Framed (1947)

I have often wondered while watching films how anyone could believe a tall, thin platinum blonde with perfect makeup and a perfect wardrobe would be working as a waitress in a drab mining town. How could she afford to wear couture outfits on a waitress’s salary anytime she wasn’t in her work uniform? In Framed, Glenn Ford’s character Mike Lambert asks those very same questions of Paula Craig (played by Janis Carter). The fact that he asks the questions shows that he has some smarts. But he wants to fall in love and be loved, which makes it easier to believe that his character would fall for Paula Craig and her lies. It’s a head-versus-heart situation that can only spell trouble in film called Framed.

And Mike Lambert is in trouble from the start, even before Paula Craig makes an appearance. He is behind the wheel of a runaway transport truck owned by the Tri-City Trucking Company on a curvy hillside road. The brakes (both the brake pedal and the hand brake) don’t work. He can’t get the truck to slow down until he arrives in a town center, where the truck finally crashes to a stop when it hits a pickup truck. The driver of the pickup truck sees the accident and wants money for the damage, but some managers of the trucking company (who just happen to be in town) refuse to pay. Mike Lambert demands the money he is owed for driving the truck and then gives some of it to the pickup truck driver, Jeff Cunningham, thus earning himself a friend.

You can find Framed online. Click here to see it free at the Internet Archive.

Mike Lambert heads to La Paloma Café in the town, which has no name (none is ever given). At the café, Lambert is served bad whiskey, and he meets the waitress, Paula Craig. Police officers, accompanied by one of the Tri-City Trucking Company managers, arrive in the café to question Lambert. Lambert is already in trouble it seems, and it doesn’t help that his driver’s license has expired and that he knows no one: He is new in town and looking for work as a mining engineer. The officers haul him out of the café and is quickly brought before a judge. He pleads guilty to driving recklessly, driving though a stop sign, and driving without a license. But he also protests that he was given a truck that didn’t have working brakes. No one knows him, however, and no one is inclined to believe him. He is fined fifty dollars, but he doesn’t have the money so he will have to stay in custody for ten days. Paula Craig has followed him to the courthouse, and she offers to pay the fine. Paula Craig quits her job at the café that night.

(This article about Framed contains a few spoilers.)

Mike Lambert has been drinking and is passing out at one of the café’s tables. Craig decides to get a hotel room for Lambert and leaves some money in his wallet. Then she goes home to the Park Court Apartments, where she gets dressed for a meeting with Steve Price. Price picks her up in the center of town. It is obvious that this is a routine for them and that they already know each other. Craig tells Price, “I found him,” “him” being Lambert. He is the same height and has the same build as Price. (Or so they say. I don’t think the two actors Glenn Ford and Barry Sullivan look anything alike, but I figured this was more of a plot device.) They arrive at Price’s place, where they talk about a safety deposit box, the keys, and signing a card for access to it. They seem to have a heist on their minds.

Price drives Craig back to their original meeting place and then goes home to his wife, Beth. Beth Price is well aware that her husband keeps odd hours. He says that he never lied to her about who and what he is. She has some regrets about marrying him and about her father getting him a job at the Empire Trust and Savings Bank. She wants to talk about splitting up. Steve makes Beth so angry that she slaps him and walks out instead. This scene doesn’t advance the story much, but it does reveal two surprises: Steve Price is married, and he has an important job and social standing thanks to his wife.

Mike Lambert, on the other hand, wakes up in his cheap hotel room. He’s hungover, not sure where he is or how he got there. He finds the money that Craig put in his wallet and doesn’t remember anything about that either. When he goes downstairs to the lobby, he asks the desk clerk how he got to the hotel, and the clerk talks about “the lady” who brought him in and paid the hotel bill. He also gives Lambert the note that she left with her phone number. It’s obvious that the clerk read the note because he points out the phone booth in the hotel lobby. Everyone in town and especially in La Paloma Café is cynical, and the hotel desk clerk is just one more example.

Lambert stops in the J. B. Smith Assay office to ask about new mines that might be opening and jobs for mining engineers. The man working there, Sandy, tells him to wait for someone who just recently brought in a mining sample for testing. This person turns out to be Jeff Cunningham, the pickup truck driver, and he is very happy to meet him again. The sample that Cunningham brought in has some valuable ore, so Cunningham and Lambert leave to talk business. Cunningham offers Lambert a job that will pay a percentage rather than a salary, and Lambert is happy with the offer. Cunningham leaves to apply for a loan at the Empire Trust and Savings Bank, and he meets with Steve Price, vice president at the bank—another surprise.

When Mike Lambert returns to his hotel room, Paula Craig drops in on him because he never called her. Lambert is packing to leave town and start working at the mine. He tells Craig enough of the particulars that she goes to a public phone to tell Steve Price not to approve a loan for Cunningham. Cunningham is angry about the change, and then he has to tell Mike Lambert that their deal is postponed until he can find another bank to lend him the money.

Paula Craig is just getting started telling her lies to Mike Lambert. What’s so amazing about them is that some of them are so plausible. The story is mostly Lambert’s, and so it is easy to identify with him and his point of view. The first time I saw the film, I believed one or two of Craig’s lies before she was exposed. Her lies are part of the long list of plot twists and turns that makes the story interesting and entertaining.

One thing that Framed doesn’t have is the same on-screen chemistry between Glenn Ford and Janis Carter as there is between Ford and Rita Hayworth in Gilda, which was released the previous year. This isn’t really a drawback, especially if you are fan of Glenn Ford, as I am. It didn’t make Ford’s character Mike Lambert seem less likely to fall for Paula Craig, but it also didn’t give the film the same romantic intensity that Gilda had. Paula Craig was simply a femme fatale through and through, with no husband like Gilda’s in the background to play sinister jealous games.

Glenn Ford is one of my favorite film noir stars, and he is so good at portraying the upstanding guy who falls in with the wrong people, as he does in Framed. Ford is definitely the star of the film—and I am not saying this just because he is one of my favorites. He gets top billing on the title card, over the title of the film. He is the reason to see Framed. His character Mike Lambert is smart enough to ask questions like the ones I mentioned and more, but Paula Craig is the femme fatale who is desperate enough to get what she wants. And Mike Lambert almost makes the perfect dupe for her and her boyfriend’s plans.

May 25, 1947, release date  •  Directed by Richard Wallace  •  Screenplay by Ben Maddow  •  Based on a story by John Patrick  •  Music by Marlin Skiles  •  Edited by Richard Fantl  •  Cinematography by Burnett Guffey

Glenn Ford as Mike Lambert  •  Janis Carter as Paula Craig  •  Barry Sullivan as Steve Price  •  Edgar Buchanan as Jeff Cunningham  •  Karen Morley as Beth Price  •  Barbara Woodell as Jane Woodworth  •  Jim Bannon as Jack Woodworth  •  Paul E. Burns as Sandy, the assayer  •  Art Smith as the hotel desk clerk

Distributed by Columbia Pictures  •  Produced by Columbia Pictures