Black Widow

No matter how pretentious the cocktail party, never escape by asking another wallflower out for dinner. That was theatrical producer Van Heflin's mistake when, on the terrace of Broadway diva Ginger Rogers' apartment, he took pity on hopeful young writer Peggy Ann Garner. Just a few months later, she was found hanged in the bathroom of his apartment.

It was all very innocent, though. While his wife, another star on the Rialto (Gene Tierney), was away tending to her ailing mother, Heflin let Garner use his place as a daytime office so she could write in quiet comfort. (Well, not so quiet: She listens to `The Dance of the Seven Veils' from Salome incessantly and fixates on a line from the opera: `The mystery of love is stronger than the mystery of death.') But when it turns out not only that she was pregnant but that she was murdered, the police sensibly enough find in Heflin their prime suspect.

Black Widow, written and directed by Nunnally Johnson, assembles an impressive array of Hollywood luminaries across whose resumés long shadows were beginning to creep. Along with Rogers, Tierney and Heflin, there's George Raft as a police detective, Otto Krueger as Garner's actor uncle and Reginald Gardiner as Rogers' whipped spouse. It's an ensemble-cast, 40s-high-style mystery movie, made about a decade too late but not too much the worse for that (even allowing for its color and Cinemascope).

Heflin's technically the center of the movie – the patsy racing around to prove his innocence. But the meatier parts go to the women, except for Tierney, all but wasted in the recessive role of the elegant but dutiful wife. Garner makes her abrupt exit early in the movie, but returns in startlingly revisionist flashbacks. And, as the grande dame (named `Carlotta,' perhaps in homage to another grande dame of the stage, Marie Dressler's Carlotta Vance in Dinner at Eight?), Rogers strides around in big-ticket outfits and fakes a highfalutin drama-queen accent. For most of the movie it seems like ill-fitting role for the essentially proletarian Rogers, but it's shrewdly written, and near the end she shows her true colors, becoming, briefly, sensational.

Like Repeat Performance and All About Eve, Black Widow uncoils in a high-strung, back-stabbing theatrical milieu that's now all but vanished – all the money and the glamour have moved west. (Not to put too fine a point on it, but the tiny part of a struggling Greenwich Village actor is taken by television producer Aaron Spelling, now one of the richest men in Hollywood.) The movie cheats a little by withholding information essential to our reading of the characters, but it's a forgivable feint; the characters are all `types' anyhow. There is, however, one baffling omission – there's not a single widow in the plot.

This is a colourful mystery yarn, nothing to deep or steep, with a limited pallet of suspects. In the right hands this could of been a decent "Film Noir" but the colour all rather lush and plush on top of highly unsuitable widescreen which mostly ruins the framing of the actors while giving this studio shot film an artificial look that undermines the suspense. Nonetheless, this is enjoyable froth nicely dated and a good movie for a wet and lazy afternoon.

I greatly enjoyed this Cinemascope, Stereo-Sound romp, but mainly as a Guilty Pleasure, as it's a film very much of it's time, with mismatched acting styles, lush, unbelievable sets, a central premise that doesn't make much sense (lending your expensive apartment to a just-met down-and-out writer while your wife's away),and an early attempt to make visual sense of the then-new wide-screen process.

Why do I like it? Ginger Rogers is way over the top, popping on and off screen with snappy diva one-liners, like Margo Channing on pep pills; Peggy Ann Garner plays a subversive Lolita, crazy-seductive and irresistible, and you can even spot Aaron Spelling towards the end in a bit part as a theatre employee.

The palette is loaded with pastel colors so popular in the 1950's, and the whole thing is sort of a mild domestic whodunit whipped up into an anemic Douglas Sirk confection. Great it ain't, but because of Rogers, Van Heflin, Gene Tierney (who has very little to do but does it beautifully) and Reginald Gardner, I found it greatly entertaining.

Van Heflin gives a striking, forceful performance as a theatrical producer in New York City who befriends a lonely 20-year-old girl at a party; she's a would-be writer hoping for success, he takes a shine to her and offers a helping hand...but then she turns up dead! Curiously mistitled drama really doesn't involve "a predatory female". Peggy Ann Garner is intriguing as the youngster who, in flashbacks, is revealed to be scheming and ambitious, somewhat ruthless, but not a black widow. Gene Tierney has a thankless role as Heflin's wife (she looks grim throughout), but Ginger Rogers is fun as a colorful, gossiping actress. The film has some ridiculous passages, red herrings and side-plots (one involving another young woman who appears to be fabricating a wild story just to frame Heflin is never explored), and a slightly anti-climactic finish. The film looks good and has some funny/catty lines in the beginning, but in the end it all seems a bit silly. **1/2 from ****

Black Widow (1954)

An early full color Cinemascope drama, loaded with starts, and written by a high powered but somewhat forgotten stage and screen writer of the 40s and 50s, Nunnally Johnson. And this is one of a handful of films he directed, too. It's really quite a fully blossomed drama, and it grows with complexity as it goes. And it's packed with stars. The leading man has always impressed me even though he's not the handsome or powerful sort that usually commands the first credits, Van Heflin. he's really amazing, subtle and perfectly sophisticated and well meaning and (eventually) tortured.

His wife is played with usual cool cheerfulness by Gene Tierney, and their neighbor and friend is a haughty and ridiculous (perfectly so) Ginger Rogers. Rogers takes her role to the hilt, both in arrogance and frivolity and later in emotional breakdown.

What ensues is not just highbrow Broadway theater culture, but eventually a criminal (or psychologically suspenseful) tidal wave sweeps over the relatively lightweight beginnings, and the effect is kind of remarkable in its own way. I mean, it's so completely theatrical and melodramatic, and yet it really works as an interpersonal and heartfelt (and probing) drama, too. The writing is smart, nuanced, and it plays the line of being exactly what it is--meaning that it's about the very world that Johnson lives in.

The cop in this case is George Raft, always a little stiff and stiff again here, but he does his job. The seductress who is the center of all these talents is Peggy Ann Garner. Who is she? Well, after several years of being a successful child actress, and except for a small role in an obscure 1951 Fred Zinnemann film as an adult, Garner was a television actress (including some t.v. movies) bouncing from one series to another. Then, at the end of her career, she had small roles in three more features. And in many ways, she's the weak link here--she's supposed to be sleeping her way to success in the theater world, and yet there's something not quite right about her in this role. I suppose I underestimate middle aged rich men.

The plot this girl weaves for those around her is elaborate and devilish. And when it goes wrong for her, it really goes wrong for our main man Heflin. At the point the film is very much like Hitchcock film, with the apparently innocent man accused of a crime. Unlike Hitchcock, Johnson uses flashbacks at key points near the end., which do their job but also have a way of deflating the suspense.

See for yourself!