STOLEN IDENTITY (1953)

By Gary Deane

“Everyone has a chance. Mine came today and I won’t let go of it.”

It’s a shadowy and harrowing tale, passionately told by its author, Austrian Alexander Lernet-Holenia, in his best-selling novel, Ich war Jack Mortimer (1933).  

Ferdinand ‘Fred’ Sponer, a Budapest taxi-driver, picks up a wealthy American passenger, Jack Mortimer, at the train station on New Year’s Eve. While Sponer is inside, retrieving his fare’s bags, Mortimer is shot. Because he’s about to start a new job as a chauffeur, Sponer doesn’t want to get involved with the police. He drives off and dumps the body in the woods. But, still worrying he could be connected with Mortimer’s disappearance, he decides to fake his arrival by checking into the man's hotel wearing his clothes and assuming his identity.  

Waiting for Mortimer is Winifred Montemayor, who’s about to leave her husband, a renowned orchestra conductor, Pedro Montemayor, and run away with the American. When she goes to Mortimer’s room and finds Fred there with her lover’s bags, she threatens to expose him. He flees, but only to learn that his is not the only deception and that he has far more to fear than just the police.

In 1935, the book became a film, Ich war Jack Mortimer, directed by Carl Froelich from an elegant script by Thea von Harbou (a fascinating profile of whom featured in the Fall 2015 edition of NOIR CITY e-magazine).  Anton Walbrook stars as the ill-tempered Fred, a prole who’s increasingly bitter about the hand he’s been dealt as he toils away with little hope of bettering himself.  He takes out his frustration on Marie, his fiancée, whose affection he doesn’t deserve.

Though Fred is not a particularly likeable character, he's not without charm. Walbrook was an engaging actor, an Austrian who in 1936 settled in England after changing his name from Adolph to Anton (Walbrook was gay and also classified under the Nuremberg Laws as half-Jewish). In Britain, he continued to work, specializing in imperious continentals such the tyrannical impresario, Lermontov, in The Red Shoes, 1948 (a highlight of the 2016 NOIR CITY festival screenings in San Francisco).

Ich war Jack Morimer shares some of the saturnine expressiveness of the great silent melodramas. Formal, Teutonic, and gloomy, it’s a compelling proto-noir. However, a second movie version of the tale, Abentueur in Wein aka Adventures in Vienna was released in 1952, starring Gustav Fröhlich (Metropolis, 1927) as ‘Toni’ Sponer and Francis Lederer as the husband, now Claude Manelli.  Then, a year later, Lederer reprised his part in an Austrian/ US co-production, Stolen Identity, 1953, a near shot-for-shot remake of Abentueur in Wein, this time featuring an all-English-speaking cast in the main roles. 

Produced by Turhan Bey (The Mysterious Mr. X, 1948; Parole Inc., 1948) and directed by Gunther Von Fritsch (The Curse of the Cat People, 1944), Stolen Identity remains set in Vienna amid the destruction of WWII.  Like The Third Man, 1950, the movie is a deeply atmospheric suspense thriller that plays like a post-war spy/ espionage drama without actually being one.

American actor Donald Buka plays Toni Sponer, now an undocumented refugee from Eastern Europe who has fled to Austria. But no papers means no work permit and no permit means no passport. Toni is desperate to leave Vienna and to get to the US where he once lived as a child. Meantime, he survives by driving a taxi illegally. When Jack Mortimer is murdered in his cab, Toni takes his passport and cash, seeing them as a way out.

Again, problems arise when Toni goes to the hotel impersonating Mortimer and is met by Karen Manelli (Joan Camden), Claude Manelli's beleaguered wife. But this time Karen reports Toni to the police and they pick him up on suspicion of identity theft.  However, Manelli, for his own reasons, identifies Toni as Jack Mortimer, telling the police that his wife has a history of mental illness and is always making up stories. Karen is released to her husband but escapes, realizing Toni has been set up.

