Red Light (1949) A "Religious" Stylistic Noir Lovers Wet Dream

"A ridiculously heavy handed but exquisitely filmed guilty pleasure." (Noirsville)

The visuals in this are amazing in this respect it's like another of my guilty pleasures Desperate, like it, the story in this film, in spots makes no sense, but you go with it because it has a lot of Visual Style.. A Style that's combined with some outrageous coincidences that are bizarrely entertaining.

Here's a film that practically hits you over the head with both visual religious iconography and aural "earcon-ography" psalms. In the visual department, it definitely leans Catholic and Torno is an Italian sur name but aurally it has Dimitri Tiomkin's Beethoven-ish  "A Mighty Fortress Is Our Lord" playing during the opening credits, later we hear a music box tinkling "Ave Maria," and then toss in Dies Irae and other familiar stuff into the mix. 

Its all put together by Roy Del Ruth (he gave us the original true to the Dashiell Hammett novel -The Maltese Falcon (1931), and also the Transitional Noir era's Why Must I Die?).

Written by George Callahan and based on a story "This Guy Gideon" by Don 'Red' Barry with additional dialogue added by Charles Grayson. 

Now, knowing what we know now, about how loose Hollywood was with Classic Noir that were adapted from original material, it makes me want to find "This Guy Gideon" and see how it played out and what was left out. 

The excellent Noir Stylistic Cinematography was by Bert Glennon... Who???? Well, he lensed proto Noir Underworld, also Street of Sin, Blonde Venus, John Ford's Stagecoach and Rio Grande, and a fav of mine, and yours to I'm sure, Crime Wave. Music was brewed up in his own original and classic style variations by Dimitri Tiomkin.

The film stars 

George Raft as Johnny Torno

George Raft (was in the original Scarface and a Vet of multiple Noir's, that I usually don't like. Raft was originally a hoofer, like Jimmy Cagney. Nocturne I think. is the other film I do like with Raft. 

Raft is Johnny Torno of Torno Freight Lines, a very successful refrigerated fish supplier. He writes $20,000 checks like they were nothing. He sounds like fought his way up from the streets, but now he's somewhat polished. 

Virginia Mayo is Carla North

Virginia Mayo (White Heat, Flaxy Martin, Backfire) is Carla North, when Torno tracks Carla down we find out she was recently working for Ken Murray's Blackouts. In the film that's all the clue you get about her past. Here is where reading "This Guy Gideon" would probably give us the scoop. 

Blackouts was "a racy stage variety show featuring Marie Wilson (among others) at the El Capitan Theatre on Vine Street in Hollywood." (Wiki)

Marie Wilson

Carla North was an ex showgirl and staying in flop house when Torno finds her. She was one of the guests that stayed only one night in the San Francisco hotel. In the film Mayo plays Carla as a good girl, but don't ask too many questions. 

Henry Morgan as Rocky

Henry Morgan (noir vet of The Big Clock, Appointment With Danger, Scandal Sheet and of course later Dragnet TV and M.A.S.H. ) plays a soon to be ex-con Rocky as in "dumb as a box of rocks." We first see Rocky working as a projectionist in San Quentin. This role is one of my favorites of Morgan's.

 

Raymond Burr as Nick Cherney

Raymond Burr (a multiple Noir Vet) plays another soon to be ex con Nick Cherney. This film has got to be Raymond Burr at his peak size. He's huge. There's one point in the film where he's wearing a fedora  and a trench coat with easily foot wide shoulders on either side of his head, lol, he dwarfs everybody else he looks like a f-ing battleship coming down the hallway.

Arthur Franz as Jess Torno

Arthur Franz (The Sniper, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt) plays Jess Torno, Johnny's younger brother. the G.I. chaplain just returned from a Japanese POW camp. 

Barton MacLane as Steckler

Barton MacLane (SFPD Detective Dundy in The Maltese Falcon (1941), and Pat McCormick in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) as SFPD Strecker, Gene Lockhart (The House on 92nd Street) as Warni Hazard, William 'Bill' Phillips as SFPD Ryan, and William Frawley (Fred Mertz in I Love Lucy) as a hotel clerk.

 Gene Lockhart as Warni Hazard

The story in a nutshell.

Rocky and Nick are up in the projection booth watching a newsreel. We see a train wreck, and a piece on ex POW's coming home. 

One of them is a chaplain Jess Torno. The narrator shows him being greeted by his brother Johnny Torno. Rocky was paying attention cause he asks Nick isn't that the guy you worked for. Nick yes and we get a flash back of how Nick was pinched at the job for embezzling company money. 

