Visiting Film Noir: The Blue Gardenia

1953 Film Noir
From Warner Bros

Directed by Fritz Lang

Starring

Anne Baxter

Richard Conte

Ann Sothern

Raymond Burr

Jeff Donnell

Richard Erdman

George Reeves

Ruth Storey

Nat 'King' Cole

This is an unusual Fritz Lang film.  He was a giant in the film noir field and I felt he always delivered.  This film is not an exception, however, it pales in comparison to his other noirs.  Perhaps it also had the misfortune of being released in between two of the director's finest noirs, Clash by Night and The Big Heat.  This isn't a bad film but it is a modest noir and I expect it got the amount of attention it deserved when it was first released.

Baxter is a telephone operator, along with her two roommates (Sothern and Donnell) and several others, in the towering Chronicle Building in Los Angeles.  In an opening scene we see the principal players in one scene.  Burr is sketching Sothern who's getting her nails done in the lobby.  Baxter and Donnell come breezily into the scene to see how the sketch is coming along.  Conte, a reporter for the Chronicle, then wanders in although he knows none of the others but he, too, wants to see the sketch.

I like how Lang fleshes out the roommates-in-their-apartment scenes.  The early ones allow for us to get to know the trio.  Baxter is the dreamy one, full of romance for her far-away soldier.  Sothern has played this role often... the older, wiser, charming, sensible one with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth as she serves up her bon mots.  Donnell is the dingy, younger one who provides her mates with a laugh.  These scenes are played for a lot of comedy and done well... a lovely tribute to women getting along.

Burr invites Sothern out for a date and without accepting, she does offer her phone number.  When he calls later, Sothern is gone and Baxter answers the phone.  She ends up mistakenly being asked out to dinner and accepts because she has just gotten a Dear John letter from her soldier boyfriend.  She's feeling dreadful but thinks a night out might help cure the blues.

Burr is one of the great noir character actor villains of all time.  His hulking frame, his yen to pounce, the deep voice dripping with venom, the black eyes that stared, the frightening feeling of doom... the man was a master.  I still have a hard time wondering how anyone thought of him as Perry Mason but I was oh so glad they did. 

He really had to rely on his acting chops here to play a detestable womanizer but it worked for me.  He first plies Baxter with many Polynesian drinks at The Blue Gardenia, a popular joint with its island motif and Nat 'King" Cole singing the haunting title tune at the piano (he would have a successful recording of it as would Dinah Washington and others).  

Once they get to his playboy apartment and he fixes her more drinks (she is beyond smashed), which she half-heartedly declines, they kiss.  When he wants to take it further and rougher, she says no.  He  continues, making it more violent and she lets him have it with a fireplace poker.  He falls to the floor and she runs out of the apartment.  The next time we see her Sothern is trying like hell to wake her up.

For me, the story (and the film) changed at this point.  I would have preferred we see the Burr part for the entire film, maybe he'd be a stalker.  Of course, I would have liked to have seen the assault a little more fully.  I don't mean porn but dramatic content and our emotional response to Baxter's character's fear and desperation is lost because the scene is quickly cut.  But it was the early 1950s and that's not how things were done.

As long as I've loved the Golden Age of Hollywood moviemaking, I found wry amusement over those administering the morals, as some of you are aware.   It seems no one wanted us to know how real life really played out.  They thought they were being proper and just, judge and jury that they were, to not clutter our pretty little heads with reality.  

Re-enter Conte.  He was dissatisfied with how the cops (Reeves, later TV's Superman, is the lead guy) didn't seem to be following up on any obvious clues.  Everyone assumed Burr's murderess was probably a local woman because they are the ones Burr went after.  Hell, it might even have been someone from the sea of phone operators at the Chronicle.

But Reeves doesn't seem to focus on the items she left behind... a handkerchief, a hat or her shoes.  Noirs like to confuse or have some things not make sense but not making something of these personal items seems like poor writing to me.  And how about her fingerprints which have to be on her drinking glass, the poker and who knows what else?   No mention.  

Conte and Reeves

So Conte, who says sudden death always sells newspapers, particularly when sex is involved, writes an article in which he asks the mysterious woman to contact him and tell her story with the guarantee of safety.  Wouldn't he be an accessory?  Just asking.  She answers and meets him but claims to be a friend of the woman which, of course, he doesn't believe.  Ultimately he isn't able to guarantee her safety and Reeves arrests her.  She is, of course, livid with Conte.  

But there is a surprise here, a reason why she's fuzzy on killing him.  Interestingly this same ending was probably used in a half dozen Perry Mason episodes.

I would call this a woman's picture in addition to being a noir.  Most noirs don't have women as the central character although any noir worth its weight has a woman at the center of the action although there are exceptions and this is one of them.  Along with being a woman's picture is its look at women's issues, one of them being date-rape... or in this case almost date rape... which would have happened had she not hit him with that poker.  

The film was based on a story by Vera Caspary who wrote Laura which was turned into, arguably perhaps, the best noir of them all.  She said she based The Blue Gardenia on Hollywood's notorious 1947 killing known as The Black Dahlia.  Caspary's story was adapted by one Charles Hoffman who had never written a noir before or since.

The roommates... Donnell, Sothern and Baxter

It was not the best shoot for Baxter because she was in the throes of an unpleasant divorce from actor John Hodiak.  She had signed on with Warners after ending a long stay at Fox.  Her first WB film, I Confess, was not enjoyable because Hitchcock didn't care for her.  He had been strong-armed by the studio into taking her.  She was, however, very much liked by Lang who left her free of his habit of making life miserable for his lead actresses.

I liked Baxter.  She was a good actress.  She hit all her marks that may have been required by any good dramatic school.  She won an Oscar (for The Razor's Edge).  She had at least one iconic role (Eve Harrington) and turned in a number of very fine performances.  The problem for Annie and me is that she just never excited me as an actress. I've mentioned this before.  My favorite Baxter performance, believe it or not, is as the murderer in a Columbo.

One thing to add, as if it's not already apparent, is that she plays a good girl, the heroine.  The juicy, lead actress roles in most noirs, by any director, are not good girls, not by far.  Stanwyck, again, in Clash, was not a bad girl, certainly not what she was in Double Indemnity, but she's hard as a diamond with not nearly the allure.  Gloria Grahame in The Big Heat is right there in the top echelon of the great noir queens.  These were the roles that got all the attention... unfortunately for Baxter.

Lang had wanted Dana Andrews for the male lead and when he proved unavailable, the director turned to Conte, who also traveled the noir beat, and very well, too, usually as a villain.  He, too, didn't get a lot of attention here because he was a good guy.  Acting plaudits must go to Burr and to Sothern.  Sothern had been off the screen for three years due to health problems and she would not make another film for nine years.  Character actress Ruth Storey, who has a plumb role, was married at the time to Conte.  The inclusion of Nat 'King" Cole is a total delight.  He caressed the song as only he could.  I loved this man's voice. 

The Blue Gardenia is the first of what some have considered the Lang trilogy of newspaper noirs.  While the City Sleeps (coming up soonish) and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, both starring Andrews, came in 1956.

I don't agree with those who sing this movie's praises nor do I agree with those who savage it and consider it a waste of time.  It is interesting to note that Lang himself considered it a job-for-hire.  I have always been a lover of film noir so I am almost bound to like it at some level although I think referring to it as a modest noir is what it is.

Here's Nat:

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