Happy New Year!

My deepest thanks for the pleasure of your company in 2023, and best wishes to all for a pleasant and peaceful 2024!

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

 A very Merry Christmas for those who celebrate!

Recently, I was interviewed by Gregory Wakeman for the BBC website on The Shop Around the Corner (1940)  which we previously discussed here.  Have a look at the article at this link.

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Get your copy of CHRISTMAS IN CLASSIC FILMS here at Amazon in print or eBook...

...and here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a variety of other online stores.

  ************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Christmas Eve - 1947

 

Christmas Eve (1947) coasts on its title and its setting on Christmas Eve to enter the hallowed sphere of yuletide movies, but it’s not very Christmas-y.  The sentiment, what little there is of it, seems forced and we have to even wonder what the point is. 

Ann Harding, fresh off her great role in It Happened on 5^th Avenue (1947) has a very different role here as a much older, frail, wealthy dowager who is lonely and a bit eccentric.  Her nephew, played by Reginald Denny, wants control of her finances.  The judge will decide her competence, and perhaps even her moral value, on the contest if her three adopted sons will return home to visit her on Christmas Eve.  We need to accept a lot of plot points on face value if we are to enjoy a movie, especially a Christmas movie, but this seems to stretch things not only beyond belief but beyond our ability to perhaps even enjoy the film. 

She is most proud of the fact that her three adoptive sons left home years ago to make their own way in the world and not sponge off her, like Reginald Denny.  Will they come home if she bids them?  She has had no contact with them for years.  That is the suspense of the story, but we are taken down avenues of the men’s current adventures that may make us doubt not only that they will make it home, but that they are even worth seeing.

George Brent plays her son Michael, who is a playboy, bankrupt, and not above writing bad checks, and trying to marry heiresses on the strength of their family fortune.  Regular gal Joan Blondell attaches herself to him like a barnacle and intends to drag him to the altar whether he likes it or not.  She’s probably the only thing that can save him from himself.

George Raft plays her son Mario, who is a gangster, but we see he has his good points too, taking the rap years ago for a crime Reginald Denny committed, just for the old lady’s sake.  His side story is the most interesting, an action-packed episode of fisticuffs with Nazis on a yacht off South America. It’s a risk for him to enter the U.S. with the feds after him, but anything for Mom.

Randolph Scott plays her son Jonathan, a rodeo cowboy who drinks quite a bit, and isn’t the sharpest blade in the drawer, but he proves to be a good guy, too, when he adopts (or runs off with) three baby girls and with luck, manages to entangle himself romantically with the lady officer incognito who is trying to break up a black-market baby adoption ring.  His rash action makes Ann Harding an instant grandma, and she couldn’t be happier.

By the end of the film, the boys have made it back to Ann Harding’s mansion, and the judge lets her keep control of her finances, and Reginald Denny is in trouble.  John Litel’s along as an FBI agent here to escort George Raft to prison, but he’s a good egg and they all have Christmas Eve dinner first. 

They bow their heads to say grace, and then the fade-out.  It’s a Christmas movie in spite it itself, but leaves us wondering, “What the heck was that?”  You can believe in Santa Claus, but it’s harder to believe this.

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Get your copy of CHRISTMAS IN CLASSIC FILMS here at Amazon in print or eBook...

...and here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a variety of other online stores.

  ************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

"That's What I Want for Christmas"

Stowaway (1936), which is not a Christmas movie, ends the movie with a Christmas scene in which Shirley Temple sings about what she wants for Christmas.

It’s used to tie up the movie, to show the happily ever after of her new family. In this adventure, Shirley is the orphaned daughter of missionaries in China. Cute as a bug, she’s raised speaking Chinese and learning Confucius-type pearls of wisdom from Philip Ahn. She’s on her own after the person who is assigned to take her to safety away from country bandits does not do his job. She wanders into Robert Young, a rich American playboy, and accidently stows away on the very ship he is taking around the South Seas. Also on board is Alice Faye, who chides Mr. Young on both his wealth and his irresponsibility (she is traveling with her dour future mother-in-law played by Helen Westley to reunite with her drip of a fiancé on a colonial plantation), but Alice eventually warms to Robert as they both find themselves shipboard babysitters to Shirley. Young’s valet, the ever-proper Arthur Treacher, helps.

