Reeling Backward: "This Gun for Hire" (1942)

Alan Ladd became a star in the most unlikely way: Playing a heartless killer in 1942's "This Gun for Hire." While ostensibly a supporting part -- 29-year-old Ladd received fourth billing, below Laird Crager -- the role of Philip Raven is one of the most enduring in all of film noir

Raven is a man who, as the trailer dubbed him, "kills for the love of killing." This is not quite right, as he is a paid assassin who kills without hesitation or remorse, but doesn't appear to have a huge emotional reaction in the act of doing so. The opening scene, where he casually shoots a scientist selling a secret formula -- and then guns down his wife to boot -- sets the hard-bitten tone for the rest of the movie.

With his carefully unmodulated voice, steely unwavering gaze and icy cold demeanor, Ladd gave Raven unmistakable presence and a pitch-dark form of charisma. Love him or hate him, you can't take your eyes off him.

Veronica Lake is supposed to be the star of the picture, but it's a curiously passive lead role. She spends most of the movie in Raven's thrall, as his traveling companion and prisoner. It's more of a partnership than a true thug/victim relationship, with Ellen Graham appealing to Raven's better nature -- apparently being the only person who even believes there is such a thing.

Ellen's an interesting gal, part moll and part golden-hearted enchantress. She's a showgirl who sings while performing magic tricks (which Lake performs herself, and ably) whose fellah is a police detective, Michael Crane (Robert Preston). The copper is a wet rag compared to the black charm of Raven, and for a long time it seems likely that she really is "Raven's girl," as the police dub her.

Directed by Frank Tuttle from a screenplay by Albert Maltz and W.R. Burnett, based on the novel "A Gun for Sale" by Graham Greene, "This Gun for Hire" is a great-looking film with lots of inky cinematography -- particularly in a brief sequence inside a gasworks factory, where the shadows of machinery envelop and bisect the people inside.

Raven spends most of the movie on the lam, but doesn't seem particularly rattled about it. He's listed in the newspapers as the "broken-wristed killer," identifiable by his left hand that juts out at an ungainly angle from his forearm. (Late in the movie we learn this injury was inflicted by an abusive aunt, who became his first murder victim when he slit her throat in retaliation.) Oddly, this deformity doesn't seem to affect Raven's physical ability, including pulling himself up over a brick wall into the gasworks.

The main antagonist is Cregar as Willard Gates, who seems to have a hand in both the entertainment and industrial worlds, picking out Ellen for his nightclub. He hires Raven to off the scientist, but he's acting at the behest of an elderly, sickly senator who wants to sell the formula for a poisonous gas to the Japanese. (This plot is revealed very late in the story, suggesting it was stitched on for war propaganda purposes.)

Gates pays Raven in marked bills, which soon puts Crane and the other cops on his tail. Not being the forgiving sort -- see the aunt -- he vows to hunt down Gates and kill him. Ellen learns of the Japanese scheme, and enlists Raven to give up his revenge in order to foil the plan.

Cregar is an interesting story. He had a brief but busy career, making 16 films between 1940 and 1945 --including playing the pirate Henry Morgan in "The Black Swan" -- before dying at the age of 31. He was actually the same age as Ladd when they made "This Gun for Hire" together, but Cregar nearly always played older characters in their 40s and up.

A looming physical presence -- 6-foot-3 with a barrel chest and shoulders like a linebacker -- Cregar struggled with his weight all his life, rarely less than 300 pounds in most of his screen roles. Tuttle is careful to avoid have Ladd and Cregar standing right next to other, since the diminutive Ladd (5'6" by most accounts) would have a hard time looking threatening next to a man twice his size. When they finally do appear together, Raven has his gun trained on Gates while wearing a gas mask, which make shim scary enough.

Cregar quickly lost over 100 pounds for his final role, and the strain on his system killed him a few days after undergoing stomach surgery. What a bright light snuffed out so early.

Preston was even younger, just 24 when this film came out, and Lake was already a big star at 20. She and Ladd would go on to make several more pictures together, forming one of the Golden Age's most iconic screen duos.


3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "High Sierra" (1941)

I've seen probably three dozen Humphrey Bogart movies in my lifetime, and no matter what his part in it is, the experience always affects me the same way.

