Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956): The Third and Final Film in Fritz Lang’s Newspaper Noir Trilogy

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt takes a while to warm to its story. A lot is explained in the opening sequences, and I was beginning to wonder if the film would seem a lot longer than its eighty-minute running time. But it’s all worth it, especially when the plot twists start coming, almost one right after the other. In fact, the film is worth seeing more than once. I have seen it twice now.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is the third of director Fritz Lang’s newspaper noir film trilogy. The others are The Blue Gardenia (released on March 28, 1953) and While the City Sleeps Doubt (released on May 16, 1956). Click on each article title in the list below to find all the articles I have written about the first two films for this series in April.

◊ The Blue Gardenia (1953)

◊ The Blue Gardenia (1953): The First in Fritz Lang’s Newspaper Noir Trilogy

◊ While the City Sleeps (1956): The Second in Fritz Lang’s Newspaper Noir Trilogy

The film starts in a prison block, with a prisoner being escorted by guards to the electric chair. He is executed with a viewing box of witnesses to the execution that include Tom Garrett and Austin Spencer. Garrett was once a news reporter working for Austin Spencer, a newspaper publisher and Garrett’s future father-in-law. They go out for a drink after the execution, and Austin Spencer tells Garrett that he is adamantly opposed to capital punishment and states his arguments against it.

Garrett and Spencer have another discussion about the death penalty in Spencer’s newspaper offices. Spencer maintains that an innocent man can be arrested, convicted, and executed on circumstantial evidence. He has been formulating a plan about getting an innocent man arrested for a capital crime that he did not commit and proving that this same man can be convicted and sentenced on circumstantial evidence alone. Spencer nominates Tom Garrett to be the suspect in his experiment.

Because Spencer’s goal is one of compassion about capital punishment and innocent people wrongly accused and convicted, it’s easy to believe in Spencer’s plan as much as he does.  But it’s really another version of the end justifying the means. The plot of this film noir could be the basis of a Greek tragedy and a study in hubris. Austin Spencer makes his capital punishment experiment sound very simple, even though so many unforeseen events can make it all go so very wrong. Spencer claims that there would be no risk to Garrett because Spencer would reveal all their plans after Garrett is convicted and sentenced, and Spencer’s word and reputation would get Garrett acquitted and pardoned automatically. Spencer tells Garrett that he has some standing in the community, and he feels that both of them can rely on that standing and goodwill. Garrett agrees to participate in the experiment and, because this is noir, viewers know that the experiment will go downhill eventually.

It isn’t long before Spencer and Garrett find a murder case for their experiment. A young woman, a burlesque dancer named Patty Gray, was found in a ravine outside town. They start trying to find out what the police know so that they can match circumstantial evidence to fit Tom Garrett. Austin Spencer assigns the task to one of his reporters, Charlie Miller. Spencer asks him to follow the Patty Gray murder case and gather as much information about it as possible. Miller says that he will probably have to work off the record, but Spencer doesn’t care about a possible newspaper story. He plans to use the Gray case and Tom Garrett to test his experiment about capital punishment. He uses Charlie Miller to do the investigating without telling him of his ulterior motives.

(This article about Beyond a Reasonable Doubt contains spoilers.)

Lieutenant Kennedy from the local police department is handling the investigation, and Charlie Miller works with him to get the details about the murder. Patty Gray’s coworkers and fellow burlesque dancers, Joan Williams, Terry Larue, and Dolly Moore, are interviewed by Lieutenant Kennedy and treated well, which was a little bit of a surprise to me. Films noir are not known for treating female characters all that well in general. Kennedy wants to know what they saw and heard and what they know about Patty Gray, and they cooperate voluntarily. Tom Garrett eventually visits the dance club and singles out Dorothy Moore to use in the capital punishment experiment.

The film never makes clear whether Austin Spencer plans to publish articles about the murder investigation or whether Tom Garrett plan to use the experience as the basis for a new book someday. Both possibilities are brought up in the narrative, but both men get so caught up in framing Garrett that they don’t return to either idea. The newspaper owned by Austin Spencer covers the murder and the investigation much as it would any other case, but no one besides Spencer and Garrett know about their experiment, not even Susan Spencer, Austin’s daughter and Tom’s now former fiancée.

One of the dancers, Terry Larue, is getting suspicious of Garrett, and she tells Dolly Moore to be wary. Moore protests at first, but then decides to call Lieutenant Kennedy. He takes their concerns seriously and follows Garrett and Moore when they go for a drive to the remote location where Gray’s body was discovered. Kennedy steps in when Garrett tries to force himself on Dolly Moore. (Dana Andrews is very good at portraying a man willing to use force to get what he wants from a woman: He plays the same kind of character in Fallen Angel [1945] and Daisy Kenyon [1947].) Garrett is now a suspect, and he is brought into the police station for questioning.