Though based on the same story, Ich War Jack Mortimer and Stolen Identity are very different movies – as could be expected having been made nearly twenty years apart, one prior to WWII, the other following. Diverging dramatically in tone and style, Ich War Jack Mortimer is a contained crime drama while Stolen Identity is an expansive thriller that provides its characters with backstories as well as giving attention to their development.  Toni, as played by Buka, a handsome and forceful actor (The Street with No Name, 1948; Between Midnight and Dawn, 1950) is a more sympathetic protagonist than his morose, self-absorbed predecessor, Fred.  While there are actors who would have turned Stolen Identity into a florid melodrama, Buka gives a restrained and believable performance.

Likewise, Joan Camden (The Captive City, 1952), a more responsive actress than Jack Mortimer's enigmatic Sybille Schmitz who committed suicide by barbiturate overdose while under the ‘care’ of her doctor. Camden was a fragile beauty, never a show-off, who made an impact in a gentle way, often portraying wholesome, devoted wives and girlfriends. She shared a quality with the likes of Margaret Sullivan, June Allyson, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Teresa Wright, though without ever managing to share their star power.

 But it’s really Francis Lederer (Confessions of Nazi Spy, 1939; The Madonna’s Secret, 1946) who claims center stage (as he actually does several times in concert performance). Lederer was a Czech-born actor whose dark good looks and silken air won him movie roles as a suave continental type in films from the silent era into the 1950’s, after which he switched mostly to television.

Lederer began on stage and with a half-dozen films made in Europe – including the silent classic Pandora’s Box (1929) starring Louis Brooks - before being brought to America by RKO as a romantic European lead. However, Lederer, in his many appearances as assorted rogues, charmers, horror villains and Nazi spies never really fulfilled his potential in Hollywood. Though Ginger Rogers wrote of him, “The studios didn’t know how to handle Francis or buy stories for him”, Lederer believed that it was his inherent shyness and reluctance to do publicity that worked against his becoming a big romantic star like Charles Boyer.  Nevertheless, he was a fine actor and even in unsympathetic roles like that of Claude Manelli, was able to imbue his characters with humanity. He was impressive in the classic noir The Madonna’s Secret as a troubled artist who might be trusted one second but never the next.

Lederer is equally good in Stolen Identity, a B production that, as suggested, can be compared favorably on its own more modest terms to director Carol Reed’s The Third Man. Among its merits are Gunter von Fritisch’s polished direction and stunningly restless noir cinematography by Helmut Ashley who worked later on German director Frank Wisbar’s gripping drama, Wet Asphalt (1958), starring Horst Buchholz and Gerte Frobe. Stolen Identity’s intelligent script also captures the despair, pain, and bone-weariness of post-war Europe. 

And though there’s no real mystery to Stolen Identity, there is still tremendous suspense, built upon small incidents and many surprises including a memorable finale. The stolen/ mistaken identity trope is common in film noir but Stolen Identity’s uncommon reckoning is not. 

CLUB PARADISE aka THE SENSATION HUNTERS (1946)

By Gary Deane

 

“When you get stuck on a guy, you just leave yourself wide-open for a whole lot of punishment.”

Club Paradise begins as it ends: A man enters the courtyard of a fashionable Spanish Revival apartment block in darkness. A woman in a negligee appears on a second-floor terrace and motions toward a stairway. The man goes up and enters.  Moments later gunshots ring out. The apartment goes dark.

What unspools between the movie’s opening frames and closing credits is a chilling film noir from Monogram Pictures, one of Hollywood’s fabled ‘Poverty Row’ production studios. Active from 1931 to 1953 (after which it became Allied Artists Pictures Corporation), Monogram’s output consisted mostly of shoot ‘em up westerns (John Wayne, Tex Ritter, Hoot Gibson, etc.) and ‘exotic’ adventure titles. The line-up also included a good number of bracing crime thrillers, many now familiar to fans of classic noir, including When Strangers Marry (1944), starring Robert Mitchum; Dillinger (1945), nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and featuring Lawrence Tierney; Suspense (1946), headlining figure-skating star, Belita; Fear (1946), with Warren William; Fall Guy (1947), with Robert Armstrong and Leo Penn; High Tide (1947), starring Lee Tracy and Don Castle; I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (1948), also with Castle; and Incident (1948), featuring Warren Douglas.

