Fri 27 Apr 2018
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: THIS SIDE OF THE LAW (1950).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[11] Comments
THIS SIDE OF THE LAW Warners, 1950. Viveca Lindfors, Kent Smith, Janis Paige, Robert Douglas and John Alvin. Written by Richard Sale and Russell S. Hughes. Directed by Richard L. Bare.
Another bonus disc thrown in by a generous dealer, a film I didn’t know I had, and one I never heard of before. Turned out to be a Warners B movie made in 1948 but not released till 1950.
Top-billed Viveca Lindfors actually has little to do here except look pretty and puzzled while Kent Smith carries the bulk of the plot as a down & out drifter hired to impersonate a lookalike millionaire who has been missing for almost seven years and about to be declared legally dead.
Smith is recruited by the dead man’s lawyer (played by that perennial movie schemer Robert Douglas) for reasons of his own. And I think I’ve mentioned before that in the movies when you assume someone else’s identity, it’s always a flying leap from the frying pan. In this case, it turns out that the ancestral manse is a hotbed of domestic intrigue, including the fetching Ms. Lindfors as his bewildered and broken-hearted wife, John Alvin as a resentful weakling brother, and Janis Paige as his sister-in-law, a femme fatale in the Audrey Totter /Ann Savage mode.
One of these characters may have murdered the missing man, and it turns out the lawyer wants Smith to find out which one – or does he?
It’s all handled efficiently, but by 1948 they were making some films noirs by rote, and this is a good example. It’s told in flashback, with lots of shadows and shady characters, but they all seem a bit perfunctory, without the resonance that typifies contemporaries like The Big Clock and Cry of the City.
Richard Sale, the author of the piece, wrote the brilliant metaphysical novel Not Too Narrow, Not Too Deep, which became the movie Strange Cargo. He also wrote a whole lot of sub-standard pulp fiction and forgettable screenplays, which always puzzled me. I mean, I can almost understand someone like Harper Lee or J.D. Salinger writing a remarkable book and then leaving it alone, but how anyone can turn out a single great book smack in the middle of a career devoted to mediocrity mystifies my mind—much more than this movie did.
Similarly, director Richard Bare was a low-level fixture at Warners, doing shorts and occasional B features. When Warners went into Television in the 50s, Bare went along, lending his trademark anonymity to just about every Western and PI show Warners produced in those days. And so much for him.
Janis Paige got tired of nothing parts in Hollywood, and went to Broadway where she became a big star, then returned to the movies for an occasional character part, like the Hollywood Star making a musical version of “War and Peace” in Silk Stockings, where she gets a great number with Fred Astaire.
As for This Side of the Law, it’s painless & watchable, done with the Warners polish of the 1940s, and while I won’t go so far as to recommend it, I will admit it made for a pleasant evening.
Well anyway, you could do worse.
April 28th, 2018 at 3:54 am
Though they were certainly not the allegorical NOT TOO NARROW NOT TOO DEEP Sale’s novels include some genre classics like LAZARUS #7 and BENEFIT PERFORMANCE as well as later bestsellers like FOR THE PRESIDENT”S EYES ONLY and WHITE BUFFALO, both great reads and the latter a good Gothic Western film with Charles Bronson as Bill Hickock .
Sale not only wrote screenplays he directed some highly entertaining films including ABANDON SHIP, A TICKET TO TOMAHAWK, GENTLEMEN MARRY BRUNETTES, and FIRE OVER AFRICA and created and produced YANCY DERRINGER for television. He also wrote SUDDENLY, based on his own short story, one of the key noir films. Actually even THE OSCAR is a good book, just made into a God awful mess of a film.
His wife Mary Loos often worked with him and wrote a few bestsellers herself, no shock as she was the daughter of Anita Loos, of GENTLEMAN PREFER BLONDES fame.
Sale’s pulp material is indeed varied from the mysterious melodramatic Cobra to the classic Daffy Dill series all the way to the spicy line, not unlike a good many pulp writers who wrote at different levels for different markets. He may have only had one semi great book in him, but his career was long, varied, and successful as writer, screenwriter, director, and producer.
He has always reminded me a bit of Steve Fisher, whose work is all over the place too in terms of quality. Professional in those days sometimes meant you just took the money and went home, especially in the pulps.
Knowing how low the role of screenwriter is in most productions, and looking at the cast here, I suspect this was a take the money and run production.
April 28th, 2018 at 4:43 am
The film’s plot – “down & out drifter hired to impersonate a lookalike” in a family where one of them “may have murdered the missing man” – is very like Josephine Tey’s novel BRAT FARRAR, published in 1949 and adapted for US TV. That might have inspired the film’s being taken off the shelf.
April 28th, 2018 at 10:15 am
Never heard f this film but Lindfors and Douglas were paired in THE ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN circa 1948 opposite Errol Flynn.
April 28th, 2018 at 10:45 am
David, I agree with you on all points and especially pointing out Abandon Ship, which was not successful, but was compelling throughout, and should have been. However, Mary Loos Sale, was not Anita’s daughter, but her niece. and quite attractive, for a writer, not entirely unheard of as Frances Marion was as well, but fairly unusual.
