With multiple reasons to see 1950’s film noir, Dark City, I watched at home with expectations for a mid-range movie. This is about what was delivered, too, as the Hal Wallis production starring Lizabeth Scott and Charlton Heston is a slice of romantic-tinged crime. I recommend Dark City as a taut, biting caper. It’s an uncomplicated movie and it’s easy and compelling to watch.
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Dark City‘s best asset, besides great costumes by Edith Head, music by Franz Waxman (Captains Courageous, Rear Window) and good direction by William Dieterle (The Story of Louis Pasteur, Love Letters) is its lesser-known cast of actors in atypical roles or movie stars and performers such as Ed Begley and Lizabeth Scott (Too Late for Tears), both of whom make a distinct impression in generic roles, Miss Scott as a nightclub singer in love with Heston’s card shark.
As the square-jawed cad, Charlton Heston is curiously both blank and damaged, which adds to the suspense in this Las Vegas-driven movie about an attempt at redemption. Though Heston would go on to star in Will Penny, The Big Country, Planet of the Apes (1968), The Omega Man and Ben-Hur, Dark City is his motion picture debut. It’s easier to see with this role why and how the good-looking, upright leading man type generally became smaller and smaller until being wiped out in the late 1960s, as the downcast, anti-hero with a broken nose became bigger and bigger on the screen. What Jack Nicholson did with campy, scenery-chewing abandon in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, one of the most preposterous movies ever made, sort of begins with and owes to Heston’s muted hero type. Heston would become known as the semi-deranged, teeth-grinding white male acting out against the dying world in ever more embittered and misanthropic ways. Strangely yet undeniably, that prototype begins here; Heston’s low-life hustler, as handsome as he is, hasn’t much going for him. His washed out gambler greases Hollywood’s slide toward the modern anti-hero archetype.
Add to this his character’s long-suffering muse, played by Lizabeth Scott as alluring and man-worshipping Fran, who puts on a show like she’s modeling Marlene Dietrich but with less cynicism. Also add a widow played by Viveca Lindfors (The Way We Were,Playing for Time, Stargate), a boy, a mysterious murderer, Scott’s frequent co-star Don DeFore (TV’s Hazel, Too Late for Tears, You Came Along) as the honest Southern Californian who gets conned and Henry Morgan (TV’s M*A*S*H, The Shootist, High Noon, Inherit the Wind, TV’s Gunsmoke) as a simpleton named Soldier who’s one of the gang and Dark City‘s a constantly moving surprise. What’s more, Morgan’s partner Sergeant Joe Friday on Dragnet, Jack Webb, plays a scrawny villain. And, while it’s a small role, Dean Jagger (Executive Suite, Elmer Gantry, Bad Day at Black Rock, Twelve O’Clock High, Forty Guns) as a policeman gets an excellent and decisive scene at the movie’s climax.
Other perks and rewards in Dark City, which is mostly a well-made B-movie with a good script partly written by TV screenwriter John Meredyth Lucas (Ben Casey, The Fugitive, Star Trek), add up, too. Watch it like it’s something you’ve stumbled upon and enjoy; Dark City provides a preview of coming distractions and a showcase of outstanding Hollywood talent.
This film noir classic with a femme fatale played by Lizabeth Scott (who apparently hated the movie) is a shocking portrayal of a diabolical woman literally on the manhunt.
The late Miss Scott, whom I recently discussed with Leonard Maltin and Robert Osborne, was an actress with range and talent, not just looks, and this is one of the roles for which she is most widely known. The Los Angeles-based Too Late for Tears (1949) was screened twice at this year’s Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival due to popular demand. According to its restorer, it was allowed by the copyright owners to fall into the public domain, leading to bad video quality and fewer showings. The restored print is scheduled to premiere on Turner Classic Movies this summer.
Here, Lizabeth Scott is a wicked wife who never loses an opportunity to cash in on the unearned. It’s a subtly layered performance in a limiting, constricting role that’s not her best. In it, she is drawn and cool as Arthur Kennedy’s wife. When a suitcase stash of stolen loot shows up, she does anything to keep it and I mean everything. With crisp LA locations from Grauman’s Chinese Theater to Union Station that fit the plot and her measured deliverance of hokey lines, the audience somehow buys the whole thing and it’s surprisingly easy to get caught in her murderous drive to keep the cash. Add an alcoholic lowlife (Dan Duryea) who stole it in the first place and the conflict cuts both ways, with this fast-thinking dame so plain about her scheme in film noir’s hard, man’s world, it’s almost tempting to root for her. Scott, who worked previously with director Byron Haskin on I Walk Alone (1948) with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, delivers a line about having been poor that provides the picture with plausibility.
