Kansas City Confidential

Saturday is "Take Out the Trash" Day

Kansas City Confidential (Phil Karlson, 1952) One of director Phil Karlson's 1950's movies, the crime expose The Phenix City Story (released in 1956) was just put into the National Film Registry. You know the one where they vote in 25 films every year for films that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Karlson was another of those "maverick" directors, he could work in any genre, but spent a long time as an assistant director and quit that job so he could direct at bargain basement studios, where he could make movies the way he wanted to with little interference as long as he could keep the finances down.

One gets the impression from watching his movies, that he'd just as soon throw a movie camera into the audience's face as do something fancy to get your attention. He made movies that were cynical, had no interest in authority, and where one could feel the grit right underneath the emulsion. It's why Desi Arnaz hired him to direct the pilot of the TV-show "The Untouchables," he wanted a low budget 20's-30's noir-equivalent. His most famous movies are the sequel to Willard called Ben, and the movie where he made his fortune, the original version of Walking Tall with Joe Don Baker.

But, Quentin Tarantino's seen his movies. Watch Kansas City Confidential (and you can below—it's public domain on the Interwebs, although M-G-M retains the broadcast/movie rights to it) and you see where his Reservoir Dogs came from.
Only Kansas City Confidential isn't so cute with the dialog or the cultural references. 

It begins with a hand-drawn map, a clock on the wall and a notebook filled with the names of low-life's. "Mr. Big" (we'll call him, as played by Preston Foster) notes the activities of the bank across the way at opening time. He notes the activity—a regular one by Western Wholesale Florists to the flower shop next door, the arrival of the early-birds to do bank-business, and the arrival of an armored car a few minutes later. He carefully checks off the routine. Then, he makes phone-calls to numbers in that notebook.

The instructions to the three men on the other side of the phone-calls are the same. There's a job. Meet him at Room 302. Baker Street Hotel. There will be a big pay-off. First on the list is Pete Harris (Jack Elam), the proverbial nervous little man in a shabby room. He chain-smokes, has gambling debts—craps is his vice. He will be the King of Spades. When Harris comes to the door, he comes armed, but the man in Room 302 makes quick work of dis-arming him and slapping Harris to attention. Harris is shocked by the man in Room 302; he is masked, gives no name, no details, but promises a pay-out of $300,000 to start a new life in another country.

Next on the list is Tony Romano (Lee Van Cleef), a sharpie with creases in his suit as sharp as his cheek-bones. He likes the dames and he likes poker, but he isn't so lucky. He's smarter than Harris and a bit too sure of himself, but 300k, he'll play along. He'll be the King of Clubs. Finally, there's the cop-killer Boyd Kane (Neville Brand) who chews bubble-gum nice and slow, doesn't talk much but sweats a lot, and he's such a high-risk that he takes the job.

It's a typical day at the bank. Western Wholesale Florists shows up to make the delivery. Driver Joe Rolfe (John Payne—sorta Robert Mitchum without the sleepy eyes) has the misfortune of nearly running over a bank customer who says "Why doncha watch where yer goin'?" He's going to not make that mistake again the whole movie. He makes the delivery and takes off, none the wiser, as the armored car parallels up. Then, while the guards are in the bank, another truck with the same Western Wholesale logo slides up behind it. When the guards with the money-bag come out, the Florist truck pulls up alongside, two men in masks jump out the back, cudgel the guards and throw the bag to a third man waiting in the back. They pile in and squeal off, leaving the too-late, too-old bank-guard to fire at their long-gone retreat.

The delivery van speeds to a waiting moving van, and it ramps into the hold. The crooks, still in their masks, want their pay-out, but Mr. Big tells them to shut up and keep their masks on—they're too "hot" and the money is, too. Nobody knows anybody's name, making them all "cop-proof and stool-pigeon proof." "Big" hands each man a stipend for them to travel to Tijuana and await instructions and half-a-playing card to serve as I.D. at their rendezvous in the future. Then, one by one, they jump out of the moving van—it's up to them to make it to Tijuana, to wait for a cable-gram for what's next.

Good day for them. Bad day for Rolfe, who gets pulled over in his delivery van during his work-day and gets man-handled by the police, and his afternoon-deliveries get ransacked looking for the stolen dough. Hauled in for questioning, he gets roughed up and accused—what was he doing in that van? His job that he got from his parole officer after a stretch on gambling charges. Rolfe is a good suspect. Never finished college to be an industrial engineer, did a stretch in the service earning a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star ("Try buyin' a cup o' coffee with 'em," he snarls), and is trying to earn money to go back to school. Well, tough luck, kid. He just lost his job—he should understand says his boss—Western's clients are "very conservative people, you know how it is."

