The Golden Age Of The B-Film Noir- Dane Clark’s “The Gambler And The Lady” (1952)

DVD Review

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

The Gambler and the Lady, starring Dane Clark, Naomi Chance,  Hammer Productions, 1952

You know I really only have myself and my furtive furious need to take a “run” when I find something of interest to review and need to go overboard to cover every bet. Been that way since I was a kid and even in retirement and not having to face the daily grind has not deterred me from this overkill. The overkill in question is my interest in of all things a bunch of B-film noirs, B at best, produced over in England during the early 1950s. Starting out when I came across a first DVD at a book sale at the local library I thought that was it until looking at dreaded (on this occasion) Wikipedia I found there were ten in the series. So once started here I doing another one. And guess what while some have a certain merit none is going to break me from my classics-that is for sure. But enough of my woes as I trek another offering out for your perusal.        

*****

I am now deep, too deep but also too deep to given my personality stop now, into my retro-reviews of the classic Hammer Productions film noir in which an American producer, the well-known Robert Lippert and his organization, contracted with that organization to do a series of such efforts, the now woeful ten films, using known, although maybe fading American film stars, down on their uppers film stars, backed by English character actors to do the whole thing on the cheap. My whole operation started the day I went to a book sale at the local library and spied a Hammer Production DVD which led to a review of the film Terror Street (distributed in Britain as 36 Hours which actually made more sense since the star had that amount of time to find the murderer of his wife otherwise he was going  to be taking the big-step off for it and would not have worry about the time at all and there was no particular terror that I saw going on) and subsequently another entry The Black Glove (distributed in Britain as Face The Music probably a better title since the plot involved a well-known trumpet player turning from searching for that high white note everybody in his profession is looking for to amateur private detective once a lady friend is murdered and he looked for all the world like the natural fall guy to take the big step-off for it) I noted that long time readers of this space know, or should be presumed to know, of my long-standing love affair with film noir. Since any attentive reader will note this is my sixth such review of B-film noirs and hence proof positive that I am now in deep and that I still have the bug.

I mentioned in that review some of the details of my introduction to the classic age of film noir in this country in the age of black and white film in the 1940s and 1950s when I would sneak over to the now long gone and replaced by condos Strand Theater in growing up town North Adamsville and spent a long double feature Saturday afternoon watching complete with a stretched out bag of popcorn (or I think it is safe to say it now since the statute of limitation on the “crime” must surely have passed snuck in candy bars bought at Harold’s Variety Store on the way to the theater). I would watch some then current production from Hollywood or some throwback from the 1940s which Mister Cadger, the affable owner who readily saw that I was an aficionado who would pepper him with questions about when such and such a noir was to be featured would let me sneak in for kid’s ticket prices long after I reached the adult price stage at twelve I think it was, would show in retrospective to cut down on expenses in tough times by avoiding having to pay for first –run movies all the time. (And once told me to my embarrassment that he made more money on the re-runs than first runs and even more money on the captive audience buying popcorn and candy bars-I wonder if he knew my candy bar scam.)

That is where the bulk of my noir experiences were formed but I should mention in passing as well that on infrequent occasions I would attend a nighttime showing (paying full price after age twelve since parents were presumed to have the money to spring  for full prices) with my parents if my strict Irish Catholic mother (strict on the mortal sin punishment for what turned out to have been minor or venial sins after letting my older brothers, four, count them four, get away with murder and assorted acts of mayhem) thought the film passed the Legion of Decency standard that we had to stand up and take a yearly vow to uphold in church led by the priest exhorting to sin no more and I could under the plotline without fainting (or getting “aroused” by the fetching femmes).

Readers should be aware from prior series that when I found some run of films that had a similar background I would “run the table” on the efforts. Say a run of Raymond Chandler film adaptations of his Phillip Marlowe crime novels or Dashiell Hammett’s seemingly endless The Thin Man series. That “run the table” idea is the case with a recently obtained cache of British-centered 1950s film noirs put out by the Hammer Production Company as they tried to cash in on the popularity of the genre for the British market  That Terror Street mentioned at the beginning had been the first review in this series (each DVD by the way contains two films the second film Danger On The Wings in that DVD not worthy of review) and now the film under review under review the overblown if ominously titled The Gambler and the Lady (distributed in England, Britain, Great Britain, United Kingdom or whatever that isle calls itself these Brexit days as unlike others in the series by the same title although one cannot say much for their choice of titles under any circumstance) is the sixth such effort. On the basis of these seven viewings (remember one didn’t make the film noir aficionado cut so that tells you something right away how bad it must have been to take the toss in the B-world) I will have to admit they are clearly B-productions none of them would make anything but a second or third tier rating. (I have already wailed in my introduction about my extreme tiredness over the whole project already.)         