Duryea’s lout starts calling her ‘Tiger’ at some early point in the plot, setting up one of the movie’s best lines, and everything comes to a climactic showdown with Don DeFore, who’s paired with Kristine Miller as the good people in pursuit of the truth and justice. Too Late for Tears is a tad too much in spite of Lizabeth Scott’s turn and it feels like some of her best scenes may have been cut out. Nevertheless, she makes the most of a brutal role, originally assigned to Joan Crawford with Wendell Corey in Duryea’s role and Kirk Douglas in the Kennedy role, according to the Film Noir Foundation’s Eddie Muller, who funded a complete restoration, which he introduced at TCM Classic Film Festival‘s showing at Hollywood & Highland. Though this genre is not my favorite, it is extremely influential. This film shows why.
Too Late for Tears, written by Roy Huggins, mentor to the late Stephen J. Cannell, co-creator of The Rockford Files with James Garner and The A-Team, premieres on TCM on July 17, 2015. Click on the image to buy the DVD.
This film noir classic with a femme fatale played by Lizabeth Scott (who apparently hated the movie) is a shocking portrayal of a diabolical woman literally on the manhunt.
The late Miss Scott, whom I recently discussed with Leonard Maltin and Robert Osborne, was an actress with range and talent, not just looks, and this is one of the roles for which she is most widely known. The Los Angeles-based Too Late for Tears (1949) was screened twice at this year’s Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival due to popular demand. According to its restorer, it was allowed by the copyright owners to fall into the public domain, leading to bad video quality and fewer showings. The restored print is scheduled to premiere on Turner Classic Movies this summer.
Here, Lizabeth Scott is a wicked wife who never loses an opportunity to cash in on the unearned. It’s a subtly layered performance in a limiting, constricting role that’s not her best. In it, she is drawn and cool as Arthur Kennedy’s wife. When a suitcase stash of stolen loot shows up, she does anything to keep it and I mean everything. With crisp LA locations from Grauman’s Chinese Theater to Union Station that fit the plot and her measured deliverance of hokey lines, the audience somehow buys the whole thing and it’s surprisingly easy to get caught in her murderous drive to keep the cash. Add an alcoholic lowlife (Dan Duryea) who stole it in the first place and the conflict cuts both ways, with this fast-thinking dame so plain about her scheme in film noir’s hard, man’s world, it’s almost tempting to root for her. Scott, who worked previously with director Byron Haskin on I Walk Alone (1948) with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, delivers a line about having been poor that provides the picture with plausibility.
Duryea’s lout starts calling her ‘Tiger’ at some early point in the plot, setting up one of the movie’s best lines, and everything comes to a climactic showdown with Don DeFore, who’s paired with Kristine Miller as the good people in pursuit of the truth and justice. Too Late for Tears is a tad too much in spite of Lizabeth Scott’s turn and it feels like some of her best scenes may have been cut out. Nevertheless, she makes the most of a brutal role, originally assigned to Joan Crawford with Wendell Corey in Duryea’s role and Kirk Douglas in the Kennedy role, according to the Film Noir Foundation’s Eddie Muller, who funded a complete restoration, which he introduced at TCM Classic Film Festival‘s showing at Hollywood & Highland. Though this genre is not my favorite, it is extremely influential. This film shows why.
Too Late for Tears, written by Roy Huggins, mentor to the late Stephen J. Cannell, co-creator of The Rockford Files with James Garner and The A-Team, premieres on TCM on July 17, 2015. Click on the image to buy the DVD.
Turning to author, Turner Classic Movies host and Hollywood historian Robert Osborne (whom I interviewed about Robert Redford last month), I asked about the late actress Lizabeth Scott, whose 22 motion pictures made an indelible impression on moviegoers.
This is an edited transcript of our short interview.
Robert Osborne: I’m not sure that we have enough of her flims unfortunately. Most of her films were for Paramount and Hal Wallis and we have to lease those. We have The Company She Keeps (1951 with Jane Greer), The Racket (1951, with Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan) and Pulp (1972, with Michael Caine and Mickey Rooney). There may be some United Artists pictures that we have. I think we have The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946, with Van Heflin and Barbara Stanwyck) which is kind of in the public domain. We also have Dead Reckoning (1947 with Humphrey Bogart). You can’t do a proper salute without the right movies. For years, we didn’t have Psycho (1960) and we wanted to do a salute to Janet Leigh. You can’t do a salute to Janet Leigh without Psycho.
Scott Holleran: Did you meet her?
