Tue 4 May 2010
A Movie Review by David L. Vineyard: THE BRIBE (1949).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Pulp Fiction , Reviews[12] Comments
THE BRIBE. MGM, 1949. Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price, John Hodiak, John Hoyt, Samuel S. Hinds. Screenplay by Marguerite Roberts, based on a story by Frederick Nebel (Cosmopolitan, September 1947). Director: Robert Z. Leonard.
This slick, well done film noir with a top notch cast may not be one of the greats of the genre, but it is an intelligent and handsomely done film with a top notch cast in attractive locations, plus a wonderfully sleazy portrayal by Charles Laughton as an opportunistic coward who almost lifts the movie far above itself.
Robert Taylor is Rigby (“I never knew a crooked road could look so straight.”), a tough emotionally remote and cold hearted Federal agent sent to Central America to track down surplus WW II airplane parts that have gone missing (*) and are showing up places the government would rather they didn’t.
Rigby’s only clue is the suspect Tugwell ‘Tug’ Hintten (John Hodiak) and his night club chanteuse wife Elizabeth (Ava Gardner), so he moves in on the couple and especially Gardner hoping to get close enough to find Hintten’s contacts.
But Rigby’s carefully polished armor begins to tarnish and show cracks under the powerful appeal of Elizabeth and the sensual tropical atmosphere.
He discovers that there is more than one kind of bribe when he realizes that Hintten and the man behind him are using Elizabeth and the promise she offers to distract him and get him to turn his gaze away from their activities.
Laughton is an expatriate, J. J. Beale, who attaches himself to Rigby like a leech, both gathering and selling information. It’s a superb little performance that stands out in this dark sweaty melodrama.
Vincent Price is Cardwell, a tourist who may be more involved than he seems. Not a great performance, but at the time Price specialized in these roles and did them with rare skill, and over the years Price played enough variations that you couldn’t always count on how his character would turn out, even when you were certain you knew going in.
As Rigby grows more attracted to Elizabeth he is caught between his mission, her distrust of him. and the still open question of whether she is a victim or part of the plot. How loyal is she to Tug, her husband, and how far will she go to protect him even if she no longer loves him?
Elizabeth: I’m not?
Rigby: OK, so you are, but you’d be surprised how nice the birds and the beasts can be if you’ll only give them a chance.
Elizabeth: Tell me, Rigby, do you fly, walk on all fours…or crawl?
As Rigby gets closer to Elizabeth, and to betraying his mission for her, circumstances grow more desperate, and Tug begins to unravel under the pressure of his crimes and his dissolving marriage becoming a danger to his partners.
The finale is a fine set piece set during Carnival, with a suspenseful and well staged shootout among the surging celebrating crowds in elaborate costumes. (Ironically it may remind you of a similar scene in Hodiak’s film Two Smart People set at Mardi Gras.)
The Bribe is based on one of the few crime stories written by Black Mask alumnus Fred Nebel for the slicks, where he labored with notable success after the pulps died out as a regular along with Doc Savage creator Lester Dent.
(At the time the ‘slicks,’ as magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and Colliers were called, actually paid better than selling a novel. Many writers works are largely lost to us since the major part of their output appeared in novella or novelette form in these now forgotten magazines, too long to be collected in most anthologies and too short to be published as a novel. As a result many highly successful writers are all but forgotten today because of the format and the market their work appeared in.)
I admit I probably like this slick little noir film much better than it deserves. It is only superficial noir, lacking the raw qualities of many of the classics, but the leads are handsome and capable, the script taut and intelligent (though in some ways it is closer to silent melodrama than modern noir), and whenever Charles Laughton’s J.J. Beale is on screen, the film threatens to become something more than a good noirish thriller.
The Bribe isn’t a noir classic by any means, but it is a capable A-film of its era and with that Laughton performance well worth catching.
Note: Of course Fred Nebel is the legendary author of Sleepers East and the adventures of newsman Kennedy and his cop pal Captain Steve McBride. (For the movies Kennedy became a woman, Torchy Blaine, played by Glenda Farrell, Jane Wyman, and Lola Lane, with Barton MacLane and Paul Kelly among the Steve McBride’s.)
He also penned the adventures of ruthless private eye tough Dick Donahue and the long running Cardigan series. Though many of his stories have been anthologized, his two novels have long been out of print, and his short fiction has been sadly neglected.
There is one collection of the Donahue stories (Six Deadly Dames), one of the Cardigan stories (The Adventures of Cardigan), a few pulp story reprints, and sadly no collection of the Kennedy and McBride stories from Black Mask. Luckily his work appears in most noir anthologies and in The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulp Fiction an entire Kennedy and McBride serial from Black Mask is reprinted.
* For some reason this film always reminds me of Charles Leonard’s (M. V. Heberden aka Mary Heberden) Paul Kilgerrin books about a tough ruthless insurance investigator who appeared in Treachery in Trieste, Sinister Squadron, Secret of the Spa, and others.
