Short Cut To Hell

Short Cut To Hell (James Cagney, 1957) No, I didn't make a mistake. This film was directed by James Cagney—the only one where he took on those duties—he'd previously only acted and produced—and only as a favor (along with some curiosity whether he could do it) to his producer-friend A.C. Lyles. It sources from the novel "A Gun for Sale" written by Graham Greene (and made into the Veronica Lake-Robert Preston film, This Gun for Hire, which had made a star out of Alan Ladd). At this point in his career, the only aspirations Cagney had were probably retirement to his farm, although he would not do so until 1962, following the completion of One, Two, Three for Billy Wilder.

 

Still, it's Cagney, with his rich history of acting in the Warner Brothers hey-day and for such directors as Hawks, Walsh, Wellman, and Ford. He had seen what worked in movies and what didn't, and he was pretty good at getting the most out of a script, and bending it if he had to. What tricks of the trade could that most adept and able of actors bring to the director's chair?

"Learn your lines ... plant your feet ... look the other actor in the eye ... say the words ... mean them."

Yvette Vickers planting her feet.

The first five minutes has no dialogue except for one line—"Let me GO, you skinny little runt!"—as the curious daughter (Yvette Vickers) of a land-lord conspires to enter the room of a mystery-man (Robert Ivers) with an idea to seduce, or, if it goes wrong, make trouble. But, when she harasses the guy's cat, he man-handles her out of the room, soothes the kitty, then gets ready for work. Hat, coat, gat, and take a towel. Then go out and gun down a functionary at the Oakland City Engineering Department—and just to be thorough his secretary—in cold blood. Seems the newly stiff is—or was—an inspector wanting to prosecute Imperial Contractors (known as "The Organization" in the parlance of the shady) for its faulty building practices which have lead to the collapse of a downtown building. The killer pockets his gun, lifts the appropriate files and leaves. It's the job, and he's good at it. What's the towel for? It makes a good make-shift silencer.

But, any job involves paper-work; he has to be paid...in cash. He meets the florid Imperial middle man, Bahrwell (Jacques Aubuchon)—his substantial middle owing to his love for peppermint patties and the obsequiousness he displays may be due to a cushy life. At the meeting, the hired gun, Kyle Niles, accepts the money—conveniently in new 20's and 50's—and makes it clear to his verbose fellow-diner that if there are any issues, or any double-cross, he will handle the revenge work himself, gratis, starting with him.

But, what the hired gun doesn't know is the money didn't come from the bank as Bahrwell had claimed, but came from the Imperial payroll in a sham robbery already reported to the police. Once the serial numbers of the bills start showing up, they'll be able to trace it back to the City Hall Murderer, and it's not too soon before the police start nosing around his apartment. Knowing the cops will be staked out at the airport, he decides to take a train out of town to L.A.

Except for one complication—the cops are there, too. Not on a stake-out, but more informally, as the guy in charge of looking for Niles—Sgt. Stan Lowery (William Bishop) is seeing his steady girl, singer Glory Hamilton (Georgann Johnson) off to L.A. for her new gig at an only somewhat reputable club. After all, Bahrwell goes there as a regular. And it's only because of the lousy scheduling of the Oakland-L.A. line (perhaps) that Glory, Bahrwell, and a town-skipping Niles happen to be on the same train...in conveniently adjoining coaches, all the better for Bahrwell to see them and assume that the gun-man and Glory are in some sort of cahoots.

So, innocent Glory gets intertwined in the death-struggle between Bahrwell, Bahrwell's boss at Imperial (the untraceably named "AT"—played by Richard Hale, who was Boo Radley's father in To Kill a Mockingbird: "the meanest man to ever take a breath of life"), and the bullet-headed assassin they hired together. It doesn't get pretty, with the film's screenwriter's and Cagney just suggesting the crueler aspects of all three men.

So...how is it? Anybody who knows me knows that I think the sun rises and sets on Cagney—that he was, if not the best, one of the best TWO screen actors to be captured on film. And I'd been wanting to see this a long time. And, so I can safely tell you...it's pretty lousy, almost amateurish. Blame it on the budget, sure. But, one has to be honest and say that Cagney is no auteur taking care of details. At one point, Bahrwell is reading a newspaper about the City Engineering killings in big bold headlines, but when he folds the paper, you can't help but notice that the rest of the paper is blank. That's the sort of detail you notice, even in the scruffy non-Vistavision-for-black-and-white-TV version that I saw. One suspects Cagney of toughening things up a bit, taking things right to the edge, but he never crosses the line to true sordidness.