District Attorney Roy Thompson, his assistant Bob Hale, and the police detectives believe that he is guilty, and he is arrested and charged with Patty Gray’s murder. Everything he claims during his trial matches the experiment details and the circumstantial evidence found in the police investigation perfectly, and Garrett is found guilty.

Austin Spencer refuses to use his newspaper to sway public opinion after Tom Garrett is arrested, even though his daughter Susan asks for this kind of help. Austin Spencer wants to adhere to journalistic standards, stick to facts, and not prejudge Garrett’s guilt or innocence, although he is lying to keep his capital punishment experiment a secret, even when questioned by the assistant district attorney Bob Hale. He also attends Tom Garrett’s murder trial and watches highlights of the trial on television with his daughter Susan and Garrett’s defense attorney, Jonathan Wilson, all without mentioning anything about the experiment.

Austin Spencer and Tom Garrett are similar to the main characters in the first two films of Fritz Lang’s newspaper noir trilogy. In While the City Sleeps, several characters use the news to further their own interests, much like Casey Mayo does in The Blue Gardenia. Mayo in The Blue Gardenia is a newspaper writer; Edward Mobley in While the City Sleeps is a reporter turned television news anchor. These two characters use their romantic interests for their own professional benefit. Mayo offers advice and legal help to the murderer of Harry Prebble with no intention of following through; Mobley uses his girlfriend as bait to catch a serial killer. In Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Austin Spencer uses his position as newspaper editor to conduct an experiment about the ease of convicting the wrong man. He and Tom Garrett could be described as pursuing a greater good (proving how the justice system can execute an innocent man), but both of them use deception to do so.

Before the jury reaches a verdict in Garrett’s trial, Austin Spencer gathers all the photos that he took and all his notes, gets in his car, and is broadsided by a truck, an accident that kills him. All the evidence burns in the resulting crash. When Susan Spencer inherits the newspaper after her father’s death, she insists that the reporters write feature series and editorials to sway public opinion in Tom Garrett’s favor. The reporters remind her of her father’s wishes about adhering to journalistic standards, but she insists: Her father is no longer alive and she is now in charge, at least until the executor of her father’s estate returns to the United States. Susan Spencer may not be sticking strictly to facts, but she is not lying to the public about her intentions. Her approach in the newspaper works well, so well in fact that district attorney Roy Thompson is getting worried about the case and wants to make sure that it is airtight. He sends his assistant Bob Hale to look for more evidence about Patty Gray and Tom Garrett before Garrett’s execution, and his investigation leads to more surprises and plot twists.

One of the reasons for the surprises is Dana Andrews’s performance as Tom Garrett: Garrett and Patty Gray are (and were) keeping secrets, and Andrews’s performance never once lets on that his character is hiding anything out of the ordinary. The narrative gets off to a slow start, but it picks up as the narrative unfolds, and it is like a roller coaster ride once Garrett’s trial ends. I always enjoy being surprised by a story, on-screen or in print, and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt delivers plenty of surprises. In many ways, it is the most pessimistic of the three films in the newspaper noir trilogy, but it’s the one most satisfying as noir.

September 13, 1956, release date  •  Directed by Fritz Lang  •  Screenplay by Douglas Morrow  •  Based on a story by Douglas Morrow  •  Music by Herschel Burke Gilbert  •  Edited by Gene Fowler Jr.  •  Cinematography by William Snyder

Dana Andrews as Tom Garrett  •  Joan Fontaine as Susan Spencer  •  Sidney Blackmer as Austin Spencer  •  Shepperd Strudwick as defense attorney Jonathan Wilson  •  Arthur Franz as Bob Hale  •  Philip Bourneuf as district attorney Roy Thompson  •  Edward Binns as Lieutenant Kennedy  •  Barbara Nichols as Dolly Moore  •  Robin Raymond as Terry Larue  •  Joyce Taylor as Joan Williams  •  William F. Leicester as Charlie Miller, reporter  •  Dan Seymour as Greco, bar owner  •  Rusty Lane as the trial judge  •  Carleton Young as Allan Kirk  •  Charles Evans as the governor  •  Wendell Niles as the announcer

Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures  •  Produced by Bert Friedlob Productions Inc.