Young wants to adopt Shirley, and he and Alice Faye create a fake marriage so that he can do so, which then after a few twists and turns in the plot, and a few songs, the judge in Reno at their divorce decides they should stay together. 

In the final scene, everybody’s sitting around the Christmas tree in their jammies and bathrobes and Shirley, the little girl everybody wants for a daughter in the 1930s, sings “That’s What I Want for Christmas.”  The lyrics include shoes for poor children everywhere, and soldiers who never fight, and making her new mommy and daddy happy, safe, and strong. What a swell kid!

Christmas is a convenient sort of ready-made finale for this movie. It’s the shorthand for happily ever after.

But I keep worrying about Philip Ahn not knowing where she is. 

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Get your copy of CHRISTMAS IN CLASSIC FILMS here at Amazon in print or eBook...

...and here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a variety of other online stores.

  ************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Strictly Personal - 1945

Today, we mark Pearl Harbor Day, the 82nd anniversary of the catastrophe that brought the United States into the worldwide fight against fascism.  It's a shame it often seems to take a catastrophe to take a stand against the evils of fascism, but to our credit, once we get going, we can do a good job of it.

Hollywood, as we've noted many times on this blog, helped enormously to get out the message on the evils of fascism and did much to support the Allied war effort.  This previous post on FMPU - the First Motion Picture Unit of the U.S. Army discussed the production of war information and training films, and this previous post on Resisting Enemy Interrogation (1944) highlighted one of those films, featuring many actors early in their careers who have since become well known to us.

Sara Haden, quite familiar to us old movie buffs and certainly familiar to movie audiences in her day, starred in another training film, this one meant for the Women's Army Corps (WAC).  Strictly Personal (1945), about 35 minutes long, is an interesting film for its frank and rather easygoing discussion of health and hygiene.  In similar films meant for male recruits, the message of health and hygiene was sometimes delivered with humor and cartoons, as if the subject was too uncomfortable for the boys to receive it in any other way.  Films discussing sex and venereal disease were perhaps delivered with more seriousness and certainly, more warning.  

Strictly Personal seems to take for granted its audience would be interested in the subject, and perhaps they were; it contains actually sound advice even for today on nutrition, exercise, musculature, sleep, health and dental concerns, as well as instruction in the use of cosmetics and hair care within the restrictions of military regulations.  Discussion of constipation and menstruation is particularly refreshing for the no-nonsense and friendly advice.  We may imagine that some young women back in the day got scant scientific information on these subjects at home.  The subject of menopause is also introduced, with the reassuring promise that it would not mean the end of enjoyment of sex.  No warnings about venereal disease, though.   At the time, the WAC was open to women volunteers between 21 and 45 years of age.  As the narrator tells us, the women can aspire to be "in perfect shape -- that's what it takes for the man-sized job you've picked for yourselves when you volunteered."

Sara Haden, with her mid-Atlantic stage diction, presents these topics breezily and banishes the very idea that her audience should be at all embarrassed.  The daughter of actress Charlotte Walker, Miss Haden began on stage in the 1920s and made her film debut in 1934.  We know her from many films where she portrayed spinster-type supporting roles, usually somebody's aunt -- most famously, Andy Hardy's Aunt Milly.  It's interesting to think that her contribution to the war effort was probably the most screen time she got in her long career.  However, like many from Hollywood who appeared in these military training films, she was uncredited.

You can watch Strictly Personal shared from YouTube below:

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Auntie Mame - 1958

Auntie Mame (1958) presents one of the most concise and yet comprehensive illustrations of Christmas in yuletide filmdom. It is only one episode in the smorgasbord of events in the life of larger-than-life Mame Dennis (catch the “life is a banquet” reference), but it contains more Christmas bang for your buck than a lot of “Christmas movies.”

Rosalind Russell, lovingly and superbly over the top as Mame, has lost her fortune in the infamous October 1929 Wall Street Crash. In the Great Depression, she must work for a living and after losing a string of jobs in the funniest way possible, she finds herself struggling through her latest employment, working the toy counter in a New York City department store. 

