Cause for Alarm! (1951)

March 30, 1951, release date

Directed by Tay Garnett

Screenplay by Mel Dinelli and Tom Lewis

Based on the radio play Cause for Alarm by Larry Marcus

Music by André Previn

Edited by James E. Newcom

Cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg

Loretta Young as Ellen Jones

Barry Sullivan as George Z. Jones

Bruce Cowling as Dr. Ranney Grahame

Margalo Gillmore as Aunt Clara Edwards

Bradley Mora as Hoppy (Billy)

Irving Bacon as Joe Carston, the postal carrier

Georgia Backus as Mrs. Warren, the neighbor

Don Haggerty as Mr. Russell, the notary

Art Baker as the post office superintendent

Richard Anderson as the wounded sailor at a naval hospital

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

One of the reasons that I love film noir is that the films often give the lead role to the woman and then proceed to show how a woman’s life can be turned upside down as easily as any man’s. Cause for Alarm! is one of those films. It tells its story so simply, but the tension is there all the same. In addition, the film is in the public domain, and you can watch it online at Internet Archive by clicking here.

The title of this film is the first clue that it’s a film noir, but just in case viewers missed that first clue, the camera starts by zooming in on a sign reading “Quiet Illness Within.” If that sign on a white picket fence in suburbia doesn’t say film noir, then . . . I’m stumped! And then there’s Ellen Jones (played by Loretta Young) in voice-over:

That Tuesday in July started out just like any other day the past few months. There was no warning it was to be the most terrifying day of my life. I remember thinking how tired I felt. Even the housework seemed drudgery, so meaningless with George confined to his bed. . . .

Even the housework seemed drudgery? Housework is drudgery every day, but this film was released in 1951, and the postwar dream of a home in suburbia, with the husband as breadwinner and the wife as a stay-at-home housewife, was held up as the ideal. Cause for Alarm! shows viewers that the postwar ideal could be awfully misleading.

(This blog post about Cause for Alarm! contains spoilers.)

Ellen Jones’s voice-over also tells viewers, “This is where I live.” Viewers don’t know initially what to expect, of course, but the illness within could refer to the suspicion, not just the heart ailment, that plagues Ellen’s husband George Jones. For Ellen, the “illness within” could be her terror over her husband’s threats and his death.

George is lying about not getting out of bed. He also tells his wife a horrible story about a ship in a bottle that he owned when he was a young boy. One day one of the boys in his neighborhood came out of the house holding it, so George beat him with it. George’s mother told him that now he will have to give the ship in the bottle to the boy; instead, George drops it on the floor and smashes it. When George finishes telling the story to Ellen, he promises to do the same to her and to Dr. Grahame, whom he suspects of having an affair with his wife.

George writes a letter to the local district attorney accusing Ellen and Dr. Grahame of plotting to murder him. He asks Ellen to mail the letter, and because she isn’t aware of its contents, Ellen unwittingly aids George in his plot to torment her. Most of the film involves Ellen’s attempts to retrieve George’s letter once she learns of her husband’s intentions, and bureaucratic red tape thwarts her every move. The postal carrier won’t give Ellen the letter because he can return it only to the letter writer (her husband). But it isn’t an arbitrary regulation: It actually makes sense in this case that someone other than the letter writer shouldn’t be able to retrieve a letter that’s already mailed. Ellen goes to the local postal inspector, who wants Ellen’s husband to fill out a form. He relents and says that Ellen can fill out the form, but only if he can read the contents of the letter. Of course, Ellen cannot agree to that stipulation. She is trapped by fate and by regulations that would make sense in any situation but hers.

Every time I see Cause for Alarm! (I have seen it I think three times), I wonder what Ellen sees in George. I cannot understand why she would choose him over Dr. Ranney Grahame. But her poor choice for a spouse is the only sticking point for me. The rest of the plot is a believable story of a woman’s suburban nightmare.

Toward the end of the film, everything seems to be falling back into place. The nosy neighbor whose behavior seemed hostile to Ellen for much of the movie offers to help her. The postal carrier returns the letter because of insufficient postage (a plot twist that came as a surprise to me). Dr. Grahame is there to comfort her, but the story doesn’t conclude with the two of them falling into each others’ arms. The last shot is of George and Ellen’s house, with the little boy who lives in the neighborhood riding by on his tricycle. But Ellen, in another voice-over, tells viewers that she has to figure out a way to put her life back together. The film doesn’t offer any definitive answers.

Cause for Alarm! is an MGM production: a film noir that doesn’t have many of the traditional film noir characteristics (for example, more light than shadows, more day than night), but it was creepy, with lots of psychological worry, fear, illness—in other words, plenty of angst. Here was a loyal, loving housewife who still couldn’t find the idyllic suburban life promised to Americans after the suffering of World War II. The ending was a complete surprise to me the first time I saw it, and I was very relieved for Ellen Jones when she dodged a bullet—almost literally.