Linda Darnell x 3

I did a piece here last year on Linda Darnell (see label) - that '40s beauty who was neglected for a long time, but - like Gene Tierney - is now recognised as one of the quintessential actresses and beauties of the era. Here are 3 of her major movies:

NO WAY OUT, one of Joseph L Mankiewicz's two 20th Century Fox films in 1950 (the other was some little trifle called ALL ABOUT EVE) is still a stunning drama; no wonder it is never revived or seen on television these days, it is a tough racist drama which does not pull its punches with all that racist language spewed out by Richard Widmark as the petty, mean hood who thinks black hospital doctor Sidney Poitier (one of his first roles) was responsible for his brother's death and he means vengance. Stephen McNally is the dependable head of the hospital and Linda is the down-on-her-luck girlfriend of Widmark's nasty hood - that roominghouse room they reside in looks all too real. Tensions escalate as the local racists gather for a fight, a scene illuminated with a flare gun; and it still shocks to see Poitier with the spit on his face from a bigot - Widmark gets more deranged and self-pitying as he launches his final attack on Poitier and then realises just what a hateful unloved mess he is .... Linda is admirable as she comes to her senses and realises where her loyalties lie. It is a good downbeat role for her after those 40s glamour roles in the likes of FOREVER AMBER and Preminger's FALLEN ANGEL. Prior to this the only NO WAY OUT I knew was the 80s Kevin Costner flick.




How can I convey how much I love A LETTER TO THREE WIVES - it is surely one of the most perfect 40s American movies showing that 40s dreamworld of plush suburbia where the women all have roomy comfortable homes, drive big estate cars and have domestic help (Themla Ritter!) when entertaining. It is just as good if not better than ALL ABOUT EVE (which really has the same format being about 3 women: Margo, Karen and Eve all with about equal screen time; it is though a more wittily acidic curdled cocktail of a movie). Each wife here represents a different type of the upwardly mobile post-WWII woman. Jeanne Crain is a pretty, stay-at-home type of modest background, grateful and anxious to fit in with the country club set. Ann Sothern is the married career girl both proud and worried that she makes more than her schoolteacher husband (young Kirk Douglas), as she writes for the radio soaps. Linda is the unrepentant social climber from the wrong side of town who plays the cards she’s dealt with masterfully, but can’t get over the golddigger persona she feels saddled with, as she lands the rich Paul Douglas who feels he has bought her.



Mankiewicz delights in pricking and celebrating the pride and pretensions of each woman, succeeding especially with Sothern and Darnell as they worry (when away on a day trip) over which of their husbands has run off with the town socialite Addie Ross who has thoughtfully had a note delivered to them advising that she is leaving town with one of their men! It remains visually expressive though of course the story would not work now in the modern world where people are never out of contact without their telephone! The first story with Jeanne Crain is the slightest, then there is the dinner party from hell with Florence Bates as the radio executive with much verbal wit with that amusing wordplay on Sadie the maid (Thelma) being saturated and penetrated by the radio ads - Gracias!; and then the story of how Linda's Lora Mae from the shack by the railroad (wait till the trains pass by..) snares her department store boss Porter Hollingsway (Douglas), she too can be a girl in a silver frame on a piano. The poor sap does not stand a chance as Lora Mae ladders her nylons to emphasise her legs and retorts "what I got don't need beads" when implored by her mother Connie Gilchrist to put on a necklace.

It climaxes nicely on New Year's Eve when Porter calls to capitulate and Lora Mae bitterly realises she has won, they do not find out they love each other until that nice moment at the end with her "you big gorilla"! This enduring classic (there was a rubbish television remake but who remembers that...or even saw it) and HOUSE OF STRANGERS made 1949 a terrific year for Mankiewicz (right), winning Oscars for writing and directing here, as he did again in 1950 with ALL ABOUT EVE, and also directing NO WAY OUT - just like a decade later Billy Wilder scored with SOME LIKE IT HOT followed by THE APARTMENT where he won his awards - as he lost out to BEN HUR the previous year). Mank of course is one of Hollywood's great writer-director-producers and he also romanced quite a few leading ladies: Darnell, Lana, Judy and so many others... as well as producing Joan Crawford movies and stuff like WOMAN OF THE YEAR where he made that remark that Tracy would cut Hepburn down to size ... I still have his FIVE FINGERS and PEOPLE WILL TALK to watch, and I always like seeing CLEOPATRA, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, THE HONEYPOT, THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA (which Linda was set to play, but then Ava was the bigger star).

