The Blue Gardenia (1953): The First in Fritz Lang’s Newspaper Noir Trilogy

I decided to see The Blue Gardenia again because it is the first of three films in what are now called director Fritz Lang’s newspaper noir film trilogy. The other two are While the City Sleeps, released on May 16, 1956, and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, released on September 13, 1956. My plan is to see and write about all three in the trilogy as part of a series this April for my blog.

The Blue Gardenia is a noir that seems to get better and better with repeat viewings. In fact, I think it’s the best of the three films, which came as a bit of a surprise to me because the second two films star Dana Andrews, one of my favorite noir actors. But Richard Conte is another favorite of mine, and he is one of the stars of The Blue Gardenia.

The back cover of the DVD that I watched for The Blue Gardenia states the following:

 . . . The Blue Gardenia is a scalding critique of the public’s hunger for bloodshed and scandal. At the same time, it captures the panic of a nation sliding into cold war paranoia. “It was the first picture after the McCarthy business,” [Fritz] Lang later said. “Maybe that’s what made me so venomous.”

It is quite true that a murder and a newspaper reporter looking for a story are vital parts of the narrative. And Fritz Lang may well have been motivated by a newspaper-reading public that enjoyed articles about false accusations directed at their fellow Americans. But The Blue Gardenia is much more than a newspaper noir (and mentions nothing directly about McCarthyism). The way men treat women is just as important to the narrative in The Blue Gardenia.

I wrote about The Blue Gardenia once before for my blog. Click here to see my first article about the film. I saw the other two films in the trilogy just recently for this series of articles.

The film starts with reporter Casey Mayo and his photographer Al of the Los Angeles Chronicle arriving at the West-Coast Telephone Company. Mayo is planning to do a human interest story on the telephone operators who work there. Artist Harry Prebble is already in the telephone company offices sketching women at random, but on this particular day, he is sketching Crystal Carpenter. Norah Larkin and her two roommates, Crystal and Sally Ellis, not only live together; they also work together as telephone operators. Richard Conte, as Casey Mayo, may appear first on the screen, but the film is all about Norah Larkin, played by Ann Baxter, and Baxter gets top billing for this film.

(This article about The Blue Gardenia contains spoilers.)

It’s never made clear why Prebble is sketching women. That is, it’s never made clear that he has any connection at all with Casey Mayo or the Los Angeles Chronicle newspaper. It is clear that he has a lurid interest in women. All the female employees know that he is looking for dates and warn each other about his intentions. Crystal and Sally make sure to point out Prebble’s ill intentions to Norah, who seems not to have noticed that he dates women and then dumps them when he tires of them. Later in the film, viewers see that his apartment is littered with his sketches of women in pinup and cheesecake poses. Someone named Rose calls Harry Prebble at the West-Coast Telephone Company offices while he is busy sketching and working. She is upset, and the implication is that she is pregnant by Prebble. He puts Rose off, saying that he’ll call her when he is not so busy.

Crystal is interested in Casey Mayo and gives him her phone number. Harry Prebble overhears it, and he calls for a date with Crystal later that evening, even though she showed no interest in him and never gave him her phone number. (Would he have been considered pushy in 1953? The women working at the telephone company certainly had their doubts about him.) Norah is the one who answers the phone, and Harry thinks he is talking to Crystal. Norah accepts a last-minute date with Harry because it is her birthday and she has just received a “Dear Jane” letter from her boyfriend, a soldier serving in Korea who has met someone new. Norah meets Harry at a restaurant called the Blue Gardenia for dinner. Until the moment Norah arrives, Harry thinks he is meeting Crystal, but he is just as happy to see Norah. It doesn’t matter who shows up as long as he has a date for the evening.

The film’s theme song is “Blue Gardenia” sung by Nat King Cole. You can listen to it on YouTube. Nat King Cole is the featured nightclub act at the restaurant when Norah Larkin meets Harry Prebble for dinner, where he sings for the nightclub crowd and the film’s soundtrack.

Harry orders Polynesian Pearl Divers for him and Norah, but he lies and tells Norah that the drinks contain mostly ice and pineapple juice, even though viewers know that he ordered them heavy on the rum before Norah even arrived. Harry’s plan is always to get his date drunk; this time it happens to be Norah. He continues with this plan when Norah agrees to go to his apartment. Once Norah is about to pass out on his couch, Harry Prebble makes his move.

