High Class Whores and Lowly Boxers

Hedy Lamarr as Sandra Kolter and Lana Turner as Sheila Regan in "Ziegfeld Girl" (1941)

"I find men terribly exciting, and any girl who says she doesn't is an anemic old maid, a streetwalker, or a saint". -Lana Turner

"A star can have anything; if there is something she can't buy, there's always a man to give it to her. Does this shock you? Well, I have no use for hypocrisy." -Hedy Lamarr


Hedy Lamarr as Eva in "Ectasy" (1933) directed by Gustav Machatý

"Hedy Lamarr was no mere pliant starlet, but an independent woman with her own agenda, which ultimately led to her downfall. Hedy Lamarr, nee Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, described in her so-called memoirs Louis B. Mayer's indignant and moralizing tone as he lectured her in a London hotel: "I saw 'Ecstasy'. Never get away with that stuff in Hollywood. I don't like what people would think about a girl who flits bare-assed around the screen."

In his mind's eye, the supposedly sixteen-year-old actress from "Ecstasy" would always be a whore, because in his patriarchal book of knowledge women could only be saints or sinners.

Hedy Lamarr fought for her career, never allowed herself to be taken in by the money-and-sex-machine Hollywood, and she was considered "difficult." They sold her as "the most beautiful woman in the world". Lamarr broke taboos and many women in the audience had their secret pleasure watching her, while the boys gawked. Within the logic of Ecstasy's narrative such independence is evaluated in a positive light, but a similar independence is coded pejoratively in Hollywood's moralistic lax Americana.

In her memoirs, Hedy Lamarr states that she was typecast as the "cold marble type", at least until she took her career in hand by producing her own films. Her temporary market value may have been based on the apparent contradiction in embodying vamp and European princess at one and the same time. But the new ideology of the post-war era ended the demand for high class whores a la Kiesler.

It became known that the "brainy beauty" had with the composer George Antheil patented a frequency hoping system (Spread Spectrum) in 1941, which could be used for remote control of torpedoes, but has now become the technological basis for all wireless communications. Since the patent expired before the government utilized it, the actress/inventor never earned a sou on an invention that is today worth billions. It was a bitter end for a woman who was filled with contradictions, neither Mary nor Magdalena, rather a multi-facetted, intelligent and not uncomplicated, modern woman.

Mayer loaned Lamarr out to Walter Wanger who was preparing "Algiers" (1938) for United Artists. In point of fact, filming had already begun in North Africa without an actress having been cast in the role of Gaby.

It was a lucky break for Lamarr, who suddenly found herself cast in a leading role next to Charles Boyer and Sigrid Gurie. The novice was working with some of the best technicians in the industry, including John Cromwell (director), John Howard Lawson & James M. Cain (script), and James Wong Howe (camera).

Lamarr plays a young Parisian woman who visits the infamous Casbah in Tunis as a tourist with her rich friends and there meets the thief, Pepe le Moko. Pepe and Gaby fall in love and learn that they grew up in the same Parisian quarter. He says: "What did you do before the jewels?" She replies: "I wanted them". Can desire be expressed any more tersely? When her aging fiance confronts her with the affair, she responds pointedly that her love is not a part of the bargain and his rights are validated through marriage. The exchange is clear; she gives her love to a man of her own choosing.

James Wong Howe's camera loves Lamarr's face. Light and shadow sculpt an image of a woman endowed with all the riches of class and pedigree, her eyes, lips and hair brazenly eroticized. White is the actress's color of choice, the color of luxury, the color that best sets off her jet-black hair. It is not known whether Howe saw "Ecstasy", but like Jan Stallich, he understands the photogenic intensity of Lamarr's physiognomy. She looks into the camera, virtually certain of her effect.

In her next comedy, Lamarr was allowed to play not only a "decent" girl, at least according to the script, but also a Viennese refugee. In "Come Live With Me" (1941), Johnny Jones must marry an American or be deported by U.S. Immigration. She finds a penniless writer (James Stewart) and pays him a weekly salary, if he marries her legally. A Hollywood love story. The film was a flop.

