Paramount took their new tough guy star, Alan Ladd, and put him in a script co-written by the leading tough guy writer of the day, Raymond Chandler in a… weepy. That’s right, a good old fashioned woman’s picture (as they were known then). It’s actually a Loretta Young movie – she’s deaf – with Ladd as a doctor who falls in love with her. His first appearance is typical Ladd – wearing a fedora, smoking a cigarette at a counter. Ladd rarely got to play a part like a doctor in his career and he’s believable enough – albeit a very tough-talking, chain-smoking doctor. (I think I would have bought it a bit more had we actually seen him working in those slums that he’s always going on about).
The film is based on best selling novel by Rachel Field, who is given top billing – partly, one supposed, because Field only died in 1942. Young’s fiancée (and thus Ladd’s rival) is played by Barry Sullivan, who went on to play a similar part in The Great Gatsby. But the story of this movie is inherently flawed – Young is deaf, which would be hard for her in real life, but not in a movie because (a) she’s rich, and (b) you know Ladd’s going to cure her in the end. And Sullivan is in love with Susan Hayward, so breaking up with him is going to be okay for Young. The only real obstacle to stop Ladd and Young getting together is the fact that she’s is rich and what sort of obstacle is that?
The last third of this film, where Ladd wants to operate on a deaf rabbit and Young asks to be a guinea pig instead, is particularly hard going. (What sort of doctor performs experimental surgery then takes off before the patient wakes up?) I mean if she’d died maybe you could have had something. If this had been better it might have opened up Ladd’s careers to different sorts of possibilities. As it is he mostly stayed in thrillers and actioners for the rest of his career. At least he and Chandler would later reunite more appropriately on The Blue Dahlia.
No comments:
Post a Comment