I spend the next couple of days unconsciously talking through my teeth in a fast, low patter. I imagine walking around with a .45 automatic tucked into my belt, and pistol-whipping any wiseguys who ticked me off.

That's the thing about the great iconic stars -- we instinctively want to like them, and be like them.

So what intrigued me while watching 1941's "High Sierra" is why we end up liking Roy "Mad Dog" Earle so much. He is, after all, a hardened killer who slaps people around and guns down innocent people who get in his way. Just released from an Indiana prison on a pardon that was bought and paid for, Roy's a gray and grizzled veteran con man.

Rather than looking to go straight, Roy's only intention is to nail one last big score so he can retire. Big Mac, a dying mob boss, arranged for Roy's release so he can head up a big job to steal half a million in jewels from a California resort. Roy's been given a couple of pinhead small-timers as his wing men (Arthur Kennedy and Alan Curtis) and he's none too happy about it. He also isn't thrilled with having to hole up in a camp up in the mountains, waiting to get the word the job is a go.

So why do we root for Roy, so much so that when the cops are on his tail and he's got a box full of hot jewels, we want him to get away with it?

Perhaps it's Roy's misplaced love for Velma (a 16-year-old Joan Leslie), a poor girl with a club foot he meets along the road to Los Angeles. Velma's grandfather -- played by Henry Travers, forever Clarence the angel from "It's a Wonderful Life" -- takes an instant liking to what he senses is a kindred soul, for Roy used to be just another Midwestern farm boy before he became a notorious gangster.

Roy arranges for Velma to have an operation to fix her foot, which he pays for, with a mind to marry the girl half his age. I think Roy convinces himself he's in love with her, rather than because of any real connection they share. She's goodness incarnate, and he knows he's bad, and maybe he thinks being around her will rub off on him. Velma represents an ideal Roy strives for but can never attain.

The flip side of the female coin is Marie (Ida Lupino -- who actually got top billing over Bogie), a two-bit moll who falls hard for Roy, without getting much of anything in return. She was brought along by one of the two small-time crooks, who fight like dogs over her, until Roy sets them straight and takes the girl under his protective wing.

The other notable player is Pard, a scraggly little mutt who starts following Roy around at the mountain camp. Algernon, the black handyman at the camp, relates that everyone Pard has taken a shine to has died -- which obviously doesn't bode well for Roy. (Willie Best plays Algernon in a shiftless, google-eyed depiction of servitude that is outrageous even by 1941 standards.)

Incidentally, a lot of people have mistakenly thought that Pard was played by the same dog that played Toto in "The Wizard of Oz," but in fact it was Bogart's own pet, Zero. Hopefully the star negotiated a decent contract for his mutt.

The last act of "High Sierra" is the least interesting, as all the little pieces of the Production Code-era morality lesson fall into place.

The two small-timers buy it in a car crash, and the inside man from the resort squeals like a stuck pig, resulting in Roy's mugshot on the cover of every newspaper. Velma, fixed of the problem that saw her labeled a cripple, becomes a party girl who loves to dance and drink. Roy decides to get hitched with Marie as some sort of consolation prize for Velma, and she immediately starts behaving like a whiny rhymes-with-witch.

Their downfall is, of course, the mutt Pard, who gets recognized by a motel manager, putting the cops onto Roy's trail. Roy helps them by stupidly giving Marie all his money so she can take a bus to Las Vegas, forcing him to hold up a drugstore for gas money, which begins a high-speed pursuit that ends with Roy trapped in the high mountains.

Marie, rushing to the media hoopla over public enemy one being cornered, is given away by Pard, who runs barking up to Roy's hideout spot. Hearing the dog, and realizing Marie must be near, Roy comes out from cover long enough to be taken out by a sharpshooter with a scope rifle. Roy's careening fall down the mountain side is pretty graphic for its time.

"High Sierra" was directed by Raoul Walsh from a script by John Huston and W.R. Burnett, based on Burnett's novel. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to label it film noir, especially with all the sunny location shots, but it's an early and above-average example of the hard-boiled heist film.

And, of course, it's got Bogart, doing that unexplainable and inescapably magnetic Bogart thing he does.

3 stars out of four