The bank's reward, put up by its insurance company is a quarter of the $1.2 million stolen from the bank. 30k. Rolfe would love to have that, but he doesn't know a thing, even though he gets beaten up by a couple of very aggressive cops every day of his three-day holding stretch, thinking he might. Finally, they can't hold him any more—the duplicate delivery van has been found—and he gets released to find his mug plastered all over the front-page. No sense looking for work with that resumé. So, he goes on a one-man reconnaissance mission to find "the guys who framed me." With the help of a buddy he served with on Okinawa, he gets a line on Pete Harris—you can find him in Tijuana.

There the details stop for you. But, you get the gist—innocent man, desperate and hard-boiled, and with just enough brains to make him dangerous, especially to thieves with no honor and no idea who their "friends" are. But, once they all settle for that meeting in a Mexican resort town, they all—how did Raymond Chandler metaphor it?—"stand out like a tarantula on an angel-food cake."

Karlson was not a subtle director (remember what I said about throwing the camera?). There's a lot of casual violence, where people slap each other around with little provocation other than things are moving a little too slow—good thing the film's black and white, there'd be a lot of bruising make-up to apply—and even though the location's supposed to be Mexico, there's a lot of sweat going around. When the film's "good girl" (Colleen Gray) interrupts Rolfe getting a good beating, everybody starts to act "un-chalant" and saying they're just talking, to which she replies "...must have been a warm discussion." Nice.

It's also tough to keep track of the fire-arms in Kansas City Confidential. Everybody's got a gat and they flash them a lot...or get caught reaching into their jacket-pockets. What was Bogart's line? My, my, so many guns, so few brains."

Except the one behind the camera. There are a couple fluff's here and there, not every "i" is dotted, not every double crossed, but Karlson makes sure Kansas City Confidential has the bad good's and it's a solid film noir where the world is so much against you that swapping it for the business-end of a gun actually feels pretty good. It may be "Take Out the Trash" day here, but every so often you find a nugget buried.

Got 90 minutes to kill? This one will keep it a misdemeanor.

Plimpton: Shootout at Rio Lobo

I've been doing very little of these "A-V Department" posts, because one of the things I wanted to do with this particular movie blog is to keep it "pure," just writing—and not filling it with, well, "filler," because I needed to put a post up and a YouTube video is handy.

But, this television special I remember from my youth, featuring Walter Mitty-ish writer George Plimpton doing hour long specials about his "tough jobs" kind of journalism which were the staple of his writings.

In this one, he does some acting—he actually would do more later in his career, usually playing foppish intellectual caricatures—in a bit part in a John Wayne western. 

Well, not just any "John Wayne western"—this one is being directed by Howard Hawks, the last movie he would make, in fact, Rio Lobo, which is sort of the third of his "variations of a theme on Rio Bravo." In fact, the story goes that when Hawks approached Wayne about it, Wayne asked "Do I get to play the drunk this time?"

I've got a couple posts about Hawks coming up, and I thought it might be nice for you to see the man in action.

The video may start out annoyingly for some as it still has the color bars and 1 k tone at the beginning of the video. The show actually starts about 26 seconds in.

The Man from Laramie

The Man From Laramie (Anthony Mann, 1955) "Hate's not becoming on a man like you." Hmm. 

 

Then, they shouldn't have put this star and director together again, as hate, obsession and (sometimes) disfigurement were the order of the screenplay. The last of the James Stewart-Anthony Mann pairings (the others being Winchester 73, The Far Country, Bend of the River, and The Naked Spur, all superior disturbing Westerns), The Man from Laramie is a continuation of the director/star collaborations produced in the 1950's that pushed Stewart's psychological boundaries in the Old West by pushing the physical and story boundaries traditional in movies about the Old West, that tended to keep things "White Hat/Black Hat."* 

 

The work of Mann and Stewart tended to smudge the distinctions a bit, making the hats more of a dirty gray, not too far from the morality of men in a new territory, finding their ways and their fortunes.

Stewart's Will Lockhart rolls into the town of Coronado with his small transport business delivering merchandise to the general store.  Along the way, he stops from his day job to indulge in his hobby—seeking revenge for his younger brother whose cavalry unit was ambushed by Apaches who were brandishing repeating rifles, too many to be acquired on raids. The Apaches are another story. He's after the man who sold them those rifles.

Coronado, though, is hardly welcoming. He can't take a few steps into the street without being warned to leave the town the same way he went in—under his own power. That advice, with intentions good or bad, stems from the town's controlling interest, a cattle baron by the name of Alec Waggoman (Donald Crisp), one of those autocratically protective father-figures who like things the way they are (once they have them), are suspicious of any changes, and is a bit blind to how others see it. They're NIMBY's with the biggest backyard in the frontier.