This one, as in Miracle on 34^th Street (1947), covered here, is in the champion of them all, Macy’s. Roz has trouble filling out her sales slip book for cash transactions, so she encourages her customers to purchase toys C.O.D. The floorwalker morphs from mere steam coming out of his ears to ulcers.

Lucky for Roz, a good-hearted Southern Gentleman millionaire stops in to buy several pairs of roller skates for an orphanage back home. She messes up the sale and gets fired. Hilariously, in a spirit of Christmas revenge, she urges the millionaire, played by Forrest Tucker, to shop at Macy’s competitor, Gimbel’s, instead. 

She walks outside into the dark night of wintry, snowy streets with festively decorated store windows, and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” wafting through the air from some unseen choir, and the sound of bell ringing from the street corner Salvation Army volunteer. Roz is poor, but still a good egg, and she drops her last coin into the bucket.

When she arrives back at her apartment, her little nephew, Patrick, played by Jan Handzlik, is home from boarding school and is excitedly decorating the living room. It is a week away from Christmas. There is a table-top tree. He wants to celebrate Christmas now because he’s so excited to give her a present. It’s a costume bracelet, which she treats like diamonds. Taking courage, she calls in the housekeeper Nora, played by our wonderful Connie Gilchrist, and the houseman Ito, played by Yuki Shimoda.

Roz gives Patrick and the staff their presents because they need Christmas now. Christmas is restorative, and a rope to cling to of hope. The staff’s present to her is to have paid off the butcher and grocery bills.

They dance around, sing “Deck the Halls” along with the radio, until Roz, overcome by the joy, the fear, the shame of not paying her bills or her staff, collapses into tears. All the colors of Christmas swirled into the image.

Then, a Christmas miracle. Forrest Tucker has tracked her down, apologizes for her losing her job, and comes to take them all out to dinner. There is joy and celebration again. Of course, those familiar with the story will know he becomes her dearly beloved husband.

The stories her nephew wrote about Mame Dennis were published in a book in 1955, and the Broadway play came in 1956. Roz, little Jan Handzlik, Mr. Shimoda, and also Peggy Cass were all in the stage play (Roz was nominated for a Tony), and this lush and offbeat movie that resurrected Roz’s career came in 1958. She was nominated for an Oscar.

This Christmas scene also left another legacy. In 1966, the stage musical version Mame, starring Angela Lansbury, gave us a popular Christmas song to add to our repertoire, “We Need a Little Christmas”…right this very minute.

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Get your copy of CHRISTMAS IN CLASSIC FILMS here at Amazon in print or eBook...

...and here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a variety of other online stores.

  ************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Our Vines Have Tender Grapes - 1945

Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945) brings scenes of Christmas simplicity on the prairie as Edward G. Robinson and Agnes Moorehead raise Margaret O’Brien with kindly, homespun gentleness.

Told mostly through episodes of Margaret O’Brien’s adventures on the farm, slight as they are, the movie shows us a life where minor, everyday occurrences have a dreamlike, magical quality to them, but Christmas, a time which for many of us stands out on the calendar as an extraordinary opportunity to overindulge in eating, drinking, spending, and desperate measures of wish fulfillment, conversely, becomes quite lovely for its very ordinary and mundane pleasures.

Here, we have young Margaret at church, intoning the story of The Nativity with breathy narration and childlike authority. She stands before the altar, and if she does not exactly have a halo, she is backed by the icon image of Christ, who certainly does. She says that Mary discovers a light shining around the head of the Baby, and that Joseph points out that Mary has one, too. She describes the sensations of the Miracle in the pastoral setting by the shepherds; she is growing up on a farm, so she knows all about sheep and stables. She finishes almost abruptly with, “and the Baby cried.”  It is almost a sense of foreboding as much as wonder. She is a child who, when she confesses at the beginning of the movie that she wants to be a WAC, cannot remember a time of peace before World War II.

