A Call From a Phone Booth May Lead to a Beating
The definition of dead reckoning:
"The process of calculating one's position, especially at sea, by estimating the direction and distance traveled rather than by using landmarks, astronomical observations, or electronic navigation methods."
Rita Hayworth was cast to play Dusty Chandler in John Cromwell's 1947 film noir, Dead Reckoning, but acted in Orson Welles's The Lady From Shanghai instead. Both are femme fatale roles, both are killers who steer the protagonists away from the truth, with deadly results. Welles had Hayworth's red hair dyed blonde. Lizabeth Scott, Hayworth's replacement, already had a rich blonde mass of beautiful hair and the bonus of a husky voice. Curiously, she also bore a resemblance to low-voiced Lauren Bacall, married to the male lead in Dead Reckoning, Humphrey Bogart.
The film deals with two paratroopers just after the end of World War Two, summoned to Washington, D.C. to receive medals: Johnny Drake (William Prince) to get the Medal of Honor and Rip Murdock (Bogart) to get the Distinguished Service Cross. Finding out this news on the D.C.-bound train, Johnny gets spooked and distant. He jumps off and runs away, to Rip's bafflement. The Army gives Rip permission to try and track Johnny down. He traces him to the fictional Gulf City, probably a resort town on the Gulf of Mexico. This is where Johnny is actually from--his story to the Army and to Rip is a cover identity concealing his participation in a homicide before he entered the service. Evidently, a Medal of Honor ceremony would provide unwelcome publicity.
This is the string end which, pulled by Rip, unveils a web of shady and dangerous characters, ongoing police investigations, and an oily mobster named Martinelli (Morris Carnovsky) and his psychopathic and sadistic henchman, Krause (Marvin Miller). Murders, frame-ups, and a delicious femme fatale, Dusty Chandler--a nightclub chanteuse--surround and guide Rip's descent into a fallen night world as he seeks to discover what happened to his Army comrade.
Johnny Drake had been in love with Dusty for a few years before joining the Army. He talked about her often with Rip. Once Rip meets her and spends time with her, he falls in love with her and she, apparently, with him. Throughout most of the film, he's convinced he's in charge of himself, but he misses telling clues about her, the "landmarks" of the dead reckoning definition. There's the implication that having heard about her often from Johnny, Rip felt her lure smoldering inside him even before he met her. Once they've kissed, late in the film, he's gone but maybe not for good.
Dead Reckoning, like many of its genre, represents a world darkened even further than it was by the Depression years. The theme of returning veterans can't help being shaded with doubts and fears of an unknown new world. It's instructive to look away from film noir to understand this. The Abbott and Costello film, Buck Privates Come Home (from 1947), is funny, of course, but it's also a wistful portrayal of soldiers coming back to a changed environment difficult to adjust to. Buck Privates, the first of the two films featuring the same characters, was made in 1941--a jolly and bright virtual Army recruitment movie disguised as an entertaining comedy, with the Andrews Sisters performing an extraordinary musical number. In that six year period between the two Abbott and Costello movies, world events shadowed cinema itself, so that by 1947, audiences weren't interested anymore in candy.
Vic Neptune
The definition of dead reckoning:
"The process of calculating one's position, especially at sea, by estimating the direction and distance traveled rather than by using landmarks, astronomical observations, or electronic navigation methods."
Rita Hayworth was cast to play Dusty Chandler in John Cromwell's 1947 film noir, Dead Reckoning, but acted in Orson Welles's The Lady From Shanghai instead. Both are femme fatale roles, both are killers who steer the protagonists away from the truth, with deadly results. Welles had Hayworth's red hair dyed blonde. Lizabeth Scott, Hayworth's replacement, already had a rich blonde mass of beautiful hair and the bonus of a husky voice. Curiously, she also bore a resemblance to low-voiced Lauren Bacall, married to the male lead in Dead Reckoning, Humphrey Bogart.
The film deals with two paratroopers just after the end of World War Two, summoned to Washington, D.C. to receive medals: Johnny Drake (William Prince) to get the Medal of Honor and Rip Murdock (Bogart) to get the Distinguished Service Cross. Finding out this news on the D.C.-bound train, Johnny gets spooked and distant. He jumps off and runs away, to Rip's bafflement. The Army gives Rip permission to try and track Johnny down. He traces him to the fictional Gulf City, probably a resort town on the Gulf of Mexico. This is where Johnny is actually from--his story to the Army and to Rip is a cover identity concealing his participation in a homicide before he entered the service. Evidently, a Medal of Honor ceremony would provide unwelcome publicity.
This is the string end which, pulled by Rip, unveils a web of shady and dangerous characters, ongoing police investigations, and an oily mobster named Martinelli (Morris Carnovsky) and his psychopathic and sadistic henchman, Krause (Marvin Miller). Murders, frame-ups, and a delicious femme fatale, Dusty Chandler--a nightclub chanteuse--surround and guide Rip's descent into a fallen night world as he seeks to discover what happened to his Army comrade.
Johnny Drake had been in love with Dusty for a few years before joining the Army. He talked about her often with Rip. Once Rip meets her and spends time with her, he falls in love with her and she, apparently, with him. Throughout most of the film, he's convinced he's in charge of himself, but he misses telling clues about her, the "landmarks" of the dead reckoning definition. There's the implication that having heard about her often from Johnny, Rip felt her lure smoldering inside him even before he met her. Once they've kissed, late in the film, he's gone but maybe not for good.
Dead Reckoning, like many of its genre, represents a world darkened even further than it was by the Depression years. The theme of returning veterans can't help being shaded with doubts and fears of an unknown new world. It's instructive to look away from film noir to understand this. The Abbott and Costello film, Buck Privates Come Home (from 1947), is funny, of course, but it's also a wistful portrayal of soldiers coming back to a changed environment difficult to adjust to. Buck Privates, the first of the two films featuring the same characters, was made in 1941--a jolly and bright virtual Army recruitment movie disguised as an entertaining comedy, with the Andrews Sisters performing an extraordinary musical number. In that six year period between the two Abbott and Costello movies, world events shadowed cinema itself, so that by 1947, audiences weren't interested anymore in candy.
Vic Neptune
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