The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

Barbara Stanwyck is Martha Ivers, the femme fatale par excellence. Stanwyck may be remembered best for her femme fatale role in Double Indemnity, but how many of these types of ruthless characters get their start in childhood? Martha Ivers does, and she makes the most of her dubious talents from that point onward.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is available online for free. Click here to see it at the Internet Archive.

The narrative starts in Iverstown, in 1928, when Martha Ivers is still a child and living with her very wealthy and very unforgiving aunt. Martha has run away from home once again, and Sam Masterson, a childhood friend, helps to feed her and her cat, both stowaways on a boxcar in a railroad yard. He and Martha are no match for Mrs. Ivers, the aunt. She has so many adults in town currying her favor that she has no shortage of people willing to track down Martha and bring her home, whether Martha wants to be home or not. And she definitely does not. The moment she is back at her aunt’s house, Sam climbs back into the house through a window, and Martha begs him to help her escape once again.

Walter O’Neil is also with Martha that night. His father brought him to the Ivers house because Mr. O'Neil claims that Walter was the one who had the information leading to the return of Martha to her aunt’s home. Detective Londine is also at the Ivers house and wants Mrs. Ivers to know that he was the one who “caught” Martha. In addition to currying her favor, no one wants to be seen as standing in Mrs. Ivers’s way.

On this same night, when the aunt is particularly peeved with her niece, Mrs. Ivers finds Martha’s cat on the long and wide front staircase of her home and kills it. Martha kills her aunt in retaliation and then lies about what happened. Mr. O'Neil goes along with Martha’s version of events about a man breaking in with the intention of robbing the house and killing her aunt. He’ll keep quiet if Martha agrees to marry Walter when they are older. When the film jumps to 1946, that’s exactly what has happened. Martha and the other children are surrounded by adults who really couldn’t care less about them, their welfare, or their feelings.

(This article about The Strange Love of Martha Ivers contains almost all the spoilers. The examples in the previous paragraph happen early in the movie. It’s almost impossible to write about this film and not give something away.)

Sam Masterson, now an adult, is driving through Iverstown and accidentally hits a pole. His DeSoto needs repairs so he is forced to stop in Iverstown, although he doesn’t want to. He spots Antonia (Toni) Marachek after dropping off his car at an auto body shop and introduces himself. After a brief conversation, she decides to ride west with Sam. Toni and Sam get adjoining hotel rooms in Iverstown to wait out the car repairs. Toni has just been released from jail, and she tells Sam about it after they are already registered at the hotel.

Martha O’Neil comes home, the same home with the same staircase that her aunt once owned, to find her husband Walter drunk and passed out. They talk about his need to keep up appearances if he wants a political career. Martha is practical and in control, and Walter is plagued by guilt. He knows that Martha killed her aunt because he was there to witness it when it happened. In spite of what she did, Walter loves Martha, and his love and desperation leave him powerless to do anything but continue with the status quo, which includes getting drunk to forget his desperation.

The next morning, Toni is arrested for violating her probation. One condition of her release was that she return to her hometown of Ridgeville, but she cashed in her bus ticket instead because she would rather ride west with Sam. Sam goes to Walter O’Neil for help getting Toni released from jail, and Walter agrees because he knows that Sam was also at the Ivers home the night that Martha killed her aunt. Martha O’Neil shows up at Walter’s office and is thrilled to see Sam, who is still there finishing his deal with Walter. Martha is attracted to Sam and doesn’t seem to care if Walter knows about it, but Sam doesn’t return her affections. She does her best to persuade him otherwise, and maybe he does care about Martha because of some fond childhood memories. She had always relied on him when they were children to help her escape from her aunt. Walter, on the other hand, is not nearly as pleased to see Sam again. He is obviously a complication for Walter.

Toni is brought to Walter O'Neil’s office to make a deal. So many things in everyone’s lives are transactions made and waiting to be fulfilled. Walter will order her release and wipe her record clean if she informs on Sam Masterson. Sam is already known to police, but they never seem to have enough evidence to detain him. Walter wants to be rid of Sam, to keep him out of town and out of his marriage. Toni faces an almost impossible choice, and her subsequent betrayal of Sam results in Sam being taken away by men working for Walter. He is beaten and dumped twenty-five miles outside Iverstown, with a warning not to return. He ignores this, of course: He needs his car, for one thing, and being back in town gives him a chance to square things with Toni. He includes Toni in his plans when he hears her side of events because he doesn’t like to see anyone pushed around.

