Los Angeles’s Bunker Hill: Pulp Fiction’s Mean Streets and Film Noir’s Ground Zero! (Book) (2012)

You do not have to be a film noir fan to enjoy Jim Dawson’s book. Fans of classic film in general would find plenty to enjoy on the pages of Los Angeles’s Bunker Hill: Pulp Fiction’s Mean Streets and Film Noir’s Ground Zero!. For one thing, Dawson does not limit his discussion to film noir. He includes a lot of other types of films that used the Bunker Hill neighborhood for location shooting.

I happened to find a copy of Los Angeles’s Bunker Hill in my library system, but you can find a copy at the Internet Archive. Reading the book at the archive apparently requires a sign-in. Click here for more information.

Dawson delves into the history of the neighborhood, the politicking over its so-called urban renewal phase (which led to its destruction in the 1960s and eventual replacement), and the impact it had on the film industry. He includes information about writers, including pulp fiction and detective fiction writers, and where they lived. Raymond Chandler, for instance, was a Bunker Hill resident for a time, both before and after his marriage, and drew inspiration from the neighborhood. Chandler grew more and more disillusioned about how Los Angeles accommodated its growing population, and his detective Philip Marlowe refers to this situation occasionally while on his investigations.

Dawson’s book includes lots of photos, which is another plus, of course. Dawson is obviously knowledgeable about his topic, and he includes a lot of information in the photo captions, too. Many of the photos are stills from the films discussed in the book, but quite a few are behind-the-scenes shots of on-location film shoots.

For even more information from Jim Dawson about the Bunker Hill neighborhood of Los Angeles, click here.

If ever the book is updated for a second edition, I have a wish list of suggested changes:

◊ A book index would be extremely helpful for cross referencing. And it should include information from both the text and the photo captions, please.

◊ The map on page 28 should have its own chapter, with a legend showing the ratio of inches (half inches, quarter inches) to miles, more details about the locations featured, and a revised numbering system that follows the numerical sequence more intuitively. And listing it in the contents would make it much easier to find.

I don’t want this wish list to sound like a list of complaints because the book is a joy to read. Classic film fans would enjoy all the information and the accompanying photos. The photos include snapshots of the structures that made Bunker Hill so unique: the Victorian era architecture; the hilly terrain that forced builders to include public staircases, innovative building designs, and lengthy tunnels; and the Angels Flight rail, all of which are features in many films noir.

The book is short at only 160 pages total and so it’s a quick read—unless you are someone like me, who likes to cross reference and consult that handy map on page 28. But if you are someone like me, somehow you are going to count that as a plus, too.

The last chapter is titled “A Selective List of Films Shot on Bunker Hill.” It’s an alphabetical list of such films and, once again, films from different types of genres are included.

And now I have a (another) new list of films noir to see.

Los Angeles’s Bunker Hill: Pulp Fiction’s Mean Streets and Film Noir’s Ground Zero!  •  By Jim Dawson  •  Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2012

The image of the front cover is from the book published by The History Press.

The Lady Confesses (1945)

The Lady Confesses is an independent film production that was distributed by Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), a so-called Poverty Row studio that produced B films on the cheap. And The Lady Confesses was certainly produced on the cheap. But even with a low budget for the film and a major spoiler for me (see the note in blue type below), I found the story engrossing. And it is compact: The film’s running time comes in at just under sixty-four minutes.

The Lady Confesses is in the public domain. You can watch it online for free at the Internet Archive by clicking here. This print is one of two at the archive, and neither one is of high quality, but viewers won’t have trouble following the story.

I knew very little about The Lady Confesses before I saw it at the Internet Archive. One of the prints had comments that I wish I hadn’t read because one of them gives away the identity of the murderer. If you don’t want to know that before you watch the film, I recommend watching without reading the comments first if you happen to find that print instead of the one at the link provided above.

The film starts with an anonymous woman knocking on Vicki McGuire’s front door. This woman tells Vicki that she cannot marry her fiancé, Larry Craig, because she, the anonymous woman, is his long-lost wife Norma. Norma has been missing for seven years and was presumed dead, but now she is back to disrupt her husband’s wedding plans and his life.

That same night, Larry Craig is in a nightclub, Club 711 (or the 711 Club; it goes by both names in the film), and he was already drunk when he arrived there. He talks to several people: Steve, the bartender; Lucky Brandon, owner of the nightclub; and Lucile Compton, a singer. He must be a regular because he seems to know almost everyone. Lucile convinces Larry to stay in her dressing room to sleep it off before visiting Vicki.

By the time Vicki calls the nightclub looking for Larry, he is sober enough to drive. He picks up Vicki before going to Norma’s home to settle their disagreements and arrange for a divorce. But when they arrive, they are greeted by Detective Harman, Captain Brown, and several police officers. The police are already at Norma’s home because she has been murdered. Larry identifies the body, and Larry and Vicki soon become suspects. They both have the same motive: Once Norma is out of the way, they can proceed with their wedding plans.

