no exit : D.O.A. (1950)

[Minor SPOILERS in this post]. Noir-heads are only too familiar with the genre’s favorite tropes: doomed heroes, back-stabbing femme fatales, visual flourishes, fatalistic plots, thunderous music. But D.O.A. stands out amongst the noir oeuvre for its totally sui generis status. Yes, it has virtually all the noir themes and characters, in abundance. But its premise, and to some extent, underlying psychology, is unique. I can’t think of any film, noir or otherwise, that has as its main plot point a guy that’s been murdered and he’s still literally alive [1], not just alive but trying to solve the case. Probably the closest is Sunset Blvd., in which we have a wise guy narrator who talks to us from beyond the grave. But it’s not quite the same thing; the William Holden character in Sunset is already dead and is just retelling the story. In D.O.A. the murdered hero is still alive, kicking, and trying to figure out what’s going on in a spiritual and existential morass that spirals out of control to a degree that’s extreme even by noir standards.

   The basic issue is not whether Frank Bigelow will die or not – that’s been pre-ordained – but why. Our hero’s eventual discovery, far too late, is more in the nature of the how instead of the why of his murder. As for the real reason, well, it’s merely the vicissitudes of fate, or to put it more bluntly, and quintessentially noirishly, for no good reason at all. Yes, there is a technical reason – notarizing a bill of sale. But the ultimate consequences are hardly proportional to the transgression, if one may put it that way. Again we have a classic noirish message: it’s an unfair universe, fella. Get over it.

   As the movie whirls and twists its way through the maelstrom we become more, not less, confused amongst the myriad receipts, bills, sales, aliases, spiked drinks, false leads, photographs, love letters, philandering and threats of philandering, and we never quite know the full story. But who cares? Best to sit back and enjoy the wild ride and delight in the dream-like excess. Indeed the whole production is awash in over-the-topness, especially the earnest B level acting that verges on camp but never quite gets there. My guess is that all involved were playing this totally straight as just another B movie, Ed Wood with a bigger budget and more talent, if you like.

   But first, let’s get to the only real misstep, and dispense with it straight away. It’s of course the hokey and hopelessly in-bad-taste (to current sensibilities anyway) wolf whistles while Frank ogles the ladies upon his arrival at the hotel. The whistles are especially incongruous given that the women Frank admires look singularly unappetizing, adorned as they are in frumpy, Forties-style garb. The only other, arguable, misfire is the prolonged romantic scene between Paula and Frank toward the end of the film. Now moving on to the good stuff: there’s great on-location scenes in San Francisco and Los Angeles (you can’t go wrong with the Bradbury Building for a thriller). Maybe the best sequence in the film is the scene at the jazz club (appropriately named The Fisherman) [2], shot in an orgiastically expressionist manner with alternating hopped up audience and wild-eyed musicians performing a bobsled ride of a jazz tune at an ever frenzied pace. By the way the proto-Beat clientele is mostly white but if one looks closely we can see hints of a multi-racial crowd, something quite unusual for a late Forties film, even an under the radar product like D.O.A. Oddly enough, and contrary to popular opinion, jazz features little in noir either as background or source music [3]. Jazz clubs are even scarcer, and this is one of the best sequences ever. The more conventional film music for D.O.A. is, in its different way, just as good. The manic pace and sweltering, claustrophobic feel throughout the story is perfectly complemented by Dmitri Tiomkin’s intrusive, bombastic score.

   Anyhow, as to the cast, Edmund O’Brien is perfect in the role of Frank Bigelow, in many, and sometimes surprising ways. For a hefty guy he shows some pretty fancy footwork skipping down steps and sprinting to avoid the bad guys chasing him. And as much as O’Brien more or less dominates the film as the frantic, frazzled Bigelow, it’s the women who steal the show.

   Pamela Britton as Paula usually gets the brunt of the bad reviews, both for the performance and the character. Okay, Miss Britton may not be the best actress in the world, or even the best in this movie. Similarly the character Paula is usually savaged for being a stereotypical clinging, whiny girlfriend/wife wannabe. But upon repeated viewings, and from the perspective of seventy years on, Paula (and Miss Britton’s performance) becomes something of an acquired taste, growing more appealing, human and sympathetic each time [4]. Indeed a case might be made that she’s the only admirable character in the story. She’s attractive, loyal, steadfast, speaks her mind (albeit sometimes impulsively and not too wisely), wants to love and be loved, and moreover is a darn good secretary. She actually looks pretty good next to the various specimens of womanhood – grifters, schemers, low-lifes, alcoholic nymphomaniacs, jazz freaks, double crossers, and who knows what else – Frank encounters on his quest. This doesn’t excuse his unchivalrous penchant for roughing up women along the way. No sympathy points for Frank here. To his credit he reserves even rougher treatment for the men, most of whom, happily, have it coming.

   1950s B movie scream queen Beverly Garland (here billed as Beverly Campbell) has a small role but registers a wallop with her bulging eyes. Ditto for a snarling Laurette Luez as the duplicitous ingénue – why didn’t this woman have a bigger career? [5] We talk more about Virginia Lee as the jazz obsessed ‘Easy’ in the footnote, below. But maybe best of all among the ladies is a 26 year-old Lynn Baggett playing, very convincingly, a fortyish grieving widow with something to hide. Her real life saga is only too noir-like: her career and life were cut short in most untimely, and most cruel, fashion. (After a tumultuous life she died in 1960 at the age of 36 from an overdose). Then there’s salon stylist and small town femme fatale Kitty (Carol Hughes) who has the eye for Frank. Alas she departs the story much too soon. Finally, how can we overlook Cay Forrester as Sue, the woman who likes to dance, and likes her alcohol. She comes on to Frank a bit too strong, much to her husband’s disapproval.