He's particularly near-sighted when it comes to his entitled son Dave (Alex Nicol, in a thankless performance, rather dimly performed), a bully who's next in line to run the ranch—probably into the ground given his business acumen—and (as John Wayne used to put it) "if he lives." To prevent those eventualities Waggoman has installed the only picket-wire he might approve of, his chief ranch-hand Vic Hansbro (Arthur Kennedy, who often provides the counter-balance in the Mann-Stewart westerns) as a nanny to keep Dave under control.

But Vic, with so much responsibility to the Old Man, always seems to be a day late and a dollar short, unable to keep Dave from single-handedly destroying Lockhart's business, burning his wagons and killing his mules, a rather contrary manner of getting him to leave town, by destroying the means. And, of course, it just inspires Lockhart to get all-cussed and motivates him to stick his nose in everybody's business and his fists in Dave's mid-section. Things don't get any better when Lockhart decides to take a job ranching for Waggoman's rival Kate Canady (Aline McMahon), a crusty woman-rancher who won't give an inch on territory or principle, or one hoof of cattle to the larger concern.

From any angle Lockhart is caught in the middle, guaranteeing a rise in tensions and an escalation of grievances. And if the elder Waggoman wanted peace and quiet, he should have looked for the anarchy running wild in his own midst. So, there's that familial element running through it. And Mann and Stewart, through their collaborations, were exploring psychological depths that weren't mentioned between the gun-shots in the standard shoot-'em-up. 

All of their westerns involved Stewart's character going through a trial by fire—he's actually dragged through a campfire in this one—facing humiliation and crippling at the hands of the Waggoman's, the confrontations with the clan making up the best part of the film, with only Stewart's rather half-hearted interplay with Waggoman's niece (Cathy O'Donnell) seeming like time wasted, although it provides one more conflict for Lockhart to be distracted by. 

Mann's use of location shooting is always imaginative and compositionally interesting, and he uses the Vistavision format to get as much horizon into the frame as possible. Certainly worth a look-see, just don't go expecting Shakespeare.**

Maurice Thomas' Stewart portrait for some of the film's poster art.

* The two also worked on the non-westerns Strategic Air Command and The Glenn Miller Story.

** Curiously, Shakespeare is on a lot of people's mind when they see this film, comparing it to "King Lear."  Um, okay, not the "King Lear" I'm familiar with, although there's a thematic string in there (actually there's a Shakespearean string in just about everything, isn't there?).  Actually, there's more "King Lear" in "Bonanza" than here (except that everybody gets along).   And, of course,  the movie Legends of the Fall has more than a bit of both in it.

Rancho Notorious

Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952) The old-old story of Hate!  Murder!  and Revenge!

After hearing about this one for oh-so-many years, I finally got a chance to sit down and luxuriate a while with Rancho Notorious, a film that offers so many surprises—subtleties and Big Statements—that work-outs were had by both my jaw (dropping) and the remote, which afforded me the essential ability to go back and "look at that again."

Rancho Notorious offers opportunities a-plenty for both. You don't see very many movies where people are actively snarling at each other, but then there aren't many movies like this wildly expressionistic main-stream Western directed by the master of German Expressionism Fritz Lang. Preceding High Noon by a matter of months, it also has a song-based score, but an odd one, not so "on the nose" as "Do Not Forsake Me...", but one's that's haunting and echoes through your head like a warning (as it did mine) for days.

The song is "The Ballad of Chuck-a-Luck," (that was supposed to be the movie's title and there's a story for ya*) written by Ken Darby and plays over the titles and interstitially during the murder investigation that lasts the entire movie, each stanza ending with those words "Hate. Murder. And revenge."

So, what's the story, pilgrim?

Vern Haskell (Arthur Kennedy) is a ranch-hand in a small town in Wyoming and he only has eyes for Beth Forbes (Gloria Henry**), the girl who runs the counter at the dry-goods store. But, right after he comes a-courtin' two strangers come into town, with an eye to robbing the store, and when the one sees Beth, things go too far. She's raped and murdered by the outlaw when she screams and the two cowards escape.

Vern Haskell (Arthur Kennedy) doesn't like you

All Haskell wants is revenge, so he quits the ranch and, with a posse, heads in the direction the bastards left town. After hours of riding, the posse gives up, but Haskell refuses to stop, and soon comes across one of the men, Whitey, shot in the back by the other desperado, who only says the words "Chuck-a-Luck" to Haskell with his dying breath. Haskell travels on, gathering clues about the mysterious word that refers to a spinning "wheel of fortune" in gambling houses and a former dance hall girl named Altar Keane (Marlene Dietrich), who made a fortune on her departing spin of the wheel, and left town on the arm of the outlaw "Frenchy" Fairmont (Mel Ferrer), never to be heard of again.