Lana Turner, Judy Garland and Hedy Lamarr in "Ziegfeld Girl" (1941) directed by Robert Z. Leonard and Busby Berkeley

Hedy Lamarr received billing above Lana Turner, Hedy plays Sandra Kolter, a refugee married to an exiled musician (Philip Dorn). When by chance she gets a job in Ziegfeld's show -an assistant comments "She looks better under wraps than all the others unwrapped".

In her first show number she is again dressed in white with stars afloat above her black hair, the camera cleverly highlighting her beauty while camouflaging her lack of dancing talent.

Turner's character chooses the path into the abyss by becoming a kept woman for a wealthy patron of the theatre. Sandra takes a path between the two: She returns to her husband after he becomes a successful musician and gives up the stage. But the happy end again cannot cover up the fact that she has probably committed adultery and that she uses men as a means to an end: "Men are easy to handle, if you are not in love with them."

Desire expressed in its most radical form best describes Lamarr's character in "White Cargo" (1943), in which she plays Tondalayo, the jungle girl in the Congo. She is the local prostitute, servicing every European man in the region, just as long as she receives trinkets and pretty clothing in return.

As in "Lady of the Tropics" (directed by Jack Conway and Leslie Fenton in 1939), Lamarr again plays an exotic woman of mixed race, but the Hays Office demanded that all references to her ethnicity be excised, since miscegenation was still a taboo in Hollywood.

With the help of masses of cocoa butter to darken her white skin, a tiny bra and the flimsiest of silk veils covering her lower body, Lamarr embodies a most primitive eroticism, which is further accentuated through high key light and shadows. Tondalayo asks her husband why he doesn't beat her ("Don't you love Tondalayo anymore?") or later she plays with a bull whip, it dawning on her that her marriage is keeping her from getting any more "Manipalava" (sex and money). American males were impressed, streaming to the cinemas in droves.

Her first line, "I am Tondalayo" became a household quotation. The role also bore a delayed fruit when Cecil B. DeMille screened the film years later and decided to cast Lamarr in the leading role in "Samson and Delilah".

Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr and John Garfield in "Tortilla Flat" (1942) directed by Victor Fleming

Lamarr supposedly turned down the leads in both "Casablanca" (1943) and "Gaslight" (1944), both roles going to her some time competitor, Ingrid Bergman. In point of fact, it seems that L.B. Mayer refused to lend Hedy to Warners, at least in the case of the former film.

A very similar scene introduces Lamarr's title character in "The Strange Woman" (1946), directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. Following a double exposure in which young Jenny, reflected in a pool of water, is transformed from a girl to a young woman, the camera follows her running through the fields to the town, where she gets tips from Lena, the local prostitute, on how to find a john among the sailors in port.

The studio's publicity pushed the evil woman angles, quoting a fire and brimstone preacher: "The lips of a Strange Woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than silk. But her fate is bitter as wormwood... sharp as a two-edged sword."

Hedy Lamarr celebrated her last major success in "Samson and Delilah" (1949). The film marries an Old Testament style, evangelical Christian moralism with the theatrical exploitation of unadulterated sex. Even before the film opened in the cinemas, DeMille worked overtime promoting the only barely clothed Lamarr as Delilah, with about as much style as a hawker in a circus side-show. The actress appeared on the cover of Newsweek, which proclaimed her to be a "sex symbol unequalled for pure muzzle velocity in the Western World", and placed her in the vamp tradition of Theda Bara and Jean Harlow.

She becomes the richest courtesan in Gaza. The tragedy is inevitable, especially in the moment when Samson reveals to her the secret of his strength. As in the Old Testament story, she symbolically castrates him by cutting his hair, his phallic power dissipates, and the spider woman triumphs. But what a fall.