This begins a cycle of one-upmanship played out between Martha, Walter, and Sam. Each one takes turns trying to get the upper hand until the final confrontation at the O’Neil home, in which Martha pushes Sam to kill Walter so that both of them can finally be together. Sam Masterson is the character that is the hardest to figure out. He’s capable of skirting the law and using violence to defend himself, but he champions the underdog. Viewers get a glimpse of that when he declares to Toni that he doesn’t want to see anyone pushed around, but at that point, it’s not clear exactly what he means. It’s not until the end of the film, when Sam saves Walter and puts his own life in danger, that viewers realize his true strength.

Perhaps another clue to Sam’s character is his familiarity with the Bible. Sam’s and Toni’s stay in the Iverstown hotel is a chance to introduce the Bible as reading material. (There’s one in every hotel room, at least in 1946.) Sam seems to be well acquainted with many of the stories in the Bible and alludes to some in the course of the narrative. At the end of the film, he specifically refers to Lot’s wife turning to a pillar of salt because she dared to look back at Sodom. After what has happened in Iverstown, he uses it as a sort of warning to Toni that she should never look back on the past. Sam’s childhood acquaintance with Martha has certainly led to trouble for all the main characters in the film. But his warning leads to a more positive outcome for him and Toni as they drive out of town:

• Sam: “Don’t look back, baby [Toni]. Don’t ever look back. You know what happened to Lot’s wife, don’tcha?”

• Toni: “Whose wife?”

• Sam: “Sam’s wife.”

• Toni: [she leans her head on Sam’s shoulder] “Sam’s wife.”

Lizabeth Scott has a reputation for playing femme fatale roles, but she plays against type in this noir. Barbara Stanwyck is the one in the femme fatale role, and she is clearly good at it. But it’s Kirk Douglas who is the real surprise. Walter O’Neil was his first film role, and he plays the pushover husband so well that it’s easy to forget all the other roles that Douglas is more famous for. Kirk Douglas may be remembered for exuding strength and command, but his true forte may be exuding anything at all on-screen in the first place. It may not matter what the role demanded of him; he would have given it everything, every time.

The title of this film noir troubles me a bit, which may be the reason behind the writer’s block that seemed to crop up every time I tried to write about The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Who (or what) is Martha’s strange love? Does she love Walter? Does she really love Sam? Or does she simply use both men because of her love for money and power? Martha Ivers is capable of evil, but I’m not sure that love of money and power is all that strange, to be honest. It’s certainly a feature in many films, not just noir.

Maybe the title refers to Walter O’Neil. His devotion to Martha since they were children is laudable, unless you recall that he was the one on the staircase who witnessed Martha beating her aunt to death. He seems incapable of doing anything that would destroy his love for Martha—until the end, that is, when the two of them engage in an unplanned murder-suicide. I think The Strange Love of Walter O’Neil would have worked much better as the title.

Either way, the film rewards repeat viewings, with its complicated plot, underhanded dealings, and multiple betrayals. Some of the plot and the characters’ motivations are told only through dialogue, which can make details hard to follow at times. Like many films noir, viewers must pay attention, or some of the details might slip by. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is worth the effort. It is a powerful film that is hard to forget.

July 24, 1946 (New York City), September 13, 1946, release dates  •  Directed by Lewis Milestone  •  Screenplay by Robert Rossen and Robert Riskin  •  Based on the short story “Love Lies Bleeding” by John Patrick  •  Music by Miklós Rózsa  •  Edited by Archie Marshek  •  Cinematography by Victor Milner

Barbara Stanwyck as Martha Ivers, neé Ivers  •  Van Heflin as Sam Masterson  •  Lizabeth Scott as Antonia (aka Toni) Marachek  •Kirk Douglas as Walter O'Neil  •  Roman Bohnen as Mr. O'Neil  •  Judith Anderson as Mrs. Ivers  •  Janis Wilson as the young Martha Ivers  •  Darryl Hickman as the young Sam Masterson  •  Janis Wilson as Martha Ivers as a child  •  Ann Doran as Bobbi St. John  •  Frank Orth as the hotel clerk  •  James Flavin as the detective  •   Mickey Kuhn as Walter O'Neil as a child  •  Charles D. Brown as McCarthy  •  Blake Edwards as the sailor  •  Robert Homans as Gallagher  •  Gladden James as John

Distributed by Paramount Pictures  •  Produced by Hal Wallis Productions

Laura (1944): True Love and Murder

It’s hard to pigeonhole or to categorize a film like Laura. Trying to write about it has made me see that clearly. It is widely acclaimed as a film noir; it is one of the most famous examples of the genre. People who say that they don’t like film noir like Laura, and I think that’s because it happens to have a love story at its center.