I had been looking forward to Preston Sturges' UNFAITHFULLY YOURS from 1948 - I like Prestons's other films a lot: SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, THE LADY EVE, THE PALM BEACH STORY are all classics, I even like those Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton comedies of his - so UNFAITHFULLY YOURS looked like it would be a treat. However I did not like it all, I found the humour laboured as famous conductor Rex Harrison suspects his lovely wife Daphne (Linda Darnell) of infidelity. While leading his orchestra in three different pieces, he elaborately daydreams various forms of revenge, each one accompanied by a classical music piece. First, in a complex and ingenious fantasy to Rossini's music, he murders Daphne and plots to frame and convict Anthony Windborn (Kurt Kreuger), his own suspected young private secretary, for the crime.
While performing the second number, by Wagner, he fantasizes about writing Daphne a large cheque, forgiving the young couple, and allowing his wife to run off with her young lover. And while conducting the third piece - a Tchaikovsky overture, he sees himself challenging Daphne and Tony to a fatal game of Russian roulette. While the plans work perfectly in his mind, he stumbles and bumbles his way through the preparations in real life in a very laboured scene. Finally, realizing how deliriously silly he's been, he embraces and kisses his loving wife, who's never been unfaithful, and has no idea that he has been plotting against her. Was this really funny in 1948? Did audiences lap it up? The scene where he fantasises about killing his wife with his razor just off camera is simply not amusing. Nice though to see that 40s high life, the furs and jewels for the women, the plush bathroom with the leather strap for sharpening an open razor ... but it is all very dated and just does not work now, even though Dudley Moore did a remake, which thankfully passed us by. Rex is as sharp as ever here but for me he did not come into his own until the '50s; Harrison though was the ideal actor for Mankiewicz, headlining 4 of his movies, including that waspish Caesar in CLEOPATRA.



Linda's great era was the 1940s of course - she still had some successes in the '50s, I like SATURDAY ISLAND or ISLAND OF DESIRE where she is on a desert island with young marine Tab Hunter (looking like a go-go dancer in his sawn off shorts), and as per review at Linda Darnell label, I love her 1954 melodrama THIS IS MY LOVE, also directed by Stuart Heisler [thanks to IMDb pals Melvelvit and Timshelboy for that one].
Linda would have been perfect as the diner owner in the Steinbeck THE WAYWARD BUS in 1957 but Fox gave it to their new import English Joan Collins! Linda alas died in a fire in 1965, aged only 41.
Linda and Mank's 40s films have that recognisable plush late '40s 20th Century Fox look, as does Negulesco's neat little '48 noir thriller ROADHOUSE where Widmark plays another deranged role opposite the very hard-boiled chanteuse Ida Lupino - more on that later, it cries out for a re-view.

"Hollywood Beauty" is a biography on Linda by Ronald L. Davis; the blurb reads: "In 1939, at the age of 15, Linda Darnell left her Texas home and ordinary world to live the Hollywood dream promised by fan magazines and studio publicity offices. She appeared in dozens of films and won international acclaim for BLOOD AND SAND, FOREVER AMBER, A LETTER TO 3 WIVES, and the original version of UNFAITHFULLY YOURS. Driven by her mother to become rich and famous but unable to cope with the real nature of Hollywood, Darnell soon was caught in a downward spiral of drinking, failed marriages, and exploitive relationships. By her early twenties she was an alcoholic, hardened by a life in which beautiful women were chattel. By the time of her death in a house fire aged 41, she was struggling for recognition in the industry that had once called her its "golden girl". Its one of Hollywood's sadder tales.

The '40s

A quick look at some choice '40s items .... left is the programme for a season of '40s films by the London National Film Theatre in 1971 - this would have been 21 years after the '40s finished, I was 25 then (being a 40s baby myself, born in Dec '45) so of course wouldn't have remembered the '40s then, but for older people in 1971 looking back at the '40s must be like us recalling the films of the '80s now ... [this NFT season is itself almost 40 years old now! - how quickly decades fly by...]

Looking at the programme it aims to capture the "flavour" of the '40s - what people went to see on a regular basis, as opposed to the classics which are all we see of the '40s today - so it has ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE KILLER and SUN VALLEY SERENADE along with THE PHILADELPHIA STORY and CASABLANCA, LASSIE COME HOME as well as THE MALTESE FALCON, it celebrates Sonja Henie, Ester Williams and Carmen Miranda as well as GILDA (no LAURA or MILDRED PIERCE though...) Bette is represented by NOW VOYAGER, Joan by HUMORESQUE, Stanwyck by BALL OF FIRE, there's LADY IN THE DARK, THE ROAD TO MOROCCO, SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, THE UNSUSPECTED, MRS MINIVER, MR BLANDINGS, ZIEGFIELD FOLLIES, THE YEARLING, GOING MY WAY, THE LOST WEEKEND, SINCE YOU WENT AWAY, FAREWELL MY LOVELY, WALTER MITTY, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, DUEL IN THE SUN, THE GANG'S ALL HERE and A LETTER TO THREE WIVES among the 40 chosen, so I suppose its quite representative. Here though are a few recent choice under-rated '40s items which were quite fun to see now:

ESCAPE. This 1940 melodrama seems quite unknown now - directed by Mervyn LeRoy it is one of Norma Shearer's last films and she is not really the lead here and in fact does not feature in the strong central section where Robert Taylor is trying to rescue his mother, a famous actress (played by the famous Nazimova) from a concentration camp where she is due to be executed. It must be one of the first hollywood anti-Nazi films to feature concentration camps. It gets very melodramatic as the mother has to be given a drug to make her seem dead and then the coffin has to be opened by the guards .... the Nazis are shown as a bit dim and the locals are all too terrified to help Taylor who arrives in Bavaria to look for his mother who has disappeared. Norma as the Countess initially offers to help but she too must protect herself, particuarly as her lover is German general Conrad Veidt (practically the same role he plays in CASABLANCA 2 years later) who soon suspects something is wrong. The ending seems rather rushed but its certainly engrossing now - who though is Ethel Vance whose novel it is based on is shown at the start as though it is a major work?

Other early '40s films showing the Nazi menace would include McCarey's oddity ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON in 1942 with Cary Grant having to rescue Ginger Rogers as the American married to general Walter Slezak; Lubitsch of course makes fun of the Nazis in the immortal TO BE OR NOT TO BE, MRS MINIVER shows the plucky Hollywood British, and my favourite: Borzage's THE MORTAL STORM with James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan resisting the Nazi menace in Austria in 1940. This is a real charmer and totally engrossing.

Then there is GOLDEN EARRINGS made after the war in '47 - is it a comedy, a romance or a thriller? perhaps a bit of each then as Ray Milland is on the run in Germany presumably before or during the war and has to depend on gypsy Marlene Dietrich to help him get around the country. Its actually quite amusing as directed by Mitchell Leisen and Marlene is droll in her gypsy makeup and not playing a heartless vamp for once. Bland Milland is dull - the stars did not get on - I read that Marlene sucked the eye out of a fish-head from her her stewpot during his first closeup to disconcert him. Again we get lots of comic Nazis and they do not seem to mind the gypsies roaming around or telling their fortunes - or maybe the gypsies were not being rounded up just then ! You have to laugh at the end: he comes back after the war and there is Marlene with her gypsy caravan as though he had left just a few minutes before...

One '40s routine actioner which I loved when I saw it as a Sunday matinee as a kid is the 1942 adventure yarn SON OF FURY - John Cromwell's terrific tale with Tyrone Power in 18th century England falling foul of scoundrel George Sanders and escaping to the South Seas, cue Gene Tierney at her most alluring but Ty has to return with his riches, Frances Farmer as Sanders' daughter is more interested in his pearls, Elsa Lanchester has a touching role, and there is a terrific final duel [Ty had his fatal heart attack duelling again with Sanders in 1958...]. Its all sheer delight and one of Power's best, up there with Flynn's THE SEA HAWK or pirate romps like THE BLACK SWAN or THE SPANISH MAIN.

FALLEN ANGEL - Otto Preminger's 1945 little noir was a treat recently, perfectly capturing that mid-40s Californian small town underworld of diners and rooming houses, as drifter Dana Andrews arrives at that seafront diner where young voluptuous Linda Darnell holds sway over the customers, who include a jealous Charles Bickford. Then there is Alice Faye - odd to see her in a downbeat non-musical black and white role which rather diminishes her - and her severe sister Ann Revere. Mix it all up, include a murder, sit back and enjoy.

ROADHOUSE. I was pleased to see this finally on dvd, its one noir I really liked when saw it as a revival when I was young. jean Negulesco's 1948 drama is engrossing, tense and exciting and is one of Ida Lupino's best. She is the very hard-boiled chanteuse who arrives at the roadhouse managed by Cornel Wilde whose best pal and boss Jefty (Richard Widmark at his baddest) has hired Ida to sing. Cornel doesn't play ball - Jefty has a habit of hiring dames and Cornel has to get rid of them, but Ida is sensational. A romance follows while Jefty is away, observed by cashier Celeste Holm who of course pines for Cornel. It all gets very tense as Jefty returns and goes predictably over the top and ends with them on the run from berserk Widmark. Its a pleasing late '40s Fox film which really delivers.

The '40s though for me also includes British films - the decade would be unthinkable without those Michael Powell, David Lean or Carol Reed classics, as well as those Gainsboroughs and Ealing comedies. More on those later .... plus De Sica and the Neo-Realists.