Delilah is more fascinating, intelligent, and sexually alluring than every other female in the story, a fact that even Samson grasps and so eventually succumbs to her charms. Thus, while DeMille's primary narrative can do nothing but function in dualistic categories of Madonna and whore, Hedy Lamarr's Delilah transcends those parameters. Inscribed in the primary text is an ancient (and new) patriarchal spirit, defining any independent and consciously erotic woman as the devil's tool. But the fact remains that Paramount's biggest moneymaker of all time (up to that point) only achieved that feat by offering female audiences a positive experience, the spectacle of a woman stronger than all the men around her". Source: www.thefreelibrary.com

'She kept going down, down, down, like Eurydice, to the depths of the criminal world, the enfer of the film noir.’ -Molly Haskell

'There is no art in turning a goddess into a witch, a virgin into a whore, but the opposite operation, to give dignity to what has been scorned, to make the degraded desirable, that calls for art or character'. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

John Garfield and Lana Turner as Frank Chambers and Cora Smith in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946)

"Then I saw her. She had been out back, in the kitchen, but she came in to gather up my dishes. Except for the shape, she really wasn't any raving beauty, but she had a sulky look to her, and her lips stuck out in a way that made me want to mash them in for her". -"The Postman Always Rings Twice" (James M. Cain)

Lana Turner and John Garfield on the beach during the filming of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946)


"In his essay “Body and Soul”, Leger Grindon identifies four fundamental conflicts that operate throughout the genre: body against soul, opportunity against difference, market values against family values, and anger against justice. These can be further reduced into a single fundamental conflict between the illusory goals a character is led to believe he wants, such as virility, opulence, and the respect of his peers on the one hand, and the goals the character actually needs to fulfill to be happy such as love, stability, and respect for himself on the other.

The parallels between film and boxing go back to the creation of the medium of motion pictures. One of Edison’s most popular exhibitions shown on his kinetoscope was footage of a sparring match between two prize fighters. Movie spectatorship and sports spectatorship are both forms of mass entertainment historically associated with the working class.

Hazel Brooks and Lilli Palmer, lust and love interests of John Garfield in "Body & Soul" (1947).

During Charley’s first championship bout Alice cheers him on ferociously as Peg shrinks away from the violence of the ring. By his last fight they have switched roles, and it is Alice who cringes and Peg who cheers as they both realize that he intends to renege on his arrangement to throw the fight.

Joyce Carol Oates, while ruminating on the misdirection of the protagonist’s aggression in the typical boxing film, notes that “The boxer faces an opponent who is a dream-distortion of himself”. Charley, and the audience with him, ultimately turns his back on the illusory promises of wealth and status and instead re-embraces the laudable goal of taking control of his own destiny and taking simple pride in his own skill.

Provoked by oppression and the possibility of poverty, Charley decides to become a boxer to help his mother avoid welfare, simultaneously satisfying a personal sense of masculine pride.

As a representation of ideologies of the time, "Body and Soul" associates women with family responsibilities and the burden of lack of economic opportunity. As a boxer, Charley quickly achieves success but debauchery eventually separates him from family values. “Marriage, domesticity, and family mean giving up the diversions of fighting (and) in order to cultivate his soul the boxer must take on attributes associated with the female, otherwise he will perish with his body”. -"Masculinity and Violence in American Cinema: Smoke and Mirrors in Body & Soul" by Will Northup (Standford University, 2010)

"Body and Soul" comes equipped with the standard noir tropes. Gangsters and femmes fatale populate this film, and it also features a bitter conclusion. Even though Davis finds that one thing worth living for by the film’s conclusion (your soul), it’s too late. He will surely die. As he so poetically remarks to Roberts, his crooked fight promoter, “Everybody dies.” This flippant, yet profound statement stands as a beautiful summary of the noir ethos in general. It’s existentialism of the highest order.

Charley Davis has been selling himself out, as well as those around him, for the entire body of the film. Only at the conclusion does he understand this, and fully realizes that the human spirit is priceless. Capitalism is repudiated in this film as an abhorrent ideology. Garfield’s life mirrored those of the noir characters he portrayed, and this is the environment that noir flourished in". Source: www.bobbywisecriticism.com

Shelley Winters packs a punch in 1954

John Garfield and Shelley Winters, co-stars in "He Ran All The Way" (1951) directed by John Berry

Shelley Winters avoided a direct confrontation with the HUAC, but during the hearings she quit Hollywood in disgust. As she told the San Francisco Film Festival years later, “It was all because of the Communist scare… I couldn’t stand what was happening.”