But, "Frenchy's" in jail, so Haskell gets himself arrested, and once behind bars, ingratiates himself with Fairmont, and gets sprung on his coat-tails. The two make their way to the Flying C Ranch, also known...as "Chuck-a-Luck," a working ranch legitimate to the world, but in secret is actually a hideout-for-hire for any outlaw willing to offer up a 10% share of their loot to Altar Keane. Quite the little operation the lady has there, and at the moment, she's full up.

But she makes room for Haskell, whom she describes as "a man who stands in doorways." All the better to survey the room, looking for clues. Is it the guy who's fast with the ladies (George Reeves) with those tell-tale scars on his face? Is it the guy who keeps looking at him funny (Lloyd Gough, not credited due to The Black List), or the guy who's just funny-looking (wall-eyed Jack Elam in an early role, looking lean and mean). He decides to hang out at Chuck-a-Luck, picking up clues, laying low, making himself handy while not necessarily doing anything...illegal, until he can determine who's the right (by saying the wrong) man. It's a little bit like Poirot in spurs with a nasty disposition. Of course, today, Haskell would be expected to lay waste to the room and let God deal with the details. Here, revenge is tempered by justice and not hormones.

Russell Johnson and Marlene Dietrich in Rancho Notorious

Before we get onto the subject of Marlene Dietrich, we should probably discuss the wealth of character actors on the verge of hitting their defining roles: William Frawley, right before "I Love Lucy," George Reeves before "The Adventures of Superman," Mel Ferrer, only his fifth film and right before Scaramouche, Russell Johnson (Happy Birthday, sir), only his second movie, Jack Elam, Dan Seymour, John Doucette, the movie is top-heavy with great veteran character actors with recognizable faces.

Then there's Dietrich.  For those of a certain age (anyone born post-Blazing Saddles), one may not recognize what a force she was and continued to be throughout her career.  She was the preternatural "other" woman, capable of seducing men and (pre-Code) women, one is always hesitant to call her the first feminist, but she might have been in movies, and she certainly was before it became "cool," (and she always was in the role). Put it this way, you'd never see Dietrich in a western riding side-saddle. Rancho Notorious is her slightly softened (although barely—when was the last time you saw a dance-hall girl riding the town sheriff like a horse?), in partnership with a man, and acting out of love or loyalty (always hard to say which with her), but it's her ranch and her operation, and that's something you rarely see in even the most hard-core of Westerns.   And it's weird, but, in Westerns, Dietrich (sorry but it's a spoiler) always seems to take a bullet, as if the genre won't accept her (or any woman) as ruling the ranch. That would change, as film-makers got more bold.**

Rancho Notorious is one of those odd Westerns of the Mainstream that took a decided bend in the river to do something else with the form. There's no pretense at naturalism (Lang wouldn't toy with that until Clash By Night), but used the familiarity of westerns to work out some interesting conflicts about gender roles (Others on that list are Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar, Samuel Fuller's Forty Guns, and, to a lesser extent, Hawks' Red River).

It's not your usual oater.  It's something different and it's recognizable from the first watch.

* The story goes that Howard Hughes wanted to change the title from "Chuck-a-Luck" and Lang wanted to know why. "Nobody'll understand it" was the reply, even though it was a familiar gambling game in the Southwest. "Okay, so what's your alternative?" Lang asked. "Rancho Notorious." came the reply. "Rancho Notorious?!  Nothing's called 'Rancho Notorious' in this movie! You think anybody'll understand THAT?!"

** There was a shock for me: I remember Gloria Henry as the mother of "Dennis the Menace" on TV.  Her presence was only the first of a long line of TV stalwarts who were paraded throughout Rancho Notorious—"Hey! there's...fill in the blank..."

