1944/USA
Directed by William Castle
Screenplay by Dennis Cooper and Philip Yordan from a story by William K. Howard and George Moskov
Cinematography by Ira Morgan
Starring Dean Jagger, Kim Hunter, Robert Mitchum, Neil Hamilton
“I have seldom for years now seen one hour so energetically and sensibly used.” – James Agee
“It isn’t as slick as Double Indemnity or as glossy as Laura, but it’s better acted and better directed by William Castle than either.” – Orson Welles
To think, such high praise from such high people was heaped upon this Monogram cheapie even before it also could be classified as one of the first genuine examples of film noir at the outset of the classic period. And if that isn’t enough, this early B wonder offers the first Robert Mitchum performance in the noir genre, and a pretty fine one at that.
So why isn’t When Strangers Marry (aka Betrayed) mentioned in the same breath with DI and Laura anymore? Why isn’t it even mentioned in some "all-inclusive" books like The Rough Guide To Film Noir at all? Goodness, why has it never been available on video or DVD? Its festival screenings have been few and far between, even though it was the leadoff film at the Egyptian Theater’s second annual Festival of Film Noir way back in 2000. So it’s hardly lost, just too often forgotten or ignored.
The film deserves better, even if it may have been a tad overhyped by Welles. Agee is probably a bit more spot-on, because WSM is a lean-and-mean 67 minutes that demonstrate how effective and potentially great a budget film can still be if you have a dynamic script (by a young Philip Yordan), committed actors and a director who accepts the challenge of his limitations to produce something special.
When Strangers Marry was made in seven days on a budget of $50,000 by the future horror schlockmeister William Castle, a $100-a-week contract director at Columbia at the time he was loaned to Monogram and the notorious King brothers (who later would produce an acknowledged noir classic, Gun Crazy). But the company was intent on delivering something worthwhile, and in the process, may have done even more.
It’s hard to believe the images of Manhattan were essentially recreated on a handful of small, sparsely decorated sets, but Castle somehow pulled it off, to degree that he takes us on a tour of Harlem and an all-black urban juke joint, a real shocker in a film from 1944.
The story: A young waitress from a small town in Ohio (played by 22-year-old Kim Hunter) has married a middle-aged traveling salesman (played by a 37-year-old Dean Jagger looking more like 47) after just a few meetings. She agrees to rendezvous with him on one of his sales trips in New York City, where they’ll enjoy a first-class honeymoon.
When she gets to NYC, however, her new hubby mysteriously hasn’t arrived at the hotel from his previous stop in Philadelphia. Instead, the young girl happens upon an old boyfriend who is also a salesman – played by a 27-year-old Mitchum – who comforts her big-city angst and also tries to assist her in finding her husband. But when word comes of a strangulation and robbery at the Philadelphia hotel where her husband was working. all signs point to Hunter’s new hubby as the killer/thief.
Hunter's character Millie Baxter (now there's a Middle America moniker) doesn’t buy it at first, even when Jagger's character Paul Baxter finally arrives covertly under an alias and tells her to meet him in a slum-area apartment on the Bleeker Street. The couple gets along swell at first and they tour the city as planned, albeit with the unscheduled detour into Harlem. But as Jagger’s behavior becomes more cryptic, she starts to suspect him of the crimes.
Mitchum massages her suspicions to the point where she’s near hysteria, but then comes a surprise twist in the suspenseful climax. As a cherry to the unlikelihood of such a strong film, a gorgeous young Rhonda Fleming turns up in a cameo that serves as the closing denouement.
Somehow, it all worked, and despite its short running time, When Strangers Marry never feels terribly rushed or sloppy. One wonders if it had been a longer movie on a bigger budget whether it could have been nearly as effective. Doubtful. It was simply was one of those rare convergences of unproven talent that delivered the first noteworthy B film of the classic noir era, even if they didn’t know it at the time.