"Garfield’s face had always seemed to project worry, and in the way he combined everyguy authenticity with a bubbling neurosis, he presaged the Method actors like Brando and Dean who would follow him. In a way, he had outgrown this kind of role". (Noir City Sentinel)

John Garfield: an immortal contender

"Force of Evil" (1948) directed by Abraham Polonsky (starring John Garfield, Thomas Gomez and Marie Windsor)

"In their up-from-nothing lawyer who gets himself in too deep on the moral excuse that he is doing it for his brother, Mr. Polonsky and Mr. Wolfert have some real things to show about the practical operation of the psychology of crime. They do it in startling situations and in graphic dialogue, in shattering cinematic glimpses and in great, dramatic sweeps of New York background. New to the business of directing, Mr. Polonsky here establishes himself as a man of imagination and unquestioned craftsmanship. True, he was very fortunate in having John Garfield play the young lawyer in the story, for Mr. Garfield is his tough guy to the life. Sentient underneath a steel shell, taut, articulate —he is all good men gone wrong.

Beatrice Pearson is something of a lucky feature, too. With her innocent, worldly demeanor, her shyness yet forwardness, too, and a voice that would melt a pawnbroker, she points up the pathos in the tale". Source: movies.nytimes.com

John Garfield and John Huston at the Stork Club

"John Huston had been working on the "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" script for six years, before World War II was declared and he directed his great war documentaries, 'The Battle of San Pietro' and 'Let There Be Light'. When he started writing in 1941, Warner Brothers Studio had envisioned it for their three leading tough guys, George Raft, Edward G. Robinson and John Garfield. By the time filming started, Humphrey Bogart was the studio's biggest star, and he inherited the riches. John Huston plays a bit as the American that Bogart is always pestering for the price of a meal. Ann Sheridan, in heavy make-up supposedly played a whore in the background of one of the scenes as a good luck gesture". Source: www.moviediva.com

Ann Sheridan and John Garfield as Goldie West and Johnnie Bradfield in "They Made Me a Criminal" (1939)


"They Made Me a Criminal" (1939) starring John Garfield, Claude Rains, Ann Sheridan and Gloria Dickson, directed by Busby Berkeley

John Garfield was one of those actors whose offscreen activities mirrored his on-screen persona: he was uneducated, didn't always think things out too clearly, loved women (too much, if such a thing is possible) and adhered to his own personal moral code.

In September 1942, Warner Bros announced the purchase of "Deep Valley" a novel by Dan Totheroh, for Ann Sheridan, Humphrey Bogart and John Garfield. The story would languish on the studio's shelves until 1947, when it finally reached the screen with Ida Lupino, Wayne Morris and Dane Clark.

John Garfield and daughter Katherine go riding in 1943

Also in 1942 Garfield was to court to have his name legally changed from Jacob Julius Garfinkle to John Jules Garfield. The change was done in order that daughter Katherine would have not trouble when she entered school.

"He lived for so short a time, 39 scant years, that he's barely recalled now except by film reviewers who conjure his name in critical comparisons and historians who lament his early demise and wonder, "What if?" He coulda been a contender, though in reality was much more than that -the precursor to Brando and Clift and De Niro and Keitel, a tough guy who was softer than his coarse exterior allowed.

He was such a star that when he died in May 1952, in the apartment of a lover with whom he shacked up while separated from the wife and kids, his funeral was a mob scene --a Hollywood ending treated like an opening-night premiere, with all the attendant glitz and glamour befitting a Warner Bros. golden boy who wasn't the prettiest boy in the bunch, only the best.

