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
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.
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