The other scene, even more appealing, I think, if certainly less ethereal, is the Christmas morning opening of the presents, where Miss Moorehead and Mr. Robinson seem quite relaxed and comfortable on hard wooden chairs before the tree, and Margaret, on the floor, hands out the gifts. There are precisely three, one for each of them. Papa gets a new jackknife, Ma gets a lovely decorative oil lamp, and the little girl gets a new dress. All are very pleased and gushing as if they’d been opening expensive presents for hours.

They are happier than if they had been. I love the look of anticipation on Agnes Moorehead’s face as she watches her child open her present. She fidgets a little, shifts position, and it is natural and as un-staged-looking as you can get. Robinson, who, despite his gangster past in other films, bears a mild, pleasant, always half-amused look behind his voluminous mustache. He is a father who, if he cannot be benevolent in material gifts, most certainly makes up for it with a benevolence of attention on his daughter.

We should all be so happy, and grateful, at Christmas.

And may I wish all Americans a very Happy Thanksgiving!  The Christmas season may start with tomorrow's frantic sales, but for today, let us all bask in the peace of family, friends, and a second piece of pie.

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Get your copy of CHRISTMAS IN CLASSIC FILMS here at Amazon in print or eBook...

...and here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a variety of other online stores.

  ************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Zoom talk TOMORROW -- CHRISTMAS IN CLASSIC FILMS!

This is to remind you of the Zoom talk TOMORROW, Monday, November 20th, at 10:00 a.m. on my book Christmas in Classic Films.  

The talk is being hosted online by Sal St. George and St. George Living History Productions.  Mr. St. George is an Adjunct Professor and Lecturer presenting programs across the U.S.A. specializing in Old Hollywood, Motion Picture & Television history.  

Looking forward to meeting you on Zoom!  

Here's the login info below:

Time: November 20, 2023, 10:00 A.M. Eastern Time (U.S. and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
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  ************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Christmas in Classic Films - movie yuletide celebrations, large and small...

 

For the next several weeks, I'm going to share chapters from my book, Christmas in Classic Films.  They have never before appeared on this blog, and I hope you enjoy them.

Christmas turns everyone who celebrates it into a classic film fan—at least for that special season.

The average person, unlike devoted classic film fans, may not recognize images of Clark Gable or know who James Wong Howe was, or be able to tell you why 1939 was such a spectacular year for films.  But when yuletide rolls around, they rejoice with Miracle on 34^th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, and of course, White Christmas.

We find a vast treasure of Christmas scenes in films that were never meant to be “Christmas movies” but which are now part of the holiday canon, and this collection of essays spotlighting Christmas in classic films brings you all the warmth and memories that have become as dear a custom as decorating your home and holiday baking.  You may even have one of these movies on in the background when you’re writing out your Christmas cards.

Unwrap this package and relive the moments and discover Christmas nostalgia anew, from Cary Grant’s mysterious angel in The Bishop’s Wife to poor Ralphie pining for a Red Ryder BB-gun in A Christmas Story. 

There’s lots more here waiting for you under the tree.

************

Don't forget to attend the Zoom presentation this coming Monday, November 20th at 10:00 a.m.  Here's the link:

Time: November 20, 2023, 10:00 A.M. Eastern Time (U.S. and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82238652855?pwd=dWV4OGdERWIzQy9KKzROY0wvSWRiZz09


Meeting ID: 822 3865 2855
Passcode: 731986

One tap mobile
+19294362866,,82238652855#,,,,*731986# US (New York)
+16469313860,,82238652855#,,,,*731986# US

Dial by your location
• +1 929 436 2866 US (New York)
• +1 646 931 3860 US
• +1 305 224 1968 US
• +1 309 205 3325 US
• +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
• +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
• +1 386 347 5053 US
• +1 507 473 4847 US
• +1 564 217 2000 US
• +1 669 444 9171 US
• +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
• +1 689 278 1000 US
• +1 719 359 4580 US
• +1 253 205 0468 US
• +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
• +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
• +1 360 209 5623 US


Meeting ID: 822 3865 2855
Passcode: 731986

Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/khK5PZZgT 

************

Get your copy of CHRISTMAS IN CLASSIC FILMS here at Amazon in print or eBook...

...and here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, a variety of other online stores.

