Fate Opens The File on Thelma Jordon

Now Playing: The File on Thelma Jordon (1949)

Pros: A good, mid-level effort that represents a sort of watershed in Barbara Stanwyck’s noir career; Features a relatable “everyman” in Wendell Corey
Cons: A head-slapper of an ending that manages to be both brutal and cloyingly sentimental

This post is part of the It’s in the Name of the Title Blogathon, hosted by two big names in movie blogging, Gill at Realweegiemidget Reviews and Rebecca at Taking Up Room. Gill and Rebecca tasked their fellow bloggers with reviewing a movie in which a character’s name (first, last or full) appears in the title; for more contributions, see either or both of the hosts’ blogs.

Speaking of big names, there weren’t many that were bigger in the classic era of screen entertainment than Barbara Stanwyck. From the risque pre-Code talkies in which she played plucky women of questionable virtue, to TV dramas like The Big Valley where she portrayed tough-as-nails matriarchs, Stanwyck blazed her own distinctive cinematic trail, eventually garnering four Best Actress Academy Award nominations, an honorary Oscar, three primetime Emmys and a multitude of lifetime achievement awards, among other honors. 

A rundown of Stanwyck’s title roles alone demonstrates the depth and variety of her career: as Mexicali Rose (1929) she’s a “loose” woman who likes to use men; as Annie Oakley (1935) she can do anything a man can do, and better; as harried, working class Stella Dallas (1937), she would do anything to help her daughter get ahead in life; as The Mad Miss Manton (1938), she’s a fun-loving debutante who proves to be more adept at discovering clues than the police; as Martha Ivers (The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, 1946), she’s an intimidating business woman with a dark secret; and as Mrs.Carroll (The Two Mrs. Carrolls, 1947), she’s the new wife of a tortured artist who may or may not be utterly mad.

Stanwyck reached her noir femme-fatale peak as cold-as-ice Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944). But as the war years receded and America settled down into a dull but comfortable suburban existence, Stanwyck’s screen image shifted. The noir roles were still there, but she was just as likely to be on the receiving end of dark designs as not.

Fred was sorry that he wasn't double indemnified against laser death stares.

Only a year after her dicey stint as the second Mrs. Carroll, Stanwyck was again in peril in Sorry, Wrong Number, portraying an invalid, Leona Stevenson, who inadvertently overhears a murder plot from her bedroom phone.

The difference between calculating Phyllis Dietrichson and panicky, bed-ridden Leona couldn’t be more stark, yet when Thelma Jordon rolled around in 1949, Stanwyck’s crime drama roles -- both as the Femme Fatale and the Suffering Woman -- were starting to get on her nerves:

“‘My God, isn’t there a good comedy around?’ [Stanwyck] asked at the time. ‘I’m tired of suffering in films. And I’ve killed so many co-stars lately, I’m getting a power complex!” [Quoted in Dan Callahan’s biography, Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman, University Press of Mississippi, 2011, p.159]

As if to punctuate the grimness of the roles she was getting, Thelma Jordon is both a femme fatale and a sufferer. Thelma takes a long, circuitous route to get to both states of noir-ness (maybe too long and too circuitous; more on that later), and drags a noir Everyman in the form of Assistant District Attorney Cleve Marshall (Wendell Corey) along for the ride.

Fate arranges for a “meet cute” between the duplicitous Thelma and her ostensible patsy, DA Marshall. One night at the District Attorney’s office, Cleve is downing shots and complaining about his depressing marital situation to his boss, Miles Scott (Paul Kelly). After Scott calls it a night and goes home, alluring Thelma shows up at the office asking for Scott, wanting to report an attempted burglary at her aunt’s house, where she is staying.

Now inebriated and not wanting to go home where his wealthy, domineering father-in-law is holding court at a dinner party, Cleve convinces Thelma to go out for drinks. Pretty soon Cleve, disenchanted with his hum-drum middle class life, falls hard for the alluring and mysterious Thelma.