Editorial Comment: The Bribe is scheduled to be shown next on TCM this coming Wednesday, May 5th, at 4 pm. It is also available from the Warner Archives site.
May 4th, 2010 at 5:20 am
I saw this a couple years ago and liked it. I’ve heard that scenes were used in the Steve Martin movie DEAD MEN DON’T WEAR PLAID. I agree about Charles Laughton, who was a great actor. I definitely will watch it again on TCM May 5th at 4 pm.
May 4th, 2010 at 6:24 am
Lavish in the MGM style, which doesn’t always suit noir, this had the advantage of a great supporting cast and some marvellous photography, but I still found it not quite top-notch noir.
May 4th, 2010 at 8:29 am
Will add to my Netflix queue. Thanks for the review.
May 4th, 2010 at 11:00 am
Dan
I agree, this is better melodrama than noir, in fact only superficially noir, but at the same time it strikes a nice balance between the slick COSMOPOLITAN style of the original story and Nebel’s early BLACK MASK days. It’s a reminder of how common the hard boiled and noir styles had become by the time this was made. Here this is almost unconsciously noir.
But as Dan and I both say it isn’t true noir, just a slick handsome variation on the theme.
Taylor gave some good noir performances in ROGUE COP and THE HIGH WALL, and of course Gardner, Price, Laughton, and Hodiak all have their noir roots.
Don’t look for this to be classic noir, just a smart entertaining drama with noir touches, and I think you will enjoy it for what it is, an attractive crime drama with an outstanding cast and some noirish touches. Laughton in particular lifts it above itself, and Gardner and Taylor are attractive leads.
May 4th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
I believe you underestimated how many stories that Nebel wrote for the slicks, David, when you said that “The Bribe” was one of the few that he did for them.
Googling around for more information about him this morning, I found a huge long bibliography on Kevin Burton Smith’s Thrilling Detective website:
https://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/nebel.html
He started out writing for North West Stories in 1925 (a pulp) and by 1926 had started writing for Black Mask, where he had a long list of credits. His first Dime Detective story came in 1931, but I was surprised to find that he first cracked the slicks with “The Wheel” in the 9 April 1932 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
I may be wrong on some of these “firsts.” There are a lot of stories, and your eyes will start to glaze over just by continuing to scroll down.
Most of his stories appeared in either Black Mask or Dime Detective until 1937 or so, which is when he seems to have made the switch almost completely to the slick paper magazines: Colliers, the Post, Liberty, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and so on.
These stories continued in abundance until 1955 or so; from 1956 to 1962 most of his work appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. (I should remember the latter, but I don’t.)
Not all of his stories were crime fiction, I’m sure, but most of his work for the pulps were. If ever there was a pulp writer as prolific as Nebel was but who’s all but forgotten now, I can’t think of who it might be.
If any of the people who are doing reprints of stories from the pulp magazines ask me who I think they should be putting out collections of, Frederick Nebel is going to be among those I’m going to suggest first.
— Steve
May 4th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Steve
I know Nebel wrote a good deal for the slicks — he and Lester Dent both did quite a bit at the POST, but my understanding was he only wrote a few crime stories for the slicks and indeed virtually abandoned that genre until his late return to EQMM.
My understanding is that like Dent many of his slick stories were frontier tales — not so much westerns, but pioneers moving west and building the farm kind of thing. I know most of Dent’s POST stories were of this kind. I’ve been told “The Bribe” is one of only two crime stories written for the slicks, but can’t verify that.
It should be pointed out that at a time when a hardcover could go for as little as $500 (usually more, but some were in that range) a story or novella in the slicks paid in the $1500 range and often a serialization of a novel could pay from $3000 to $5000 in the forties and early fifties.
If you have ever wondered why John P. Marquand spent so much time on Mr. Moto or Erle Stanley Gardner was so loyal with Perry Mason in the POST that’s why. And they likely did better than that $5000 range for their serials. Quite a few pulp writers found homes in the slicks including Philip Wylie, Paul Gallico, Gardner, Dent, Nebel, Robert Heinlien, Ray Bradbury, Rex Stout, and others, while some writers like Mignon G. Eberhart, Kelly Roos, the Lockridges, and others did most of their work as novellas in the slicks then expanded them to novels in slightly different forms. Most of Roy Huggins Stuart Bailey private eye stories first appeared in the slicks.
I don’t know if “The Bribe” has ever been anthologized, but I’d love to read it.
And while I would love to see more of the Cardigan stories, a really nice anthology of the Kennedy and McBride stories is well past due. A couple of the Torchy Blaine movies are loosely based on them though I think the first is the only one directly attributed to a Nebel story. Almost everyone counts the stories as one of the high points of BLACK MASK, but I guess because its about a reporter and a cop instead of an eye they tend to get pushed aside.