  ************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Criss Cross - 1949

Criss Cross (1949) is a romantic triangle told noir style involving three poor souls who can’t help being themselves.  There’s a heist in there, too. 

This is my entry into the Classic Movie Blog Association fall blogathon:  “Blogathon & the Beast” featuring characters battling, or losing the battle, with their primal inclinations.  In my house, we’ve always called that being your own worst enemy.  But there are enemies aplenty in this yarn, to be sure.

Burt Lancaster and Yvonne De Carlo are in their prime here as both stunningly photogenic and emblematic of the scowling hopelessness of fate in film noir.  Dan Duryea, a favorite sniveling baddie, is the third point in the triangle.  Love and betrayal go together like a horse and carriage.  Or something like that.

The story is set in Los Angeles (where else?) with an aerial shot over the credits of a misty twilight, as we move toward the Bunker Hill section of town that is no more.  Like director Robert Siodmak’s camera shots, the streets are always at a treacherous angle.  We get lots of location views, including Union Station, and the famous Angel’s Flight funicular, which we covered previously here in The Turning Point (1952) and in this essay specifically on the Angel’s Flight in movies.

Burt provides occasional narration, and the plot is revealed drip by drip, so we are always left off balance and wondering.  He is returning home to L.A. after a year of travel about the States, working here and there, coming back to his mother’s house to renew acquaintance with his younger brother, played by Richard Long; his boyhood pal police detective Stephen McNally; and the bar and nightclub where he used to hang out before he went into a self-imposed exile.

The reason for his exile and the reason for his return appear to be the same:  Yvonne De Carlo.

The movie starts with great energy by plunking us down in the middle of a crisis.  Miss De Carlo and Mr. Lancaster, clutching each other between parked cars in the parking lot of the night club, seem to infer that there’s a plan about to the hatched, and she wishes it were all over.  He tells her to wait in a secluded cottage by the beach many miles away, and they must not be seen together.

“It’ll be you and me, the way it should have been from the start.”

Inside, gangster Dan Duryea, smarmy even in an immaculate white dinner jacket, is curt and suspicious when Yvonne enters, badgering her with questions.  Aha!  She’s his wife and she’s messing around with Burt!

Burt’s old pal Stephen McNally sticks his nose in and warns Burt off her and they argue.  He wants to prevent a fight between Burt and Duryea, but he can’t.  They fight, and when he attempts to arrest Duryea for having a knife, both men act like nothing’s wrong.  They don’t want the cops involved.  They both go out in the alley at a dirty old iron set tub to wash.  They don’t have a men’s room?

Here, Duryea, his gang, and Burt have a splintered discussion that clues us in to their mysterious behavior.  The fight is fake.  They are setting up the cops.  But how, and why?

We next see Burt at his job, an armored car driver chatting with his work pals, including old man “Pop” who is his partner and rides in the back of his truck with the money.  They are headed out on a highway, and we see over Burt’s shoulder in the back of the truck is a rifle.  Director Siodmak is meticulous in dropping foreshadowing hints.

But as Burt drives and his mind wanders, we finally get the required noir flashback to tell us the whole story.

Burt has returned to sunny L.A. after a year spent trying to his get ex-wife out of his system.  Yvonne De Carlo.  He swears he’s over her, but we see he’s not.  His worried mother, who never liked Yvonne, sees he’s not.  His interfering pal, Stephen McNally, sees he’s not.  Most especially, a delighted Yvonne De Carlo sees he’s not.

He goes to old haunts trying to accidently run into her on purpose, and finally encounters her at the nightclub dancing a vigorous rumba with Tony Curtis is his first film role.

After a verbal and psychological tug of war between them, Burt wants to get together again, is eager for it, but she disappears and afterward he finds out she has married Dan Duryea.

But why?  Especially when after several months he stalks her again and she haughtily barks at him, but eventually breaks down and says she had no choice.  Stephen McNally threatened to run her in and send her to prison on trumped-up charges if she didn’t stay clear of Burt.  So she married Duryea, who treats her badly.  One look at the bruises on her back, and Burt is steadfastly her hero again, ready to fight the world to protect her and defy family and friends, heaven and earth, to keep her to himself, where he will make her safe and happy.  She is a tragic figure.  So is Burt, by virtue of his big, stubborn heart.

