Visiting Film Noir: Nightmare Alley

1947 Film Noir

From 20th Century Fox

Directed by Edmund Goulding

Starring

Tyrone Power

Joan Blondell

Coleen Gray

Helen Walker

Mike Mazurki

Ian Keith

Taylor Holmes

Tyrone Power was tired of making movies with Gene Tierney and Linda Darnell (oh, who wouldn't be?), tired of romantic comedies, tired of dashing swordplay and tired of being treated as little more than a pretty face.  Since he'd been back from the service, he'd seen that newcomer Gregory Peck had moved in and gotten some plum roles.  He wanted a change.

At Power's request studio head Darryl Zanuck purchased William Lindsey Gresham's dark novel, Nightmare Alley, for a whopping $50,000 because Power wanted to play its unsavory lead, Stanton Carlisle, an ambitious but deceitful carnival barker.  It's a wonder that Zanuck made the purchase because he found the story abhorrent and as wrong for his top star as it could be.

The story opens on a stage of a traveling carnival with blowsy Joan Blondell playing Zeena a phony spiritualist who pretends that she can read minds by answering questions written out for her by the audience.  The questions are spirited to her hidden husband (Keith) and the questions come from a pre-designed, secretive code they've worked out between them.  

The husband is an alcoholic and at one point he asks Power to give him his bottle.  Power mistakenly gives him a bottle of wood alcohol which he downs and then dies.  While it was an accident, Power is delighted to become Blondell's new assistant.  He wants to learn the code and then take his act on the road and make some real money.

In the meantime he courts a comely carnival worker Molly (Gray).  Not only is Blondell annoyed because she thought she and Power were on their way to being partners on and off the stage but a coworker (Mazurki) is more than upset because he thought he had a chance with Gray.  He insists that Power and Gray marry and after they do, they leave the carnival for the bigtime.  

Winding up in Chicago, the pair becomes a sensation in a nightclub act.  He is blindfolded while she reads the questions off cards that audience members have written out.  Of course because of the code he nails everything and becomes a sensation.

Two schemers, Power and Helen Walker

One evening a psychologist, Lilith (Walker), tries to trip him up with her question but he turns the tables on her, getting wild applause.  He decides to see her professionally.  Power thinks they are cut from the same cloth and after he discovers that she records all of her sessions with patients (without their knowledge), he says they should go into business together.

They decide he will manipulate her patients who have lost loved ones.  She provides the information on the deceased and he convinces the people that he can commune with the dead.  One man (Holmes) is so impressed he wants to build Power a temple and gives him $150,000 to get plans underway.  Then Holmes wants Power to bring back his lost love.

Power at first is unsure about how to do that and then decides that it will be done in the rich man's vast gardens and Gray, dressed in a flowing gown, will float through the garden.  Power makes Holmes stay on his knees so he can't run to her.  But when he breaks down and sobs and calls to her, Gray, who was very reluctant to do her part in the first place, suddenly runs to Holmes and Power crying out that she can't do this anymore.

Power is exposed as a fake and Holmes threatens to ruin him.  With the nightclub act now a thing of the past, Power sends Gray away, saying they'll meet up later.  He then goes to Lilith to retrieve the money that she has kept in her safe.  He discovers that she has ripped him off and may be playing the con game better than he is.  He gets angry with her, she calls the cops and he runs away.

Mike Mazurki and Coleen Gray

He ends up in hobo camps doing card tricks and guzzling booze.  When he's finally down and out as he's ever been, he decides to return to carnival life.  He tries to talk the owner into letting him do his own act but the owner wants nothing to do with it.  He agrees to hire Power on as a geek.  At one point Power goes mad and is yelling and screaming as he's chased by other carnival performers after hours.  Who hears him?  Gray.  She cradles him in her arms.

Zanuck saw the finished product and he still didn't like it.  He was the one responsible for tacking on the softer ending with Gray although those claiming it is the typical happy American ending should watch it again.

The movie was considered daring in its day.  It's been said that it was not easily forgotten, having stuck with moviegoers for days afterwards.  It is gripping from the first frame to the last.  It flirts with spiritualism and God and provides an uncomfortable look at salvation becoming entertainment.  I didn't see it for a couple of decades after it came out and I blame it for my acquired distaste of carnivals.

Joan Blondell

It is grim, probably too much for audience's tastes but I chose to look, I guess, at how richly atmospheric it is. Far and away it's about Power's striking performance, the calculating opportunist chewing up everyone in his path.  No one is surprised at the answer to the question the screenplay poses... how did he get so low when he reached so high?

Power said it was his best work and I have to agree that it is right up there with his performance in Witness for the Prosecution.  Of course in both films he plays despicable, scheming characters.  I would never have believed that makeup could have made Power unattractive but in those final carnival scenes he was not the handsome actor I knew.  It's also kind of sad that he didn't follow up on his desire to secure better roles but then Zanuck would have had something to say about that.

Power was an actor who worked with some of the same actresses over and over again.  Here he is paired with three actresses, none of whom he worked with before or since.   All are good but I didn't see Blondell's earthy characterization as being anything she hadn't done before.  In my mind she was always a character actress and I have wondered if her being the top-billed of the three actresses didn't have a little something to do with the film's lack of box office.

Gray was always someone I enjoyed.  She has the most screen time of the three and has one good scene where she tries to talk Power out of continuing his wicked ways.  Plot-wise it is a scene that is necessary but this being only the actress's second starring role, her inexperience shows.

Most people have never heard of Walker.  She was a wonderfully insightful actress who was always poised yet strong and determined.  She meets Power eye to eye with a showy performance.  I always thought her talent was obvious.  But prior to starting this film she was involved in an auto accident.  She was leaving Palm Springs to return to Los Angeles when she picked up three hitch-hiking soldiers.  She had been drinking and hit a divider.  She and two soldiers were injured and the third soldier was killed.  She made a few more films but the press was scathing and her star dimmed and she faded away.

It is worth mentioning Mazurki's role here.  Appearing as a rare blond, he is affectingly tender as the carnival worker who has a one-way love for Gray.  Huge at almost 6'5", he was almost always a bad guy and a pretty scary one at that.  

Goulding directed with his usual keen eye.  He made good use of the carnival atmosphere on a set that was built on a Fox backlot.  He was also the director for Power's previous film, The Razor's Edge.  

Nightmare Alley (I love that title) bombed at the box office and critics' reviews were mixed.  Power was terribly disappointed and Zanuck was the type to say I told you so.  The studio chief withdrew the film from release and kept it locked away for several years.  I might have heard there was some legal wrangling going on as well.  When it was re-released in the mid-50s audiences gave it another look and came away with more rewarding opinions.   After Power's death in 1958, it got even more kudos and future generations came to regard it highly.

TCM's resident film noir guru, Eddie Muller, says the movie is one of his favorite noirs and one of his favorite films of the entire decade.

A remake, scheduled for release at the end of the year, has been completed.  Oscar-winning director Guillermo (The Shape of Water) del Toro has an intriguing cast... Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Rooney Mara, Willem Dafoe, Mary Steenburgen, Ron Perlman, David Straitharn and Richard Jenkins.  I understand Tyrone Power's daughter, Romina, has a small role.

Here's the trailer:

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