When Norah realizes that something isn’t right and that Harry has ulterior motives, she tries to push him away. Harry tries to force himself on her, and Norah puts up a fight. She manages to get up off the couch, pick up a fireplace poker, and hit Harry. Norah blacks out, but she finally gets away after waking from her position on the floor and running out the front door of Harry Prebble’s apartment. What she doesn’t realize is that Harry Prebble is lying on the floor, too. But he is dead.

Casey Mayo and photographer Al (who apparently doesn’t have a last name) are the first newspaper people on the murder scene. Casey is surprised to learn that the murder victim is Harry Prebble because he recalls meeting him at the West-Coast Telephone Company earlier in the day. Casey is determined to be the first to break each new development in the murder investigation, and part of his plan is to use his newspaper column to write an open letter to the murderer, christened by one of his staff as the Blue Gardenia.

Casey describes the murderer as “hot copy” because he sees her as a story that newspaper readers will gobble up. He writes a “letter” addressed to the Blue Gardenia in his newspaper column for the Los Angeles Chronicle and promises her legal help if she contacts him and gives him her story. Casey is a cynical reporter who promises to help the Blue Gardenia; in reality, all he wants is first access to her story. He’s willing to listen to all the crank callers who claim “credit” for the murder before Norah does reach out to him. She believes his willingness to help her, but she poses as a friend of the person who killed Prebble. Casey starts to care for Norah and regrets making promises that he has no intention of keeping. And in spite of his cynicism, Casey believes Norah when she tells him that she is speaking for a friend.

Crystal, one of Norah’s roommates, knows that something is wrong because Norah has not been her usual self. She helps Norah contact Casey again, and they meet again. Casey thinks at first that Crystal killed Harry Prebble; he is surprised when Norah admits to him that she killed Harry Prebble and asks him what they should do next. When Casey says that he doesn’t know, Norah realizes that Casey never had any intention of helping her, and she is justifiably angry. When the police show up to arrest her, she thinks that Casey set her up. But it wasn’t Casey who dropped the dime on her; it was Bill, owner of the diner where they met.

Casey Mayo is supposed to look good in comparison to Harry Prebble, and he probably did in 1953. But he has a little black book of women’s telephone numbers, and his photographer Al is jealous of Casey’s success with women. Casey’s black book comes up a few times in the narrative, and these instances make Casey and Al sound callous. Casey annotates his black book with a secret code, and he refuses to explain it when Al questions him, but that level of secrecy isn’t enough gallantry to make Casey look like a knight in shining armor. When Casey discovers that he actually cares about Norah Larkin, he is happy to get rid of his little black book. But he does so by tossing it to Al so that Al can call women he has never met and ask them out on dates, a tactic Harry Prebble used with Crystal Carpenter and Norah Larkin.

Harry Prebble doesn’t have a little black book because he has no intention of keeping in touch with women for very long. All three men—Casey, Al, and Harry—treat women as objects. Harry Prebble is the worst one of the three because he is a predatory rapist; he uses drugs and alcohol to get women to sleep with him and cuts them off soon after. Rose’s pregnancy, for example, is not and never was part of his future plans.

Norah Larkin has fallen in love with Casey Mayo, in spite of everything. Her roommate Crystal Carpenter advises her to play it cool, at least for a short while, and that’s probably a good idea. If there had ever been a sequel to the story, it wouldn’t have hurt Norah to find out if Casey’s developing conscience is permanent or just a ploy to get her sympathies.

Until the end of the film, Casey is another man, like Harry Prebble, who lied to Norah Larkin, and The Blue Gardenia is an excellent film noir that shows quite well the different predatory streaks in its male characters.

March 28, 1953, release date  •  Directed by Fritz Lang  •  Screenplay by Charles Hoffman  •  Based on the novella “The Gardenia” by Vera Caspary  •  Music by Raoul Kraushaar  •  Edited by Edward Mann  •  Cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca

Anne Baxter as Norah Larkin  •  Richard Conte as Casey Mayo  •  Ann Sothern as Crystal Carpenter  •  Jeff Donnell as Sally Ellis  •  Raymond Burr as Harry Prebble  •  Richard Erdman as Al  •  George Reeves as Police Captain Sam Haynes  •  Ruth Storey as Rose Miller  •  Ray Walker as Homer  •  Nat King Cole as himself

Distributed by RKO  •  Produced by Blue Gardenia Productions