April 28th, 2018 at 1:48 pm
David, I have read a lot of other Sale, including the ones you mentioned, and found them readable but routine. Much like this film. On the other hand, NOT TOO NARROW… is a book I have come back to for re-reading more than once.
April 28th, 2018 at 4:41 pm
Dan,
I’m not disputing your taste, just pointing out a different view of Sale’s career and work. Horse races and all that.
I would argue his Daffy Dill stories are among the best screwball tales of the period, on a par with Davis Max Latin at least, and no less a critic than James Sandoe praised LAZARUS # 7, which comes very close to a tour de force, and I found both FOR THE PRESIDENT’S EYES ONLY and WHITE BUFFALO far above routine.
All eye of the beholder territory.
Barry,
Thanks for the correction.
ABANDON SHIP is an interesting film that in someways is a parallel to NOT TOO NARROW … in terms of setting and even story though based on an actual incident. I think audiences at the time both had problems with Power in that role and the films open ended conclusion leaving it up to the viewer whether his actions were called for or not.
If nothing else the film has a fine part for Lloyd Nolan who shows his usual skills.
Most of Sale’s films are fairly routine, entertaining, but not great though TICKET … is underrated and more than just an early appearance for MM, and FIRE OVER AFRICA unusual in that it features both a tough female lead (Maureen O’Hara) and female villain (Brenda de Banzie), neither of which lets down the side, and BRUNETTES is a creditable sequel to the Hawks film, though no classic.
But Sale really shined in SUDDENLY where his taut script gave Sinatra a chance to shine in a scene stealing role. It still holds up well today both in terms of suspense and characterization, and the opening and closing sequences add a nice irony.
April 29th, 2018 at 12:14 pm
Today, I would rise in defense of Richard L. Bare, whose lengthy career in all visual media was anything but anonymous.
Let’s start with those shorts – which consist in the main of the Joe McDoakes – Behind The Eight-Ball series, now generally considered to be among the best of their kind.
It was in the Warner B-westerns that Bare discovered James Garner – who says as much in his own memoir (and in his introduction to Bare’s book about film direction).
From those Bs, Bare went on to help invent and establish Warner’s TV style (again confirmed by Garner in his own writings) on both the Westerns and the detective shows (all the while continuing to do the McDoakes shorts), with the occasional B feature thrown in for good measure.
Post-Warners, Bare’s considerable TV work included at least three classic Twilight Zone episodes: “Third From The Sun”, “The Purple Testament”, and best-known of all, “To Serve Man”.
(Those are the three I can recall off the top of my head; there are possibly some others (corrections welcomed)).
And even at that, all the foregoing is still overshadowed by Bare’s direction of the entire run of Green Acres, the subversive nature of which has only recently come to be appreciated.
Scarcely “anonymous” …
Admittedly, one early-stage programmer in a career this long is but a blip on the radar, but Richard Bare’s career was a long – and well-deserved – one indeed.
The Defense Rests.
April 29th, 2018 at 3:48 pm
Mike Doran,
As a fan of the Joe McDoakes shorts (“So You Want to Be a Detective” a favorite), I appreciate your giving us the Bare facts.
April 29th, 2018 at 4:16 pm
Make that double thanks from me!
April 30th, 2018 at 11:26 am
Thanx for your Thanx – I live to serve.
May I pass on the following anecdote, which I hope is true:
IN 1960, Richard Bare was filming a pilot for MGM and ABC, called The Islanders.
One of the stars was William Reynolds, who had the lead role in the Twilight Zone episode “The Purple Testament”, which Bare had directed about a year before.
This is the one where Reynolds plays a GI who can see which of his fellow soldiers are going to be killed – in advance.
Anyway, Bare, Reynolds, and several others were flying at night in a light plane to a Caribbean location for The Islanders pilot, when the plane went down and crashed in the water.
All concerned were seriously injured – Bare sustained two broken legs, Reynolds was similarly injured, and the others in the plane were also injured, at least one fatally.
All of the foregoing is true.
The Story Part:
While they were all in the water, someone – either Bare or Reynolds, or possibly both – remembered that CBS would be running “Purple Testament” as that night’s episode of Twilight Zone back in the States.
And The Story goes:
Bare called out to Reynolds:
“Bill – don’t look at me!”
… Well, if it isn’t true, it oughta be …
June 15th, 2021 at 11:37 am
I saw “This Side of the Law” yesterday for the first time and was struck by the strong similarity to Daphne du Maurier’s 1957 “The Scapegoat.” In both stories, a man unsatisfied with his life is lured into impersonating a wealthy lookalike, and he improbably convinces his emotionally estranged wife, his resentful brother, and the sister-in-law he had an affair with that he’s the guy they knew. The reason for the impersonation is different, and the cast of peripheral characters is narrowed (no money for actors portraying servants in the mansion?), but it’s too much of a coincidence for me to dismiss the notion that du Maurier filched the concept from Sale. All’s fair in literature, I suppose. The ending of the 1959 film adaptation of “The Scapegoat” is actually closer to the one in “This Side…” than is du Maurier’s novel.
As you point out, the plot holes in this movie are as cavernous as an empty cistern. That in no way detracted from my enjoyment as the excellent cast overcame rather uninspired direction to deliver the goods. The dialogue was snappy, in a good way.