For that matter both his novels should be back in print — certainly SLEEPER’S EAST, and the first film of that from 1932 with Preston Foster on DVD since copies do exist of it (the film of Paul Cain’s FAST ONE, GAMBLING SHIP with Cary Grant should be available too since I know it was shown at conventions in the eighties and nineties). The remake of SLEEPER’S EAST, SLEEPER’S WEST is available in Fox’s set of MICHAEL SHAYNE films with Lloyd Nolan.
Considering how much fiction from the slicks was adapted into films and how popular it was, it’s a shame so much of it is forgotten if not lost. It may lack some of the energy of the pulps but it is by no means deserving of being forgotten.
I collect American illustrators of this period, especially the forties into the early sixties and you look at their work and think to yourself that you would love to read the story that goes along with that painting or illustration. Granted they aren’t as much fun as the pulps, but they don’t deserve to be forgotten either.
May 4th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
David
I stand corrected. You did say “The Bribe” was one of the few CRIME stories Nebel did for the slicks, with the emphasis on the word “crime.”
It’s impossible to tell from the titles what kind of stories they were that he wrote that appeared in the slicks; perhaps frontier stories, as you say, or even light romantic stuff.
Jon Breen put together an anthology of some of the detective and mystery novellas that appeared in THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE, but he certainly didn’t exhaust the supply, since they did one every month.
I’ve always been tempted to put together runs of the POST, COLLIERS and AMERICAN MAGAZINE, not only for the stories but as much for the illustrations. But they’re heavy and quite massive in bulk when you have a stack of them on a shelf.
My grandparents bought all of the above regularly when I was a kid, late 1940s, and I used to go over and enjoy everything in them that a kid could enjoy.
— Steve
May 4th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Was this movie (getting back to the film) the closest that MGM got to making a true noir film? Dan mentioned the lavish MGM style, which got me thinking about this question.
Most films considered “noir” today were filmed on small budgets, which certainly accounts for the stark black and white settings and the well-done photography accomplished with limited funds, if not the story lines themselves.
May 4th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
MGM did some near noir films, certainly UNDERCURRENT and THE CONSPIRATOR have noirish elements even if they are primarily melodrama. THE HIGH WALL with Taylor and Audrey Totter is certainly noir — he’s a war hero in a sanitarium and believed to have killed his wife but doctor Totter begins to suspect he’s innocent and kindly Herbert Marshall did it, and the Anthony Mann westerns AMBUSH and THE DEVILS DOORWAY are by noir staple Anthony Mann.
ROGUE COP based on the William McGivern novel is about as noirish as it gets.
And by any standards:
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
LADY IN THE LAKE
FORCE OF EVIL
ACT OF VIOLENCE
BORDER INCIDENT (Mann)
CAUGHT
SCENE OF THE CRIME
SIDE STREET (Mann)
THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (Huston)
A LADY WITHOUT PASSPORT
TENSION
CAUSE FOR ALARM
THE PEOPLE AGAINST O’HARA
THE STRIP
THE UNKNOWN MAN
Plus some would include;
BEAST OF THE CITY
and JOHNNY EAGER
May 4th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
A good long list, David, thanks! There are more here than I’d come up with, that’s for sure.
May 4th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Steve
Luckily almost all of these show up on TCM fairly regularly. Robert Taylor, who wanted to rid himself of his pretty boy image after the war, enjoyed these tougher roles in particular.
UNDERCURRENT is notorious for how much Katherine Hepburn hated being in it — however Robert Mitchum denied she was ever hateful to him and said they had a good time together despite the bad film. I don’t think she cared much for Robert Taylor though.
THE CONSPIRATOR is a Cold War spy drama with Robert and Elizabeth Taylor and a screenplay by Bulldog Drummond writer Gerard Fairlie, and based on a novel by Humphrey Slater. Mostly romantic twaddle about a young woman who discovers her handsome British officer husband is really a Commie spy.
Most of these are fairly well known, and many reviewed here, but the sleeper is THE HIGH WALL directed by Curtis Bernhardt. Taylor gives a fine performance as the war hero who may or may not be an insane killer, and Herbert Marshall turns in a nice piece of villainy with Totter very good as the psychiatrist who starts to suspect Taylor may not be as mad as he’s painted.
ROGUE COP is a damn fine noir cop film with crooked cop Taylor caught between brother Steve Forrest and gangster George Raft. Janet Leigh and Anne Francis are in it and Robert Ellenstein has a good role as a Jewish cop who turns out to be the only man on the force who will back Taylor when things get dicey.
May 6th, 2010 at 5:28 am
Despite having seen this movie a couple years ago, I watched it again on TCM yesterday and I’m happy to report I enjoyed it even more the second time around. Crime and film noir movies often have that extra level of meaning that makes it possible to watch the same film several times without overdoing it. Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Vincent Price all gave good performances but the prize goes to Charles Laughton as the pie faced man(or was it the pie shaped man). Nice use of light and shadows and I have no problem including this as film noir.