The movie is full of favorite character actors in bit roles, including Percy Helton as the bartender, Griff Barnett as Pop, John Doucette as one of Duryea’s mob.  We have to feel at least a little sorry for Joan Miller for being known in the script and on the credits only as “Lush,” though she does get a few good scenes on her barstool.

The dynamics shift again when Duryea and his gang surprise Burt and Yvonne at Burt’s mother’s house, and we think for a moment Burt is going to be fitted for cement shoes, but Burt surprises everyone with a hastily thought-up excuse to not only diffuse the situation, but to also hatch a plan for his intended escape with Yvonne.

He tries to interest Duryea in a heist of the armored car he drives.  Burt will be the inside man in the crime.  Duryea bites, and they proceed to have a meeting in an empty apartment right next to the Angel’s Flight funicular with an expert to help them plan the heist:  dapper Alan Napier, who we can see without much explanation, is an intellectual loner, with his books, his chessboard, his educated speech and demeanor, and his weakness for alcohol.  Everyone here has a weakness.

He plots out the scheme with mathematical precision, while the gang hovers about drinking beer, and Yvonne De Carlo watches morosely, tensely, clearly fearful of the consequences and not being able to get away with Burt. 

The ploy involves driving the armored truck at a specific time and location, passing by an ice cream truck to be used to take the loot away, a couple of plants at a manhole who will discharge smoke bombs at the right moment, plenty of firepower, and some gas masks.  Burt’s only requirement is that Pop not get hurt, and they all agree.

It’s a nice bit where the gang member who poses as the ice cream truck man pulls a kid away from the traffic about to be hit by the armored car at the last minute. 

But things go wrong, and Pop is killed, and Burt tries to save what’s left by firing his gun on the baddies.  He is shot, too, and he wakes in the hospital, told he is a hero because he saved half the payroll.

Only his pal, cop Stephen McNally suspects Burt was in on it.  He warns him that Duryea will be after him.  Burt tells him to shove off, but spends an anxious night worried that any sound in the hospital corridor will mean one of Duryea’s boys has come to get him.

There’s a nice duality between two scenes with dressers:  Earlier in the apartment when the gang is planning the heist and a few of them sit playing cards around a dresser for a table.  The dresser has supports for a mirror, but the mirror is missing.  Later in his hospital room, Burt is riveted on the dresser with a tilted mirror, trying to see the man sitting in the chair in the hall.

A terrific suspenseful scene with Robert Osterloh, who plays a man visiting his wife in the hospital—who turns out not to be quite that, and we find ourselves with Burt and Yvonne reunited at the secret hideaway, because Burt bribed Osterloh to get him there.

Now that Burt’s got everything he wants—Yvonne and half the money from the heist—he thinks his troubles are over and he’s outsmarted everyone.  “I just wanted to hold you in my arms, to take care of you.”

Yvonne, who was never stupid, blows up at him.  Osterloh, she says, will run right back to Duryea and tell them where they are.  How could he be so stupid?  She packs her things, and the money, and briskly and in no uncertain terms, without an ounce of guilt, tells him she has to look after herself.  Everyone does.  It’s just how people are.  She’s going to leave him there, helpless and injured, and broke.

Poor Burt is gobsmacked.  For such a clever, quick-thinking guy, he never thought of this.  He never thought she was really as mercenary as everyone said. 

Duryea shows up, just like Yvonne knew he would, and plugs them both, and Burt’s last sensation is of holding her in his arms when she claws at him for protection.

Then with satisfaction, Duryea turns away, and then a look of horror as we hear approaching sirens.  Osterloh has sold him out, too.  With all the bribes he’s taken just this night, he’s got to be filthy rich.

Criss cross.  Every betrayal merits a double-cross.  In the film noir world, it’s just the way things are.  Yvonne De Carlo knows it.  Burt can’t help being who he is, even after hard lessons.  Duryea and his boys know no other life.  All of them fight the beast within. 

Except maybe Pop.  He’s a nice old fella.

For more great blog entries in CMBA’s “Blogathon & the Beast” have a look here.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.