Blonde Ice (1948)

Directed by Jack Bernhard
Written by Kenneth Gamey and Raymond Schrock, based on the novel Once Too Often by Whitman Chambers
Starring
- Leslie Brooks
- Robert Paige
- Michael Whalen
- Walter Sande
- John Holland

Blonde Ice was supposedly considered a lost film by the mid-’70s, though obviously prints have since surfaced. To label something a “lost film” conjures images of hidden treasure and holy grails, which in this case is certainly overselling what was found. It’s not a bad film; instead, it’s a mostly competent little B-list suspense-drama, the likes of which there are dozens and dozens of examples among the non-lost films most of us have never seen.

The main character, of whom the title phrase is a description, is Claire Cummings (the porcelain-like Leslie Brooks), soon to become Claire Hanneman — “soon” as in “the first scene is a wedding.” A former society columnist for a San Francisco paper, she leaves behind a trio of rejected suitors — Hack (Walter Sande), the editor, who has since married another quite happily; Al (James Griffith), a reporter with the longest neck I’ve ever seen that isn’t supported by a dozen gold bands; and Les (Robert Paige), a sports columnist who’s taking the situation hardest of all. I’m not sure if his state of mind is helped or hindered by the big wet kiss she gives him in private on the veranda right after the ceremony; she says that it’ll always be Claire and Les, but how can he believe her? Especially when she’s immediately to depart on a month-long honeymoon in L.A. with the rich groom Carl (John Holland)?

Seriously, it’s like putting a double-breasted suit on a goose.

Carl catches a glimpse of the clinch on the veranda, but is willingly placated when she describes it as a goodbye kiss to a dear friend. A week into their honeymoon, though, he finds the letter she’s been writing to “Darling Les,” counting the days until they can be together again. In possibly the most passionless discovery of infidelity ever put to film, he packs his bags to go back to Frisco and leaves her with a pittance of money, hoping never to see her again outside of divorce court.

She is, however, the conniving type. She arranges a late-night chartered flight from L.A. to Frisco and back, giving the pilot (Russ Vincent) something extra to forget her and establishing well her alibi at the hotel. The next day, she calls Les with a story of Carl having been called away to New York on business, and arranges to have him pick her up at the airport and take her home… where Carl’s body is waiting.

Sugar and spice and hubba.

Les has a good alibi as well (though he didn’t know he’d need it), but the police aren’t willing to rule it the suicide that it appears to be at first glance; there are no fingerprints of any kind on the gun, there are no powder burns on Carl’s clothes and no powder traces on his hands, and the crime lab eventually shows that there’s no way Carl could have shot himself at that angle. And Claire’s nonchalance at her honeymoon widowhood, after her sudden “shock” at finding the body, plants the smallest of seeds of suspicion in Les’ mind.

“We’re all men here. You can leave your hats on.”

And other complications get thrown Claire’s and Les’ way. Al, the formerly jilted reporter, is assigned to follow the story, and his journalistic method is largely comprised of needling Les about Claire’s possible guilt, and his own. The pilot, Blackie, shows up for a further shakedown, having recognized Claire from the papers. And Claire, free of her boring husband but also shorn of her admission into high society, starts putting out feelers toward an attorney turned wanna-be congressman, Mason (Michael Whalen). I recognized Whalen from three other movies I’ve seen recently, and half-expected in despair that odious comic relief Sid Melton would also make an unwanted appearance; I was fortunately wrong in my forecast.

“Dang! I feel like I should be paying admission!”

For a “programmer” destined to play second fiddle on a double bill, it’s not as poverty stricken as some others of that era (I just linked to some of them last paragraph). Leslie Brooks as Claire is stunning to look at, though her performance, as with those of most of the cast, exemplifies the “mannered acting” common to the time and the budget range. In fact, the best acting from anyone comes in those few scenes of “just us boys” which usually involve Hack. (Brooks, only 26 at the time, was nearing the end of a 27-feature career that started with roles like an uncredited Ziegfeld Girl in 1941; she retired soon after she entered a second marriage of her own.)

The movie’s biggest problem, which becomes hard to ignore in the end, is that we really don’t know if Claire or Les is the protagonist, if we’re watching the tragedy of a Lady Macbeth trapped by her own ambition or a compromised lover who starts to suspect his beloved of being a murderer. (Which is really not where he concentrates his suspicions; he mostly just comes to the realization that Claire is Not A Nice Person.) This culminates in probably one of the worst climactic scenes of the genre, certainly much worse than the movie it caps; it’s a conclusion that speaks loudly of writer desperation in coming up with some kind of ending, and leaves the audience wondering, “Seriously? That was the best they could do?”

“No matter how much money comes her way, every girl needs a patsy like you to fall back on!”