Harrison's Reports (1949)

58 HARRISON'S REPORTS April 9, 1949 "Flamingo Road" with Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott and Sydney Greenstreet (Warner Bros., April 30; time, 94 min.) This is a lurid melodramatic mixture of unrequited love and crooked political intrigue, forcefully directed and capably acted. It should go over pretty well with adult audiences, particularly women, for the trials and tribulations of the heroine will give them much to sigh about. As a worldly-wise woman who is relentlessly persecuted by a ruthless political boss when she tries to build a new life for herself in a small town, Joan Crawford is cast in the type of role she plays convincingly; one is touched by her suffering and sympathizes with her because of her courage. It is not a cheerful entertainment, but the story, though involved, is absorbing. The action is highly melodramatic and many of the situations hold one tense. Its depiction of political corruption in an unnamed Southern state is exaggerated, and for that reason the picture should not be exported to foreign countries lest it create a false impression of the American political system: — Joan, a dancer in a bankrupt traveling carnival, becomes fed up with her derelict existence and decides to settle down in a small town dominated by Sydney Greenstreet, the local sheriff and political bigwig. She is befriended by Zachary Scott, a deputy sheriff, who falls in love with her after helping her to obtain employment as a waitress. Greenstreet, who was grooming Scott for a state senatorship with the governorship as his ultimate goal, orders Scott to forget about Joan and to marry Virginia Huston, whose family background could help his political career. Scott reluctantly marries Virginia without delay, and Greenstreet, to make sure that Joan would keep out of Scott's way, frames her on a prostitution charge and sends her to prison. Meanwhile Scott is elected as Senator but degenerates into a rubber stamp for Greenstreet and seeks solace in heavy drinking. Upon her release, Joan determines not to be forced out of town by Greenstreet. She obtains employment in a disreputable roadhouse operated by Gladys George, where she meets David Brian, head of the state political machine, and marries him after a swift courtship. In the complex events that follow, Greenstreet discards Scott, decides to groom himself for the governorship, and frames Brian on a political corruption charge to win control of the state machine. These happenings bring to light the fact that Joan had been in love with Scott, causing Brian to leave her. Scott, despondent because Greenstreet had involved him in Brian's frame up, commits suicide in Joan's home. Greenstreet uses the incident to incite the townspeople against Joan and force her out of town. Unable to bear the persecution any longer, Joan visits Greenstreet and, at the point of a gun, orders him to telephone the Attorney-General and confess that he had framed Brian. A scuffle ensues, during which Greenstreet is killed when the gun is accidentally discharged. The story ends with a reconciliation between Joan and Brian, and with the indication that she will be cleared of the killing on a plea of self-defense. Jerry Wald produced it, and Michael Curtiz directed it, from a screen play by Robert Wilder, based on a play he wrote in collaboration with Sally Wilder. Adult fare. "Too Late for Tears" with Lizabeth Scott, Dan Duryea and Don DeFore (United Artists, July 8; time, 99 min.) An unpleasant mixture of murder and blackmail, revolving around a money-mad woman with a twisted mind. The theme, coupled with the suggestive lines and situations, make it strictly an adult picture, but there is little to recommend it as entertainment, for there is too much about it that is ugly. The atmosphere is sordid and the principal characters do not arouse sympathy, the heroine especially being one of the most vicious characters seen in pictures for a long time. The action is ruthless and there are moments of suspense, but the story is thin and never convincing. There is no comedy in it at all: — Driving along a lonely road, Lizabeth Scott and Arthur Kennedy, her husband, have a mysterious encounter with another car, whose occupants throw a leather bag containing a fortune in cash into the back seat of their car. Kennedy insists upon turning the money over to the police, but Lizabeth, determined to keep it, wheedles him into waiting for at least one week to think the matter over. Kennedy checks the bag at a railroad station and puts the claim check in his overcoat