His Kind of Woman (1951)

Robert Mitchum is one of my many noir favorites, and his character, Dan Milner, in His Kind of Woman has one of my favorite lines in all of film noir. Milner is a professional gambler (like Steve Maddux in Her Kind of Man). He makes his living in a profession that was illegal in the United States when the film was released in 1951. He is on a losing streak in his illegal profession, so the claim at the start of the film that he owes money couldn’t come at a worse time. And it’s bound to cause all sorts of problems for Milner because he supposedly owes money to a shady character. In a situation like this, he doesn’t have much recourse, at least when it comes to legal options.

Very early in the film, Milner comes home to three strangers playing cards in his apartment. One of them tells him, “Ollie Chester wants the dough.” (Ollie Chester is never mentioned again in the film, and viewers never meet him. He many not even exist, as far as Milner and the story are concerned.) Milner says that he doesn’t know what the man is talking about, but that turns out to be irrelevant. The three men are in Milner’s apartment to collect the money, no matter what. Milner is beaten for refusing to pay, and the three men leave him on his living room floor.

Milner is still on his living room floor when his telephone starts to ring . . . and ring . . . and ring. He finally gets up to answer the phone, and viewers hear only his side of the conversation: “Hello? . . . Yeah, this is Milner . . . No, I’m not busy, Corley . . . No, I was just getting ready to take my tie off . . . and wondering whether I should hang myself with it.”

Robert Mitchum delivers these lines with a combination of conviction, resignation, and deadpan humor. I laugh every time I see the film and hear these lines. Lest you think I am callous, His Kind of Woman is a film noir with an odd combination of humor, snappy dialogue, violence, and dark themes, but the humor and the snappy dialogue are already evident by the time Milner arrives home to find three strangers in his living room.

The film actually starts with a voice-over narrator (Thompson, played by Charles McGraw), who explains how the film’s narrative really starts in Naples, Italy. Ferraro is staying in his villa overlooking the Bay of Naples. He wants to return to the United States, but he cannot because he was deported. He leads a crime syndicate, and he is still the head of gambling and vice in the United States despite his deportation. Ferraro wants greater control over the money he makes from his so-called businesses. He has a plan to visit Morro’s Lodge in Mexico to trade places with Dan Milner, to take over his identity so he can reenter the United States. Whether Milner survives this identity transfer is the least of Ferraro’s worries.

Corley’s phone call brings Milner to the home of someone named Arnold. Arnold is funding Milner’s trip to Mexico and Morro’s Lodge. (Another point that is never clarified is Arnold’s relationship to Ferraro and to Milner. I never understood why he is in charge of getting Milner from point A [the United States] to point B [Mexico].) At this point in the film, neither Milner nor the viewers know what Milner’s trip to Mexico will entail. Milner knows that he will make a quick $50,000, but that’s all he knows before he leaves the country and flies to Nogales, Mexico. At his first stop in Mexico, he meets a singer named Lenore Brent. Both are heading to Morro’s Lodge, where the two of them meet several other characters. Some are involved in Ferraro’s plans, and some are merely distractions that provide some of the film’s humor.

(This article about His Kind of Woman contains spoilers.)

Milner finally learns at Morro’s Lodge what is expected of him, but he is not willing to go through with Ferraro’s bargain. This angers Ferraro, and he intends to get rid of Milner even though he now has to find someone else’s identity to steal. Milner is now more dangerous to Ferraro because he knows too much. Much of the violence in the film is directed at Milner, and much of it is the result of Ferraro’s displeasure with Milner’s decisions.

His Kind of Woman is a long film (almost two hours), especially for a film noir. I must admit that I found the running time a bit too long. The last third or so of the film features alternating sequences between Ferraro’s desire to inflict pain on Milner and the crusade by Mark Cardigan, an actor and fellow Morro Lodge vacationer, to save Milner. For me, the humor in the Cardigan sequence falls a little flat in comparison to the violence and sadism on display by Ferraro and his henchmen. The most humorous and witty bits of dialogue usually involve Robert Mitchum’s character in other contexts: Dan Milner’s conversations with Lenore Brent, his exchanges with Mark Cardigan before he is in any real danger, and his interactions with supporting characters in about the first half of the film.