While the City Sleeps (1956): The Second in Fritz Lang’s Newspaper Noir Trilogy

The first time that I saw While the City Sleeps, it seemed the least noir of the three films in director Fritz Lang’s newspaper noir trilogy, and I would say that’s still true on repeat viewings. The story involves a serial killer in New York City and newspaper employees trying to outsmart one another to tell the killer’s story. But the main characters Edward Mobley and Nancy Liggett fall in love, and their typical-for-1950s romance is given a lot of screen time for a noir.

While the City Sleeps is the second of director Fritz Lang’s newspaper noir film trilogy. The others are The Blue Gardenia (released on March 28, 1953) and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (released on September 13, 1956). My plan is to see and write about all three in the trilogy as part of a series this April for my blog. I have written twice about The Blue Gardenia. Click on each article title in the list below to find both articles.

◊ The Blue Gardenia (1953)

◊ The Blue Gardenia (1953): The First in Fritz Lang’s Newspaper Noir Trilogy

Dana Andrews plays news commentator Edward Mobley. His boss owns several newspapers, including one called the New York Sentinel that is run by Jon Day Griffith; a television channel, where Edward Mobley works; and a wire service, headed by Mark Loving. The serial killer is in the middle of his murderous reign in New York City, and his story absorbs everyone in the media conglomerate.

Media owner Walter Kyne takes over the business after his father Amos Kyne dies. Walter doesn’t know too much about the news business, so he creates the position of executive director and hopes to fill it with someone who does know the business, who will do all the work, and then keep him apprised of all developments. His goal is not to have to do any of the direct managing himself.

When reporters learn of the serial killer terrorizing young women in the city, Walter Kyne decides to give the job of executive director to the person who learns the killer’s identity first, setting up a fierce competition. Edward Mobley takes himself out of the running because he has been away from the crime beat for five years and doesn’t want to go back. So the search is down to Jon Day Griffith, Mark Loving, and a photographer called “honest” Harry Kritzer. Kritzer is not so honest: He is having an affair with Kyne’s wife and uses her to influence her husband Walter.

Sounds noir, but the character of Edward Mobley brings a devil-may-care attitude that actually lightens the mood of the film. His attitude shows up the most in his romance with Nancy Liggett. It’s one of the reasons she gets angry with him and is hesitant to become emotionally involved with him. In one scene, he tries his best to get her to sleep with him, but she doesn’t fall for any of his propositions. She might have fallen for the one where he tells her that he loves her, but he won’t go quite that far. He does finally ask her to marry him in a roundabout way, and she does agree to that.

The narrative actually starts with a delivery from a drugstore. Viewers know almost immediately that the delivery person is the serial killer simply by his clothes: 1950s motorcycle gang style with a black leather jacket, black leather gloves, and a cloth cap. He listens at the door to hear that the janitor (who accepted the delivery) is leaving. He hides, watches the janitor leave, then he goes back to the apartment to surprise the woman, Judith Felton, whose scream ends the opening sequence.

(This article about While the City Sleeps contains almost all the spoilers.)

The police arrest the janitor, George Pilski, the man who accepted the drugstore package at Felton’s apartment. Edward Mobley visits his old friend Lieutenant Burt Kaufman in the police department and tells him that George Pilski didn’t kill Felton. Lieutenant Kaufman tells Mobley that anyone can learn how to commit a murder by reading what’s published these days, including the stories in comic books. According to the lieutenant, the comics provide enough details to educate any would-be criminal—a bit of detail in the film that I found fascinating because if Lieutenant Kaufman is right, criminals haven’t changed their technique too much, except that they find what they want to know today online instead of in print. Mobley is convinced, however, that the police should be looking for a younger man. He is sure that they will have to let Pilski go by the end of the day because they won’t have enough evidence against him.

While George Pilski is in custody and Lieutenant Kaufman and Mobley are talking, Kaufman receives news of another murder of a young woman, a schoolteacher. Both of them go to the crime scene, and again Mobley voices his opinion. Mobley may be five years removed from crime reporting, but he still seems to have the same gut instincts about crime. He thinks the killer is taunting the police by what he leaves at the crime scenes: First was the message “Ask mother” scrawled in lipstick on the wall of Judith Felton’s apartment; next is a copy of The Strangler magazine at the schoolteacher’s apartment. Lieutenant Kaufman has to admit that Mobley may be right.

Mobley decides to use his television newscast to address the killer directly. The killer is watching and is upset by what Mobley says: that the killer is young, that he lives with his mother, and that he is a momma’s boy, among other details that all happen to be true of the killer. Mobley thinks that taunting the killer will make him angry enough to make a mistake and get caught. He is pretty sure that the killer will go after anyone that he (Mobley) likes, and that person could be Nancy Liggett.