When the flashback ends and we are back in the present, Rocky is commenting that Johnny sure likes his brother which gets the squeaky wheels turning in Nicky's head. Yeah?

Nicky asks Rocky "'ain't you getting out soon?" And Rocky says yeah, next week, for "good" behavior. During the whole film Rocky talks in a punch drunk way, slow and deliberate like he's taken one too many hits to the head. 

Nicky asks Rocky if he wants more money, and we here at the point, from the theater, the narrator of the film exclaim "and here's this seasons new women's swimsuits"  Women, yeah rocky could use some extra money....

We cut to Johnny, Jess, and Warni in the Torno Freight lines office. Johnny's got a present for Jess a musical clock that plays Ave Maria. Jess can't believe it, its the clock they saw in a window around Christmas when they was just poor ghetto kids. Johnny remembered that Jess wanted one just like it someday. 

Now you'd think that all we've seen would have taken place over the course of a few days, no? 

No, because later, Johnny at the Old St. Mary's Cathedral on California Street, finds out that the bishop wants to send Jess up to his own parish upstate in Redwood. 

Again all along, you'd assume that Johnny would have taken Jess back to his apartment, right, they haven't seen each other for years, so why is Jess checked and unpacked into a hotel?  So here you wonder if the story  "This Guy Gideon," made any more sense that this scenario.

Johnny offers to drive Jess up they can spend the time catching up. Johnny tells Jess that he'll pick him up from the hotel after he's done at work.

We cut to Jess packing his gear in hotel room, 812, and here's another thing that may bug you. When Johnny gave Jess the musical clock it came in a transporting wooden case. So why not keep it in that since he knows that Johnny is driving him up to Redwood? 

But it doesn't matter because the lights go out and Rocky puts three slugs into Jess telling him here's a present from Nick as he does it. Jess falls to the floor knocking over a lamp.

When Johnny and the hotel bellboy find Jess he's barely alive. 

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Johnny asks him who did it to him and Jess gives him no name he just says it's written in the bible.

By the time the cops get there Jess is dead. When Detective Steckler asks Johnny what Jess said he tells then don't worry about it he'll take care of it. 

Strecker: You know, Johnny, when you play solitaire you can only beat yourself.

During the next week Johnny stays up, drinking his meals, going page by page through Jess's bible trying to get a clue to his murderer. 

Warni Hazard: My old man always said, "liquor doesn't drown your troubles - just teaches 'em to swim."

Warni finally gets him out of the office by telling him that he saw Nick Cherney bowling down at the alley. Johnny of course jumps to the conclusion that Nick had something to do with Jess's death. 

He goes to confront him at the alley and after knocking him around a bit finds out from Steckler who coincidently just happens to show up that Nick was still in prison when Jess got it. Nick playing on Johnny's guilt asks for a job. Nick tell him he'll think about it.

When Warni and Johnny are walking back down the street towards Johnnys apartment they pass a Gideon's Bible storefront. A lightbulb goes on in Johnny's head. It's not in Jess's  Bible it must be the Gideon Bible in the hotel room where he was killed, of course!

We cut to Johnny in the Carlton hotel knocking on the door of room 812. There's a man and a woman there. The Gideon Bible is gone. A hotel maid confirms that it went missing during the past week.

So Johnny tips the bell captain to find out the names and everything anyone can remember about the guests that stayed in that room. He gets a list of five names and the first name is Carla North who gives as her address the El Capitan Theatre on Vine Street in Hollywood. and listed as her employer Ken Murray's Blackouts.

Johnny hops the first plane to Los. Angeles. At the El Capitan Theatre Johnny speaks with Ken Murray about Carla north Murray tells him the act she was in  has finished it's engagement.

When Johnny asks about Carla;s address the stage door man tells him to check a flop house called the Hotel Sampson. To quote Murray "it's one of those places where they put you in a sleeping bag and hang you on a hook."

The real Ken Murray

Here's another point where you'd like to see "This Guy Gideon," to see if anything was censored in this sequence in the novel, we know that Hollywood censored all the juicy parts. 

So Johnny goes to the Sampson and there   the hotel clerk (Frawley) tells him Carla's in 210 but she's not in. 

Willian Frawley as the hotel clerk

Hotel Clerk: She's about as chummy as Leo Durocher with an umpire.

When the clerk is distracted Johnny gabs the spare key to 210 and goes up the stair. He lets himself in and starts searching her belongings. He finds a picture of his brother with some soldiers in her luggage.