Hedy Lamarr and John Garfield as Dolores and Danny in "Tortilla Flat" (1942) directed by Victor Fleming

If nothing else, the wonderful Turner Classic Movies documentary "The John Garfield Story", narrated by Garfield's daughter Julie and filled with testimonials by the likes of Joanne Woodward and Harvey Keitel and Martin Scorsese and a dozen other A-listers, serves to remind us of that much: Its subject may have vanished too soon, his demise hastened by a bad ticker and the leering goons of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, but John Garfield was a real immortal. Even if no one quite remembers why anymore". Source: www.dallasobserver.com

Cecil Kellaway, John Garfield and Lana Turner in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946)

James M. Cain: Oh yes, I can remember the beginning of 'The Postman Always Rings Twice". It was based on the Snyder-Gray case, which was in the papers about then. Grey and this woman Snyder killed her husband for the insurance money. The big influence in how I wrote "The Postman Always Rings Twice" was this strange guy, Vincent Lawrence, who had more effect on my writing than anyone else. He had a device which he thought was so important —the “love rack” he called it. What he meant by the “love rack” was the poetic situation whereby the audience felt the love between the characters.

INTERVIEWER: How did you react to Albert Camus's praise of your writing?

CAIN: He wrote something about me —more or less admitting that he had patterned one of his books on mine, and that he revered me as a great American writer. But I never read Camus. In some ways I'm ignorant. In other ways I'm not. At fiction I'm not. But I read very little of it. When you write fiction, the other guy's book just tortures you —you're always rewriting it for him. You don't read it just as a reader; you read it as a guy in the business. I've read a great deal of American history. I don't write whodunits. I write love stories. The dynamics of a love story are almost abstract. The better your abstraction, the more it comes to life when you do it —the excitement of the idea lurking there. Algebra. Suspense comes from making sure your algebra is right. Time is the only critic. If your algebra is right, if the progression is logical, but still surprising, it keeps.

When they were making "Double Indemnity" in Hollywood, Billy Wilder complained that Raymond Chandler was throwing away my nice, terse dialogue; he got some student actors in from the Paramount school, coached them up, to let Chandler hear what it would be like if he would only put exactly what was in the book in his screenplay. To Wilder's utter astonishment, it sounded like holy hell. Chandler explained to Wilder what the trouble was that Cain's dialogue is written to the eye. That ragged right-hand margin that is so exciting and wonderful to look at can't be recited by actors.

Chandler said: Now that we've got that out of the way, let's dialogue it with the same spirit Cain has in the book but not the identical words. Wilder still didn't believe him. They got me over there, purportedly to discuss something else, but the real reason was that Wilder hoped I would contradict Chandler, and somehow explain what had evaporated. But, of course, I bore Chandler out, reminding Wilder I could write spoken stuff well enough, but on the page there just wasn't any room for talky climaxes. Chandler, who was an older man, was a bit irked by Wilder's omniscience, and he was pleased I backed him up". Source: www.theparisreview.org


Lana Turner plays femme fatale Cora

Cora/Kora: *k(o)-ra as a girl's name is pronounced KOR-ah. It is of Greek origin, and the meaning of Kora is "maiden". Can be traced back to classical mythology, though the modern form was coined by American writer James Fenimore Cooper in "The Last of the Mohicans" (1826), its proto-Germanic root, *khoraz (fem. *khoron) means “one who desires.”

John Garfield as Charley Davis and Hazel Brooks as Alice in the boxing drama "Body and Soul" (947) directed by Robert Rossen

"Body and Soul" is an experimental ethnography in the originary meaning of the term, in that the researcher is one of the socialized bodies thrown into the sociomoral and sensuous alembic of the boxing world. Boxing has declined tremendously from its glory days of the 20's or the 60's and it is only a shadow of its old self now.
It’s hard for us to imagine how central it was to national life half a century ago, when a heavyweight championship fight brought the whole society to a complete standstill. The first reason for this is the general transformation of the life of the working classes, with the marginalization of hard manual work, the improvement in the standards of living, and the generalization of schooling as a means of access to even unskilled jobs: it has nearly dried up the supply of volunteers for the pugilistic front.

Secondly, boxing occupies a lowly position at the bottom of the hierarchy of athletic avocations in the United States: it is something of a pariah sport, practiced mostly by those who have failed at other sports. It is not integrated into the normal academic courses: you cannot get a fellowship to go to college by boxing. Boxing is the quintessential body craft: you work on your body, to produce a new, skilled, body capable of withstanding and giving punishment in the ring.

