I Want To Live (1958) Bio Noir

Directed by Robert Wise.

Wise gave us Crime Noirs Born to Kill, The Set Up, The Captive City, and you can look at Odds Against Tomorrow as either the last Classic Noir or one of the first Transitional Noirs. He also gave us a SiFi Noir The Day The Earth Stood Still, and a Western Noir Blood On The Moon. Wise also did a Quasi Bio Noir in 1956 about the life of Boxer Rocky Graziano titled Somebody Up There Likes Me, check it out if you get a chance,  it's got quite a few noir-ish sequences though it doesn't quite tip Noir, its one of those "On the Cusp of Noir" Noir.

Cinematography by was by Lionel Lindon (The Blue Dahlia (1946), Quicksand (1950), The Turning Point (1952), Hell's Island (1955), The Scarlet Hour (1956), The Big Caper (1957), The Young Savages (1961), All Fall Down (1962), The Manchurian Candidate (1962)) and the Jazz Music was
by Johnny Mandel.

Susan Hayward as Barbara Graham

The film stars Susan Hayward (five Classic Noir) as Barbara Graham, Simon Oakland as Edward S. "Ed" Montgomery, Virginia Vincent as Peg, Theodore Bikel (Neo Noir Darker Than Amber (1970)) as Carl G.G. Palmberg, Wesley Lau as Henry L. Graham, Philip Coolidge as Emmett Perkins, Lou Krugman as John R. "Jack" Santo, James Philbrook as Bruce King, Bartlett Robinson as District Attorney Milton, Gage Clarke as Attorney Richard G. Tibrow, Joe De Santis as Al Matthews, John Marley (five Classic Noir) as Father Devers, Raymond Bailey as San Quentin Warden, Gertrude Flynn as San Quentin Matron, Russell Thorson as San Quentin Sergeant, Dabbs Greer as the San Quentin Captain, Stafford Repp as the police Sergeant, and Gavin MacLeod as the police Lieutenant.

All That Jazz 

Passing a joint

Taking a hit

I Want To Live was written by Nelson Gidding and Don Mankiewicz and they based their screenplay on Ed Montgomery's newspaper articles for the San Francisco Chronicle and Barbara Graham's actual letters. The film pretty much picks up Barbara's story in 1950. It goes back much further.

The Reality

Oakland California

Barbara was born in 1923 in the "Detroit Of The West, Oakland" California. It was in one of Oakland's ghetto/slum areas either Old Downtown or West Oakland, possibly around 7th Street or maybe near what is known today as "Dog Town" aka North of Clawson or "Ghost Town" along Hoover & Foster at that time populated with diverse ethnic groups that were eventually displaced by Afro-Americans.

Old Downtown Oakland

7th Street 

Barbara was the unwanted baby of a knocked up teenage hooker Hortense Wood (ne Ford). So her mother goes out pullin' tricks and suckin' dicks for a livin, and either Barbara went with her or was getting  dumped off, we can guess, with not the most ideal caregivers.

"Years later, Barbara would tell a reporter that she was certain her mother didn't care whether she lived or died "as long as I didn't bother her."" (Mara Bovsun)

When Hortense got busted and shipped off to the State School for Girls in Ventura, Barbara was passed around between family, sleaze ball acquaintances and fellow hookers. When mom gets out she soon gets another bun in the oven, followed nine months after that by yet again another. When Barbara reaches 12, a social worker offers to adopt her. Hortense tells her to basically fuck off.

Ventura School For Girls

Barbara becomes a wild child herself. She eventually gets shipped off to Ventura school for girls also. When she gets out 16 at she becomes a child bride marrying a coastguardsman. She tries going straight by enrolling in a business school. She has two sons but it doesn't work out. Hubby is awarded custody of the boys.

Sexually active now, Barbara eventually works her way down to selling her ass on street. Like mother like daughter. By 18, she's strolling the pavement around the harbor trolling for sailors then after 1941 expanding to Navy seamen from the Oakland Naval Supply Depot. 

Sea Gull

She was a "Sea gull" providing the mid service of the popular "Stewed, Blewed, and Tattooed," phrase. No different than future movie stars Norma Jean Baker (at 14 BTW) aka Marilyn Monroe or Liz Rene. Rene referred to her servicing the service men as being a "V" girl.

During the next eleven years Barbara was married and divorced three times, was arrested numerous times for prostitution, pandering, lewd conduct, vagrancy, grifting, and perjury. Its in 1950  where I Want To Live picks up Barbara's story.

The Film

San Francisco, a flea bag hotel above a jazz club. Barbara has picked up a trick and showed him what the local talent has to offer. The police knock at the door.  The john tells them they met in Reno, and that they are having a good time. 

They tell him tell him that they can bust him on the Mann Act a federal law that criminalizes the transportation of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” Barbara saves his ass by admitting the truth. She gets busted once again and is told to get out of town.