Mobley doesn’t discuss the case with Liggett before he does the television broadcast. When he does tell her, she doesn’t seem to be worried about it, which is a good thing because the announcement of Mobley’s and Liggett’s recent engagement is already in the newspaper, and it is big news because he is a media employee who is in the public eye thanks to his television news broadcasts. Mobley tells Liggett, with Lieutenant Kaufman in attendance, that he and the lieutenant have already arranged for Nancy to have her own personal police detail.

Mobley is right: The killer looks for Nancy Liggett, but she won’t open the door when the killer comes knocking because he identifies himself as Mobley and Nancy is angry with him. Instead, the killer attacks Dorothy Kyne, Walter Kyne’s wife, when she visits Harry Kritzer, who is renting an apartment across the hall from Liggett’s. Dorothy Kyne fights off the killer and bashes his head with a heavy ashtray, stunning him enough to escape. She goes to Nancy Liggett’s apartment, and Nancy lets her in. Nancy calls out her apartment window to Mobley and Lieutenant Kaufman, who have just arrived because Mobley thinks the killer’s next move will be to kill in broad daylight (the other killings were committed during the night). Nancy tells Mobley and Lieutenant Kaufman where the killer is heading after he leaves the apartment building.

Edward Mobley has all the right ideas about the serial killer. Coincidence certainly works in his favor when he happens to show up at the same time that the killer decides to kill during the day, and the police certainly benefit from Dorothy Kyne’s feistiness and Nancy Liggett’s quick thinking. I was surprised that the main female characters were given so much to do in the story. Thanks to their contributions, Mobley and the police chase down the killer, who is finally caught trying to escape through a manhole cover above a subway line. He eventually confesses to killing four women.

Four women have been murdered, and all Edward Mobley, Jon Day Griffith, and Mark Loving care about is getting the story out before anyone else does. Harry Kritzer cares only about covering up his affair with Dorothy Kyne, Walter’s wife. Edward Mobley and Nancy Liggett leave New York City to get married and go on their honeymoon in Florida. While they are away, Nancy reads the following in the newspaper: Harry Kritzer is on an extended goodwill tour, Jon Day Griffith is the new executive director, and Edward Mobley has been promoted to managing editor of the New York Sentinel.

In While the City Sleeps, several characters use the news to further their own interests, much like Casey Mayo does in The Blue Gardenia. The themes of both films are very similar, although the stories are told a bit differently. Casey Mayo is a newspaper writer; Edward Mobley is a reporter turned television news anchor. Both of them use their romantic interests for their own professional benefit. Mayo offers advice and legal help to the murderer of Harry Prebble with no intention of following through; Mobley uses his girlfriend as bait to catch a serial killer.

Everyone gets a happy ending, however, in While the City Sleeps, an ending that ties up all the loose ends neatly and feels a bit tacked on. The relationship between Mobley and Liggett is a necessary part of the film—without her and Dorothy Kyne, Mobley and Lieutenant Kaufman wouldn’t have caught the serial killer, at least, not as soon as they did—but I wish it and the film’s ending fit more with the noir tone of the film.

I don’t want to give the impression that I didn’t enjoy While the City Sleeps because I did. Dana Andrews is one of my favorites. I have always liked him, since the first time I saw him in The Best Years of Our Lives on television many years ago. And he does a good job in While the City Sleeps in spite of the fact that his drinking was reportedly excessive by the 1950s. The list of noir regulars in this film is extraordinary, with great performances from all of them. Of the three films in Lang’s newspaper noir trilogy, however, this one has a few plot details that I wish were more noir and less romance.

May 16, 1956, release date  •  Directed by Fritz Lang  •  Screenplay by Casey Robinson  •  Based on the novel The Bloody Spur by Charles Einstein  •  Music by Herschel Burke Gilbert  •  Edited by Gene Fowler Jr.  •  Cinematography by Ernest Laszlo

Dana Andrews as Edward Mobley  •  Rhonda Fleming as Dorothy Kyne  •  George Sanders as Mark Loving  •  Howard Duff as Lieutenant Burt Kaufman  •  Thomas Mitchell as Jon Day Griffith  •  Vincent Price as Walter Kyne  •  Sally Forrest as Nancy Liggett  •  John Drew Barrymore as Robert Manners  •  James Craig as “Honest” Harry Kritzer  •  Ida Lupino as Mildred Donner  •  Robert Warwick as Amos Kyne  •  Mae Marsh as Mrs. Manners  •  Leonard Carey as Steven Butler  •  Ralph Peters as Gerald Meade, a reporter  •  Sandy White as Judith Felton  •  Pitt Herbert as Carlo the bartender at the Blue Dell  •  Vladimir Sokoloff as George Pilski

Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures  •  Produced by RKO Radio Pictures