Cleve: "I'm fed up. Ever heard that phrase? No, you wouldn't, you're not married."

It seems that a combination of alcohol and infatuation has painted a big P for Patsy on Cleve's forehead.

First, there’s Thelma's story about attempted burglaries at her aunt’s house that smells to high heaven. When asked why she didn’t just go to the police, Thelma responds with a laugher of an explanation that her aunt is afraid of uniformed cops. Then, having allowed Cleve to think that she was single, Thelma belatedly admits that she herself is married -- to a low-life crook and con man named Tony (Richard Rober).

The noir stuff soon hits the fan when, on the night that the pair are planning to go off together on a romantic trip, Thelma calls Cleve in a panic that her aunt has been shot. Cleve steals over to the house to help clean up the mess. Wanting desperately to believe that it’s Thelma’s no-good hubby Tony who has shown up unannounced and killed the old lady in an attempt to rob her, Cleve, with his extensive DA experience, frenetically barks orders at Thelma to set the scene to look like a garden-variety burglary gone wrong.

If Thelma is truly a cold-blooded murderer she’s an excellent actress, as she seems genuinely panicked, like an innocent bystander who realizes how much the circumstances make her look guilty. And despite the lovers’ best efforts at rearranging the crime scene, she most definitely looks guilty.

Thelma: "I wish so much crime didn't take place after dark. It's so unnerving!"

When Thelma’s sketchy past becomes public, along with the news that Aunt Vera changed her will in Thelma’s favor, means, motive and opportunity line up against her. Combined with Vera’s butler’s testimony about Thelma’s furtive behavior on the night in question, DA Scott decides that a murder charge is a slam dunk.

With the ball in his court, Cleve goes to work, anonymously suggesting to Thelma’s lawyer (Stanley Ridges) that he hire the Chief District Attorney’s lawyer brother to work for the defense, forcing the DA to step down due to conflict of interest. Cleve gets the lead prosecutor assignment, and proceeds to do everything he can to throw the case.

Is he the dupe of a cold-blooded Phyllis Dietrichson type, or is it more complicated than that? And where was the shadowy Tony on that fateful night?

The File on Thelma Jordon invites the viewer to be an alternate juror on the case. We haven't witnessed the actual shooting, but we have seen Cleve’s and Thelma's hurried rearrangement of the crime scene. The circumstantial evidence -- like the convenient change to the will -- is strong, but there are seeds of doubt. Thelma’s distress on the night of the shooting seems genuine, which is uncharacteristic of a shrewd, heartless manipulator -- or was she just acting?

Stanwyck synthesizes Thelma’s contradictions over the course of the film, from wry bemusement at Cleve’s drunken advances, to smoldering passion, to panicked helplessness in the middle of the night, to tight-lipped stoicism after she’s been arrested, to an almost regal dignity as she leads a swarm of reporters and onlookers from the jail to the courtroom to hear the jury’s verdict.

You'd be confident too if you had both the defense and the prosecution on your side.

Thelma’s ultimate fate comes completely out of left field and it’s both shocking and cloyingly sentimental. It's the sort of ending guaranteed to bring a tear to the eye of any blue-haired upholder of public morality. 

Fortunately, Thelma's ending hasn't erased fond memories of the film. Biographer Dan Callahan relates that at the American Film Institute’s fete of Stanwyck, in which she received a Lifetime Achievement Award, Walter Matthau singled out Barbara’s performance in Thelma Jordon:

“[P]articularly the way she sighed, ‘Maybe I am just a dame and didn’t know it.’ Matthau then went on to knock her co-star, Wendell Corey, an unprepossessing actor who was good when he was doing a menacing type in Budd Boetticher’s The Killer is Loose (1956), but who was hard-pressed to hold his own as a leading man opposite Stanwyck.” [Callahan, p. 158]

While I’m hesitant to disagree with the great Walter Matthau, I think “unprepossessing” is just what the film calls for. Cleve is a post-war, suburban “everyman” who is fed up with domestic life and resents being dominated by his overbearing father-in-law. Cleve would be far less believable in the hands of a more charismatic leading man who could “hold his own” with Stanwyck. Men like Cleve don’t often score with sensual mystery women like Thelma, and it makes sense that he’s willing to endanger his family and career for her.