What brought that idea into sharp focus for me was when I started taking screenshots in anticipation of writing about the film for my blog. I realized that I was taking screenshot after screenshot of Dana Andrews, one of the stars of the film and the actor playing the lead character, Detective Mark McPherson. And that made me realize how beautiful the two leads are. Gene Tierney plays Laura Hunt, McPherson’s love interest. The two of them, in fact, are too beautiful to ignore, and they are especially hard to ignore in Laura.

How to explain that phenomenon? Laura isn’t the first film noir to feature beautiful stars in the lead roles. Some might say that it’s the chemistry that they portray on-screen, but I think there’s more to it than that. In Laura, we have two beautiful stars playing characters who fall in love in the oddest of circumstances. Laura Hunt is the victim of murderous obsession, which makes her automatically sympathetic. Detective McPherson is sympathetic because he is seeking justice for a woman savagely wronged.

But after multiple viewings of the film and on closer examination, Detective McPherson’s and Laura Hunt’s flaws reveal themselves. They are still sympathetic characters; there’s no reason not to root for them all the way. But they are flawed, and that is one of the features that helps to make their noir love story so believable.

(This article about Laura contains spoilers.)

Detective McPherson reveals his flaws by the way that he conducts part of his murder investigation. Waldo Lydecker, Laura Hunt’s friend and mentor, talks about her in glowing terms with the detective when the investigation starts, but he inadvertently describes her as someone just like him, and Lydecker comes across as vain and self-centered. When Laura Hunt reappears from a long weekend away and Detective McPherson realizes that she is not the murder victim, she doesn’t act like a completely innocent bystander, and she doesn’t help the detective much in his quest for justice in the murder case.

Let me describe these three ideas in more detail.

Detective Mark McPherson

Detective Mark McPherson drinks rather heavily in Laura’s apartment while he is trying to solve her murder. He helps himself to Laura’s stash of alcohol and spends a lot of time in her apartment trying to discover more clues about her life. These clues could lead to the identity of her killer, but it does seem odd that he spends so much time there. Waldo Lydecker, a friend of Laura’s who opens the film with his voice-over narration, even points out Detective McPherson’s behavior: “McPherson, did it ever strike you that you’re acting very strangely? It’s a wonder you don’t come here like a suitor, with roses and a box of candy . . .”

Both Waldo Lydecker and Detective Mark McPherson are obsessed with Laura Hunt, but the circumstances are different for both men. Lydecker is obsessed with her while she is still alive. It’s only when he thinks that she is dead that he feels he has won complete control over her. Detective McPherson is obsessed with Laura after he commences the murder investigation. He is determined to learn who is responsible for her death, which is one reason that he spends so much time in her apartment. It is the crime scene: Her body was found just inside her front door after opening it to a visitor, presumably the murderer.

But Detective McPherson’s obsession is more benign than Waldo Lydecker’s. McPherson wants to solve the case. Lydecker may accuse him of falling in love with a corpse, but it is more complicated than that. Detective McPherson reminds me of detectives who are interviewed on true-crime shows about their involvement in their respective cases. Many of them talk of being obsessed with a case, the one that keeps them awake, the one that gnaws at them because they are afraid that they may have missed the one vital clue and because they are so afraid of letting the murder victim’s family and friends down if they don’t find justice for them. Detective McPherson’s obsession strikes me as being the kind that solves murder cases, which makes him more sympathetic, not less so.

Laura Hunt and Waldo Lydecker

The first time that Laura Hunt appears on-screen, she is rather pushy. She interrupts Waldo Lydecker at lunch at the Algonquin Hotel, and she doesn’t do so because she is a fan of his newspaper column or because she is an acquaintance of his. She wants him to endorse the Wallace Flow-Rite Pen for her advertising account. She could be described as self-absorbed, just as much so, in fact, as Waldo Lydecker. She’s mostly concerned about her own career, and when Lydecker points that out to her, she accuses him of being selfish.

