The Devil Makes Three (1952): Gene Kelly in a B Film

Gene Kelly ticks off many boxes with his starring role in The Devil Makes Three. Yes, it’s a B film (noir), and it is my entry for the Second Annual “Favorite Stars in B Movies” Blogathon, hosted by Brian at Films from Beyond the Time Barrier. Gene Kelly is one of my favorites, and I have enjoyed finding and seeing films that don’t showcase the talents for which he is most famous, that is, dancing and singing. But The Devil Makes Three is not just a B film noir that happens to star an actor famous for his dancing and singing: It’s a Gene Kelly B noir Christmas rubble film—all rolled into one!

Viewers know right away that they are watching something from the postwar period because the film starts with the following acknowledgment: “Appreciation is expressed to the Office of the High Commissioner of Germany, the United States Army Military Police Corps., and the Munich City Police for their cooperation while filming this motion picture in Germany and Austria.” After the opening credits, a voice-over narrator, Colonel James Terry (and one of the characters in the film), explains that the story takes place in Munich, the city where Adolf Hitler founded the Nazi Party. The events of the film take place in 1947, and they are based on several case studies of ongoing criminal activity and espionage.

The narrative starts with a car driving through a snow-covered landscape and swerving to a stop by a phone booth. A woman in a fur coat jumps out to make a phone call. She speaks urgently in German. Men on motorcycles and wearing masks and heavy leather coats drive up and stop near the phone booth. One of them pulls out a gun and shoots and kills the woman trying to make a phone call. They drive away, leaving her body in the snow. This sequence sets up the mystery that Captain Jeff Eliot (played by Kelly) walks into innocently.

Eliot is on leave for two weeks during the Christmas season. He lands in Munich hoping to spend his time off with the Lehrt family, who helped him escape from the Nazis. He has a soft spot for the daughter Wilhelmina (played by Pier Angeli), who Eliot nicknamed Willie. She was only fifteen when Eliot escaped from Germany, and he believes that he will find her and her family at their home, alive and well. But the realities of war dash those hopes. The Lehrt home is flattened, and Willie is nowhere to be found. Eliot eventually finds her in the Silhouette cabaret with the help of Captain Parker, who knows all the nightclubs and brothels in town. He tells Eliot that hunger forces almost all women to extremes.

(This article about The Devil Makes Three contains some spoilers.)

Eliot wants to thank Willie by treating her to Christmas. She tells him about one Christmas in Salzburg with family friends. At Willie’s suggestion, Eliot rents a car to take her to Salzburg, but the auto rental agency is a front for a smuggling ring. The Take Ten Snack Bar at the Austrian-German border, where Eliot and Willie stop on the road, is also a front, but this one is a front for the U.S. authorities, including Captain Parker, investigating smuggling and spies. Their car is searched, which turns up camera lenses, hypodermic needles, and assorted watch springs, all rather petty items. The U.S. authorities replace everything and allow the car to continue.

At this point, Eliot is unaware that the car is searched, but it isn’t long before he is brought in for questioning and informed that he could contribute to the investigation. At first, Eliot remains loyal to Willie, but some of her actions cause him to doubt her intentions, and he agrees to help the investigation. The U.S. military and domestic German authorities have uncovered information about a smuggling ring based in the Silhouette cabaret and likely connected to Nazis still hiding in Europe. As Colonel James Terry told Eliot during his questioning, the Nazis had a plan before the war even ended to use the gold they collected during the war (mostly from victims of their concentration camps) to finance the rebuilding of the Third Reich.

The ensuing story intertwines all the various plot threads: the romance between Eliot and Willie, the investigation into the smuggling ring operating out of the Silhouette cabaret, and the hunt for Nazis remaining in Europe. Much of it was filmed on location in Germany, amid the ruins of the postwar period—and hence the film’s categorization (one of many) as a rubble film. For example, when Captain Jeff Eliot tries to find the Lehrt family at their home address, he finds the house and the neighborhood in ruins. Later, he and Willie walk from the Silhouette cabaret to her apartment through the ruins of her neighborhood so that they can get reacquainted. A spectacular chase scene near the end of the film ends in the ruins of Adolf Hitler’s home in Berchtesgaden, a site that was destroyed by the German government not long after filming was completed on The Devil Makes Three. The film is a history lesson, too.

I did some research about the film a long time ago and already knew that The Devil Makes Three had been filmed on location in postwar Germany. But the research I did recently yielded even more information about the on-location shooting. Visit the Three Movie Buffs website for more information by clicking here.