Thelma: "I'm no good for any man for any longer than a kiss!"

In the same year as Thelma Jordon, Corey lost Janet Leigh to Robert Mitchum in Holiday Affair. Corey was the epitome of the reliable but unexciting second male lead who loses out in romance to the charismatic star. At least he had Stanwyck all to himself for most of The File, even if it wasn’t entirely due to his animal magnetism.

The File on Thelma Jordon was directed by Robert Siodmak, who was one of a generation of filmmakers who got their start in Germany during the silent era, but fled to Hollywood as Hitler rose to power. In the 1940s he made a string of crime pictures that years later would come to be seen as some of the very best examples of film noir, including Phantom Lady (1942), Christmas Holiday (1944; with Deana Durbin and Gene Kelly), The Killers (1946; Burt Lancaster’s film debut and Ava Gardner’s first featured role), Cry of the City (1948; Victor Mature and Richard Conte), Criss Cross (1949, Burt Lancaster and Yvonne DeCarlo), and of course The File on Thelma Jordon to round out the decade.

Besides having such an assured director in her corner, Thelma benefits from George Barnes’ standout cinematography. Many of Cleve’s and Thelma’s scenes together take place at night, with the play of light and shadow serving as a visual metaphor for the lovers' dark sides and conflicting emotions.

Thelma Jordon is not Barbara Stanwyck’s best title role, and it’s not the high point of director Siodmak’s noir career, but it is a solid crime thriller with a relatable everyman in the person of Wendell Corey and enough plot twists and turns to make things interesting. But be forewarned: the slap dash ending might induce cognitive whiplash.

Where to find it: Streaming | DVD

Fading Stars in the Dead of Night

Now Playing: The Night Walker (1964)

Pros: Very effective, spooky atmosphere and imagery; great music score
Cons: Plot holes and continuity errors

The 1950s and early '60s were an era of "creative destruction" for the movie business. With the oligarchic power of the big studios long broken (United States vs. Paramount Pictures, 1948) and the big bad wolf of television threatening to eat the industry's breakfast, lunch and dinner, a new generation of independent pitchmen and showmen (and some conmen) stepped in to demonstrate a different, but profitable business model. They cleverly recognized that the postwar youth of America actually had some extra cash to spend and needed an excuse -- any excuse -- to get away from their so-square parents. The result was a seemingly endless stream of low budget flicks aimed exclusively at the youth market. Exhibitors were ecstatic to get their hands on a steady supply of cheap product and teens were happy to fill their balconies and drive-ins and make out as movies made specifically for them played on the big screen.

Of course, these movies didn't scare up business with glamorous stars' names on theater marquees. They got the kids' posteriors into the seats with a combination of lurid titles (e.g., I Married a Monster from Outer Space; I Was a Teenage Werewolf), equally lurid posters, cheap tickets, and cheesy promotions. The Big Cheese of promotions in the late '50s and '60s was William Castle (born William Schloss in 1914), who at first labored anonymously in the business, directing programmers in the 1940s and doing some TV, before reinventing himself as the P.T. Barnum of B pictures with Macabre in 1958. Castle's first great gimmick was to issue $1000 life insurance policies to theater goers insuring them against death by fright. Some theaters also had nurses in the lobby and hearses parked outside, standing by. Macabre was more plodding and atmospheric than a real fright-inducer, but the gimmick sold tickets, making the film an unexpected success and spurring Castle on to more imaginative promotions.

