A collection of classic Hollywood good girls step into the world of noir.
Noir City returns this weekend to Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse Ritz with nearly a dozen titles chock full of stories right from the dark underbelly of 1940s society, all made possible thanks to the continuous efforts of the Film Noir Foundation. The Czar of Noir himself, Eddie Muller, the organization’s Founder and President, will be on hand to introduce Friday and Saturday’s lineup of films, while the foundation’s Director, Alan K. Rode, will host Sunday’s crop.
As always, the inspiration behind the Noir City film festival is the FNF’s aim to bring rare and underrated genre entries (many of which the organization has painstakingly preserved and restored) to film noir fans across the country. However if there’s one small theme among a handful of this year’s titles, it’s in the appearance of a number of actresses which classic movie fans wouldn’t automatically associate with film noir. Normally a fan would expect to see an Ida Lupino, a Marie Windsor, a Lizabeth Scott (who pops up as part of Saturday’s slate in I Walk Alone), or the queen of noir herself, Barbara Stanwyck, populating the noir landscape in the most smoldering of ways. This year, however, one can’t help but notice the likes of some of the more revered and admired stars of the day playing against the images which would cement their legacies by dallying in the darkness.
Loretta Young
If there was ever any one actress who embodied wholesomeness in Hollywood during the golden age, it had to be Young. The accomplished actress spent the majority of her career crafting an image of pure refinement, as evidenced by the majority of her film output. She won an Oscar for playing a young woman with dreams of becoming a nurse in The Farmer’s Daughter before scoring a subsequent nomination as a nun on a mission to build a children’s hospital in Come to the Stable. Sandwiched in between is her turn as the spouse of a disenchanted man of the cloth whose charmed by Cary Grant’s angel in the now-holiday favorite The Bishop’s Wife. Even her darkest, most well-known film, Orson Welles’s The Stranger, cast Young in a role which preyed upon that endearing vulnerability she had mastered.
It’s therefore a surprise, not to mention a rare treat, to see her turn as a college professor who murders a student and then proceeds to not only cover up the crime, but also fend off the attractions of those on her tail in The Accused. For an actress who would later famously turn down a lead role in Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte due to the movie’s content and demand that a vintage clip from a past film be removed from the scandalous bomb Myra Breckinridge, seeing Young slip into the guise of the accidental femme fatale in The Accused is one of this year’s Noir City highlights.
Jane Wyatt
There isn’t anyone alive unfamiliar with classic TV who doesn’t consider Wyatt to be one of the quintessential TV moms. In Father Knows Best, Robert Young’s titular patriarch may have ruled the family, but it was Wyatt’s character who held the cards. As Margaret Anderson, Wyatt was the mom everyone wished they had — she was loving, wise and above all, genuinely funny, a fact more than proven by the three Emmys Wyatt won during the show’s run. On the film side, many fans tend to either cite her turn as the female lead in Frank Capra’s adaptation of Lost Horizon or her late-career appearance as Spock’s mother in Star Trek VI: The Voyage Home as her most noteworthy appearances.
Yet much like a number of actresses from her generation, the eternally radiant Wyatt put in her time as a film noir presence. This weekend sees a rare big-screen turn from Wyatt as a high society wife who recruits her cop lover to clean up the mess when her husband turns up dead in The Man Who Cheated Himself. A “never trust a dame” exercise if there ever was one, watching the ruthless, cunning side of Margaret Anderson show itself through the talents of the always watchable Wyatt, promises to be one of the more surreal Noir City experiences.
Veronica Lake
While Lake played almost as many femme fatales as she did “good girls” during her regrettably all-too-brief career, it’s the latter roles which tend to retain more notoriety. One mention of Lake and most cinephiles’ minds go straight to her iconic turn as the scrappy, yet still glamorous vagabond in Sullivan’s Travels, one of the greatest American films ever made. Her broad comic turn in I Married a Witch (rumored to be the inspiration behind TV’s Bewitched) and her presence in such patriotic efforts including So Proudly We Hail!, The Hour Before the Dawn, and I Wanted Wings (coupled with her popular signature hairstyle) made her more idolized than loathed when it came to her screen persona.
Yet a true film noir staple she was, as this weekend’s Noir City reasserts with a screening of The Blue Dahlia, Lake’s most famous entry in the genre. Paired with frequent co-star (and real-life good friend) Alan Ladd, Lake plays a strange woman who helps the aforementioned Ladd in a quest to find his wife’s killer. Lake’s turn in The Blue Dahlia may come off at times like a reworked version of her Sullivan’s Travels character, but watching how seamlessly the actress fits into the world of noir more than reinforces her status one of the genre’s greatest.
Betty Grable
Hollywood’s ultimate pin-up girl was not only one of the sweetest, but also one of the most profitable. As 20th Century Fox’s leading actress, Grable was a true moneymaker for the studio during her heyday, encompassing all of America’s values from girl-next-door sweetness to voluptuous sexuality. The hits were seemingly endless: from Down Argentine Way and Moon Over Miami, to Sweet Rosie O’Grady and How to Marry a Millionaire (still her most recognized film). Even though Grable was stuck singing and dancing in what was essentially the same part from film to film, the public (and in particular hordes of WWII servicemen) loved her.
It would make sense then that the star’s studio would try to fashion vehicles for Grable to expand her range (and marketability). One of these, the stark noir entry I Wake Up Screaming, managed to do just that. The film sees Grable as a distraught woman who teams up with Victor Mature’s sports promoter turned amateur detective, to solve her sister’s murder. Reportedly the studio’s first attempt at noir, I Wake Up Screaming wasn’t a huge hit when first released, yet remains a favorite among die hard fans for a variety of reasons, not least of all the fact that it showed the public how America’s sweetheart could be more than just a pair of legs.
In some ways, seeing these actresses inhabit characters in the world of noir is reminiscent of a darker side of femininity which all but disappeared in the conservative ‘50s. The femme fatales of film noir were replaced by the dutiful wives and secretaries of a post-war America searching for a spiritual redemption. Seeing Young, Wyatt, Lake, and especially Grable in such a setting represents a sort of coming-of-age for the quartet; cinematic growing pains which allowed each woman to explore her darker side, at least in an artistic sense, before becoming the actress she is known to the world today. While each one’s (save for Lake’s) foray into the world of film noir may have been brief, all of the actresses in their own way showed true versatility as screen performers while contributing worthy editions to one of the most enduring genres in all of cinema.
Noir City Austin 2018 is is taking place May18–20th at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz. Click here for movie and ticket details. For more about the Film Noir Foundation, including information about their quarterly magazine and ways of donating, please visit their website.
