Directed by Fritz Lang and based on a novella by Vera Caspary. The cinematographer was Nicholas Musuraca, and the music was by Raoul Kraushaar. An independent production released by RKO.
A Woman's Noir a chick flick. The three main characters are three single women getting by in the City Of Angels. Ann Sothern is the continually tar bar sucking Crystal Carpenter. Jeff Donnell is Sally Ellis, the kid sister type addicted to the pulp fiction of a Mickey Spillane clone hard boiled detective novelist. Our heroine is torch carrying Norah Larkin played by Anne Baxter who is in love with a GI serving in Korea.
Richard Conte plays newsman Casey Mayo his sidekick photographer is Al played by Richard Erdman, Raymond Burr is playboy Harry Prebble, George Reeves is the L.A.P.D. Police Capt. Sam Haynes, Ruth Storey is Rose Miller, Ray Walker is Homer, and Nat King Cole plays himself.
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| Casey Mayo (Richard Conte) |
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| Al (Richard Erdman) |
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| Chrystal Carpenter (Ann Sothern) |
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| Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr) |
He also meets calendar cheesecake artist Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr) who is doing a sketch of Crystal. Prebble is your typical playboy putting the moves on Crystal then expertly switching track to Norah when she shows up with Sally to lunch with her roommates. They take off. Harry Prebble gets a frantic call from a woman. She tells him that he's got to help her. He tells her to take it easy and hangs up.
Later that night at the apartment it's Norah's birthday. She plans on having a romantic dinner for two. Her and her fiance George. He's in Korea but she has his photo on the table and his last letter she received. She douses the lights, sits at the candlelit table set for two, opens the champagne, toasts her fiance and takes out his letter.....
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| Norah Larkin (Anne Baxter) |
Later that night at the apartment it's Norah's birthday. She plans on having a romantic dinner for two. Her and her fiance George. He's in Korea but she has his photo on the table and his last letter she received. She douses the lights, sits at the candlelit table set for two, opens the champagne, toasts her fiance and takes out his letter.....
Cue the cheap piano music...
In voice over we hear George tell her that he's been thinking a lot about her and also about an army nurse he met in Tokyo where he took a load of commie shrapnel they gave him in Korea. Her name is Angela. She supplied the strength and courage to pull him through. He tells Norah that he didn't want it to happen but it's the real McCoy, and that he's going to marry Angela as soon as he gets out. It's a Dear Jane letter.
It's Harry on the phone looking for Crystal. He asks Norah thinking she's Crystal to "how about slipping into something comfortable, like a few drinks and some Chinese food?"
Norah tells him alright she will. He tells her to meet him at the Blue Gardenia on Vine right off Hollywood.
While this is going on Sally gets back from the dime store with what was hinted at as the newest hard boiled paperback and likely a knowing dig at Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer first from Sally's description and then from its cover art below.
Norah tells Sally that she's going out, with a man. Sally is perplexed until Norah leaves and she reads the letter.
At the Blue Gardenia, Harry is ordering dinner for two, he tells the waiter to keep the Polynesian Pearl Divers coming and to tell the barman to go heavy on the rum. Hey every playboy knows candy is dandy but liquor is quicker, no? While Harry wanders around the Blue Gardenia waiting for his date, he runs into Casey at the bar.
Norah shows up and surprises Harry, who tells her he was expecting Crystal.
Norah tells him she had answered the phone. She tells Harry that it was a silly impulse. Harry tells her impulses are never silly and to sit. As soon as they sit the waiter delivers two Polynesian Pearl Divers.
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| getting drunk on Polynesian Pearl Divers |
Harry Prebble: [speaking about a Polynesian Pearl Diver cocktail] These aren't really drinks. They're trade-winds across cool lagoons. They're the Southern Cross above coral reefs. They're a lovely maiden bathing at the foot of a waterfall.
Norah tells Harry she wants to forget the earlier part of the evening. Harry leers. he buys her a blue gardenia from a flower lady and Nat King Cole breaks into the song of the same title.
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| Nat King Cole |
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| showing Harry some cleavage |
Norah is getting tipsy. She's showing Harry quite a bit of cleavage. Harry drives her to his place. He breaks out the champagne. He spins a platter of Nat King Cole singing "Blue Gardenia." Harry kills the lights. Norah gets comfy on the couch. Harry gets a bit too frisky. Norah fights him off. She grabs a poker from the fireplace stand and beans him with it. Norah passes out.
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| blacking out.... |
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| Coming to... |
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| running out into the night.... |
At the girls apartment Crystal sees Norah's clothes are strewn upon the floor. She wakes up Norah who is sleeping in the raw. Crystal mentions she must have had quite the night. Norah tells her she blacked out and doesn't remember anything.
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| Norah slept in the raw |
The police find clues at Harry's, a pair of size five women shoes, a fireplace poker, a blue gardenia. The cleaning lady did her job, she moved and cleaned the evidence before finding the body so no fingerprints are found. Their investigations though do lead them to the telephone company operator pool, which was Harry's favorite "hunting ground" for his models.
The police begin to question the girls who posed for Prebble. Norah thinks she may have killed Prebble.
Casey Mayo begins to investigate and write a series of columns about what he dubs the "Blue Gardenia Murderess." He snoops out that the killer was a blonde, had a quite gentle voice, and wore a black taffeta dress. When Norah reads about the dress, she burns hers in the incinerator.
Casey's next stunt is to write a "Letter to an Unknown Murderess," calling for her to turn herself in. He gets a lot of nuts replying to it.
Here director Lang has a nice sequence of Casey answering the crank calls of disillusioned and slightly disturbed ladies who crave attention. We get close-ups of the pathetic women building up their possible legitimacy in the viewers eyes, only to have Casey dash their accounts as lies.
When Norah finally calls in Casey figures correctly that she is the one. When they meet Norah tells Casey she is there for a friend. Casey tells Norah that he's willing to pay the attorney fees if her friend gives herself up. It all goes Noirsville when the police show up at a lunch counter where Casey and Norah arrange another meeting.
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| betrayed.... |
Noirsville
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| Rose (Ruth Storey) |
The cast does an admirable job with a routine story. Of course being made under the Motion Picture Production Code, all the references to why Rose is frantically trying to speak with Harry are reduced to subtext references. Harry, apparently, supplied Rose with enough Polynesian Pearl Divers to successfully dive down on her "pearl," getting her pregnant in the process. She wants Harry to make her an "honest" woman, in the parlance of the times, to marry her. Oh, how quaint and innocent the Hollywood Studio powers were (on the outside) in the straight-laced 1950's and how the sexual Pandora's Box was nuked open by Sexploitation in the late 1960s.
I personally get a kick out of Anne Baxter's very convincing tipsy woman sequences at the Blue Gardenia and at Harry's studio/pad. Sothern is a hoot with a cig perpetually dangling from her bottom lip, Burr is appropriately slimey, and it's always great seeing Nat King Cole. Screen caps are from a TCM streamer. Café au lait Noir 7/10
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