burgess Meredith. He also stars, along with two other high-caliber actors, Charles Laughton and Franchot Tone. The original director, Irving Allen, gladly departed after a barrage of tomatoes was thrown his direction, chief among them, Laughton. The film was somewhat of a team effort as it was co-produced by Tone and Allen. A minor but noticeable point, there are no French-speaking actors within a three-mile radius of the Eiffel Tower. Even a local newsboy speaks perfect English. The fine music score by Michel Michelet provides appropriate themes, especially the first ascent up the tower. Ansco Color's overall "burnt-sienna" murkiness certainly degrades the enjoyment of this complicated, suspenseful thriller with a disjointed story and jarring edits. Still, it would not be difficult to imagine that this film might have been a celluloid classic in more capable hands. In my astute assumptions, few will bother watching this film. Hench, a few spoilers below.

The story begins with a mousey Meredith, again wearing thick eyeglasses, a prop that may have made an impression on him. There is at least one other film role where he is cast with “coke-bottle” lenses, though his most noted role was as the bookworm in the television series, The Twilight Zone. Similar to that episode, his lenses get broken after stumbling, this time over a corpse in the dark. Out of the shadows appears a pair of slacks with shoes or feet wrapped in burlap. Perhaps this unexplained detail was to establish an abnormal individual. Let the speculations begin. He taunts Meredith with his commands, and the viewer is (literally) in the dark as to their connection or why Meredith is at this location. Leaving behind numerous fingerprints and a pair of broken spectacles, Meredith is arrested for the murder.

The manic-depressive, egocentric intellectual medical student wash-out, and Meredith's mystery man is Tone. A creepy sociopath responsible for the corpse, the wealthy aunt of the spineless Robert Hutton, who nervously paid to have it done. As a “favor” to tie up any loose ends, Tone also kills the aunt’s maid, hoping to pin both murders on the unsuspecting Meredith. Blackmailing Hutton for a chunk of the inheritance is also part of his scheme. In a subplot seemingly lifted from a separate movie, Hutton completes an infidelity trio with wife, Patricia Roc, and Jean Wallace. Roc is quite aware of her husband's affair with the latter, and the ladies exchange sarcastic barbs, like two sisters who do not get along. 

Mush-mouthed Laughton plays the pipe-smoking Jules Maigret, a fictional French police detective created by writer Georges Simenon. Laughton usually steals every scene with facial expressions and body language, sometimes humorously, as in the handwriting analysis scene regarding Tone’s notes. He does not believe in Meredith’s guilt, so he arranges his prison break to have him tailed. To Laughton’s ire, his men lose him after he jumps from a bridge into the river. I guess it never occurred to them to follow his slow swim along the river’s bank and wait for him to come ashore. Laughton methodically goes about his investigation while Tone taunts and mocks his progress. First in phone calls and messages, then in person, in the tower’s open-air restaurant. Dining together, we first witness Tone’s eccentricity with his diatribe against Laughton. The tower is his sanctuary and a metaphor for being above everyone else. He suggests to Laughton that, with his seeming lack of evidence, he will never be caught.

There are a few exciting moments in the film. The first has a young William Phipps chasing Tone on Parisian rooftops. The climactic tower scene also makes for good filmmaking, but suggesting Tone can climb preposterously fast in leather dress shoes on the angled grids of iron is beyond belief. The only thing more unbelievable is having the introverted, first-time tower climber, Meredith, rapidly chase him up the tower in retribution. The ending is not what you might expect after the killer ascends to the tower’s top platform. Laughton asks him to climb down. Yet knowing Tone’s self-imposed courage and importance, maybe just let him jump.