After all as mentioned before in that first review look what they were up against. For example who could forget up on that big screen for all the candid world to see a sadder but wiser seen it all, heard it all Humphrey Bogart at the end of The Maltese Falcon telling all who would listen that he, he Sam Spade, no stranger to the seamy side and cutting corners life, had had to send femme fatale Mary Astor his snow white flame over, sent her to the big step-off once she spilled too much blood, left too long a trail of corpses, for the stuff of dreams over some damn bird. Or cleft-chinned barrel-chested Robert Mitchum keeping himself out of trouble in some dink town as a respectable citizen including snagging a girl next door sweetie but knowing he was doomed, out of luck, and had had to cash his check for his seedy past taking a few odd bullets from his former femme fatale trigger-happy girlfriend Jane Greer once she knew he had double-crossed her to the coppers in Out Of The Past.

Ditto watching the horror on smart guy gangster Eddie Mars face after being outsmarted because he had sent a small time grafter to his doom when prime private detective Phillip Marlowe, spending the whole film trying to do the right thing for an old man with a couple of wild daughters, ordered him out the door to face the rooty-toot-toot of his own gunsels who expected Marlowe to be coming out in The Big Sleep. How about song and dance man Dick Powell turning Raymond Chandler private eye helping big galoot Moose Malone trying to find his Velma and getting nothing but grief and a few stray conks on the head chasing Claire Trevor down when she didn’t want to be found having moved uptown with the swells in Murder, My Sweet. Or finally, tall lanky and deceptive private eye Dane Jones chasing an elusive black box ready to explode the world being transported across Europe by evil incarnate if gorgeous Marla Sands in European Express who would stop at nothing including whoring although in those days that would have been inferred not shown to get what she wanted. Those were some of the beautiful and still beautiful classics whose lines you can almost hear anytime you mention the words film noir. The entries in this series are definitively not ones with memorable lines or plots.  

In the old days before I retired I always liked to sketch out a film’s plotline to give the reader the “skinny” on what the action was so that he or she could see where I was leading them. I will continue that old tradition here to make my point about the lesser production values of the Hammer products.  In the Gambler and the Lady not surprisingly the two main characters are Jim, an ex-pat American gambler from nowhere seeking in Merry Olde England to get in tight with the Mayfair swells and Lady Susan, played by Naomi Chance, as the Mayfair swell, well, Lady. Jim had clawed and climbed his way from nothing to the top of the gambling rooms in London and intended to stay there-with plenty of backup to enforce his will. But instead of craving more dough like a real racketeer like Johnny Rocco in Key Largo Jim has big ideas about crushing high society not knowing that those bastards are worse than the scumbags he had to deal with back in the say. Christ Jim even had some old biddy teaching him table manners, you know what spoon or folk to use with which course, Jesus.          

One of Jim’s clients, a Lord no less, bounced a check and that is where the trouble began. One of Jim’s boys got rough without permission (Jim didn’t even want a dead-beat Mayfair swell touched-double Jesus). This Lord had a sister though, the Lady Susan in question and she and Jim became against all good sense by either party an item. (Not without the others swells ripping him apart for trying to crash the gate to their class.) Everything was going fine until two things happened. One some foreign tough guys wanted to crash the London gambling scene and before it was over Jim had cashed his chips and sold out to them in order to get “legit.” And second he invested all his dough in a project he got conned into by that deadbeat Lord and his father with a little assist from Lady Sue. That thing turned out to be a Ponzi scheme and Jim went belly up. But not before an irate ex-heavy put the bad news on him and an ex-girlfriend who was crazy for him tried to take him down in her speeding car. All this to grab the lapels of decadent nobility gone wrong. Jim, I thought you were a smart guy.         

This one almost got that Wings of Danger treatment mentioned above, a non-review, but with an actor like Dane Clark who seems to have been down on his uppers more than most of those fading American stars recruited for this series since he is in at least three and a couple of minutes on my hands I figured once again what the hell.     

Better that Terror Street but not as good as The Black Glove although it also can’t get pass that Blue Gardenia second tier in the film noir pantheon. Sorry Hammer.