If you are small and stubby, with short arms and a strong upper body, you are tailormade for becoming what the lingo calls a “slugger” who is willing to take punches in order to walk up close to his opponent and fight from inside. But if you are lightly built, with a lithe torso, thin legs and long arms, then you’ve got to be what specialists call a “boxer” in the sense of technician who punches at a distance and avoids fighting by moving around and keeping his opponent at bay with straight jabs and right hands. As a rule, sluggers or counter-punchers have much shorter careers than “boxer-punchers” because they absorb a lot more blows and their bodies wear down much quicker. And they are also more prone to suffering long-term physical damage (medical studies show that dementia pugilistica, the “punch-drunk” syndrome, affects primarily sluggers and brawlers). —“Busy Louie” in the Ring: A Sociologist Among Prizefighters - An interview with Loïc Wacquant

Disc 1, side A: The Maltese Falcon Disc 1, side B: The Big Sleep Featurette The Big Sleep Comparisons 1945/1946 with UCLA archivist Robert Gift analyzing differences between the movie's two versions Disc 2, side A: Dial M for Murder
Featurettes: Hitchcock and Dial M, 3-D: A Brief History

Disc 2, side B: The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Documentary profile: The John Garfield Story, Introduction by historian Richard Jewell, Behind-the-scenes Image gallery

Ida Lupino as Stella Goodwin and John Garfield as Harold Goff in "Out of the Fog" (1941) directed by Anatole Litvak

When Barbara Stanwyck turned down the role of Stella in "Out of The Fog" (1941) directed by Anatole Litvak (written by Robert Rossen, Jerry Wald & Richard Macaulay, based on Irvin Shaw's play "The Gentle People"), Ida Lupino jumped at it. Producer Henry Blanke asked George Raft to play the heavy, but he declined. Bogart asked for the role, but Ida Lupino used her influence and Blanke agreed that her pal John Garfield would play the smooth-talking hoodlum Harold Goff.

Filming "The Big Knife" (1955) directed by Robert Aldrich (based on a stage play written by Clifford Odets inspired by John Garfield - Odets's wife Bette Grayson supposedly slept with Garfield in real life), every scene was a heart-rendering experience for Ida (playing Marion Castle); the similarity between the film's character Charles Castle (Jack Palance) who commits suicide, and Garfield's downfall was emotionally upsetting to her. Ida told Aldrich the last scene gave her an eerie child (on screen, she reacted to her husband's suicide with a shattering scream).

Ida Lupino & John Garfield in "Out of the Fog" (1941)

Exiled from Hollywood, Garfield had come back to his theatrical origins and played 'The Big Knife', 'Peer Gynt' and 'Golden Boy'. Garfield had sent Ida tickets to see him onstage. She arrived at his apartment with a writer friend from the New York Times for a toast before the performance. When Garfield opened the door of his dressing room, Ida was taken aback by his haggard appearance. Garfield prepared cocktails. He pointed to a basket of flowers, champagne and glasses. Ida read his note: "To my favorite sister. Sorry, I'm not going to make it tonight but I've always loved you, kid". Ida was perplexed.

Ida wanted to hire John Garfield for her company but felt it was hopeless. Howard Hughes would never permit such a controversial actor to work at RKO. The heart condition that had prevented him from performing the last evening Ida saw him soon took his life.
—from "Ida Lupino: A Biography" (2000) by William Donati

John Garfield with Ida Lupino

"'My father once said to me, 'You're born to be bad', she recalled. 'And it was true. I made eight films in England before I came to America, and I played a tramp or a slut in all of them'." —Ida Lupino, The Hollywood Reporter (August 7, 1995).

"Her films [as a director] display the obsessions and consistencies of a true auteur. What is most interesting about her films are not her stories of unwed motherhood or the tribulation of career women, but the way in which she uses male actors: particulary in "The Bigamist" and "The Hitchhiker" (both 1953), Ida Lupino was able to reduce the male to the same sort of dangerous, irrational force that women represented in most male-directed examples of Hollywood film noir." —Richard Koszarski in "Hollywood Directors 1914-40" (Oxford University Press, 1976)