Captain Brown naturally wants to know where Larry and Vicki were all evening. Captain Brown takes Larry back to Club 711 to talk to witnesses to confirm Larry’s alibi. Detective Harmon leaves with Vicki to confirm her alibi, which viewers learn about through conversations later. Captain Brown talks to Gladys, the hat check girl; Steve, the bartender; and Lucile Compton, the singer. While Captain Brown and Larry Craig are in Lucile’s dressing room, Lucky Brandon enters to give Lucile her paycheck. Captain Brown asks Lucky if he saw Larry Craig earlier in the evening, and Lucky denies it, even though Larry did see him in Lucky’s nightclub office and even called out to him just before he left the club. Both Larry and Lucile protest the veracity of Lucky’s denial, but he insists that he never saw Larry at the nightclub earlier in the evening. Vicki’s alibi is not airtight either so she, too, remains on the suspect list.

(This article about The Lady Confesses contains some spoilers.)

Captain Brown goes to Lucky Brandon’s nightclub office next to talk to Lucky. Lucky admits that he and Norma Craig knew each other and that she loaned him $10,000 when he first opened the club. He maintains that he was in his nightclub all night during the hours when Norma was murdered. But small details between his, Larry’s, and Vicki’s stories are not adding up perfectly enough, and Captain Brown naturally continues his methodical investigation.

Both Vicki McGuire and Larry Craig believe that Captain Brown is unsure of their alibis and that their motives concerning Norma Craig being in the way of their marriage are too strong to ignore. Vicki decides to get a job at Club 711 so she can find out what she can, which Larry thinks is a bad idea. Both of them are under scrutiny, and the police can handle the investigation without Vicki putting herself in harm’s way. Vicki is undeterred by Larry’s arguments. She bribes the nightclub photographer to take her place for a couple of days.

Vicki McGuire is an amateur sleuth, but she manages to pick up several possible clues that the police seem to have missed so far:

◊ The developer working in the nightclub’s darkroom, Bill, tells her that Norma Craig and Lucky Brandon were running around together and that Lucile Compton has a crush on Lucky.

◊ Vicki overhears Lucky and Lucile arguing about Norma Craig. Vicki then goes into Lucile’s dressing room to get more information out of Lucile, but Lucile is called back to the nightclub stage to perform.

◊ Vicki snoops through Lucky Brandon’s nightclub office and finds a receipt dated the night of Norma Craig’s murder. It is made out to Norma.

◊ Lucky Brandon leaves the nightclub in a hurry, in his own car, and Vicki follows him in a cab. She follows him on foot into Norma Craig’s house, where he retrieves a pen that he had lost there. (The print at the Internet Archive is murky during these scenes, and the film is too dark to see much of what is going on. But viewers definitely know the pen belongs to Lucky Brandon because his name is engraved on it.)

How did Vicki turn into such a competent investigator, and so quickly? Is it just plain luck, or is she really that good at getting people to talk and not getting caught in places she has no business in?

The Lady Confesses is a tight story, but a few details nagged at me. None of them detract much from the story, which was meant to be compact. One of them, of course, is Vicki’s successful turn to investigation:

◊ Vicki McGuire barges into Lucile Compton’s dressing room—always uninvited—and snoops in Lucky Brandon’s nightclub office. She doesn’t need a warrant because she is not a police officer, but her bravado and confidence seemed like a rather sudden turnaround to me. Norma Craig seemed more capable of intimidating her, murder suspects not so much.

◊ Larry Craig (played by Hugh Beaumont) and Vicki McGuire (played by Mary Beth Huges) have very little chemistry on-screen. It’s hard to believe that Larry has any affection for Vicki, even before she begins her amateur sleuthing and discovers some dangerous secrets about him.

◊ How did Norma Craig keep up her beautiful and expensive home when she was gone for seven years (or more)?

◊ Were Norma and Lucky “running around” on the sly (and fooling everyone) during the seven years that she was supposedly missing? Or did Lucky find out that Norma was back in town and very much alive before anyone else did?

It is quite possible that these last two points would be answered if the print were crisp and the sound were perfect. Answers are not necessary, however, to enjoy the story. And I always enjoy seeing an actor like Hugh Beaumont, who is probably much more famous for his role as Ward Cleaver in the television sitcom Leave It to Beaver, in a film noir role. Mary Beth Hughes gets top billing, though, and she deserves it. The story really is more about her character, and she does more to help the investigation than would be expected of any ordinary civilian!

May 16, 1945, release date  •  Directed by Sam Newfield  •  Screenplay by Helen Martin  •  Based on a story by Irwin R. Franklyn  •  Music by Lee Zahler  •  Edited by Holbrook N. Todd  •  Cinematography by Jack Greenhalgh

Mary Beth Hughes as Vicki McGuire  •  Hugh Beaumont as Larry Craig  •  Edmund MacDonald as Lucky Brandon  •  Claudia Drake as Lucile Compton  •  Emmett Vogan as Police Captain Brown  •  Barbara Slater as Norma Craig  •  Edward Howard as Detective Harmon  •  Dewey Robinson as Steve, the nightclub bartender  •  Carol Andrews as Margie, the nightclub photographer  •  Ruth Brande as Gladys, the nightclub hat checker  •  Jerome Root as Bill, the nightclub photo developer

Distributed by Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC)  •  Produced by Alexander-Stern Productions