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Now the villain is more romantic than the hero — Dan Duryea's unusual contribution to Hollywood history
A tussle with Gale Storm in "Underworld Story," a United Artists release. An expert says Dan's masterful air is refreshing in era when men are often dominated by women.
By Alyce Canfieid
MOST of today's top stars started out as heavies. Clark Gable zoomed to popularity twenty years ago on the strength of his brutality to Norma Shearer in "A Free Soul." James Cagney, neither tall, dark nor handsome, started the females panting at the box-office when he shoved a grapefruit in his pretty co-star's face. Humphrey Bogart, as a mean, no-good gangster with a yen for dames, became No. 1 man at Warner Brothers. Yet, once they hit the consciousness of the jemme trade — as Hollywood Variety neatly phrases it — they started to backtrack. Their fans, it seemed, wanted them to turn into nice guys. So, one after another, Gable, Cagney, Bogart, Ladd, even Widmark, started playing nice guys on the screen, completely ignoring the fact that the thing that made them stars in the first place was their male ruthlessness and charm.
This will never happen to Dan Duryea. His fans are different. The meaner he is, the better they like it. Beginning with "Scarlet Street" and "Woman In The Window" and going on to "Johnny Stool Pigeon" and "One Way Street," Dan's fans have always reacted with one solid expression, "Give us more of the same!"
Studio mail clerks must occasionally blush at the frankness with which some of Dan's fans voice their admiration. From London, a shady lady wrote: "I
Under that cold, mean exterior is a warm guy — the women think. Dan has even introduced sex to the Western as he'll prove in Columbia's "Al Jennings Of Oklahoma."
(lleaii fls IJou Ore
Dan menaces Mervin Williams in "The Underworld Story." Fans won't let him reform. They adore his outright villainy. He definitely has that man-woman look in his eyes.