The next three Castle productions cemented his reputation as the Grand Guignol impresario of low-budget movies. It's no coincidence that these three represent his cheesiest, most imaginative promotions, and are the films he's primarily known for today (excepting Rosemary's Baby, which he produced but did not direct). House on Haunted Hill (1959) introduced "Emergo," which consisted of a glow-in-the-dark skeleton on a wire that was hoisted above the audience at a key point in the film. The Tingler (1959), featuring Vincent Price in an early B horror film role, jolted theater goers with electric motors hidden in select seats; this was supposed to represent the "tingling" sensation all humans supposedly experience when they are about to be frightened to death. 13 Ghosts (1960) was filmed in "Illusion-O," which required audience members to don special "ghost viewers" (really 3D glasses) to see the ghastly ghosts that the characters were seeing in the movie.

Barbara and Robert had been long divorced when they met
on the set of The Night Walker, but got along quite well.

Several years later, the success of neo-gothic thrillers featuring aging glamour stars of the studio era -- What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, and Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964) with Bette and Olivia de Haviland -- had Castle scrambling to put together similar packages in the hopes of striking box office gold. The Grand Guignol master countered with his own versions: first Strait-Jacket (1964) with Joan Crawford as a reformed murderess who seems to have had a relapse, then another 1964 release, The Night Walker, with former A-list stars Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor (who had also been married in real life).

With the revival of big name glamor stars in decidedly non-glamorous roles (and the movies themselves aimed at an older audience), Castle skipped the juvenile promotional gimmicks for Night Walker. It was enough of a coup to score two of the biggest names that big studio Hollywood had ever produced. According to Castle biographer John W. Law (Scare Tactic: The Life and Films of William Castle, Writers Club Press, 2000), Stanwyck was easy to persuade for the role, having recently regretted turning down the Olivia de Haviland role in Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, which became a big hit. Castle wanted Stanwyck's ex Robert Taylor for the male leading role. Barbara was fine with the idea, but suggested Castle also get the blessing of Taylor's wife at the time. Taylor was also quite OK with playing opposite his ex-wife, telling the press, "Any actor who would turn down a chance to play opposite Barbara Stanwyck, under any circumstances, would have to be out of his head. She's certainly one of the pros in the business. I'm very enthusiastic about the film. It looks like it will be a pleasant experience." Later, asked how the production was going, he answered drily, "It's as if we were never married." (Ibid.)

The Night Walker was certainly different from anything Robert had made up to that time (elements of it are reminiscent of Stanwyck's role in the 1948 noir-suspenser Sorry, Wrong Number, but the overall tone is completely different). Stanwyck plays Irene, the oppressed wife of a blind, cruel millionaire, Howard Trent (Hayden Rorke). Castle and screenwriter Robert Bloch (author of Psycho) immediately put the audience on edge, as Trent is as ugly on the outside as he is on the inside-- wisps of hair cover his enormous, domed head, and he doesn't bother to hide his creepy, all-white occluded eyes behind dark glasses. (Rorke, best known for his role as the genial but befuddled psychiatrist on TV's I Dream of Jeannie, is unrecognizable under the heavy make-up.) Trent has been taping his wife as she talks in her sleep, and is convinced that she's having an affair. Except, Irene points out to him, that she practically never goes out of the house, and they never have people over, except for Trent's lawyer, Barry Moreland (Taylor). Trent confronts Moreland, but the lawyer indignantly denies any involvement with Irene.

The obsessed, jealous man can't let it go. His wife has clearly been dreaming about a lover night after night, and where there's smoke, there must be fire. After Moreland leaves, Trent confronts his harried wife again. He smirks like a snake as he tells Irene, "It's only because I love you darling, that I'm interested in everything you do and everyone you see." As the argument escalates and Trent demands to know who Irene's lover is, she screams at him, "My lover is only a dream, but he's still more of a man than you!" Ouch! Trent tries to strike her with his cane, but she flees the house. As the old man stands at the foot of the stairs calling to his wife, a muted explosion sounds from an upstairs laboratory (the reason for or purpose of the lab is never explained). Not seeing (and apparently not smelling) smoke pouring from the room, Trent enters and the door closes, whereupon he's apparently blown to bits in a much larger explosion.