In fact, one scene in particular almost acts as the preface to Noir 101 – Hunter as the young, virginal Middle America girl in her first trip to the cold, foreboding, predatory city. She’s all alone in an oversized, impersonal hotel room, with a large neon sign across the street blaring its blinking lights into the room and a shrill, loud jazz band tooting a jitterbug riff at a nearby nightclub. Without dialogue, it’s a pure two-minute expression of the noir idiom: the comfort, safety, and naivete of a small-town existence gives way to the dangerous, invasive, sinful and frightening clamor of the urban jungle. Finally, as she's near the point of hysteria, a phone rings that nearly shakes her out of her shoes.
Brilliant, brilliant stuff. Hunter undergoes an emotional transformation during the scene, almost as if she’s been violated. Without question, she has been subliminally raped of her innocence. In the bigger scheme of things, the scene almost serves as a gateway clip of to what was to come in the film noir world over the next 15 years. If nothing else, that one scene is what makes WSM essential to the noir canon.
Of course, it is much more than that, and as a bonus, we have Mitchum’s breakout performance to boot. Some critiques I’ve read of WSM paint him as stiff and amateurish in his role as the spurned boyfriend Fred Graham (how's that for a Middle America name?). I would go the other way. While there are a few rough edges, you also see every side of Mitchum that would soon make him an icon. The suave, stolid persona. The dreamy walk. The heavy-lidded indifference. And in the end, of course, we even get a prelude to the Night Of The Hunter/Cape Fear Mitch. He also gets a couple of helpful props in the film. He has a Boston terrier companion who travels with him, and he also smokes a pipe, which give him the initial aire of a trusting, responsible and caring soul.
I love this Mitchum performance because some of his detail work regarding simple mannerisms is already impeccable. Watch the scene of him alone at a breakfast table, smoking a cigarette and paying the check. Tough to explain, but nobody but Mitch can make it look like such a cool thing. He already had that especial cinematic presence, even if he didn’t completely realize it (the Kings did, and tried desperately to sign Mitchum to a long-term contract during filming ... without success).
The rest of the cast works well here, too. Jagger is solid (if a bit unbelievable that he possibly could steal away Hunter from a young, hunky Mitchum) as the husband looking old enough to be Hunter’s father. At first Jagger seems so mysterious and menacing, and in the end he’s such a lamb. Two character actors also help give this film a very big lift. Portly Dick Elliott, who probably played more mayors than anybody in film history, plays the boorish drunk businessman to the hilt, flashing his money in the bar and essentially begging someone to rob him in the opening scene. The other is Lou Lubin, the jockey-sized man with the sad, bony cheeks who most often portrays hoods, bums or newspaper jockeys. He’s the bartender here who incriminates Jagger’s character as the most likely murderer, and he has one very effective scene with Hunter at a police station. The police inspector might look familiar, too: he's Neil Hamilton, who played Commissioner Gordon in the Batman TV series.
The scene with Hunter and Jagger hiding inside the black jazz club to escape the threat of the law is another interlude of wonder, an accurate portrayal of how blacks and whites lived in two distinctly separate worlds, and rarely tread on each others turfs. There is something of a racist moment during the scene when sirens go off and all of the black people look up with bug-eyed guilty looks on their faces. But all returns to normal when its discovered it’s just the black boxing champion (obviously a faux Joe Louis) arriving by motorcade at the club after defending his title uptown. The scene closes with an intriguing dialogue between two black motorcycle cops as they discuss a bet on the fight, another rare instance from that time period when an African American is shown holding a dignified job and wasn’t portrayed as a maid, butler, shoeshine boy or janitor. In short, it may be another reason to admire this film.
It’s probably a bit of a shame that When Strangers Marry was adopted as the predominant title for this work as opposed to its alternate title, Betrayed. The former doesn’t really hint to much as powerful film noir, the latter pretty much stamps it. Sadly, legal issues over the Monogram holdings have been cited as a reason WSM doesn’t show up on TV too often and hasn’t received the DVD treatment it merits. But it is work tracking down if you haven't seen it. It is a certified B classic that lives up to the early high notices it receives from Agee and Welles, as well as Manny Farber. It even takes it a step beyond--in retrospect, it is essential to understanding the development of film noir in the first half of the 1940s.
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