Lured (1947)

September 5, 1947, release date

Directed by Douglas Sirk

Screenplay by Leo Rosten

Based on a story by Jacques Companéez, Simon Gantillon, Ernest Neuville

Music by Michel Michelet

Edited by John M. Foley, James E. Newcom

Cinematography by William H. Daniels

George Sanders as Robert Fleming

Lucille Ball as Sandra Carpenter

Charles Coburn as Chief Inspector Harley Temple

Boris Karloff as Charles van Druten

Ann Codee as Matilda, van Druten’s assistant

Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Julian Wilde

Joseph Calleia as Dr. Nicholas Moryani

Alan Mowbray as Lyle Maxwell alias Maxim Duval, Moryani’s accomplice

George Zucco as Officer H. R. Barrett

Robert Coote as the detective

Alan Napier as Inspector Gordon

Tanis Chandler as Lucy Barnard

Ethelreda Leopold as the nightclub singer (voice dubbed by Annette Warren)

Gerald Hamer as Harry Milton

Lynne Baggett as Fleming’s girlfriend

Distributed by United Artists

Produced by Hunt Stromberg Productions

A serial killer is terrorizing London (not the small unnamed seaside community in Beast, the subject of one of my February blog posts). Lured has some of the same dark themes that Beast has, but a bit of humor lightens the story from time to time, mostly because of the character of Sandra Carpenter, played by Lucille Ball. Lured gives her a chance to show her serious dramatic abilities, too.

Lucille Ball is also great in The Dark Corner, one of my film noir favorites and my first post in this blog. Click here to see my blog post about The Dark Corner.

The opening credits are handled creatively, in a style fitting a story about a hunt for a serial killer. The film starts with a circle of light on pavement from a flashlight that is held by a man (viewers know that it is a man from the shot of his shoes). The camera focuses on the man’s shoes as he walks to a street curb, where he shines the circle of light on a crumpled newspaper from the London Enquirer lying in the gutter. Then he moves the flashlight, the circle of light, to and then up a short flight of steps, across a front door, and to a “nameplate” announcing “Hunt Stromberg presents.” The circle of light is used to reveal all the subsequent credits before the narrative begins.

Sandra Carpenter works as a taxi dancer in a London nightclub called the Palladium. The scenes in the nightclub give Lucille Ball the best opportunities to show off her comedic skills. Her dialogue includes many one-liners and some dry observations of her own occupation. One of Carpenter’s coworkers, Lucy Barnard, answers a personal ad and tells Sandra all about her upcoming meeting with someone named John. Instead of finding romance, however, Lucy becomes the serial killer’s eighth victim. Advertising in the personal ads, it seems, is the killer’s way of luring his victims. He also taunts the police by sending them poems written in the style of Baudelaire, specifically Baudelaire’s poems from The Flowers of Evil.

◊ Wikipedia provides some interesting facts about the profession of taxi dancer; click here for more information.

◊ Click here for some background information about Charles Baudelaire.

In the photo above, Chief Inspector Harley Temple of Scotland Yard reads from Baudelaire’s book to his main suspect, but I’m getting ahead of myself. . . .

(This blog post about Lured contains some spoilers.)

Sandra Carpenter is recruited by Chief Inspector Temple to help in the investigation. She was the last one to see Lucy Barnard before she went missing (at this point in the investigation, Barnard’s ultimate fate is unclear), and she wants to do what she can to help her friend. Carpenter, of course, is an amateur: After she agrees to take on the undercover work, Chief Inspector Temple gives her a handgun for self-protection, and Carpenter walks out of his office without a single lesson on the care, maintenance, or use of her weapon. The scene comes across as both comedic and ludicrous. But an amateur detective is exactly what Chief Inspector Temple wants because his female and male detectives would probably be too well known for the kind of undercover work Sandra must do.

Chief Inspector Temple wants Carpenter to act as bait for the serial killer. With the help of the detectives at Scotland Yard, she answers personal ads in the hope of finding him. This plot device offers some humor and some diversions in the form of false leads: Most of the people looking for true love in London are relatively harmless. But some of them are kooky enough to raise alarm bells. One of the first ads that Carpenter answers reads, “Famous artist seeks beautiful model. Meet me nine o’clock 60 paces north of White Swan, under triple light lamppost.”

When Carpenter answers this ad, she sees a mysterious man outside the White Swan, which is a restaurant. Carpenter and viewers find out later that this man is Officer H. R. Barrett, Carpenter’s assigned police detail, but because he is working undercover, he gives Carpenter a bit of a fright and one of several diversions for viewers.

The personal ad that I quote above was placed by Charles van Druten (Boris Karloff), and Carpenter does find him under the lamppost. He asks for proof that she is the person who answered the ad: He wants her to recite the first and last line of her letter. She asks nothing of him, which doesn’t slip van Druten’s notice. They leave for his studio, however, where Carpenter meets Mathilda, van Druten’s assistant. Van Druten, a one-time fashion designer, asks Sandra to model one of his gowns for an imaginary audience. When van Druten gets carried away with his delusion and threatens Mathilda and Carpenter with a sword, both manage to escape because Officer H. R. Barrett intervenes. Carpenter doesn’t realize that Barrett is on the scene to protect her until they meet outside van Druten’s home. (This sequence, by the way, constitutes the only appearance by Boris Karloff.)

Romance manages to flourish between Sandra Carpenter and Robert Fleming, a flamboyant businessman and nightclub owner. A talent scout working for Fleming is at the Palladium hoping to lure employees with the offer of a new job. This talent scout gives Carpenter a business card because Fleming plans to open another new nightclub. Carpenter is apparently the only woman who catches the eye of the talent scout, out of a roomful of young women working as taxi dancers. This struck me as a rather weak coincidence. Another was Carpenter’s first conversation with Fleming over the phone: Fleming is instantly intrigued. It’s obvious until this point that Fleming plays the field, and I find it hard to believe that such a character would be so smitten after one phone conversation.

However, the romance between Sandra Carpenter and Robert Fleming serves its purpose in all of the intrigue, even if it starts with two somewhat flimsy plot devices. Fleming eventually comes under suspicion as London’s serial killer, which threatens his relationship with Carpenter. Lured is thus not that easy to categorize because it has so many important—and intertwining—plot threads.

The film is a remake of Robert Siodmak’s 1939 French film Pieges (titled Personal Column in the United States), which I have not seen. Even though Lured is a noir shot in black and white, director Douglas Sirk shows some flair for the dramatic, in the false starts of the criminal investigation, and for the ornate, in the exotic interior set design for Robert Fleming’s new nightclub, The Silent Dove. I have always associated Sirk with lush color melodramas, and I was surprised to see that he had directed a film noir.

For more about the director of the film, Douglas Sirk, click here. This essay from IndieWire doesn’t mention Lured, unfortunately.

Lucille Ball shows that she can act in almost anything with her performance in this film noir. It’s a very welcome change from the role of hers that I am most familiar with: Lucy Ricardo in the television series I Love Lucy. George Sanders may have gotten top billing for Lured, and he is very good in the role, but Lucille Ball upstages him when she’s on-screen.

I enjoyed this film a lot more than I thought I would, and I enjoyed seeing Lucille Ball in another film noir. Her legacy as a comedian overshadows her dramatic acting abilities, which I think is unfortunate because she is multitalented. And I wasn’t so sure who the serial killer was for a good part of the story: Keeping me guessing is always a plus for any story. Lured is the right mix of noir, mystery, and humor—and even romance.