Villainy with B Leading Man Stephen McNally

He populated a helluva lot of movies in my boyhood and my young eyes bulged out of their sockets at some of the vicious, spellbinding things he did.  All those women he slapped and the men he shot right between the eyes.  While I didn't know the word "amoral" at the time, I see it's fitting to describe Stephen McNally's characters.  He could be a nasty killer, a brooder, blistering with his stock-in-trade being the eyes that narrow and bore into his quarry.  He scared me.  

My young mind never thought of him as a man who basically made B films but he made a lot of them.  There he was in all those westerns that kept me happy.  And then, hunting around as I was given to doing, I noticed he was in film noirs (most of them Bs as well).  Well no wonder he seemed like a big actor to me.

The New York City native almost wasn't an actor at all.  He actually was a practicing attorney who happened to love going to the movies.  He couldn't remember not loving them and that, in turn, gave burst to the notion that he'd like to be in them.  It must have been quite a passion because he gave up his profession to pursue the bright lights of Broadway.  One of his roles was the good doctor in Johnny Belinda.  He would one day be in the film version but as another character.  

The truth is he wasn't always a bad guy... the urban leader in City Across the River (1949), the cop in Criss Cross (1949) and the doctor in No Way Out (1950) come to mind and there were others.  Capable as he was in good guy parts, the truth is that although he was always a completely competent actor, he never caught fire as the hero.  He was nice-looking but never in the leagues of the pretty-boy stars.

But as a bad guy, one who is often on the verge of flipping out, he was simply riveting.  I can envision a director saying... ok, Stephen, that's good.  That's good, Sweetheart. Calm down now.  Breath... breathe.  He is unforgettable as deaf mute Jane Wyman's rapist in Johnny Belinda (1948)... that change of role helped open up his career as never before.  He was equally vicious as a cowboy in Winchester 73 (1950).

That film brought McNally to Universal and like most others who signed on after working for other studios, it meant one's career was on the wane.  I recall him so well in colorful westerns there such as Wyoming Mail, Apache Drums, The Duel at Silver Creek and The Stand at Apache River.   He costarred in a couple with Audie Murphy.  The two became friends and Murphy was loyal to his friends.

He was maniacal as a prisoner in Devil's Canyon (1953) with Virginia Mayo and Dale Robertson and duplicitous as Dorothy McGuire's estranged husband in Make Haste to Live (1954).  The fifties was a busy decade for him and my three favorite McNally films are from then, all film noirs.  Let's chat about them.


Woman in Hiding (1950)

This one, in hindsight at least, is more about Ida Lupino and Howard Duff than it is McNally.  It is the first of five films in which the pair would costar but this one is before the marriage.  That said, it's a good McNally role, not overplayed, just subtle enough to wonder whether we're to believe Lupino's ravings or not.  Is she telling the truth... does he want to murder her?

He is the foreman at her father's factory.  We know that McNally used to date Lupino and now they're just friends, although he wants it to be more.  We know the father dislikes him but keeps him on because he does good work.  And then the father dies after falling off some scaffolding with McNally next to him.  

In her grief, Lupino turns to McNally and then inexplicably marries him.  On the honeymoon an ex-girlfriend, Peggy Dow, tells Lupino in front of McNally all the sordid truths about him, including pushing the father to his death.  Until that point, neither Lupino nor the audience was really sure.  It's crafty acting on McNally's part to convincingly keep us guessing.   As soon as she can, Lupino flees.  Here on it becomes a compelling chase film involving Duff, who has something up his sleeve.

It ends as 1950 films ended.  It is all Lupino, one of her best acting jobs around this period of time.  Duff looked unusually handsome and McNally, though a conniving murderer, would play it meaner in the next two.  



Split Second  (1952)

Top-billed McNally and an injured Paul Kelly and Frank De Kova are escaped prisoners wandering around the Nevada desert.  They need to hole up somewhere so a doctor can see Kelly.  They come across rich Alexis Smith and her friend Robert Paige and make them drive all of them to a particular destination.  When the car runs out of gas, they commandeer another car with Jan Sterling and Keith Andes.

Now the seven of them head for a ghost town further out in the desert that turns out to be the proving grounds where the Atomic Energy Commission and the army are going to detonate an atomic bomb the following morning at 6 a.m.  McNally is unconcerned because he plans to leave far before then.  He hears that Smith is leaving her doctor-husband (Richard Egan).  He forces her to call him and tell him to come and get her.  Here is the needed doctor.  Obviously things don't go as planned while the air is rife with tension and excitement.  

This is the first of actor Dick Powell's five directorial features and he did a fine job.  There is the great ensemble acting with the cast all on the same set at once which we know I love.  There is a palpable urgency with varying degrees of anger, fear and threats.  McNally is genuinely scary.  He doesn't need to hold them at gunpoint, not only because De Kova is around for that task, but because McNally is frightening with his fists.  He also plugs a guest or two in a most alarming manner.  This is a great film for the actor, aided by particularly good turns by Sterling and Smith. 



Violent Saturday (1955)

Directed by the wonderful Richard Fleischer early in his career, here is the rare color noir about three thugs who come to a small copper mining town with the intent of robbing the bank.  They arrive on Friday, case the bank and town, spend the night and plan the robbery for Saturday which, as the title indicates, turns violent with several deaths.

McNally is the leader, posing as a salesman.  He is joined by a sadistic Lee Marvin and a quiet but crafty J. Carroll Naish.  We and they meet the townsfolk.  Richard Egan is the wealthy head of the copper company, a man taken to drinking because he wife, Maggie Hayes, cheats on him with Brad Dexter.  Tommy Noonan is the creepy bank manager who is a peeping tommy when it comes to nurse Virginia Leith who, in turn, is smitten with Egan.  Victor Mature is a cop whose son Billy Chapin is sullen and distant because he doesn't find his dad a hero like his friends' dads.

The robbers need a car and unfortunately they choose Mature's personal car with him in it.  They take him and their loot to Amish Ernest Borgnine's farm.  Borgnine and family refuse to fight, leaving it all up to Mature.  It's an exciting and lengthy finale and young Chapin, of course, will change his mind about his dad.

Fleischer and company did a fine job.  There's an uneasiness from start to finish and the characters are well-written.  The film is the best of the three presented although McNally's best part is in Split Second.


And finally...
Despite good performances in these and other movies, his film career was not going in the direction he would have wanted.  Perhaps he thought of returning to lawyering and maybe he didn't but somewhere along the way he had eight children with the only wife he ever had.  He was first and foremost a family man and a far cry from being a bad guy.  So he went into television where he was much in demand. 

Stephen McNally died of heart failure at age 82 in Beverly Hills, California in 1994.  Sadly, he is barely remembered today.


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