Missing from that list is Club Paradise, a little-known title almost as comfortless as that sine qua non of comfortless Hollywood B noirs, Detour, released a year earlier by Producers Releasing Corporation. (PRC). While Detour recounts the tale of a man’s failed attempt to outrun his past, Club Paradise—also told in flashback—counters with that of a woman’s failed attempt to outrun the present. Like Detour, the film leaves behind a doomed protagonist swept away by fate’s  undertow—bleak testament that in noir, as in life, bad things happen to good people.

And Club Paradise’s Julie Rogers (Doris Merrick) is a good person—despite the abuse heaped upon her by her father, a pious weakling and her brother, a feckless drunk. Her mother is no help to her at all and her pregnant sister-in-law struggles to keep her marriage together. Which leaves Julie with little to raise her spirits except the occasional night at the fights with her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Ray Lawson (Eddie Quillan). Ray, in fact, is “a swell guy” who works at same factory as Julie and dreams of being a trumpet player in a big band. Though he’s got a steady gig at a neighborhood club, The Black Cat, he thinks he can do better.

For that to happen, he’ll need money and one night heads to local casino, with Julie along for good luck. However, Ray’s a better trumpeter than he is a gambler and he soon blows through his stake. Worse, as they go to leave, the joint is busted and the two are arrested and charged. Later sentenced to “thirty dollars or thirty days” by a mean-spirited magistrate, Ray goes to jail while Julie’s father pays her fine and tells her not to bother coming home again.

By this time, she’s had all she can take of being a dutiful daughter and a factory girl with few prospects worth talking about. With nowhere to go, she turns to Irene (Constance Worth), the manager of the Club Paradise who listens to her story and offers her a tryout with the club’s dance troupe, ‘The Rubinettes’. While she’d been thinking more about a job serving on the floor (“I feel like I have two left feet.”), she changes her mind when the club’s resident chanteuse, Mae (Isabel Jewell) laughs and says, “Doll, who do you think is gonna be looking at your feet?”. 

What Julie doesn’t know is that Irene is the former girlfriend of Danny Burke (Robert Lowery), a smooth-talking sharpie who’d taken Julie to the club after chatting her up in a cafe some days earlier. Danny’s still hanging around ‘the Paradise’ and she soon falls for his flagrant charm—even though he warns her: “Don’t fall in love. It doesn’t payoff. I’ve been in trouble. I still am.” As it turns out, Danny’s been with every woman in the club. One night after one of the dancers requires urgent medical attention, another seems to suggest that it’s because of a botched abortion (see footnote). It also appears as though Danny could be involved.

Less in doubt is that Danny is on the hook to some small-time racketeers. Gang boss Lew Davis (Nestor Paiva) brings him in one day and delivers an ultimatum, “We’re funny guys. We like our loans paid on time…Pay up, or else”. Danny begs Irene, who still has feelings for him, to help but she refuses, telling him, “You’re no good. I don’t know why we both still love you.” Later, after Davis and his thugs have come by the club, Julie emerges from an upstairs room disheveled and shaken—a victim of Danny’s recklessness. Meanwhile, Ray’s now out of jail and is working at an upscale cabaret, the Continental Club. Despite being dumped, he offers Julie a job as a vocalist with the new band. She says she’s not interested: “I belong here. You’re on your way up, not down.” Her hopes and dreams have come and gone. What she doesn’t know is that her worst nightmare is about to begin.

A haunting tale of hard-boiled despair, Club Paradise is tawdry even by Poverty Row standards—though a few titles nearly as lurid, like Columbia Picture’s Night Editor (1946) come to mind. That said, the storyline of Club Paradise is as plausible as it is pulpy, making it tempting to re-imagine as if produced by a studio with money to spend. Danny would have been a good fit for Tyrone Power—who played a similarly charming-but-faithless heel in Rose of Washington Square (1939) before later taking it all a step further with a descent into hell in Nightmare Alley (1947).

