Laura

Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944) A favorite for many film-goers for the unique reason that it's a multi-hyphenate of genres. Laura ticks off many boxes: a detective story, a murder mystery, a love story, a ghost story, a "woman's picture," and a proto-film noir.

The story of the murder of advertising executive Laura Hunt (played by Gene Tierney) is an investigation into the gossipy underbelly of New York high society, contrasting the low-down jealousies and back-biting of the rich and famous amid the glamorous fashions and elite penthouse settings, all seen through the eyes of an unimpressed gumshoe trying to see the truth behind the lace curtains.

 

The film's production history is a tempestuous one, filled with office politics at 20th Century Fox--studio head Darryl F. Zanuck had an on-going feud with producer Otto Preminger, but with Zanuck in Europe with the Army Signal Corps documenting the war effort, he had no say in Preminger's work on an adaptation of the property, which came to him when it was still the first draft of a stage-play called "Ring Twice for Laura" written by Vera Caspary. Preminger saw it as a good vehicle to make his directorial debut, and tried collaborating with the author to make it a viable project for the stage...and screen.

Ultimately, the two parted ways and Caspary turned her story into a 7-part serial for Collier's magazine with play's original title, which when re-published in book-form was shortened to, simply, "Laura" and was bought for development at 20th Century Fox.

It falls on jaded New York police detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) to find out who murdered the influential ad executive Laura Hunt (Tierney), and forensics doesn't help as she was killed by a shotgun blast to the face just inside her swanky apartment. No murder weapon has been found, so he makes the rounds of Laura's acquaintances to see if he can come up with any motivation behind the killing. First, he sees Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), notorious newspaper columnist, who, after initially dismissing the ambitious Miss Hunt, became her Svengali/mentor. Lydecker used his column to promote the up-and-coming designer, but also to disparage any suitors approaching Laura on a romantic basis.

That didn't seem to dissuade Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), Laura's fianceé at the time of her death and boy-toy of her aunt (Judith Anderson). McPherson gives them all third degree burns, but is no closer to cracking the case: which of these high-toned, impeccably-dressed lizards would have, well, just the bad taste to do in Laura? Appearances may be deceiving, so he doubles down on Laura's old haunts, her apartment, going through her letters and diary, trying to read between the lines, looking to her thoughts on who might be the culprit. Instead of learning more about any suspects, he learns more about the girl, finding a woman of ambition, yes, but, a different sort than the duplicitous phony-balonies she was navigating amongst.

That's where "the twist" comes in. McPherson finds himself falling in love with the dead woman, and things only get more complicated from there, deepening the resentments that the suspects have against the lower-class detective.

Once Preminger had the script he wanted (with some venomous contributions from Ring Lardner Jr.), but his plans to direct were vetoed when Zanuck came back from Europe. Preminger was relegated to producer, and the studio head ultimately gave the director's chair to Rouben Mamoulian, who must have sensed that his producer would lose in any battle with Zanuck, and so started to re-write the script and do his own casting, using a painting by his wife for the portrait of Laura, and favoring the more sinister Laird Cregar (Hitchcock's The Lodger) as Lydecker over Preminger's choice, the slight and haughty Clifton Webb.

 

Preminger and Webb prevailed, but none of the cast was happy with Mamoulian's direction in the first days of filming, where he ignored Tierney, Andrews and Webb, and encouraged a stagey performance by Anderson. A mutiny began among the cast and Zanuck was forced to fire Mamoulian and replace him with his antagonist, Otto Preminger. Preminger kept the cast, but re-staged all of Mamoulian's work, even going so far as to toss the portrait by the director's wife.

But, there was one more ingredient that was needed to make the film an immortal classic. Zanuck assigned David Raksin to do the score and the composer met with the TCF head following a screening: "I liked the picture at once but was disheartened to hear [producer Darryl] Zanuck immediately zero in on an essential scene in which...the detective assigned to solve the ostensible murder, wanders disconsolately around Laura's apartment at night. I gathered that the sequence had already been severely shortened, and now it was about to be reduced still further. . . . There was a horrified hush when I was heard to interject, 'But, if you cut that scene, nobody will understand that the detective is in love with Laura.' Zanuck turned toward me, then ... told me that he was about to trim the sequence again precisely because he felt that as it stood the audience would not understand it. . . . I persisted. 'This is one of those scenes,' said I, 'in which music could tip the balance--tell the audience how the man feels. And if it doesn't work, you can still trim the sequence.'"

Meeting with Preminger, Raksin was also disheartened to hear the director had planned to use Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady" for the score, and told the director that he would have a better substitute by the next Monday morning. He was dissatisfied with his work—the legend goes—until he finally got around to reading the "Dear John" letter his wife had sent him. That was the inspiration for the "Theme from Laura", which Preminger was impressed by, Zanuck approved (the sequence wasn't trimmed any further) which became a huge hit, quite apart from the movie. It did add one element that was missing from the movie, even if it hinted at motivation—sentimentality, the melancholy sort. And it hammers home the point that love is such a strange beast that it can make one fall in love with a ghost. It is a love story, after all.