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Robert Osborne: Yes, I did. She came to a couple of Academy events. I hosted a tribute to Barbara Stanwyck and Lizabeth Scott came. She was lovely. I used to see her at parties. She looked terrific, she was very chatty and she always fascinated me. There was a point when I saw her [as Ivy Hotchkiss] in You Came Along (1945) and she was my favorite actress. I pinned up pictures of her. But then she went into the film noir movies and she got into the Lauren Bacall and Veronica Lake mode. I wonder if Hal Wallis, who saw something in her and wanted her under contract, hadn’t pushed her into the film noir mode—it would have been interesting to see what she would have become. [Pauses] You Came Along (1945 with Robert Cummings) is really a lovely movie. Have you seen that?
Scott Holleran: Yes.
Robert Osborne: She was such a charming leading lady in that movie.
Robert Osborne: I think she was good. She was perfect for a movie star. She had the hair and the Bacall demeanor—I don’t think she was in any way a copy of Bacall—and she held her own with Humphrey Bogart and Burt Lancaster and other overwhelming personalities. I always had the feeling that she wasn’t that gung ho about acting—kind of by her own choice; she kind of pulled out of it. If she’d wanted to do more, she would have. She was a smart cookie. I think she realized that what she had to sell was timeless—she was smart enough to know that. Bacall had a limited shelf life, too, but she went from the vamp in [Howard Hawks’] To Have and Have Not to becoming a character actress, which she did in The Shootist with John Wayne. In that sense, I think Lizabeth Scott knew she had a limited shelf life.
Scott Holleran: Did the smearing in Confidential help push her out of Hollywood?
Robert Osborne: I don’t think so. It was nasty. Of course, everyone believed it but, because she ran with a tony group of people, I don’t think it affected her. She was better known for being Hal Wallis’ girlfriend, which was never confirmed. But it got to the point where nothing that Confidential [the publication that printed the smear against Lizabeth Scott] published was believed.
Scott Holleran: Is she a wronged woman?
Robert Osborne: Is she wronged? [Pauses] She was certainly damaged by rumors.
Scott Holleran: Was there an out of court settlement?
Robert Osborne: I don’t know. You do bring up an interesting point. She was very chic and she had a lot of money. I had a feeling that her motivation [to act] had more to do with money than with the satisfaction of acting. You might say that Sally Field had to be an actress. With Lizabeth Scott, I think that having a nice bank account and living well was important to her. She knew it wouldn’t go on forever and she was smart enough to make as much money as she could while she could.
Scott Holleran: What are Miss Scott’s three most essential pictures for one who’s never seen her?
Robert Osborne: Dead Reckoning, which shows that she could hold her own with big name stars. Certainly, You Came Along. And I think that I Walk Alone (1948, with Burt Lancaster) is a terrific movie. She’s also very good in The Company She Keeps, with Jane Greer, which is about these two women—a woman who goes to prison and a parole officer—and you kinda think Lizabeth Scott would play the ex-convict and Jane Greer the parole officer but it’s the other way around. But I would say those first three.
Scott Holleran: Is it fair to describe her as a film noir actress?
Robert Osborne: I think so, because film noir is so loved—it’s probably the most loved genre of movies—it kind of describes her properly. She’s so adorable in Loving You(1957) with Elvis Presley and other things. I don’t think Lizabeth Scott felt like she had to be an actress. But she was certainly qualified to do so much more.
Leonard Maltin: I met her twice, ever so briefly. Many years ago, we met at a reception honoring Hal Wallis—Bette Davis and Earl Holliman were there—and then again at the Golden Boot awards years later.
Scott Holleran: What do you think of her?
Leonard Maltin: On screen for me she defined the word sultry, which I realize brings me nearly into cliché territory, and most recently I saw the Film Noir Foundation’s restoration of Too Late for Tears (1949). I think I’ve underrated the film in the movie guide—she was good. Whether she had more range than we realize or she was perfectly suited to those femme fatale roles we’ll never know. But she certainly filled them very well.
Scott Holleran: Is she a good actress?
Leonard Maltin: Yes, I think so.
Scott Holleran: What are three essential Lizabeth Scott pictures?
Leonard Maltin: Dead Reckoning because it’s one of her more significant films. It teamed her with Bogart at the peak of his career and it’s a good movie. Then I would add Too Late for Tears because I think it is a prototypical film noir with a great part for her because she’s so persuasive as the femme fatale, and I suppose Pitfall (1948).
Scott Holleran: What’s at the root of her cinematic appeal?
Leonard Maltin: She had a unique look—her looks were unusual. They were not conventional Hollywood looks and she had a certain bearing and attitude that seemed particularly suited to that film noir genre. She didn’t look like a sunny ingénue. So she’s always convincing.
Scott Holleran: Is it fair to describe Lizabeth Scott as a film noir actress?
Leonard Maltin: I don’t think it’s unfair because that’s what we really remember her for—but it is limiting because it implies that that’s all she could do.
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Robert Osborne: I think so, because film noir is so loved—it’s probably the most loved genre of movies—it kind of describes her properly. She’s so adorable in 
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