Mon 24 Sep 2012
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: THE TATTERED DRESS (1957).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[13] Comments
THE TATTERED DRESS. Universal International Pictures, 1957. Jeff Chandler, Jeanne Crain, Jack Carson, Gail Russell, Elaine Stewart, George Tobias, Edward Andrews, Phillip Reed, Edward Platt. Director: Jack Arnold.
Back in the 1950s, Universal Studios had two really fine trashy directors under contract: Douglas Sirk did garish melodramas like Written on the Wind, and Jack Arnold handled the more overtly pulpy stuff, Westerns and monster movies like Tarantula and Creature from the Black Lagoon.
The Tattered Dress finds Arnold encroaching on Sirk’s territory with a tawdry tale penned (or typed, as the case may be) by George Zuckerman, who churned out Written on the Wind and the engaging scripts for Dawn at Socorro and The Brass Legend. The results in Tattered maybe aren’t purely successful, but they’re at least fun to watch.
The story starts in a small desert town where wealthy Phillip Reed murders the guy who seduced his wife (said wife played with classy trampiness by Elaine Stewart, one of three actresses here who deserved better). Reed gets arrested by that perennial comic foil Jack Carson, playing a hick-town Bozo-Sheriff, and Jeff Chandler shows up as a high-powered attorney hired to defend him in court.
Chandler coolly gets Reed acquitted by making a fool of Carson on the witness stand (not a terribly difficult task, given Carson’s persona) and prepares to go back to the Big City — only to find that the sheriff isn’t such a hick ass he seems, and Chandler is on the receiving end of some rather sticky and perhaps deadly revenge.
Jack Arnold always seemed to like desert locations, and he does well with this one, evoking a lonely isolation where passion and violence seem to simmer below a hot, dusty and deceptively still surface. Zuckerman’s script has its slack moments, but director Arnold gets through them as quickly as possible to highlight the occasional scenes of tension and violence.
As far as the acting goes, Jeff Chandler delivers his usual clapboard performance, and Jeanne Crain simply marks time in a role so thankless as to make her casting seem positively churlish, but Gail Russell, a sad-eyed actress who died tragically young, does a fine job in an interesting bit, and Jack Carson trades on his buffoonish image impressively as the apparently-dumb cop.
It’s not a totally riveting ninety minutes, but The Tattered Dress has its moments, and it sure won’t put you to sleep. I might add that this was produced by one Albert Zugsmith, an auteur too colorful to explore here in any depth, but definitely a subject for further research.
Editorial Note: The video you see above consists of only the first four minutes of the movie. For some reason I haven’t been able to embed the entire movie, but you can watch it on YouTube, here.
September 25th, 2012 at 11:23 am
Elaine Stewart, she of the torn dress, died in June 2011. Her obituary in the NEW YORK TIMES can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/movies/elaine-stewart-sultry-1950s-actress-dies-at-81.html
Although there were far too few of them, many of her film credits are mentioned, along with the fact that she was at one time promoted as being a “dark-haired Marilyn Monroe.”
As a model, she was on the cover of LIFE in 1953, and posed for PLAYBOY in 1959. I may have purchased that issue. I was just old enough.
September 26th, 2012 at 8:33 am
Sounds great, thanks for the overview Dan. I just got a DVD of another Zugsmith production, Arnold’s MAN IN THE SHADOW also starring Jeff Chandler and it sounds like they may have quite a bit on common.
September 26th, 2012 at 10:53 am
Thanks, Sergio. It’s a twofer. Another movie to be put on my “To Be Obtained” list, along with TATTERED DRESS. The longer I do this blog, the broker I get.
From a commenter on IMDB:
“Jeff Chandler is the sheriff of a small southwestern town and a Mexican migrant worker, Martin Garralaga, has brought news of a homicide committed by white ranch hands on the property of his employer Orson Welles. It seems that a young Mexican was paying to much attention to Welles’s daughter, Colleen Miller, and Welles wanted to teach him the error of his ways. Of course Leo Gordon and John Larch go too far and now a murder has to be covered up.
“It becomes two murders when witness Garralaga also turns up dead. Though Welles and his Golden Empire Ranch have a stranglehold on the local economy and the town’s leading citizens beg Chandler not to pursue the case, Chandler doggedly goes ahead anyway. He’s the sheriff and it’s his duty.”
September 26th, 2012 at 4:24 pm
Cool review, Dan! This sounds like a nice little thriller. I find a lot of Arnold’s product pretty interesting, and he is especially good at using desert settings, as you say. I think you’re damning Chandler with faint praise with your “clapboard” comment, however…he’s not always inspired but he gave some very good performances over his tragically brief career, not only in a ton of mid-range adventure films but particularly in BROKEN ARROW, THE JAYHAWKERS and MERRILL’s MARAUDERS.
September 27th, 2012 at 10:30 pm
Re Jeff Chandler
There is a film set in Israel-Palestine called Sword In The Desert (1949). The star is Dana Andrews, who is as almost always, quite strong. Chandler as the leader of Irgun…? Is superb. And, I am not a fan of his adventure films but he could have done better given the right opportunity.
