Thu 16 Jul 2009
TOO LATE FOR TEARS. United Artists, 1949, aka Killer Bait. Lizabeth Scott, Dan Duryea, Arthur Kennedy, Don De Fore, Kristine Miller. Screenwriter: Roy Huggins, based on his book of the same title. Director: Byron Haskin.
Lizabeth Scott fans, and I know there are many of you, will be happy to know that she pulls out all the stops in Too Late for Tears, as if you probably didn’t already know. I apologize for the cliche in the opening sentence, but it is true.
As Jane Palmer, she and her husband (Arthur Kennedy) are driving down one those hills surrounding Los Angeles one evening when someone in a car speeding by in the opposite direction tosses a bag into the back seat of their convertible.
Stunned, the pair manage to shake the car that begins to follow them immediately . Obviously the bag was intended for someone else; the Palmers have somehow been caught in the middle of something they know nothing about.
One close-up scene will tell you all you want to know about what the rest of the movie has in store. One look at Jane Palmer’s face when she sees the contents of the bag tells the story, all of it. The bag is full of money, stacks and stacks of it. Alan Palmer doesn’t stand a chance. It’s keep the money or lose his wife.
Not being a strong believer in telling a prospective viewer too much, I won’t, but it’s hard to resist. I’ll do my best not to reveal too much, but to tell you the truth, I can’t think of a noir movie as complicated as this one is.
Dan Duryea. The money — a payoff of some kind? — that was meant for someone, that someone couldn’t be played better than by Dan Duryea. Can even he resist being caught up in Mrs. Palmer’s plans?
Don DeFore. He claims to be Alan Palmer’s wartime buddy, Don Blake, but he’s turned up at a strange time. Although friendly enough, even to the point of being somewhat of a sap, he asks too many questions and doesn’t seem to be completely on the up-and-up
Kristine Miller. Alan Palmer’s sister, Kathy, who finds herself falling for Don Blake, while frantically suspecting Jane Palmer of anything and everything.
And of course don’t forget Lizabeth Scott as Jane Palmer. She can go from scowling grimness to a smiling luring vamp full of charm in a fraction of an instant. If she sees an opening, she’ll take it in a second.
If ever a woman could devour a man who stands in her way in less time than it takes to flicker an eyelash, it is she.
If you’re a fan of film noir, or even if you aren’t but you’re still reading this — if you haven’t seen this movie, by all means, do something about it, and soon.
I think anyone who’s already seen this movie will tell you exactly the same thing, and for exactly the same reasons. Good direction, a great story, and five well-drawn performances. You can’t go wrong.
Danny Fuller to Jane Palmer: Don’t ever change, Tiger. I don’t think I’d like you with a heart.
July 16th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
I second the motion, and read the Huggins book too, even if it doesn’t have Liz Scott in it.
Hope there are better copies of this available than the one I’ve seen though.
July 17th, 2009 at 5:58 am
The thing I always liked about Dan Duryea was that he was completely unlikeable. like Laurence Harvey, he rarely made a serious claim for audience sympathy, and I always found this engaging.
July 17th, 2009 at 7:28 am
I really enjoyed this little noir film. Any movie that Dan Duryea is in -is worth your time. He never got the star recognition that he deserved, mainly because Hollywood constantly gave him the scoundrel role.
As for Liz Scott, she reeked sexuality on the screen. And she is still with us today,at the age of 86.
July 17th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Jake
As Dan says, Dan Duryea got the parts he did because he did them so well. He had such a sneering, taunting way of appearing on screen it was almost impossible for him to play more than villains in noir films. When those roles dried up, he did go on to star in a lot of westerns in the 1950s.
He did meet his match in Lizabeth Scott in TOO LATE FOR TEARS though. Talk about being sexy, tough and hard-boiled, all at the same time. She had it in this movie to spare.
— Steve
July 17th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Even on the rare occasions when Duryea played a good guy (“China Smith” in The World for Ransom or Al Jennings of Oklahoma) he was an odd one. I think I liked him best in his outings for Fritz Lang and as the irredeemably bad men in Winchester 73 and Night Passage.
July 17th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
I watched this movie after reading the Roy Huggins novel about a year ago. Both were very impressive. The unusual thing about this film is that Lizabeth Scott is the main character instead of playing the usual female supporting role in a film noir.
She is scary as hell and evil enough to make you worry about the female sex.
July 17th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Walker
That Lizabeth Scott is the main character didn’t dawn on me before. I don’t know why, but I never even thought about it.
And looking at the posters and DVD cover I included with my comments on the movie, I see that she gets the the top billing on all of them.
How unique do you think this is? Do any Bette Davis or Joan Crawford films not qualify, for example?
— Steve
July 17th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Lizabeth Scott is excellent in this film, as is Dan Duryea. Duryea was a marvelous rat in film noir and westerns, but he could play a sympathetic loser character well too. This character in Too Late for Tears is a mixture. Arthur Sullivan is good too, though it’s a less important part.
What knocks this down a notch for me is Don DeFore, the guy from the TV series Hazel. He simply lacks the depth for this sort of film and his confrontation at the end is hard to believe. The ending seemed trite, Lizabeth deserved something more.
But it’s a solid noir that would be worth restoration.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
David also mentioned the inferior copy of TOO LATE FOR TEARS that’s been in circulation for far too long. The one I watched had small jumps and other glitches, so that every so often the sound track was out of sync with the visual. Normally I find this very annoying, but this is one time I bore with it.
I called Don DeFore’s role kind of a sappy one, but all in all I think the movie needed a somewhat lighter character in it — not to the point of being humorous, but someone not quite as dark as Duryea and Scott. But you might be right, Curt, maybe they could have found someone with just a little more pizzazz.
The ending trite? Another maybe. It was obvious what was coming, true enough.
As for Arthur Kennedy, working my way backward through your comments, he was in RED MOUNTAIN with Lizabeth Scott also, a western film. I reviewed it here on the blog not too long ago. I wonder how many other films the two of them were in together, and (SMALL SPOILER) if so, whether his character survived any of the other ones?
July 17th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
What I mean by trite is
SPOILER
forced as in “crime does not pay.” Maybe perfunctory is a better word. I can’t believe Lizabeth, who has been so ruthlessly evil the whole film, would have folded so easily like that, and to the guy from Hazel of all people! Her climactic scene with Duryea was great stuff though. And I dug the alibi!
July 18th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Though I agree with everyone about Don DeFore keep in mind when this was made he was not the ‘guy from Hazel” or even primarily a comic actor. In fact I mostly remember him as “normal guy” in war movies and even westerns, and I suspect that the casting director chose him for that ‘normal guy’ quality shown in films like Without Reservations (admittedly a comedy) and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.
Re the leading ladies of noir Davis, Crawford, Stanwyck, and Susan Hayward all had lead status in noir films even though the genre tended toward masculine leads. Hedy Lamar and Jane Wyman also had noir leads as did Joan Fontaine, Olivia de Haviland, and Loretta Young.
And I would agree that Scott is the main character in the film, and certainly she is top billed.
To see Duryea is a rare good guy character role check him out in Flight of the Phoenix where he is so out of character you tend to forget it is Dan Duryea. He’s also great as the lead in the noir Underworld Story as a reporter exiled to a small town newspaper who uncovers a rat’s nest of corruption.