Lydecker soon returns Laura’s “favor” by pushing his way into Laura’s place of employment, the Bullitt and Company ad agency, without an appointment. He has decided to endorse the Wallace Flow-Rite Pen, but he is using it as a way to get into her good graces and establish himself in her life. It’s a surprising similarity between the two that isn’t readily obvious on first viewing of the film. Lydecker’s motive is more sinister than Laura’s: He wants to exert control over her life; she wants a product endorsement. And they both get what they want—at least for a short while.

Laura Hunt and Detective Mark McPherson

Laura Hunt shows up alive in her apartment and finds Detective McPherson asleep in one of her living room chairs. She is shocked to find a stranger in her home; he is shocked that she is alive after all and that the murder victim has been misidentified. But she quickly becomes a suspect, and she doesn’t help her own cause by the way that she treats McPherson.

On the first night of Laura’s return to her apartment, Detective McPherson insists that she remain at home and stay off the telephone. McPherson does have the force of law behind him. After all, Laura was the original murder victim, and now that she has returned and someone else has been murdered in her apartment, she is one of the suspects. She promises that she will follow his instructions, but it isn’t long before she is on the phone to her boyfriend and sometime fiancé Shelby Carpenter. McPherson knows that she is on the phone and making plans because Laura’s telephone has been tapped since the start of the murder investigation. He and his partner follow her to her meeting with Carpenter.

When McPherson shows up at Laura’s apartment the next day, he confronts her immediately about her actions. Laura’s response? “You forced me to give you my word. I never have been and I never will be bound by anything I don’t do of my own free will.” Detective Mark McPherson doesn’t react to this statement, even though it’s a poor defense of one’s actions. I wonder how a judge and jury would react if Laura were on the witness stand accused of homicide and defended herself by saying that all she did was exercise her free will.

And Laura does lie to Detective McPherson about more than leaving the apartment. She also lies about seeing Shelby Carpenter. And she says one thing and then another about wanting to/not wanting to marry Carpenter. McPherson isn’t one to show his emotions, however, and his subsequent actions in his investigation reveal that he doesn’t sit idly by and let Laura, or anyone else, for that matter, get away with deception.

***

Detective Mark McPherson and Laura Hunt are still sympathetic characters, in spite of the ways that each is introduced in the film and the circumstances of their first meeting and growing attraction. They meet and get to know each other because of a murder investigation. Their flaws make them, especially Detective McPherson, more endearing, not less so.

Waldo Lydecker is one of the characters who helps them see how they feel about one another. He is quick to move in once again, as he did in Laura’s previous romantic relationships, and try to break them apart. Instead of accomplishing his goal, he reveals his true character clearly to Laura and she begins to see him as he really is.

So much has been written and said about Laura. It’s considered a classic by many who aren’t fans of film noir. Its complications are exactly why it so much more than noir, exactly why the film is so wonderful, all these years—almost eighty years—later.

October 11, 1944, release date  •  Directed by Otto Preminger  •  Screenplay by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, Betty Reinhardt, Ring Lardner, Jr.  •  Based on the 1943 novel Laura by Vera Caspary  •  Music by David Raksin  •  Edited by Louis Loeffler  •  Cinematography by Joseph LaShelle

Gene Tierney as Laura Hunt  •  Dana Andrews as Detective Lieutenant Mark McPherson  •  Clifton Webb as Waldo Lydecker  •  Vincent Price as Shelby Carpenter  •  Judith Anderson as Ann Treadwell  •  Dorothy Adams as Bessie Clary, Laura’s maid  •  Ralph Dunn as Detective Fred Callahan  •  Clyde Fillmore as the owner of Bullitt & Co. Ad Agency  • William Forrest as important client  •  James Flavin as Detective McEveety  •  Kathleen Howard as Louise, Ann’s cook  •  Larry Steers as man dining with Laura  •  Cara Williams as a secretary in Laura’s office  •  Eric Wilton as a restaurant patron  • John Dexter as Jacoby, the artist

Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox  •  Produced by Twentieth Century Fox