The DVD I borrowed came with commentary by professor Vivian Sobchack, and she provides lots of details about Hugh Hefner’s involvement in the film and the ways that he got around or simply ignored the production code that was in force at the time. It’s well worth a listen. You can also find the film at the Internet Archive in English with Spanish subtitles, but I do believe that getting the DVD would be the best option.

Here are just a few of the points made by Sobchack in her DVD commentary:

◊ Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell were the biggest stars at RKO at the time. Jane Russell was a commanding presence on-screen that Robert Mitchum could match. Mitchum could match Russell’s “hard glamor,” as it was called at the time.

◊ Jane Russell was a protegee of Howard Hughes. She does her own singing in the film.

◊ Raymond Burr was cast after the film was finished. His character is based on real-life mobster Lucky Luciano.

◊ Joseph Breen of the Production Code Administration (PCA) objected to Mexican and Latin American stereotypes, but many of them remained in the film. The United States was following the Good Neighbor Policy at the time the film was made. Breen also objected to the violence, but it stayed, although viewers don’t see much of it directly. Viewers never see Dan Milner being beaten by the three strangers in his apartment at the beginning of the film, and they never see Bill Lusk killed by Thompson.

◊ Howard Hughes made his money in aviation. Planes are featured in the film, even when they are unnecessary for moving the plot forward. Lusk, the federal immigration agent, is the pilot coming in for a landing at Morro Lodge during the storm, and the sequence about his landing is another instance of showing aviation that doesn’t really advance the plot.

◊ Howard Hughes loved the character of Mark Cardigan and helped rewrite much of the second half of the film to give the character more to do on-screen and to build up Cardigan’s character. He also liked Vincent Price in the role. Cardigan’s in-film movie clips are a parody of Errol Flynn and Errol Flynn’s roles, and Cardigan is very appreciative of his own performance.

◊ Howard Hughes didn’t want to make message films and sent a memo to that effect to everyone at RKO when he bought the studio. Some of the supporting characters even voice this type of opinion:

• Myron Winton: “People don’t go to the movies to see how miserable the world is. They want to eat popcorn and be happy.”

• Martin Krafft: “It [Cardigan’s movie] has a message no pigeon would carry.”

His Kind of Woman is one of those films that could go into several categories: film noir, humor, adventure, romance. It’s a bit hard to pigeonhole, which might turn away some viewers. I enjoyed it more on subsequent viewings, and it’s worth seeing more than once, as it is with so many films noir, to catch all the details. It’s a must-see for fans of Robert Mitchum because he doesn’t disappoint. His character has most of the best lines. In fact, I would say that he carries the film, even with the strong supporting cast around him.

August 21, 1951 (Chicago, Illinois, premiere), August 25, 1952 (United States), release dates  •  Directed by John Farrow, Richard Fleischer  •  Screenplay by Frank Fenton, Jack Leonard, Earl Felton, Howard Hughes  •  Based on a story by Gerald Drayson Adams  •  Music by Leigh Harline  •  Edited by Frederic Knudtson, Eda Warren  •  Cinematography by Harry J. Wild

Robert Mitchum as Dan Milner  •  Jane Russell as Lenore Brent  •  Vincent Price as Mark Cardigan  •  Tim Holt as Bill Lusk  •  Charles McGraw as Thompson  •  Marjorie Reynolds as Helen Cardigan  •  Raymond Burr as Nick Ferraro  •  Leslie Banning as Jennie Stone  •  Richard Bergren as Milton Stone  •  Jim Backus as Myron Winton  •  Philip Van Zandt as Jose Morro, the resort’s manager  •  John Mylong as Martin Krafft  •  Carleton G. Young as Gerald Hobson  •  Paul Frees as Corley

Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures  •  Produced by RKO Radio Pictures