Also, incredible voice. Great radio. Marlowe I think.
September 27th, 2012 at 11:43 pm
You’re right about Jeff Chandler’s great voice, Barry, but he wasn’t one of the ones who played Philip Marlowe on the radio. There were several actors who had the part, but it was Gerald Mohr who played him the longest. You’re close, though. Chandler played the part of another well-known PI on the radio, MICHAEL SHAYNE, in a 26-episode series that was syndicated in 1948.
I hope this link works directly:
http://ia600208.us.archive.org/15/items/Michael_Shayne/Michael_Shayne_-_480911_-_11_-_Model_Murder.mp3
If you listen closely, I think one of the others actors in this episode is Jack Webb.
To show you Chandler’s versatility, he was also the first bashful Mr. Boynton in the Eve Arden series OUR MISS BROOKS.
September 28th, 2012 at 9:16 am
Thanks Steve,
I will run this shortly.
September 28th, 2012 at 3:50 pm
I have been doing some research for another series when I came across a surprise in re. to Jeff Chandler.
“Broadcasting” (3/28/55) had this little new item under film production: Charles Michelson Inc. NY has completed 26 half-hour programs of “The New Adventures of Michael Shayne” featuring Jeff Chandler. It also said it would be offered on the syndication market in April of 1955.
That is TV-Film, not radio.
Oh, don’t forget Jeff Chandler’s career as pop singer on the Decca label in the 50s.
September 28th, 2012 at 5:20 pm
Charles Michelson was known primarily as a syndicator of old radio shows, so I have a feeling that the BROADCASTING item you came across is an error. Other reasons: once Chandler starting making movies, he was making 2 to 4 a year. He wouldn’t have had time to film 26 episodes of a TV series, nor would he have needed to. Also, THE NEW ADVENTURES OF MICHAEL SHAYNE was the exact title of the 1948 syndicated radio show, and there were exactly 26 episodes.
And, if 26 episodes of a syndicated TV series were filmed, what happened to them? Jeff Chandler was a big name then, not as big as Bogart & Bacall, but big enough. It’s not as if they were talking about a pilot. That many complete episodes wouldn’t have simply disappeared.
In this case, I think the BROADCASTING item was placed in the wrong section.
September 28th, 2012 at 6:20 pm
Steve, I tend to agree with you. But the radio version was on Mutual in 1949. By the mid-fifties, it was common for old radio shows to be adapted for television. And it is not unusual for such a program to disappear and be forgotten.
The two points I want confirmed by another source is, did the film production star Jeff Chandler or was it based on the radio series that starred Jeff Chandler? And was the series’ 26 filmed episodes “completed” or just some Hollywood producer’s sales pitch?
The item appeared in more than one issue of “Broadcasting” during the period when local TV stations were ordering syndicated series.
Do I think there is a lost TV series of Michael Shayne or one starring Jeff Chandler? No. But it is possible enough to get me curious.
September 28th, 2012 at 6:43 pm
Just to correct myself, the Jeff Chandler radio series did not have 26 episodes it had nearly three dozen.
September 28th, 2012 at 8:21 pm
I know some sources say Jeff Chandler did nearly three dozen MICHAEL SHAYNE radio shows, but I think that if you tried to put a set of them together, you;d find that there’d be a lot of duplication and you’d end up with only 26. I was the first to mention this number in these comments, I believe. Go back and check out my my reply to Barry. (I don’t have the number handy where I am.)
Our friend at Digital Deli agrees with this:
http://www.digitaldeliftp.com/DigitalDeliToo/dd2jb-Michael-Shayne.html
saying at one point “Chandler’s twenty-six characterizations of Mike Shayne were punctuated by continual impending peril, a series of gunshots whizzing past his ears at most opening credits, or the intent to convey an omnipresent doom surrounding his character’s every movement from episode to episode. The twenty-six scripts were as follows…”
and he goes ahead and lists them.
As much as I’d like to believe that there was a comparable set of 26 episodes made for a TV version of MICHAEL SHAYNE, with Jeff Chandler, I just can’t see it. But if they were mentioned more than once or if you can find another source that says they really were made, I’d be delighted to be proven wrong. (It happens often enough that I’m not worried about being embarrassed when it happens again.)
October 6th, 2012 at 7:03 pm
Re MIchael Shayne – Jeff Chandler
Thanks for the link. I thought Chandler’s voice a little stretched or worn. He certainly supplied narrative energy but without the nuance Howard Duff brought to Sam Spade or Dick Powell to anything. And no Jack Webb. Or if so, I couldn’t find him. Now about Mid-fifties television syndication and Jeff Chandler. Not a logical thought. Chandler had a job in the movies. No way he would give away his persona. When the movie thing ended, maybe. You would think Chandler in position to get a decent payday at the network level. But no one then, or now, with a job int he movies works television–Kate Winslet and Mildred Pierce excepted. But, maybe not. A one off.