Black Hand (1950), a film I wrote about for the first Favorite Stars in B Movies Blogathon in 2023, makes more use of Kelly’s physicality and even of his singing ability. Kelly doesn’t dance or sing in The Devil Makes Three, but there is one curious nod to his dancing abilities. Willie and Jeff Eliot stop for a break at the Take Ten Snack Bar on the Austrian-German border. The snack bar features a jukebox and swing dancing. Willie mentions that she doesn’t think she could ever learn to swing-dance. Eliot tells her, “Sure you could. All you need is a good hard hit on the head.”

Click here to see my article about Gene Kelly in Black Hand.

What to make of this comment? Aside from the association of dancing with Gene Kelly, this exchange is odd—until Willie and Eliot arrive in Salzburg and do a little bit of sightseeing on their own. They stop in a beer hall and watch two men folk dancing. The men engage in a mock fight over a girl during which they slap each other on the head. Willie repeats Jeff’s line from the Take Ten Snack Bar, but the sequence on the whole seems to be more of a way to introduce American audiences to folk traditions in Austria than a nod to Gene Kelly’s talents. Otherwise, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher.

But if you are a fan of Gene Kelly’s musicals and his dance numbers, as I am, you will probably still recognize some of his signature moves in The Devil Makes Three. They are not as prominently displayed as they are in Black Hand, but they are there nonetheless. The best examples occur during Jeff Eliot’s investigation of the rental car in Salzburg late at night. He hears footsteps approaching outside the garage where the car is stored, and he uses his whole body in dancer-like fashion to show his alarm.

I enjoyed The Devil Makes Three, and I have seen it several times, but there is just one more little detail that I notice every time I see the film, and that’s the difference in ages between the two leads. Gene Kelly was thirty-nine when the film was released, and Pier Angeli was only nineteen. Their romance always strikes me as age inappropriate, even though nothing is mentioned about Kelly’s/Eliot’s age. But that still means that Eliot met fifteen-year-old Willie when he was thirty-six. Not so easy to ignore in 2024, and it shouldn’t have been easy to ignore in 1952 either. And age factors into Eliot’s occupation: Kelly strikes me as too old to play a captain in the U.S. air force (although I have nothing really to base this impression on).

The Devil Makes Three is many things: a B movie, a film noir, a rubble film, a Gene Kelly movie. It takes place during the Christmas holidays and could be called a Christmas movie. But one category it cannot be put in is musical, which is the category one usually associates with Gene Kelly. Once again, Kelly is taken out of his usual milieu, where he is dancing and singing, and plunked into a B film. But his physicality still shines through, especially when he cannot use dialogue to get his point across.

This article about The Devil Makes Three is my entry for the Second Annual “Favorite Stars in B Movies” Blogathon, hosted by Brian at filmsfrombeyond.com. Click on each link in the list below for day-by-day access to participants’ blogs. The list is updated each day of the blogathon:

◊ Day One, April 12, 2024

◊ Day Two, April 13, 2024

◊ Day Three, April 14, 2024

September 19, 1952, release date  •  Directed by Andrew Marton  •  Screenplay by Jerry Davis  •  Based on a story by Lawrence P. Bachmann  •  Music by Rudolph G. Kopp  •  Edited by Ben Lewis  •  Cinematography by Václav Vích

Gene Kelly as Captain Jeff Eliot  •  Pier Angeli as Wilhelmina (Willie) Lehrt  •  Richard Rober as Colonel James Terry  •  Richard Egan as Captain Parker  •  Charles Gordon Howard as Lieutenant Farris  •  Michael Tellering as Detective Lieutenant Ernst Haltmann  •  Wilfried Seyferth as Hansig, owner of the Silhouette cabaret  •  Otto Gebühr as Mr. Nolder  •  Gertrude Wolle as Mrs. Nolder  •  Heinrich Grether as Mr. Keigler, Lehrt family friend  •  Annie Rosar as Mrs. Keigler, Lehrt family friend  •  Charlotte Fleming as the woman shot in the phone booth  •  Harold Benedict as the sergeant at the airport  •  Bum Krüger as Oberlitz, owner of the car rental agency  •  Sepp Rist as the customs official  •  Claus Clausen as Heisemann  •  Margot Hielscher as the Silhouette cabaret singer  •  Iván Petrovitch as Sigmund Neffs  •  Claus Benton Lombard as the waiter at the Take Ten Snack Bar  •  Ruth Megary as the waitress at the Take Ten Snack Bar

Distributed by Loew’s, Inc.  •  Produced by Metro Goldwyn Mayer