pocket. On the following day, Dan Duryea, a blackmailing crook, turns up at Lizabeth's apartment while Kennedy is absent and demands the money, claiming that it belonged to him. Lizabeth, fearing that her husband would eventually take the money to the police, makes a deal with Duryea. The deal leads her into killing her husband and, with Duryea's aid, sinking his body to the bottom of a lake, after removing his overcoat. She is shocked, however, to find that Kennedy had removed the claim check. While she carries on a frenzied search for the claim check, Lizabeth explains Kennedy's absence by making it appear as if he had run off with another woman. Kristine Miller, Kennedy's sister, doubts the story, and with the aid of Don DeFore, a stranger who claimed to be a wartime buddy of Kennedy's, starts an investigation. They locate the claim check, but Lizabeth takes it away from them at gunpoint. She obtains the money and, after killing Duryea with a dose of poison, escapes to Mexico City. She is traced to a swanky hotel by DeFore who, after tricking her into confessing that she had killed Kennedy and Duryea, reveals himself as the brother of her first husband, whom she had driven to suicide. DeFore planned to expose her to avenge his brother's death. Attempting to escape from DeFore, Lizabeth loses her balance and accidentally plunges to her death from her hotel room window. It was produced by Hunt Stromberg and directed by Byron Haskin from a story and screen play by Roy Huggins. Strictly adult fare. "Big Jack" with Wallace Beery, Marjorie Main and Richard Conte (MGM, April; time, 85 min.) A fair comedy-melodrama, revolving around the activities of an outlaw leader in the Maryland backwoods in the very early 1800's, and around the efforts of a young doctor to gain knowledge about surgery. With Wallace Beery as the outlaw, and Marjorie Main as his wife, the picture is full of the boisterous type of humor one expects from this comedy team. Dramatically, however, it is weak, and on the whole misses fire. As a matter of fact, it may offend sensitive picturegoers, first, because it has a touch of the macabre in that the young doctor resorts to stealing bodies from graves to carry on his experiments, and secondly, because it treats in a comedy vein the religious burial service of a town drunkard, who had once been buried as dead although only stupefied by drink: — About to be hung by a posse for the crime of graverobbing, Richard Conte, a doctor, is rescued by Wallace Beery's bandit gang, who take him to their secluded camp where Beery was dying from a bullet wound. Conte operates and saves Beery's life. He refuses payment and asks that he be permitted to leave so as to continue his medical study. Beery insists that he become his personal physician and makes him his prisoner. To relieve Conte's moodiness, Beery and Marjorie decide that he needs a "mate." Accordingly, the gang raids a town nearby, kidnap Vanessa Brown, daughter of the mayor (Edward Arnold), and bring her back to camp. Conte, alter assuring the girl, escapes with her back to town, where her grateful father persuades him to set up practice. Beery, determined to find Conte, surmises his whereabouts when he hears that bodies had been disappearing from the town's cemetery. He finds an added incentive to go to town when news arrives that the local bank had received a shipment of gold. Posing as a fashionable traveler, Beery visits the town and, through a series of clever maneuvers, robs the bank and captures Conte. The young doctor escapes, but Beery catches up with him and is about to shoot him dead when a posse arrives on the scene. Beery gets out of the hole by explaining that, with Conte's aid, he had thrown the "bank robber" over a cliff and had recovered the stolen money. Conte confirms the story lest Beery reveal his grave-robbing activities. Shortly thereafter, Vanessa's sister, expecting a baby, becomes very ill, and Conte decides that only an abdominal operation, never before attempted, can save her life. As he prepares to operate, the townspeople discover his grisly secret and a posse forms to lynch him. Beery, realizing the importance of the operation, rounds up his gang and holds off the posse while Conte saves the woman's life. Conte is acclaimed, but Beery, mortally wounded in the gunfight, dies happy in the thought that he had done at least one good deed. It was produced by Gootfried Reinhardt and directed by Richard Thorpe from a screen play by Gene Fowler, Marvin Borowsky and Osso Van Eyss, based on a story by Robert Thoeren. Unobjectionable morally.