Howard Trent seems a little worse for the wear
after his laboratory accident.

An arson investigator assures the new widow that, although there's a gaping 6 foot hole in the lab floor, the rest of the house is structurally sound and safe to live in. (He also tells her that the explosion and resulting fire was so intense, that Trent was literally blown into atoms-- an unlikely proposition.) The house may be structurally safe, but there's something wrong with it nonetheless. That night, Irene hears the tapping of her husband's cane, and sees the door to his study close. She hears yet another muffled explosion coming from the locked lab, and when she goes up to investigate, she encounters the animated corpse (?) of her husband shuffling toward her through the smoke, one side of his face hideously burned. She wakes up. Was it a dream?

Naturally spooked, she visits Barry the lawyer for help in selling the house. Barry explains that the house is tied up in probate and it will be months before she can put it on the market. Irene decides to move back to a small apartment in the back of her beauty parlor (she owned and ran the business before marrying the dreadful millionaire). The plot thickens as Barry starts to woo Irene. But he has a rival in Irene's dream lover (Lloyd Bochner), who seems to have become flesh and blood, calling on her in the dead of night to whisk her off to strange destinations. Irene's life has suddenly gotten very complicated-- she's gone from being a downtrodden housewife whose obsessive husband wouldn't even let her leave the house, to an attractive, rich widow with a real-life would-be suitor, a dream lover, and a dead husband who's still after her. Will she go mad, or perhaps suffer an even worse fate?

The Night Walker is long on eerie atmosphere and chock full of Barbara Stanwyck's throaty, blood-curdling screams. Like Psycho, Robert Bloch's screenplay hauls out its spooks and scares at odd points, never letting the audience settle into a predictable narrative flow. A bizarre wedding-from-Hell officiated and witnessed by wax figures is particularly creepy. The sound work is also quite effective, from the ghostly tapping of Trent's cane, to Irene's aforementioned screams, to the superb and moody score by Vic Mizzy. And of course, there's the inherent interest in seeing two former larger-than-life Hollywood stars working outside their comfort zones in a low-budget mystery-thriller.

The movie suffers from a few plot holes and continuity errors that occasionally spoil the carefully-built atmosphere. Trent's 2nd floor laboratory that figures into so much of the film's plot is never adequately explained-- what did he do there, what was it for? A character, Irene's beauty parlor assistant (Joyce, played by Judi Meredith) is introduced, seems to be nefariously involved in the mystery, and then is quickly and inexplicably dispatched. And at the climax, a character refers to some trick with the Trent mansion's clocks, which to that point had not figured in the plot at all (probably a scene that didn't make the final cut). On the other hand, the holes and inconsistencies add to the film's incoherent, dreamlike quality. Dreams within dreams.

If you see this in your dreams,
you need to wake up fast!

Speaking of dreams, Castle, always trying to do something different, inserted an odd, animated sequence between the film's opening titles and Act I. Narrated by Paul Frees (whose rich, deep voice was utilized in a number of genre movies of the time), the sequence lasts for several minutes, and is a surreal, somewhat rambling mini-essay on dreams and nightmares:

When you dream, you wander into another world where everything is strange and terrifying, a world that only exists at night. When you dream, you become… a night walker!

A woman's face, half hidden in shadows, is suddenly supplanted by a fist clenching a staring eyeball. The woman screams. The scene is irised out, then Act I begins with the hideous, sightless Trent advancing toward the camera. Damn, but that is some good, weird stuff-- classic William Castle! I know this is going to make me sound hopelessly old and out of touch, but I wish there were more William Castles in movies today, and fewer Michael Bays.

Long out of print in the U.S., The Night Walker is hard to find on DVD or for downloading/streaming. It deserves better. A few sites offer foreign DVD releases that are playable on North American machines. Google Night Walker DVD and see what you find.


The mystery of dreams is explored in a surreal introductory sequence: