Good 1950's Films: Clash by Night

1952 Drama
From RKO Radio Pictures
Directed by Fritz Lang

Starring
Barbara Stanwyck
Paul Douglas
Robert Ryan
Marilyn Monroe
Keith Andes
J. Carrol Naish
Silvio Minciotti

While lining up two Barbara Stanwyck movies for this 50's tribute, I hadn't realized that there's a similar plot device... that of a hardened woman returning to her home after years of being away.  The films take different trajectories after that but both, of course, feature magnificent performances from the lady.

Here Mae Doyle returns to her Monterey, California fishing village home after being away for years in New York in an affair with a married man.  Her brother Joe (Andes) and his girlfriend, Peggy (Monroe), share the home (how did that get by the 1952 censors?). She works at the local cannery while Joe works on a fishing boat.  

Mae is clearly embittered because life has not worked out the way she wanted it to.  Joe is not pleased that she has come back (unannounced, no less) but Peggy thinks it's great that she's home and hopes that they will be great pals.  Joe is concerned that Peggy will turn out like Mae.  What happened, asks Joe.  Big ideas, small results, Mae bemoans.  She doesn't hold out much hope for being back, adding home is where you come when you run out of places.  She might have added or money.  

She meets Joe's boss, Jerry (Douglas), a big-hearted, big-bodied fisherman who owns a boat and looks out after his aged father and uncle (Minciotti and Naish).  Jerry, who probably hasn't had a romantic involvement in many years and suffering under the weight of his own naivete, quickly falls for Mae.  She dates him simply because she's bored to death in the fishy-smelling town with its insufferable heat.  

Jerry is anxious for Mae to meet his friend Earl (Ryan), whom Jerry, for some odd reason, looks up to.  Mae laughs when Jerry tells her Earl's in the movie business... he's a projectionist at the local movie theater.  She takes an immediate dislike to Earl because he's crude, mean-spirited, has no respect for women and patronizes Jerry.  On the other hand, Jerry is the only one who doesn't notice the inquisitive looks Mae and Earl shoot at one another.

Mae is not in love with the Jerry but one night she tells him she is tired of looking after herself and Jerry immediately proposes, telling her that he can provide a safe place for her to rest.  She avoids giving him an answer because, though he is a sweet guy, Jerry is too bland for Mae's tastes.

We know that Mae knows Earl is a wrong guy and she blocks his attempts to put the make on her.  Still, bad boys are more her style.  When Earl won't quit, Mae ups and marries Jerry, who is the happiest he's ever been in his life.  Earl is miserable and astonished she did such a thing.

Mae immediately becomes pregnant and all seems to be going well for a year.  But when Earl, who is still always around, grabs her again and kisses her hard, she doesn't resist and the affair we've seen coming is in full swing.  Ultimately in the small community word gets around and Jerry's father and uncle try to clue him in that Mae is being unfaithful.  At first Jerry doesn't believe it and then becomes enraged.

Mae is determined to leave town with Earl but when Jerry says he will not let her take their child, cracks develop in her illicit relationship.  She also sees that Earl has no interest in the child and is little more than a drifter and a bum.  

In a newly-written ending from the play, Mae sees the error of her ways and determines to reunite with Jerry.  Endings in American movies in the 1950's almost always worked out nicely.  Director Lang and studio head Howard Hughes had a kerfuffle over that upbeat ending.  But then upbeat never seemed to meet Lang's standards. 

Lang liked socially-relevant dramas and specialized in stories of common folk caught by fate, often railing against life.  Mae beat herself up because her dreams hadn't come true.  And I have always held the film in high regard because of its reasonably fleshed-out examination of infidelity, at least 50's style.   

Lang was a good fit for this project although it invites an examination of film noir for which he was considered a pioneer.  In some circles, Clash by Night is considered a noir, which is helped along by starring noir icons Stanwyck and Ryan.  Sure seems like a noir but I disagree.  It is a moody piece and from time to time there is the look.  However, there's no murder, no crime at all, no cops, no bad girl (I don't consider Mae a bad girl, per se), no use of those dark streets, no obvious use of the great lighting and shadows.  This is simply a drama or a romance-drama if one prefers.

The play was written by the esteemed Clifford Odets who specialized in socially-relevant dramas.  It was adapted by Alfred Hayes whose 1950's movie successes include The Lusty Men, Human Desire, Island in the Sun and A Hatful of Rain. 

While I am known to sing the praises of most Golden Age actresses, there was never anyone who yanked my chain more than Stanwyck.  She was the most letter-perfect actress I've probably ever encountered.  She was so intentional in all she did, never more dazzling than in her emotions.  She could be earnestly loving, she radiated strength and who hasn't been taken in by her chilling anger?  She frightened me, excited me, inspired me, entertained me.  (I had no plans to write this paragraph and I certainly filled my earlier piece on her with worshipful renderings, but when I get started on Stanwyck, it's hard to stop.)

She made a few duds along the way and she has made some great films but the great majority of her performances are glorious.  She  had a knack for knowing what was right for her.  The complex Mae is one of those roles, certainly in the top 10 of her great performances.  She could have gone over the top here but there's no display of wounded savagery.  It is a moving and nervously effective turn.

A bit poignant perhaps is that Stanwyck chose to make a film about a marriage since in real life she and Robert Taylor were divorcing after 10 years, a decision which made her most unhappy.

I suspect Hollywood usually thought of Ryan for those sneering, cynical roles.  Hooking up with him always seemed to promise unhappiness.  Earl is not a nice person but we are taken aback when  Mae tells him it has to be over and he cries out help me, Mae, I'm dying of loneliness.     

File away under Why, I'll Be Damned... Ryan appeared in the Broadway version of Clash by Night but in the role of Joe, Mae's younger brother.   Three years later he and Stanwyck would join up again for Escape from Burma.  

She would also work again with Douglas in 1953's all-star Executive Suite.  He is most impressive as the cloddish but likeable Jerry, so tender-hearted but thunderous in his anger at the betrayal of his wife and best friend.

Up to this point in her career, Monroe was an eager starlet who had small roles in several films.  Clash by Night and the same year's Don't Bother to Knock gave her a chance to show her dramatic chops sans that feathery little voice she would add to her bag of tricks.  While she is fine as Peggy, behind the scenes she had her usual difficulty in remembering lines, much to the consternation of Lang, who, like Otto Preminger, always needed someone to pick on on a film set.  The following year, 1953, came Niagara and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Monroe was never the same.

Some of the extra attention brought to Clash by Night is owed to Monroe.  At the beginning of filming a enterprising RKO publicity guy came across her nude calendar and saw to it that it became a worldwide sensation.  As a result more folks flocked to this film than they normally might have.

Andes is all he needed to be to play the hunky Joe, all serious and down to business and shirtless.  Oddly, he is given an introducing credit although I distinctly know he played one of those Swedish brothers in 1947's The Farmer's Daughter.

I never particularly understood the title, although I liked it.  Perhaps it referred to the working over Douglas gives to Ryan in his projection room at night but that just didn't click for me as warranting that title.  Just recently I read it is derived from Walter Arnold's 1867 poem Dover Beach:

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, it seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain,
And here we are as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Okay, here's the preview:

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The Other James Stewart