Walk Softly, Stranger - 1950

“Walk Softly, Stranger” (1950) re-teams Joseph Cotten and Valli from “The Third Man” (1949) in a film that is not quite Noir and not quite romance, but which is carried by the dependable understated and nuanced playing of both leads.

Drifter Cotten wanders into an anywhere-in-America factory town and for a minute we might wonder if this is going to be a Van Heflin in “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” (1946) sort of adventure. Not quite. We don’t have the snap and sizzle of the true Noir of “Ivers”, but what we do have is a male lead more intriguingly ambiguous. We know Van Heflin is a sharp character right off the bat. But we don’t really know what Joseph Cotten is. Jack Paar, incidentally, has a small role as a co-worker.

Cotten picks out Spring Byington’s house seemingly according to some plan, and tells her a tale of it’s being his boyhood home. A lonely widow whose only son was killed in The War, she trustingly rents him a room in her house. Soon his comfortable teasing of her evolves into a warm almost mother-son relationship, but the thought that she might not be safe with him still lingers.

He accosts the elegant Valli, the daughter of the town’s wealthy manufacturer on the terrace of a country club party with the self-assuredness again of somebody following a carefully plotted plan. He spins a story of having a crush on her when she was a girl and he was the paperboy. We see he has designs on her, but the glimmer of surprise in his expression when he notices she is in a wheelchair makes us wonder if his plans are changing, or merely gelling.


Mr. Cotten is a gambler and a thief, hiding out from the mob. When his weasel pal played to a self-interested, nervous crescendo by the sinister Paul Stewart shows up with the even badder guys on his tail, the jig is up.

There are some pensive scenes with the lovely Valli as a depressed and bitter invalid after a wild debutante life of cocktails and skiing accidents, and how she becomes drawn to Cotten’s ingratiating bravado about the wheelchair. They fall in love, though we are more certain of her attachment than his, so steady is his reserved guise as a man with many angles, many hands to play, and more than one name.

The ending is improbable, but inevitable. You can’t leave a girl in a wheelchair, already sadder but wiser, alone without a date on New Year’s Eve. So, when the cuffs are on him at last, she declares will wait for him. It’s hard to say whether this cozy moment is better or worse than her just coldly walking past him into the distance and the end credits like she did in “The Third Man.” There was something awfully right about that, in an agonizing sort of way. But then, “The Third Man” really was Noir, and “Walk Softly, Stranger” is gray, groping in the dark.

The Theme From the Movie

In the 1950s, when the movie musical blossomed into its golden age, another phenomenon occurred in tandem that had to do with movie music. This was The Theme from an otherwise non-musical movie that was played all through the film, flicking us like a wet towel snapped at the back of our legs. Then it morphed into a popular song, made the Hit Parade, and took on a life of its own.

Think of “Love is a Many-Splendored Thing” (1955) and “Picnic” (1955) and we think of the song from the movie that takes us by the hand and gently leads us into romantic undercurrents. Sometimes it grabs us by the neck and throttles us into paying attention, sternly reminding us that This Is the Pivotal Moment. Both songs leapt off the screen and dashed down the street to the recording studio. Here are The Four Aces taking a crack at “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing” and the McGuire Sisters having a go at “The Theme from Picnic.”

The Four Aces made a career covering movie theme songs, and here they are with “Three Coins in a Fountain.” That film, produced in 1954, featured Frank Sinatra’s voice launching The Theme. But most movie themes seem to have had less auspicious origins. The decade’s fascination with The Theme From the Movie might have begun with “The Third Man” (1949) and the needling zither of Anton Karas. The zither music has become as identifiable with that film as Orson Welles.

And one guy on a zither was a lot cheaper than hiring an orchestra. Along the same lines of economy in the form of a distinctive sound, we have the theme from “Ruby Gentry” (1952) played by George Fields on the harmonica. Fields also did the harmonica solo on “Moon River” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961).

A single guy whistling made the theme of “The High and the Mighty” (1954) memorable. He was Muzzy Marcellino, who whistled in a handful of movies in what one imagines must have been a career of fairly limited opportunities. Here is Mr. Marcellino at work.

“Moulin Rouge” (1952) gave us “It’s April Again” which was also called “The Song from Moulin Rouge”, which was also called “Where is Your Heart?” Not being able to decide on a title did not keep Percy Faith and his orchestra having a hit with it.

Dimitri Tiomkin, prolific composer for the movies probably did not expect to join the pantheon of the Hit Parade with his cowboy song, “High Noon” or “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh, My Darlin’” from “High Noon” (1952). Tex Ritter sang it in the film, but Frankie Laine lassoed it and made it his own.

Except for the anomaly of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, most of these theme-from-the-movie songs were from the early 1950s. Popular music tastes changed for a younger record buying audience in the later part of that decade. We still have the occasional hit song from a movie, but never one that is so threaded into the film like a tapestry, where we are inspired, enthralled, and beaten over the head with it. And yet, like the victims of a slapstick thump on the head, we may be left with a warm and goofy smile from the assault as the music swells.