Wed 28 Apr 2010
NORA PRENTISS. Warner Brothers, 1947. Ann Sheridan, Kent Smith, Bruce Bennett, Robert Alda, Rosemary DeCamp, John Ridgely. Director: Vincent Sherman.
As you can see from the photo to the right, this previously hard-to-find film noir drama has recently been released on DVD as part of the Warner Brothers Archive Collection. Every fan of old movies should be buying these.
Even though they’re essentially print on demand items, the quality is good, and every one that’s purchased will convince the Powers That Be that there’s a small but steady market for them – I wouldn’t count on more – but continued income for Warners will convince Universal and MGM to step up their own programs of releasing old movies in their vaults on DVD.
And sometimes they go on sale, as this one was, and very well may still be, if you’re reading this early enough. It’s also one of the good ones, which you probably knew already before I came along to tell you about it.
I don’t imagine that Ann Sheridan ever made a really bad movie, and if she did, I don’t want to know about it.
She’s the title character in this one, of course, a singer and night club entertainer who has a small traffic accident one evening, and the good Samaritan who comes to her rescue happens to be a doctor (Kent Smith) with a partner and a thriving practice who’s also a happily married man with two teen-aged children.
Well, maybe not so happily married. Doctor Talbot’s a mild-mannered creature of punctuality and habit, and his love life at home has gradually disappeared to less than nothing.
Some mild, good-natured flirting by Nora Prentiss during her first office visit does more than remind him of that, it shakes him up and down and back again.
She finds his reaction amusing at first, but more and more she finds herself taking his intentions seriously. We (the viewer) do not get to see the details of the burgeoning romance, but we certainly know what’s going on.
And if it were not for the prologue, in which we see a man in a jail cell, accused of Dr. Talbott’s murder, we would not know we are in a film noir movie at all, but since we do, we have a different perspective throughout the movie than even the characters themselves do, and into more and more difficulty do they certainly get — in true noir fashion all the way.
Ann Sheridan, she of the lovely face and body and low contralto voice, is obviously the star, but even though she is the “other woman” in this film, it is nearly innocently so. It is Kent Smith who undergoes the drastic twists of fate which this movie provides, in abundance, and on whose shoulders rests the burden of making the viewer feel as though it could actually happen.
I think he succeeds, but Kent Smith, a long-time but strictly second-tier movie and TV star and one you perhaps never heard of, lacks the charisma or sex appeal, to put it bluntly, to pull it off his role in this movie completely.
One wonders, at times, what a real life Nora Prentiss would see in an equally real life Dr. Talbot, best described as I said above as mild-mannered. Distinguished and accomplished, yes, but still rather weak and ineffectual.
Given that small quibble, plus a much more outrageous trial that takes place after the prologue is caught up to, in terms of chronological events, this is nonetheless a noir film that is very much worth watching.
If you have not seen it, and if you’ve read this far in the review, I very strongly recommend that you do.
April 28th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
If nothing else I’d watch the movie just because of that poster. Reminds us that Ann was also the model for Tex Avery’s Red Hot Riding Hood in the MGM cartoons — who in turn was the model for Jessica Rabbit. Oomph was clearly an accurate description of her.
Kent Smith was invariably reliable and dull in films with likely his best roles the hero in CAT PEOPLE and CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE and Howard Roark’s spineless friend in THE FOUNTAINHEAD.
Don’t worry, I can’t think of a bad Sheridan movie either — she was in a simply awful television series — PISTOLS AND PETTICOATS, but that was more than a decade later.
Still, do you think the rarity of this one could be because the most charismatic actor in it is former Tarzan and serial star Bruce Bennett? He was a reliable actor good in everything from TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE to MILDRED PIERCE.
For a former Burlesque comic Robert Alda never really held the screen very well though he did a couple of good films — notably THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS, CINDERELLA JONES (based on a Philip Wylie book), CLOAK AND DAGGER with Gary Cooper for Fritz Lang, and his portrayal of composer George Gershwin in RHAPSODY IN BLUE.
April 29th, 2010 at 12:16 am
I believe that PISTOLS AND PETTICOATS, the TV show you mention, was filmed when she was ill with cancer. She died before the season was over. I’d like to see at least an episode or two; I believe several are available to collectors.
Some who’ve left comments on IMDB remember it quite fondly, but others, like you, David, see it rather differently. I gather it was a show akin to PETTICOAT JUNCTION and GREEN ACRES in many regards. (I don’t mind being corrected if I’m wrong.)
Bruce Bennett, by the way, played Dr. Talbot’s physician partner in NORA PRENTISS. In some irony, Bennett, not married, is chastised by Talbot at the beginning of the movie for his wild nights, the latter not knowing what lay in store for him.