*** Ford's frontier women usually ran the ranch, but let the men think they did.

Kiss Me Deadly: The Brightest Noir, or The Anti-Life Equation

Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955) Kiss Me Deadly might be the greatest film noir film of all time. You know the genre—"When the streets are dark with something more than night"—implying that the lack of light goes far beyond foot-candles and is radiated by a void in the soul...or the permeating Evil in the World. Oh, there'd always been detective movies—but, they were usually played in a cocktail party environment, gussied up and prettified for the ladies...and there always had to be a pet. But, in the late 30's, with Hitler bringing real evil to our headlines and minds, that world changed, became darker, the booze cheaper, and the dames less dependable. After the war, we'd lost our innocence enough that the tarnished golden age of noir happened, its authors became legit, movie deals followed, and the resulting films rougher, because we could take it. Combined with what Hollywood saw coming out of the European neo-realist movement, things got grittier, less polished and the gangsters came out of the dark cracks of the wood-work to walk amongst us and make the lives of decent folk miserable, while in the mind's eye loomed the existence of mushroom clouds that could turn all of us, any of us, into ash and dust. By the time the 50's sneaked up on us, promising a better life (if we followed the rules), paranoia walked the streets, the board-rooms, and halls of government, setting the stage for Robert Aldrich's über-noir. 

Mickey Spillane, author of "Kiss Me Deadly" in all its popular crudeness, didn't like the film version. It slapped his book around for its tough-guy attitude that puffed up its chest in the face of truly nihilistic forces that could wipe the sneer off its mug and dared to question the sexist-macho attitude of its protagonist. The script is by one of the better novelist-scriptwriter vagabonds, A.I. Bezzerides (whose novels were turned into the films They Drive By Night and Thieves' Highway). "I was having fun!" Bezzerides said of his adaptation of Kiss Me Deadly, and, indeed, it is a lot of fun in a savage, even cruel way, that has no truck with the merits of its source-book, and boils it down into a Maltese Falcon-ish quest of thugs for a "great whats-it," that (as is ultimately revealed) is not riches, but power—at the time, the most dangerous form of power extant.

Our savior—the point-man walking down these mean streets—is a private dick in all senses of the term, the not-subtly named Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker), the bluntest of instruments, and where that other tool of the trade, Sam Spade, beat up bad-guys and gunsels, Hammer makes no character distinctions, he's as indiscriminate as a force of Nature, turning people, places and prized possessions into disaster areas so he can sort through the rubble.

The caper doesn't start very subtley—it doesn't come to him, knocking politely on the door of his offices—he nearly runs it over on the highway. A damsel in distress (Cloris Leachman—yes, her—in her film debut) is running down the street in a panic and only a trench-coat.  She might have escaped from a mental institution, but Hammer, at her request, tries to take her to the nearest bus stop.  

"Get me to that bus stop and forget you ever saw me. If we don't make that bus stop…"  "We will," says Hammer dismissively, confidently.  "If we don’t," she pointedly says, "Remember me."

They never make it. 

Details aside, Hammer wakes up in a hospital bed, remembering—the girl is dead, tortured, and he has two motivations: revenge and to find the people who tried to kill him and succeeded with her. Hammer strikes out, becoming the bull with Los Angeles as his personal china shop, getting closer to the responsible parties but not many answers. A detective without a clue, things usually have to be spelled out for him with a constant litany of "you just don't get it, do you's." His informants and victims dance around the answers, talking circumspectly, while Hammer just scowls, wondering if there's a way to beat the answers out of them.

It's the way things have to be, because almost everyone is corrupt, no matter what their position on the intelligence scale, and that includes the guy behind the whole operation, Dr. G.E. Soberin (Albert Dekker), the type of character Sydney Greenstreet might play in earlier mysteries: brilliant, erudite, but not smart enough not to be brought down by baser instincts than his own. And, once he's gone, any hope of containing the evil about to be unleashed goes with him.

There are two endings to the film: in the first, Hammer and his sexy secretary Velda (Maxine Cooper) manage to escape from the traditionally burning building (burning quite non-traditionally) and seek refuge in the surf. But, somewhere along the way, the film was streamlined, so their fate is undecided and, indeed, the film screams "The End" in the middle of a growing apocalyptic nuclear conflagration. Does it ever end, or does Los Angeles go up with it, the match being struck by the sociopath who sold her soul for power.

It's the ending I first saw when I encountered the film and it's the ending I prefer: Kiss Me Deadly presents a world so far down the jungle path that even a thug like Mike Hammer can be considered a hero. Man has de-evolved so far but still managed to harness the power of God, that the inevitable happens. The film asks nihilistically, given how bad the world is, why not let the whole rotten system crash (sound familiar?). The quest for power has gone nuclear. Let 'em get what they deserve.

The opening of "The Great 'Whats-it:" a "Pandora's Box" that would "inspire"
filmmakers Alex Cox, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino.

Given the view of the film Kiss Me Deadly, if the world is so corrupt, maybe the justice should be dealt in an uncontained fusion, where the shadows are permanently burned into the landscape. And so the world ends—not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a high keening shriek, echoing the many screams that have occurred throughout the film.

Even in the glare of a nuclear light, you can't get more dark than that.