Whiplash (1948)

Dane Clark and Zachary Scott are two of my noir favorites, and both star in Whiplash. I was really looking forward to seeing it, but I started dragging my feet when I learned that boxing was part of the plot. Boxing is not one of my favorite sports or film noir themes, but it was a mistake to let the boxing dissuade me. Yes, the film starts in the ring, but almost the entire film—approximately seventy-six out of ninety minutes—is an extended flashback, and it has little to do with boxers in a ring.

The film does start with Mike Angelo (played by Dane Clark) of California fighting Duke Carney of New York City at Madison Square Garden, and Mike is on the losing end. An announcer says that the middleweight challenge of the world should take fifteen rounds, but Mike is fading and almost knocked out in the fourth. While Mike recovers in his corner of the ring, he thinks about returning to a California beach, and the film turns into an extended flashback, where Mike is on that beach making a sand sculpture of two fighters, with a crowd of children looking on.

A boy calls Mike from the bluff overlooking the beach and tells him that Sam wants to talk to him. When Mike arrives in Sam’s bar and restaurant, Sam tells him that he sold one of Mike’s paintings. Mike is upset because, for him, his paintings are just studies, and they are not for sale. Mike wants to know where the purchaser, a woman, lives so that he can get the painting back. Sam tells him that she lives in Bungalow C at the Casa de Oro Hotel in Monterey.

Mike goes to Laurie’s hotel bungalow and finds the front door unlocked. He lets himself in (would he do this if he had known the purchaser was a woman?) and starts investigating some of Laurie’s possessions in her bedroom. He is so absorbed that he doesn’t notice when Laurie returns from the beach and finds him going through her things. He comes off as a creep, even though the music on the soundtrack makes the incident seem romantic. Laurie apparently thinks he is creepy, too, and starts for her phone to call the police.

Mike talks her out of making the phone call, but he can’t talk Laurie out of taking her money back and returning the painting. But now Mike doesn’t care because he likes her reason for buying it in the first place: Laurie says that she thinks the artist shows imagination. When Mike introduces himself as Mike Gordon, Laurie realizes that she is talking to the painter. She still won’t return the painting, but Mike does convince Laurie to go out on a date with him that evening.

Laurie and Mike have dinner at Sam’s bar and restaurant. She tells Mike that she used to sing professionally, in another life about which she reveals nothing. After dinner, Mike takes Laurie home and insists on coming in because he wants to talk to her. He asks her a lot of questions, and she remains evasive. She asks Mike to leave. He says that he will if she will go for a swim with him, he won’t ask any more questions. She agrees. On the beach, under the stars, Mike declares that he has already fallen in love with Laurie. She is taken aback at firsts because they barely know one another. Mike is pretty convincing, however, at least for Laurie, and she gives in to a passionate kiss.

It was hard for me to believe that Laurie would fall for Mike in the first place, or at least as quickly as she did. Mike was a man who had invaded her home and was going through her things (checking out her intimate clothing, sniffing her perfume bottle) when she came home from the beach. Why didn’t she run out and look for help? And when they arrive back at her front door after their first date, she gives Mike her key and lets him open her front door. I found that one simple act confusing, even a little alarming. Was this a custom in 1948 America? Why would a woman trust a near stranger with the key to her front door? And how much can she trust a man who proclaims his love for her after less than twenty-four hours?

Laurie not only trusts Mike; she has fallen in love with him. She comes to Sam’s place and talks with Sam about Mike. While Sam leaves to get some coffee for himself and Laurie, a man (Trask) walks in and plays a song on the jukebox. Laurie spots Trask and leaves the restaurant, seemingly in fear, and perhaps with good reason because Trask follows her out the door.

(This article about Whiplash contains spoilers.)

Mike learns from the front desk at Laurie’s hotel that she has checked out and left no message for him, no forwarding address. All he finds is a package that she wants forwarded to a Dr. Arnold Vincent in New York City. The package is wrapped, but it looks just about the same size as the painting that Laurie purchased from Sam in the restaurant. Mike becomes depressed after Laurie’s sudden departure. Sam tries to convince him to go to New York City, look for Laurie, and then go to Paris and return to painting if he cannot find her. Mike finally agrees.

In New York City, Mike is unsuccessful in finding Dr. Arnold Vincent. Like Laurie, he seems to have disappeared, too. Mike has rented a room where he paints, including one of Laurie from memory. His neighbor Chris Sherwood invites him out for an evening at the Pelican Club with her and a Texas oil man, Tex Sanders. (The oil man likes Chris; Chris likes Mike.) At the club, Chris and Mike learn that Laurie is one of the acts. Laurie is alarmed when she spots Mike in the audience. She runs off the stage when her song is done and refuses to talk to him when he comes backstage.

Trask, the stranger who showed up at Sam’s place in California, wants Mike to leave the nightclub and is willing to fight him. One of the man’s friends, Duke Carney (the prizefighter in the film’s opening sequence), also wants to fight him, but they don’t get anywhere because Mike is good with his fists. Someone named Costello finally comes up behind Mike and knocks him out with a handgun to the head. Costello and Trask bring Mike into the office of their boss, the owner of the club, Rex Durant (played by Zachary Scott), and Laurie follows them inside. Mike learns that Durant is Laurie’s husband and that he is confined to a wheelchair.

