The Tattered Dress

It is, after all, 1957, the badly ripped garment of the title, reveals only that Elaine Stewart has been the victim of a sexual assault by Floyd Simmons and that she is clearly in.... distress.

Fuming hubby, Phillip Reed, soon settles the issue, with the hapless Simmons winding up on the wrong end of a bullet. Cue for the timely entrance of whip smart, fast talking defence lawyer, Jeff Chandler. A crumbling marriage to Jeanne Crain aint gonna stop HIM from winning a case. In another life he could have made his fortune selling refrigerators to Eskimos and is given a wide berth by any donkey that values its hind legs!

Sharp as a tack, he turns sharp as a cushion sheriff (Jack Carson) into mincemeat on the stand, winning both the battle of the gabble and the gavel plus an acquittal along the way. Barely half way through and this sultry drama, with it's poolside culture resembles an undress rehearsal for 'Anatomy of a Murder'....until...

The bewildered Chandler is framed, accused of bribing juror, Gail Russell and the previously intimidating lawyer finds himself the victim of intimidation from the small, closely knit community. Meanwhile, the chunky, chirpy sheriff begins doing evil by numbers; from the giveaway glint in the eye, to bully boy lover, to murderous menace. All carried out with a superficially nonchalant, 'Who me?' persona, which cuts no ice with the astute Chandler for one second.

Shot in Cinemascope and undeniably voguish, this Rock'n'Roll era noir appears to be consciously anticipating the sixties, but much of the intended impact is lost in a wordy, sluggish execution, culminating in Chandler's soul bearing speech. An inordinate outpouring of Shakespearian proportions. What had the potential to be a taut, tense thriller, becomes an unduly padded, plodding, ponderous and over indulgent triumph of style over substance.

The first 20 minutes are quite vivid and garish, and Elaine Stewart is lovely and electrifying as the well-married tramp. Later it bogs down in pompous courtroom scenes that magnify Jeff Chandler's tendency toward two-note delivery. Note: The review in TV Guide slams Jack Arnold, implying that he's a poor director and that the "Incredible Shrinking Man" was a poorly-directed film. (!?!) Hey! Please study your film history! Take it from someone who thinks that 50's pop culture is important, that it is reflected in almost everything we think, do, and watch today, from the cars that we drive to the presidents that we elect! Jack Arnold was a master, and the films (and TV shows) that he directed have been a major influence.

THE TATTERED DRESS has so many fascinating elements within it that it deserves to be elevated to the class of forgotten, but major, works. Jack Arnold's direction of a potentially overly-melodramatic plot manages to sidestep most of the problems, but it is the acting that is most memorable. The film's beginning uses Elaine Stewart to enormous advantage. She may have had a short film career, but you could not take your eyes off her when she was on screen (THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, SKY FULL OF MOON, HAJJI BABA, etal). She had quite a bit of talent that never saw stardom, partly because of a dog attack that left her out of the biz for a while. GAIL RUSSELL is superb...totally wonderful... in a supporting role, and the scene in which she breaks down in the courtroom deserved a Nomination. And how splendidly she handles the line about drinking!! JACK CARSON is cagey and sneaky and superbly threatening. In the lead, JEFF CHANDLER, as a lawyer, is always convincing. Low-keyed, you can tell when his character is confronted with an insurmountable problem. JEANNE CRAIN has little to do as his wife, but she is always lovely to watch. Catch this underrated film. It's worth searching for.

Jack Arnold's "The Tattered Dress" is a wonderful surprise - a very fine, well-crafted movie from Universal that defies the usual movie pigeonholes of A-movie versus B-movie, and serious film versus exploitation film. It also demonstrates Arnold's versatility as a director: known for his many classic sci-fi/fantasy pictures, yet capable of a classic British comedy hit "The Mouse That Roared" and everything in between including blaxploitation (with Fred Williamson) and excellent work for TV.

Watching it for the first time, some 67 years after release via YouTube, I was immediately struck by the excellent CinemaScope black & white photography, with fine compositions by an unheralded cameraman Carl Guthrie (who shot one of my all-time favorite movies, "Christmas in Connecticut").

But this is an Albert Zugsmith production, and like so many of his exploitation movies features many beautiful actresses like Elaine Stewart (she of the tattered dress) to add a tidbit or so of raciness to an otherwise serious picture.

The script by George Zuckerman, best-known for his screenplays for Douglas Sirk classics, is remarkable, with complex lead characters played by Jeff Chandler (the deeply flawed lawyer who has heroic elements) and well-cast Jack Carson (a most amiable villain). He manages to include courtroom gimmickry that puts a Perry Mason episode to shame, by taking the usual preachiness of a spirited lawyer's speech to nearly satirical extremes.

IMDb submitters have classified the movie incorrectly as "film noir" and "Psychotronic" (apologies to Michael Weldon, who I knew well back in Cleveland before we both moved to NYC). Just as the word "cult" has been misused and widely overused in recent decades, I prefer "overlooked" or "misunderstood" as more accurate to describe so many great movies ranging from Hugo Haas to Ken Russell that eventually have found a niche and latter-day appreciation. (Growing up in the '50s, it was the word "camp", both high and low, that was how film buffs treated similar off-beat content.)

Big-shot trial lawyer Jeff Chandler gets a client off for a murder in Nevada. The murdered man had been a friend of sheriff Jack Carson. Carson frames Chandler for bribing a juror. When the attorney Chandler and long-suffering ex-wife Jeanne Crain hire begins to talk about plea deals, Chandler fires him and conducts his own defense.

It's directed by the under-rated Jack Arnold, who is best remembered for some fine, subtext-laden monster movies of the era. With Chandler's dramatic, rumbling voice, however, it turns into a well-told soap opera, with undertones of danger from Carson, who is very good in his part. I'm afraid I was put off by the slovenly-lawyered courtroom scenes, in which attorneys accepted hearsay evidence without a whimper, and verdicts that seem unlikely. Other cast members include Edward Platt as a reporter whose job seems to be to follow around Chandler, George Tobias as a not-too-funny comic, Gail Russell as the woman who accuses Chandler of bribery, and Elaine Stewart as a rather dumb blonde.