Carla returns to her room and is surprised to find Johnny. Johnny questions Carla about the photo he found. She tells him its the last photo she has of her brother before he died. Of course Johnny answer's "Your brother?' It turns out her brother is one of the soldiers in the photo with Jess. 

Johnny offers her a job, not with the company but on personnel business. Carla doesn't think it's legit, thinks it's a job where Johnny expects extra benefits. Johnny tells her it's for real. They fly back to San Francisco on the first plane. 

Johnny sets Carla up in his apartment while he crashes at the office. He has her tracking down the whereabouts of the rest of the out of town hotel transients. 

One of the guests that Johnny tracks down from a tip from the bell captain turns out to be a bookie named Max who was overhead talking to an elevator man about a book. 

Johnny is at a news / candy /cigar stand that sits at the street entrance to a 2nd floor billiard parlor. He's talking to the man behind the counter. 

Johnny: I've been here three times looking for Max Appleby.

Max: For the third time I'm telling you he ain't here.

Johnny: Where is he? 

Max: In Florida getting a tan.

Max is thinking Johnny is some kind of "trouble" keeps stalling, it's worked until a guy passing the desk says "goodnight Max." lol. 

Johnny: Max aye?

Max: Eh blow will ya, I ain't answering no more dopey questions.

Johnny: Your Max Appleby!

Johnny reaches over the counter grabbing Max with both hands.

Max: Hey listen shyster I ain't talking

Johnny: Where's the bible you took from the Hotel Carlton two weeks ago?

Max: Where's the what I took when?

Johnny: Spill it when you left there you said you got the book back. 

Max: Oh no [shakes his head] you heard wrong. I said I had to get back to my book I left it here. [pulls out his betting book] This book, every bet I take is in here I loose this I'm out of business.

Johnny: Why did you take a room only for five minutes? 

Max: I wanted to hide out there, my ex wife Ethel is hounding me chasing me with process servers, Why do I have to tell you, ain't you her lawyer? 

Johnny: Look did you take or see a bible in that room?

Max: I didn't see nothin' or take nothin' like I said I had to get back to my book.

Johnny: OK forget it. [Johnny turns and leaves].

Into the scene now steps Nick who we spotted earlier coming down from the billiard parlor but stopped when he heard Johnny questioning Max.

Nick: What was the beef Max?

Max: Do I look like a bible thief?

Nick: What?

Max: That character thought I snatched a bible from the Carlton Hotel.

Nick: The Carlton. I wonder why he wants it?

Max: Who cares, long shot players in the back room taking the book apart, out here screwballs, maybe I should better go back to Ethel, nothing but trouble since.

Steckler and his partner Ryan visit Johnny and give him a report on what they know, the bullets Army issue a million of them, no fingerprints. They tell him maybe Jess walked in of a sneak thief or maybe a psycho. Big help. 

William 'Bill' Phillips as SFPD Ryan

The Next day Nick shows up at the office surprising Warni. Nick tells Warni that Johnny told him he would think over giving him a job at the company. They get interrupted. Over the intercom Johnny tells Warni to come into his office. 

It all goes Noirsville when, while Warni is gone, Nick switches on the intercom and eavesdrops on Johnny and Warni. 

Johnny: Warni, I guess I owe you an explanation. You're the only one that knows the when I found Jess he was still alive. When I asked Jess who shot him he said bible, written in the bible. 

Warni: The murderer's name?

Johnny: Yes. In a Gideon bible that was taken from room 812. 

Warni: Why are you going to Reno?

Johnny: I'm going to see a man named Water Stoner he's one of the few people who had room 812 after Jess died.

Warni: Why don't you let the cops handle it?

Johnny:  I'll handle it my way.

When Warni comes back out of Johnny's office, he finds the intercom on, a shouldering tar bar on the edge of the ash tray and Nick gone, already on his way to Reno hoping to get there first. 

Noirsville

With this one the ending is sort of telegraphed way ahead of time if you can read the obvious "neon" code, but it has enough twists, turns, and dopey coincidences that keep you asking what's next, and once we cross the tracks into Noirsville it stays there and doesn't disappoint with beautifully filmed Noir Stylistic Sequences to keep you highly entertained to the end. 

Raft does a better job that in most of his other Noir. Mayo is wasted, but Burr and Morgan are a hoot to watch in action.

The Red Light in the films title refers partly to the large Torno Trucking sign that figures in the final denouement. Forget what you see and read on the poster above Mayo provides no cheesecake of any sort and she really doesn't take anything either a bit of false advertising. 7-8 /10.