Which takes nothing away from Robert Lowery’s knowing portrayal of the blasé and self-aware homme fatal in Club Paradise. With his everyman appeal and versatility (fans often confused him with Clarke Gable when he first arrived in Hollywood) Lowery featured in everything from popular B westerns to noirish crime thrillers such as Dangerous Passage (1944), They Made Me a Killer (1946) and Danger Street (1947).

Helping out are a couple of classic noir’s favored male character actors, able to give a lift to any movie just by showing up. Byron Foulger, for his part, made a career out of roles as unhelpful, mealy-mouthed room clerks, baggage handlers, bank tellers, gas station attendants, store keepers, motel managers, or morticians in hundreds of screen performances, including in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1945), Scarlet Street (1945),  Deadline at Dawn (194), Blonde Alibi (1946),They Won’ t Believe Me (1947), He Walked by Night (1948), Union Station (1950), Dark City (1950), and The Sniper (1952). As Julie’s embittered father, the owlish actor gives her all the reasons in the world to never look back.

Nestor Paiva, the bald and bulky actor of Portuguese descent, made his mark with portrayals of sinister ethnic villains—Spanish, Greek, Italian, Slav, East Indian, or Arab—in pictures such as Cornered (1945), Fear (1946), Suspense (1946) Humoresque (1946), Alias Nick Beal (1949), Follow me Quietly (1949), On Dangerous Ground (1951), 5 Fingers (1952), Split Second (1953), Hell on Frisco Bay (1955), The Case Against Brooklyn (1958), and Pier 5, Havana (1951). In Club Paradise, Paiva is even more of his malevolent self.

In the end, however, the film really belongs to its actresses and their better angels—including the ones who’ve fallen. Merrick, Janet Shaw (Julie’s sister-in-law), and Wanda MacKay (Helen, her best friend) were all off-the-shelf Hollywood beauties who’d feature mostly in low-budget programmers, though all were capable, spirited performers. In Club Paradise each pulls her weight, especially Merrick, who bestows Julie with a resilience and resolve that make her  easy to like and  to feel something for. MacKay, a former model and a presence on screen, would wed singer/ songwriter/ actor Hoagy Carmichael. The two would be together until his death in 1981.  

Constance Worth, an elegantly composed Australian import, arrived in America under contract to RKO before going over to Columbia. Bearing a notable resemblance to Claire Trevor in looks and demeanor, she too often found herself cast as a woman without illusions but not without hope. Worth made appearances in Dillinger (1945), Deadline at Dawn (1946) and The Set-Up (1949)—her next-to-last film before leaving the business at age 36.

On the other hand, Isabel Jewell, a contract player with MGM,  featured mostly in A productions in the ‘30’s and early ‘40’s, before the parts on offer began to go from smaller (Born to Kill, 1947) to uncredited (The Snake Pit, 1948) Unfaithfully Yours, 1948, and The Story of Molly X, 1949). Jewell referred to herself as “the most unsuccessful successful actress in Hollywood” —always working, but just as often type-cast as a tough-talking broad, gangster's moll, or fallen woman. In Club Paradise, she’s in great form as the cynical doxie with a heart of stone who later tells Julie, “Listen, kid, this is a tough racket. You prance around night after night with your back and feet killing you. And for what? So a bunch of rummies can slobber in your drink, that’s what.”

Club Paradise works hard to make the most of its running time— thanks to the tightly-plotted screenplay by Dennis Cooper (When Strangers Marry, 1944; City Across the River, 1949) and agile, fast-paced direction by Christy Cabanne—himself a sure-handed story teller. The veteran director’s career reached back to the early days of the silents. However, Cabanne appears to have kept up with the times and in tune with anguished characters who know what they’ve lost or are about to lose and are unable to do anything about it. Visibly more than just the efforts of an everyday cast and crew working for scale, Club Paradise is another of those prized B noirs that somehow manages to transcend its impoverished origins. Which is as much as one could ask for, or maybe even want.

 Footnote:  Although Monogram was a member of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA)— and thereby bound by the Production Code— it seemed that those in charge of administering the Code often paid scant attention to the output of the Poverty Row studios.        

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