   The spot on remainder of the cast sparkles, even – especially – the supporting and bit players, who include some familiar faces in the noir universe. Peter Graves lookalike William Ching makes for a wonderfully smooth bad guy. The suave, always delightful Ivan Triesault, so memorable as the sinister Mathis a few years earlier in Notorious, here is reduced to a cameo as the manager of the photography studio where Frank goes to track down ’George Reynolds.’ Nonetheless he’s a welcome touch of Old World savoir faire. Which reminds me, yes, I have to give props to Neville Brand as Majak’s psychotic enforcer Chester. His is a chillingly overwrought take. By contrast, Luther Adler as the aging capo Majak oozes calm, sinister elegance. Trivia: IMDB credits Hugh O’Brian and John Payne for bit parts in D.O.A., but darned if I see them.

   So … is there a moral to D.O.A.? Indeed a case can be made that all films noirs are at heart morality plays, in which the (anti)-hero, or –heroine, eventually learns the folly of their ways, at great remove, i.e. too late, usually accompanied by a very steep, sometimes irreversible, price. Such is the case with Frank Bigelow. To his credit he passes by several temptations, thus implying that, perhaps unconsciously, he was really more committed to Paula than he realized. But for Frank, the epiphany comes much too late, with the resultant cost being very high indeed. If there is a moral to D.O.A. it’s perhaps this: to know what we’ve already got, and be grateful for it. It may not be too much of a stretch to see a mythic quality to D.O.A.: Frank’s loss of Pamela and subsequent, alas far too late, appreciation of just how much he’s lost has overtones of the Orphic legend.
  
   The seemingly inevitable, nowhere near as good, remake appeared in 1988. There was also an unofficial remake, Color Me Dead (1969).

   [1] D.O.A.’s murder plot exists in a sort of reverse-retroactive time frame: the crime of murder has been committed but the hero’s death will actually take place in the future. This is distinct from the similarly plotted ‘spectral incognizance’ story, in which the unbeknownst protagonist has been dead or is in the process of dying all along, and it’s only revealed to the audience, and the protagonist, at the end. The early Sixties cult classic Carnival of Souls is a good example. The trope was also done for at last one Twilight Zone episode.

   [2] The scene at The Fisherman is probably the most unvarnished portrait of a jazz club in a mainstream film up to this time. A few years later the Brit noir Sleeping Tiger did a pretty good job of a realistic depiction of a jazz club, as did Kiss Me Deadly (1955), I Want to Live (1958), and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), with KMD presenting a fairly sedate, otherwise all-black club where Mike Hammer likes to hang out. Like The Fisherman, the club in Odds Against Tormorrow is multi-racial, rare for films of that era. The jazz club in the below mentioned Sweet Smell of Success (1957) is a low-keyed, well scrubbed affair. Another depiction of a 1950s jazz club, this one another fairly bland, clean cut example, can be seen in the Perry Mason tv series, ‘The Case of the Jaded Joker,’ episode (1959).
    One of the aficionados of The Fisherman is an uptown, enigmatic blonde with a hint of the femme fatale. She seems to use jazz as an opiate and naturally she catches Frank’s wandering eye. Anyhow she’s played perfectly in mildly flirtatious, come-hither form by Virginia Lee. IMDB lists her character’s name as Jeannie (actually Bigelow addresses her as such), but I swear she calls herself ‘Edie’ or ‘Easy.’ In either case Miss Lee, whether as ‘Easy’ or ‘Jeannie,’ goes uncredited in the final print. By the way, the character of 'Easy' recalls the unnamed woman (memorably portrayed by Joan Miller) who also sat at the end of the bar in Criss Cross of a few years earlier, though her thing was strictly alcohol, not music.
    Trivia: In D.O.A. the bartender at the club chastises Bigelow for not being very hip. Surprising that he uses this term given ‘hep’ was more in fashion in the Forties and even Fifties. Interestingly, in Sweet Smell of Success, which appeared nearly a decade after D.O.A., Hunsecker lectures the senator that any hep person could see that he and the young woman who accompanies him are an item. In the 1946 film Ziegfeld Follies Judy Garland performs “The Great Lady Gives an Interview,” in which she declares that she wants her fans to know she’s really hep. In 1958 Ann Miller essayed a live TV version of the same number and also used the word ‘hep.’ By the way, Ann Miller's version holds up pretty well when compared with the Garland.

[3] Joel Dinerstein, The Origins of Cool in Postwar America, Univ. of Chicago Pr., 2017, pp.198-206.

[4] Miss Britton was woefully underutilized in the movies, and in the Fifties and Sixties she confined her work mostly to theater and television, most notably as Mrs. Brown on the tv series My Favorite Martian. Panela Britton was only 51 years old when she died of a brain tumor in 1974.

[5] Miss Luez plays the femme fatale Marla Rakubian in D.O.A. Marla's a bit of a mystery woman since her status in Majac's criminal organization, as well as her ultimate fate, is murky. (Perhaps she used that ticket to Buenos Aires after all). We can assume she's 'George Reynold's'/Ray Rakubian's cousin, sister, or, most likely, widow. She seems to have a cozy, albeit non-romantic, relationship with Majac: he treats her in the manner of an affectionate uncle; he seems more fond of his brutal protégé Chester.