And Cagney knew what to do with scripts, so how does he allow such thudding dialogue like "Not with your boy-friend chasing me; you're my insurance—my life insurance!" Or this exchange: "You're gentle." "Yeah, c'mon, let's go." And there's an admirable directness that just unfortunately crosses into camp when Kyle confronts the villainous AT: "I don't take orders, young man! I GIVE 'em!" BANG! Not even a sneering "My order is you fall down and die!"

And (okay) the greatest actor of the screen can't seem to inspire good performances out of his cast: Aubuchon is so obsequious he could be a cartoon, Bishop was meant to be the fourth lead in a serial, and Robert Ivers is such a mis-fire as Kyle that you wonder what inspired his casting—looking for an unknown who could be the next Alan Ladd by way of James Dean and Richard Widmark? Oh, he's good at the sarcasm, and he's a good mover/runner, if of the "flopping around" variety. But, the menace is all rather "weaselly" and of the "see? I'm tough" school, rather than "I'm so tough I don't have to play it" variety. You don't worry that he'll get shot; you worry he's going to catch a cold.

The only good performance is from Johnson, a utility player of just about every television show ever made and a main-stay of the soap "Somerset" (and others of their ilk—geez, she even played a Starfleet Admiral!). She sells her lines and her emotions with a committed earnestness that can best be described as "110%"—even if nobody else is giving her anything to work with—a slightly less-restrained version of Doris Day, with a touch less theatricality. She's plucky, even managing to make you believe this character would have the moxie she displays in the most unbelievable of circumstances. Cagney probably liked her a lot.

But, he didn't like the experience. Shortcut to Hell is the only movie Cagney ever directed, and his assessment of it was typically frank and has the ring of truth and honesty to them that he brought to his roles: "We shot it in twenty days, and that was long enough for me. I find directing a bore, I have no desire to tell other people their business."

 

I was enough for him to be good at his own job.

Thunder Road

Thunder Road (Arthur Ripley, 1958) A B-movie curiosity that has gained cult status, especially in the southeast corner of the U.S., usually neglected by Hollywood. Although beloved by its corps of loyalists (there are "Thunder Road" fests every year), most folks only know it from writer-producer-composer-star Robert Mitchum's driving recording of the film's theme song. He co-wrote that song, as well as it's love ballad "The Whipoorwill," sung in the film by Keely Smith, the exotic—if dead-pan—wife-chanteuse of the Louis Prima Band.

The film, based on Mitchum's story-idea, concerns an ex-con Luke Doolin (Mitchum), who drives a souped-up Ford delivering moonshine hootch throughout Kentucky and Tennessee. The story has Luke as the hub of several tugs-of-war: there's the struggle between the still-men and the Treasury boys (represented by Gene Barry); a territorial tussle between the loose association of mountain-folk and the smuggling kingpin (Jacques Aubuchon) who wants control of their routes, by any way possible; then, he's caught between two girls after his affections—singer Francie Wymore (Smith), who wants him to settle and stop rum-running, and the girl who looks up to him (Sandra Knight), whether he's running or not. She's probably more suited to Luke's younger brother Robin (played by Mitchum's son, Jim—when Col. Tom Parker wanted too much money for Elvis Presley to play the part), who wants to be a part of the family business.

The film's directed by Arthur Ripley a B-movie veteran who'd started doing television work, but whose lasting legacy is as one of the industry stalwarts who established the UCLA film school. The film looks much older than it is, as it employs filming techniques that emphasized economy over spectacle, or even consistency, as in one scene where Gene Barry's monologue starts on location and ends up in a studio.

But dang! Some of the racing scenes are amazing, especially in some of the daylight scenes where it's readily apparent no camera tricks were used to speed things up—those hulking roadsters are really go that fast.

Mitchum is great in it—he rarely stepped out of his personal cruise control when acting, employing the same effective techniques as he had since The Story of G.I. Joe, but he stands out like a professional thumb in this film. Keely Smith has a startling look, but her acting ill-becomes her, as she's at her best at stillness—the more lines you give her, the worse she is. Barry is terrific in his "Just the Facts, Ma'am" mode, and Peter Breck and Mitchell Ryan are around to off-set some of the halting, amateurish acting of some of the cast.

Thunder Road is beloved as a cult film, but it's one of those films where love is blind and looks past the faults. One of those "not a great movie, but it's 'our' movie" movies.

Is the song in it? Yup. But it's sung as a ballad with just an acoustic guitar accompaniment, like it was being trilled on the porch, a part of memory and maybe of legend.