It was nominated for five Oscars (winning for Cinematography) and in 1999, it was voted into the National Film Registry. But, the ultimate test is that it still holds up today (even after being copied for at least one episode of every detective show on television) for its wit, sophistication, and downright grisliness. Good movies are not all that common. It takes a certain magic, an indefinable "something" of happenstance that makes one more than its separate elements. Given its turbulent production history and how many times it avoided mis-steps, Laura is something of a miracle.

Frank Sinatra had a hit with "Laura"

but there's something about Raksin's scoring that is...haunting.

Wild Boys of the Road

Wild Boys of the Road (William Wellman, 1933) Warner Brothers continued their tough Depression era stories with this look at juvenile transiency in the wake of the Depression, where kids who were a burden to their financially strapped families took to the road as hobos rather than going to orphanages or foster homes. With the country in the midst of a vast migration in search for work or to escape the dust-bowl

Tommy Gordon (Edwin Phillips) and Eddie Smith (Frankie Darro) are high school kids who have it pretty good. They go out on double dates with their best girls in Eddie's jalopy and the only thing they have to argue about is who gets the rumble seat. 

But, Tommy has some bad news. He tells Eddie that he's going to drop out of school to look for work so he can help his family. Aw, that's too bad, Tommy, maybe my Dad can help out. Dad can't. Times are hard and Dad Smith has lost his job, too, and he can't help Tommy, he can't even help his own family. Seeing his father in distress and being a good boy, Eddie sells his flivver and gives Dad the $22 bucks he sold it for.

Having given the last of his worldly possessions to his family, and with them facing eviction, Eddie joins up with Tommy in a quest to find work to provide for their families. They jump a train and start riding the rails. They hook up with other boys, learning what they need to in order to avoid the "bulls" on the rail-line looking for any such vagrants using it for free transportation.

One of the "boys" turns out to be a girl—Sally (Dorothy Coonan)—one of the few who disguise themselves as boys to fit in and protect themselves from attack. Sally is on the way to Chicago, where she hopes she can move in with her aunt until she can find work. It's as good a plan as any and Tommy and Eddie run interference for Sally while they make a transition from train to train. Once in Chicago, they find their situation hasn't improved, as work is impossible to find and the local police are picking up vagrants, but Sally gets past it with a note from her aunt and claiming the boys are her cousins.

They make it to Aunt Carrie's (Minnie Gomball), but the stay is short-lived. Seems Aunt Carrie is running a brothel out of her place (Don'cha love pre-Code films?) and the police raid it that night—not a good thing for runaway and vagrants. They beat it out of a window and hook back up with the kids in the rail-yard.

But, life only gets harder for them: one girl, Lola (Ann Hovey) is discovered by a train brakeman (Ward Bond, uncredited probably because the character is so despicable) and raped, which inspires the others to trap the bum and beat him within an inch of his life, leading the brakeman to fall out of a compartment and die a well-deserved death. Once in Columbus, they hop off the train, but Tommy misses his footing, stumbles, and is clocked by a railroad switch and knocked across the tracks.

Wellman stages one of the grittiest set-pieces he ever produced—the other kids watch helplessly as Tommy, unconscious, one leg splayed over the tracks has his foot cut off by a speeding train, crippling him. Only the help of a visiting doctor saves his life as he has to have his leg amputated. Things are tough on the road, and they're only made tougher by Tommy having to make his way with a crutch when speed is of the essence. But, the incidents near Columbus only steel the group of kids making them tougher, bitter, and, rather than running from authority, ready to take it on and fight it.

The group makes it to Cleveland, where they camp in what was called "Pipe-towns" during the Depression—make-shift shelters made from sewer conduits stacked in a supply yard. The kids call it "Sewer Pipe City" and for awhile it's a stable community in the unstable lives of the kids. It's short-lived, however, as authorities move in to take it down to prevent any lawlessness in town, turning water hoses on the group. The past incidences have hardened the young vagrants and they take on the police, beating them back and getting on another train, pelting the law with rocks and whatever else they can use as weapons.

Finally, they end up at the end of the line in New York, living in a municipal dump and things begin to look up, Tommy in line to get a job, if he can just scratch up enough cash to get a decent jacket. But, even that creates complications that get them mixed up with the law and an appearance before a local judge. This gives Eddie a chance to make a bitter speech on their treatment that has an eerie echo recalling the current issue of homelessness: 

I knew all that stuff about you helping us was baloney. I'll tell you why we can't go home--because our folks are poor. They can't get jobs and there isn't enough to eat. What good will it do you to send us home to starve? You say you've got to send us to jail to keep us off the streets. Well, that's a lie. You're sending us to jail because you don't want to see us. You want to forget us. But you can't do it because I'm not the only one. There's thousands just like me, and there's more hitting the road every day.

Wild Boys of the Road was made in 1933, and runs a tight 68 minutes, but its story of Society's way of dealing (or not dealing) with the issues of those souls who have fallen through the cracks of the economic infrastructure still resonates today.

Wild Boys of the Road was voted into the National Film Registry in 2013.