Like a good little seagull she heads to the next nearest lucrative port, San Diego. There she gets her groove back and mingles with the other denizens of the underworld. 

There in San Diego, trying to do a favor for some crumbs, she gets charged with perjury for providing a false alibi. She does time, 12 months, she gets out and returns to selling her ass again but also getting a cash bonus for steering rubes into Emmett Perkins illegal gambling joint set up in the back of a machine shop. Around this time she meets junky bartender Hank Graham.

Philip Coolidge as Emmett Perkins

Wesley Lau as Henry "Hank" L. Graham

Hank and Barbara like what each other sees, she marries him, gets quickly "preggers" again and has a son Tommy. She also gets hooked also on horse (the film leaves out this detail). Hank looses his job and starts to bum off Barbara.

She finally tells him to "geddefugoutahere" when Hank tries to steal her stash. The film just has her throwing him out for trying to steal her money. She then stays at the apartment until evicted.

In reality Barbara leaves Bobby with junkie Hank and moves in with Emmitt. functioning as a friend with benefits. Perkins has other nefarious plans besides just running an illegal card game. Perkins with two bit hoods John Santo, and Bruce King (all box men BTW), get, wind of a feeble old Beverly Hills widow, Mable Monahan, who is rumored to have a wad of cash in her house. The cash, 100 Gs, is part of the winnings that her son in law, a Las Vegas gambler, left her.

Mable Monahan

Perkins picks up one more crook Baxter Shorter and an out of work deep sea diver John True, who is quite desperate for cash. The "easy pikin's" job on Marh 9, 1953 goes seriously haywire. They pistol whip Mable to death and never find any of the money. They also missed Mable's substantial jewelry collection that was stashed in a bag in a closet.

Crime Scene

Here is where things start to become foggy. 

In the film, the police bust the the illegal gambling operation while Barbara is there. Under questioning during the police investigation Barbara is shocked when accused of being an accomplice to the Monahan murder.  

The states case version goes that Perkins asked Barbara to be an accomplice because they figured that Mable would easier open the door for a woman. They say that Barbara claimed to have car trouble and needed to use the phone. Mable opens the door and lets her in, the crooks push in and Mable starts shrieking. To shut her up, they say, that Barbara pistol whipped her, getting a bit carried away. If they were all users, and if say Barbara was in desperate need of a fix you can realistically see it going down that way. 

The police pull in Shorter first on another unrelated job. He squeals about the details of the Monahan murder. They let him go. Through the grapevine Perkins, Santo, and King get the low down on the stoolie Shorter and Shorter disappears from the face of the earth.

The police round up the other suspects and luckily for them John True spills the beans on the whole story for immunity. 

Barbara denies the John True version of what went down, but she is incarcerated while awaiting the trial. She is put in a cell with a Donna Prow. They both go "lez" while in stir and get into a bit of "tongue in groove" action with each other. Gils got to do what girls got to do. When Barbara confides in her that she doesn't have a good alibi for the night Mable was killed, Donna tells her that he has a friend, Ben Miranda, who will say that he was with her at the time of Monahan's murder. 

At the trial the friend turns out to be an undercover cop, who takes the stand against her. Donna got a reduced sentence for setting up the ruse.

Barbara, Emmitt, and John get sentenced to death in the gas chamber.

In the film Barbara claims that she was at home with Bobby and Hank. But Hank is too strung out and on the stand the jury will not believe a dope addict, so desperate, she agrees to Donna's plan to have Ben give false testimony. While Ben is visiting with Barbara at the prison, he insists that she admit that she was part of the caper before agreeing to give a false alibi, he makes a recording of their conversation. Now quite desperate, Barbara agrees.

During the trial, the taped recording of her confession, made by Ben during their meeting, is used as evidence against her. Barbara explains that she sought the phony alibi only to avoid the death penalty, and that her admission was false.

The rest of the film focuses on the trial, psychological evaluations, attorney strategies, the events leading up to Barbara's execution, her conflicts with the prison matrons and guards, the morbid workings of the death chamber, rituals of an execution, and the efforts of a crusading reporter to point out and publish the holes in the states case. For instance, Mable was bludgeoned to death by a right handed person while Barbara is left handed.

Knowing what we know now with the recent prevalence of police bodycams and cellphones who knows how much more bullshit went on back in the day or how any poor innocent shmucks got railroaded.

Noirsville

Raymond Bailey as San Quentin Warden

Simon Oakland as Edward S. "Ed" Montgomery

Noirsville

The excellent cinematography provides a crisp photojournalistic look to the film. A Jungle Jazz/Beatnik zeitgeist prevails in a haze of tobacco and marijuana. Drunks, potheads, junkies, high rollers, low renters, winners and tragic losers are depicted realistically. Susan Hayward shines as she dominates all in an Oscar winning performance. 9/10  

The real Barbara below