The Walls of Jericho

From 1948, The Walls of Jericho stars Cornel Wilde, Linda Darnell, Kirk Douglas, and Anne Baxter, directed by John Stahl.

Wilde plays Dave Connors, the county attorney in the small town of Jericho, Kansas, at the turn of the century. He's loved by the townspeople and is considering a run for Congress. His life isn't an easy one: his wife (Ann Dvorak) is a drunk and unpleasant.

When his best friend, newspaperman Tucker Wedge (Douglas) introduced Dave to his new wife Algeria (Darnell), it's obvious she's used to a much fancier way of life. She also immediately attracted to Dave.

When she can't get anywhere with him, she convinces her husband to start a campaign about problems in town and blame Dave - except there aren't any problems. Then she convinces Tucker to run for Congress.

Dave, however, is in love with Julia (Anne Baxter) - it's a chaste love, but when they finally declare themselves, he realizes if he runs for Congress, he will never be able to see her even platonically. So he drops out, thwarting Algeria's plans yet again.

Julia leaves town anyway. However, circumstances, bring them back together. Just what Tucker's wife was waiting for.

Darnell has a real Gene Tierney conniver role here - in fact, Gene was set to play it - and she does it well. Anne Baxter is appropriately noble. Cornel Wilde never did it for me. He just can't warm up the camera.

The direction is somewhat static. I saw this on YouTube where all the background noise is described as "applause"

The Walls Of Jericho finds both Cornel Wilde and Kirk Douglas as ambitious men and best friends who become estranged due to the behavior of their wives Ann Dvorak and Linda Darnell. Dvorak is an alcoholic and Darnell is a manipulator. The one thing that Darnell could not manipulate was an affair with Wilde who turned her down flat because of his friendship with Douglas. That sends Darnell into a quiet rage and her manipulations of people and events drives the film after that.

Also in the picture is Anne Baxter a female attorney in the ragtime era when such people were a rarity. She's the daughter of Henry Hull who was an attorney who Wilde admires, but who has fallen on bad times. She and Wilde hit it off professionally and personally, but when it looks like an affair might be in the offing, Baxter moves away.

However the arrest of young Colleen Townsend brings Wilde and Baxter together professionally. Townsend is charged with murdering town tough Barton MacLane and it will take some good lawyering to get her off. But that brings Darnell out who sees Wilde once again as a threat to her husband who is now a Congressman. And of course there's that ever present itch that Wilde has never scratched for her.

The Walls Of Jericho is a ragtime soap opera set in the Roosevelt-Taft era. The choice roles in this definitely are for the females with Darnell, Baxter, and Dvorak all making themselves memorable. In fact Baxter gets a chance at what is normally a male prerogative in the cinema, she gets to make a closing argument before a jury.

For reasons I don't understand this film is rarely seen and that does a disservice to the female cast members. This contains some of the best work any of the three leading ladies have done, especially Baxter. It will be a revelation if you get the chance to see this.

This is a very local soap opera in a small town in the midwest where everyone knows everybody and boredom is escaped by garden parties and rural balls with pianolas, while there is some trouble brewing under the surface. The county attorney Cornel Wilde is married to Ann Dvorak, an alcoholic, and the leading town nespaper man Kirk Douglas brings a bombshell beauty for a wife to town called Linda Darnell. She outshines everyone else and is the most dangerous of all. Gradually Anne Baxter sails up to challenge her in the last moment, but then this surprisingly good film has already advanced into high gear drama ending up in a murder trial.

At first you will suspect that the argument will be about drinking problems, especially as Kirk makes an issue of it in his paper and Cornel's wife never shows herself except when drunk. Neither couple has any children. Kirk is the one who at an early stage wonders why any man should ever marry a woman, and his question proves reasonable, when it is all too late.

Alfred Newman provides the music, always amazingly reliably excellent, and the environment of a small midwest very conventional town around 1910 is endearingly charming. You will be surprised to find such a small local world being able to come up with such a very intriguing drama.

In spite of the title ,the movie has nothing to do with Joshua and the Bible ;it's closer to film noir than to melodrama ,like "leave her to heaven " which already featured Cornel Wilde ; but in spite of its high rating , it cannot be mentioned in the same breath as the Stahl /Wilde/Gene Tierney's tour de force in 1946 ;even "the foxes of Harrow (1947) had a better screenplay .

It pits Wilde /Baxter 's idealism against Darnell/Douglas' careerism ;in consequence,the movie really takes place in the second part of the movie, when poor Marjorie might be sacrificed to political ambitions : here the movie thoroughly belongs to Anne Baxter ,who alone against the world of the high and the mighty ,shows an unexpected stamina and strength of character :at a time when ,most of the time, women had minor roles in the courts of justice ,the movie can be considered ,from that point of view, a successful effort.

Cornel Wilde is a county attorney married to alcoholic Ann Dvorak. Wilde's best friend is firebrand newspaper editor Kirk Douglas. Kirk returns to town after a lengthy trip with new bride Linda Darnell in tow. She's a gorgeous society lady who immediately takes a liking to Cornel, but those affections aren't returned by the stoic Wilde. Linda doesn't appreciate the rebuff and sets out to undermine Cornel in any way she can, pushing him away from his friendship with Douglas, and even sabotaging his nascent political career. Cornel is also falling for nice-girl attorney Anne Baxter, but they won't consummate their affair due to Cornel's marriage.

This was based on a novel by Paul Wellman, and it has that slightly clunky feel of a larger work having been whittled down to fit a feature-length script. Certain secondary characters, like those of Henry Hull and Marjorie Rambeau, don't amount to much in the finished work. That being said, I liked this more than most soapy dramas of the time, and all of the leads turn in excellent work. Darnell gives one of her best performances as the scheming manipulator. She's sporting lighter-than-usual hair (blonde? redhead? It's B&W), but she's still beautiful. Dvorak's role is complicated, and while it's smaller than the others, it, too, is one of her best. Wilde is broad-shouldered and quietly dignified, and Douglas, in only his second film, does what he can with a slightly secondary part.