Slightly Scarlet (1956)

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Directed by Allan Dwan
Written by Robert Blees, based on the novel Love’s Lovely Counterfeit by James M. Cain
Starring
- John Payne
- Rhonda Fleming
- Arlene Dahl
- Kent Taylor
- Ted de Corsia
Produced by Benedict Boeaus

Novelist James M. Cain (Double Indemnity in Three of a Kind, The Postman Always Rings Twice) was famous for putting his characters on the “love rack,” wherein the thing that they must do and the thing that they must not do are the same thing. Slightly Scarlet, based on Cain’s novel Love’s Lovely Counterfeit, is slightly unfocused in its application of Cain’s formula (I hear that the novel wasn’t any better, though the film version incorporated a few major changes to the novel’s storyline); it is, however, one of the few movies at the tail end of the “noir era” which brings the shadowy monochromatic sensibilities of that subgenre into full Technicolor with satisfying results.

Central to the story are two red-headed sisters, June (Rhonda Fleming) and Dorothy Lyons (Arlene Dahl). Of the two, Dorothy is the red-headed black sheep, having just served eighteen months of her sentence for theft before getting out on parole. Dorothy is very believable and very infuriating; she’s a self-centered jerk (do you use that word to describe dames? How about “jerkess”?) whose pursuit of pleasure and larceny always ends her up in hot water, and she always expects June to bail her out. When June picks her up from the prison gates, Dorothy immediately goes into a passive-aggressive routine about how they would have dropped the charges if only June could have paid for the stolen merchandise, and her comments about “next time” show she’s not willing to change her self-destructive ways, no matter how many lives around hers she ruins. Lord, I hate her.

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“C’mon, they had bigger portion sizes in the Big House!”

June, on the other hand, is the secretary and romantic to a powerful (and single) businessman, Frank Jansen (Kent Taylor), who’s also in the final stages of a run for the mayor’s office of “Bay City.” June also lives in an improbably huge and posh house with a housekeeper (Ellen Corby — that’s “Grandma Walton” to you and me). No wonder that some think she must be doing “extra work” for the mayor, if you know what I mean.

That’s what Solly Caspar (Tred de Corsia) thinks, anyway. He’s the mob boss who’s the target of Jansen’s reform campaign, a coarse thug who made good and now surrounds himself with people smarter than he is. One of them is Ben Grace (John Payne), a smooth but straightforward operator who’s given the task of digging up some dirt on Jansen. No dirt, alas: no gambling, no drunkenness, no slipping out of his secretary’s house at 2 in the morning. Caspar takes out his displeasure on Ben in front of his underlings, and it’s from that moment of humiliation that he starts working for the other side.

That night, Caspar and a cadre of cronies confront newspaper publisher Marlowe (Roy Gordon) in his office suite after hours. Marlowe has been instrumental in Jansen’s campaign, decrying the corruption in city hall and the influence of Caspar by name in print and on TV. Caspar intends to rough him up and scare him, but accidentally kills him. And unknown to Caspar, Ben got it all on tape.

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“You’re not nearly as scary as your shadow!”

Ben shows up at June’s house the next morning with the recording and an offer. Having the wherewithal to accuse Caspar of Marlowe’s death will give the Jansen campaign a boost over the hump, and Ben’s willing to give them the tape for nothing; he just dislikes Caspar that much. June is offended by the idea that their campaign needs that kind of under-handed support and turns him out, but not before Dorothy intrudes and makes clear that she’s (a) man-hungry, and (b) willing to pursue anything in trousers if it will piss June off.

Later that day, June relents and takes the tape to Jansen, and suddenly Solly Caspar is on the run to Mexico. Jansen wins the election in a landslide, and Ben quickly swoops up the reins of the criminal empire (so I guess personal animosity wasn’t the only thing motivating him) and modifies their business to fly under the radar with the new administration — no larceny, no prostitution. He puts a bug in June’s ear that his friend Lt. Dietz (Frank Gerstle) would make a good replacement police chief, and he cuts a deal with the newly-minted Chief Dietz: “Thirty nice, clean, quiet gambling locations.” It’s an activity which can hang on unnoticed even with reformers taking over City Hall.

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Why don’t women ever open the door to me dressed like that?

And why does June listen to Ben? In what may be the quickest realignment of affections ever, June finds herself willingly falling for Ben’s quiet, understated charms on the evening of the election victory, and he for her. Even Dorothy’s over-the-top attempts to throw herself at Ben don’t come between them.

But Dorothy is also a kleptomaniac still. And sooner or later she’s going to get herself into trouble, she’s going to lean on June’s guilt button, June’s going to call Ben for help, Ben’s going to cell in a favor from Dietz to make the charges go away, and Mayor Jansen is going to find out that his secretary may be a little conflicted about “reform”…

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“Maybe I am Santa Claus and I just shaved my beard. You ever think of that?”

The biggest missed opportunity here is the triangle between Ben, June, and Jansen, because it’s really not there. June never has to choose between them; she’s suddenly very open to Ben’s exloratory advances, and not only does it cause her no inner turmoil to change the focus of her affections, but Jansen never finds out and feel betrayed. The drama is all about Dorothy and how June tries to protect her, but even when Jansen finds out about her attempted machinations, he’s not overly upset about it except to the degree that he’s put in an awkward position. And Dorothy’s such a blindered self-obsessed hedonist that she isn’t remotely impacted by what June has to go through to try to help her.

But that’s after-the-fact analysis. While watching the movie, one’s mind is more focused on how these well-acted characters interact with a well-written script and a visual design to die for. Cinematographer John Alton, of Raw Deal (1948), He Walked by Night (1948) and The Big Combo (1955), all in black and white, demonstrates here that the moody and evocative visual tropes of film noir weren’t at all dependent on monochromatic film stock; adding rich color to the interplay of lights and shadows standard for the genre only deepens the visceral nature of the cinematography. And speaking of visual delights, there’s no other era of women’s fashion as appealing to this all-American boy than the one that concentrated on wasp-waisted, bullet-bra’ed women in dresses with full skirts and open necks. Yowza.

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The sensuous appeal of a woman’s neck and shoulders is sadly underappreciated in today’s culture.

It’s not one of the immortal noir films (as Max Allan Collins says on the commentary track of the VCI Entertainment DVD, the last great noir was probably the previous year’s Kiss Me Deadly), but it’s a quality example of the last days of the art, and deserves more attention than it gets.