After Durant learns how Mike handled himself with Trask and Carney, he wants to know if Mike is interested in fighting professionally because he wants another fighter to win for him in the ring once again. Durant was once a prizefighter, but an injury in the ring paralyzed him. Mike refuses at first and walks out. Laurie meets Mike outside the club and warns him about getting involved with Durant. Her interference is enough to change Mike’s mind: He decides then to fight for Durant.

Mike reports the next day to Durant’s gym and learns that Dr. Arnold Vincent, the one that he had been looking for when he first arrived in New York City, is the gym’s doctor. He learns a lot now and quickly about Dr. Arnold Vincent. The doctor is Laurie’s brother, and Durant blames the doctor for his paralysis, even though he had nothing to do with Durant’s accident. And then he sees the painting that Laurie bought hanging in the doctor’s office.

Mike starts training and becomes a ruthless fighter. His drive comes from wanting revenge for his unrequited love for Laurie Durant and for what he perceives as her deception. Laurie is distressed at his transformation. She tells Mike that Rex is using him, but Mike is happy being a fighter. He doesn’t feel anything anymore, and he is happiest about that. Like Laurie’s brother, however, Mike becomes enmeshed in Durant’s schemes and convinces himself it is all for the best—until he is in the ring fighting and unaware that he was already seriously injured before the fight began.

The fight in the opening sequence may have started as a losing one for Mike, but when the long flashback is over, the fighting and the pause seem to have knocked some sense into him. The film moves back to the present with the referee’s whistle, back to Mike in his corner of the ring and the championship fight. Mike wins the championship but then collapses onto the canvas. Dr. Vincent arrives and says that Mike has been fighting with a concussion and needs to get to the hospital immediately. The two men in Laurie’s life that she cares for most—Mike and her brother—finally come to their senses and save her from a loveless and bitter marriage.

As I mentioned, it was already hard for me to believe that Laurie would fall for Mike in the first place: He invaded her home uninvited; he wants her key to let her in her own home after their date; he proclaims that he is in love with after their first date. And in New York, when Mike finally agrees to train as a fighter, he becomes crude, angry, and cruel. Laurie finally starts to wonder about Mike, but she forgives him rather quickly when he makes a turnaround after hearing about her marital situation and the predicament her brother has found himself in. Mike helps to save her from a bad marriage to Durant, but what happens when he starts being suspicious of her again for any reason at all?

If you can look past all that, maybe the attraction between these two would seem more natural. But I still had my original questions, and more questions: When Laurie found Mike (then a complete stranger) in her bedroom, why didn’t she run out and look for help? Was she afraid making a scene would attract enough attention to make the news and alert her husband? If that was the reason in California, it couldn’t have been in New York City, after she had already returned to her husband and watched Mike turn into a vicious boxer. His transformation back into a concerned lover was a bit rushed for me. The title of the film, Whiplash, could easily apply to Mike’s changing attitudes toward Laurie.

Dane Clark is one of my noir favorites, but he didn’t pull off the whiplash changes in his character Mike Gordon well enough to convince me like he convinced Laurie, although I was relieved that they reunited in the end. Zachary Scott plays a type of character for which he is most famous: a thug with a mean streak. But Scott is convincing. How many actors can be so menacing in a wheelchair?

My description may make Whiplash sound like a soap opera, but that is not true of the film. The love story between Laurie and Mike is the central theme, and it is the motivation for almost everything that Mike does. It’s true that I found it to be the weakest part of the story, but there is more to the film’s narrative than the love story. Whiplash is a film noir after all, and Zachary Scott and his henchmen have enough menace to give the film the tension that it needs. I enjoyed Whiplash in spite of all my questions about Laurie’s feelings for Mike and my reservations about boxing as a central theme.

December 24, 1948, release date  •  Directed by Lewis Seiler  •  Screenplay by Maurice Geraghty, Harriet Frank Jr., Gordon Kahn  •  Based on a story by Kenneth Earl  •  Music by William Lava, Franx Waxman  •  Edited by Frank Magee  •  Cinematography by Peverell Marley

Dane Clark as Michael Gordon  •  Alexis Smith as Laurie Rogers  •  Zachary Scott as Rex Durant  •  Eve Arden as Chris Sherwood  •  Jeffrey Lynn as Dr. Arnold Vincent  •  S. Z. Sakall as Sam  •  Alan Hale as Terrance O’Leary  •  Douglas Kennedy as Costello  •  Ransom M. Sherman as Tex Sanders  •  Freddie Steele as Duke Carney  •  Robert Lowell as Trask  •  Don McGuire as Jimmy Harkus  •  Jimmie Dodd as Bill, the piano player  •  John Harmon as Kid McGee  •  Charles Marsh as Charlie, the hotel manager

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures  •  Produced by Warner Bros.-First National