As for Robert Alda, he’s Nora’s nightclub owner boss, who’s been not so secretly in love with her for years. In the best of all possible worlds, the two of them are totally right for each other, and fate should have taken better care of them.
April 29th, 2010 at 12:43 am
Actually I’m being kind to PISTOLS AND PETTICOATS. The plot, such as it was, had a family of pistol packing females: Grandma Ruth McDevitt, Mom Ann, and daughter (can’t recall her name), and Grandpa Douglas Fowley who move into a small town and help the hapless lawman keep the peace with their gunwielding skills and family that shoots together stays together values.
That Ann’s health was failing is pretty obvious. And while it may have been meant to be in the mode of GREEN ACRES or PETTICOAT JUNCTION, they were PLAYHOUSE 90 in comparison. SHE’S THE SHERIFF was Shakespeare in comparison.
I’ve seen about three episodes including the pilot on one of those 50 old western series for $20 DVD sets and they confirm why this was a legendary stinker. It doesn’t even qualify as so bad it’s good.
I’ll confess I assumed it couldn’t be as bad as it was painted either. I was wrong.
None of this should detract from Sheridan’s fine career. Jean Arthur was a favorite of mine too, but her shot at television was also legendarily bad, and she didn’t make many bad films either.
I suppose there are some out there who can enjoy PISTOLS on the ironic basis of just how bad it is, and with that cast it is hard to believe just how truly inept this material is — even by the standards of really bad television. You’d be better off watching the TAMMY GRIMES SHOW.
Watching PISTOLS AND PETTICOATS I was reminded of a quip of Audie Murphy’s when someone from his series WHISPERING SMITH committed suicide: “He must have seen the rushes.”
April 29th, 2010 at 5:19 am
I’d like to also recommend Warner Archives for the old films that they are making available. Their website is http://www.wbshop.com and they often have sales and free shipping. I recently bought over 20 westerns on sale for only $11.00 each. They even have some series boxsets like the Torchy Blaine movies.
April 29th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
The Film Noir Foundation magazine the Noir City Sentinel has a regular feature called “Noir … or Not?” For what it’s worth, I pose that question about NORA PRENTISS in the latest issue. The verdict: close enough. Director Vincent Sherman was right when he called this film a melodrama, and confessed that he damaged the material irreparably when he retooled what was obviously the doctor’s story into a comeback vehicle for Ann Sheridan. She is marvelous in the movie, though.
April 29th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
If you’d have asked me, Vince, whether NORA PRENTISS is noir or not, I’d have said there’s no question about it, as melodramatic as I’d have to say it is.
Vincent Sherman’s comments about retooling it, though, do help answer some things that were bothering me about the structure of the film. Did he say anything more than this about putting the story together?
Steve
PS. I keep forgetting to sign up for the Sentinel. Looks like I really have to now.
April 30th, 2010 at 2:35 am
Sherman’s memoir STUDIO AFFAIRS: MY LIFE AS A FILM DIRECTOR is one of the best books on Hollywood I’ve ever read. Certainly the most honest. Sherman explains that once he agreed to rework the original NORA PRENTISS story for Sheridan at Jack Warner’s request, he and screenwriter Richard Nash tried “to make the doctor and Nora real people, not merely stock characters.” He then admits that they succeeded too well. “As we humanized the people, gave them some depth, the plot became less important. Unfortunately, we were stuck with it … the first two-thirds of the picture became a moving human drama, while the last third seemed, by comparison, phony.” I have to agree with him.
April 30th, 2010 at 5:33 am
Speaking of the Film Noir Foundation, I have two excellent books collecting the best of the Noir City Sentinel. Annual #1 is 150 pages and Annual #2 is over 200 pages. You can order at filmnoirfoundation.org. Click on the store link. Each book is $20 plus postage and are full of great noirish articles.
It’s taken me 40 years of watching old films to arrive at this conclusion, but I now can safely say my favorite type of movie is film noir.
April 30th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Made ten years earlier this would have just been another Hollywood melodrama, but I think by the time it was made there are just enough elements to qualify as noir, if only noir by default.
Walker
Though I sometimes have to stray from noir for a while before I can come back to it and fully appreciate it I think I have to agree it is my favorite type of film. Luckily there is quite a bit of variation in noir films with everything from near comedy to soap opera falling under the broad umbrella of noir style.
May 2nd, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Walker
“…but I now can safely say my favorite type of movie is film noir.”
David
“I think I have to agree it is my favorite type of film.”
Here’s my response: So say we all!
— Steve