THE HORROR OF "THIS PRETTY WORLD": PROGRESSIVE PESSIMISM IN VAL LEWTON'S FILMS AND NOVELS CAMERON MONEO A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN CINEMA AND MEDIA STUDIES YORK UNIVERSITY, TORONTO, ONTARIO SEPTEMBER 2009 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-53736-7 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-53736-7 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. 1+1 Canada THE HORROR OF "THIS PRETTY WORLD": PROGRESSIVE PESSIMISM IN VAL LEWTON'S FILMS AND NOVELS By CAMERON MONEO A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of York University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS ©2009 Permission has been granted to: a) YORK UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES to lend or sell copies of this thesis in paper, microform or electronic formats, and b) LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA to reproduce, lend, distribute, or sell copies of this thesis anywhere in the world in microform, paper or electronic formats and to authorize or procure the reproduction, loan, distribution or sale of copies of this thesis anywhere in the world in microform, paper or electronic formats. The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the thesis nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's written permission. (iv) ABSTRACT This thesis addresses the political connotations in the work of Hollywood producer Val Lewton. Operating from 1942-1946 at RKO Pictures, Lewton's "B" horror unit specialized in bringing an understated technique and a probing social consciousness to bear on low-budget genre filmmaking. This thesis primarily concerns the latter distinction, arguing that the Lewton horror cycle evidences a politically progressive sensibility in its complex treatment of issues of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Tracing the context and implications of this progressiveness, this thesis focuses on Val Lewton's importance in the political atmosphere of 1940s genre filmmaking in Hollywood. This thesis also examines the social content of Lewton's pre-RKO, Depression-era pulp novels alongside his films, revealing the political strands connecting his work as a whole. Finally, this thesis unpacks Lewton's films through the politically-oriented horror theory proposed by Robin Wood, arguing that Lewton's social conception of "horror" is both progressive and markedly pessimistic. (v) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Suzie Young for her gracious support, confidence, and guidance. My heartfelt thanks also go out to Michael Zryd, Scott Forsyth, Evan Cameron, Pat McDermott, Art Redding, Eriona Voci, Maria Basualdo, Stephen Broomer, Fabiola Caraza, Jeff Moneo, Samuel Lopka, Eli Horwatt, Scott MacKenzie, Geoff Macnaughton, Malcolm D. Morton, Coral Aiken, Tina Benigno, and Jamie McKay. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, brothers, and sisters. This project was funded in part by a Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). (vi) TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract iv Acknowledgments v Chapter 1: Val Lewton and the Importance of "B" Horror 1 Chapter 2: Social Topics in Lewton's Pulp Novels .41 Chapter 3: Patriarchal Horror and Progressive Suicide: The Seventh Victim 76 Appendix A: List of Lewton's Productions atRKO 108 Appendix B: List of Lewton's Pulp Novels 109 Works Cited 110 Filmography 115 1 CHAPTER 1 Val Lewton and the Importance of "B" Horror For many Hollywood radicals and progressives of the so-called Golden Age, genre filmmaking was the ideal vessel in which to smuggle new ideas into an industry founded on a tradition of sticking to the (ideological) formula, with a low tolerance for deviation. The forties in particular, while being a rather fertile period for the Left in Hollywood, proved—if only in retrospect—to be an ill-fated time to be too politically outspoken, to which everything from William Randolph Hearst's embargo on Citizen Kane (1941) to the HUAC hearings attests. James Naremore writes that "when we take into account all the governmental and semiofficial organizations of the Left and the Right who were involved in making judgments about film, the period between 1941 and 1955 was probably the most regulated and scrutinized era in the history of American entertainment" (105). Many members of the Left therefore took up shop in the "lower" genres, a strategy which could be viewed as an even more effective way of changing the complexion of Hollywood film over time and by degrees. "[Precisely because the attention of censors and conservative political 1 When media magnate William Randolph Hearst caught wind of rumours that Orson Welles' film Citizen Kane was a loose—but nonetheless unflattering—account of his own life and affairs, Hearst blackballed Kane and Welles from receiving publicity through any of the channels in his vast media empire. For more on this embargo, see John Evangelist Walsh's book Walking Shadows: Orson Welles, William Randolph Hearst, and Citizen Kane (U of Wisconsin P, 2004). 2 In October 1947, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), headed up by J. Parnell Thomas, began hearings to root out Communist Party members, sympathizers, and propagandizers in the American film industry, calling several witnesses—"friendly" and "unfriendly"—from Hollywood to provide testimony on "subversive" activity within the industry. With the compliance of the major film studios, HUAC assured that "[association with radical causes or radical organizations could lead to dismissal, blacklisting, or even, as the case of the Hollywood Ten [a group of'unfriendly' witnesses cited in contempt of court for refusing testimony] illustrated, imprisonment" (Krutnik et al. 5). 2 critics focused elsewhere, artists on the bottom rungs of the genres often had a freer hand than their more exalted counterparts" (Buhle and Wagner 111-2). Slapstick comedies, musicals, westerns and melodramas of the forties, if implicitly, were just as likely to bear the stamp of the Left as overtly political war dramas and "message films." The films noir (as they retrospectively came to be known) directed in the 1940s by such noted Leftists as Edgar G. Ulmer and the soon-blacklisted Edward Dmytryk gave proof to a "subtle anticapitalist message that seem[ed] to be inscribed in the genre as a whole" (Booker xi).3 Jean-Loup Bourget asserts that the freedom of Hollywood directors is not measured by what they can openly do within the Hollywood system, but rather by what they can imply about American society in general and about the Hollywood system in particular ... The implicit subtext of genre films makes it possible for the director to ask the inevitable (but unanswerable) question: Must American society be like this? Must the Hollywood system function like this? (58) Taking up and often transforming the forms and conventions of pre-established genres (film noir itself joined themes and styles from the gangster film, the detective film, the horror film), Leftists fashioned critiques of the Establishment that both projected outward to the social sphere and fell self-reflexively on Hollywood itself. An attitude of questioning and contestation imbued the genres; the significance of this 3 In an essay on Ulmer's 1945 B-noir Detour, Andrew Britton explicates the director's use of the metaphor of the road "not [as] a refuge for exiles from a culture in which America's ideals have been degraded; [but as] a place where the real logic of advanced capitalist civil society is acted out by characters who have completely internalized its values, and whose interaction exemplifies the grotesque deformation of all human relationships by the principles of the market"; Britton argues Detour's main characters are "isolated vagabonds whose lives are dedicated to the pursuit of private goals which they set themselves ad hoc, in the light of their own immediate interests, and who collide with one anther in a moral vacuum where human contacts are purely contingent, practical social ties have ceased to exist, and other people appear as mere use values to be exploited at will" ("Detour," 204). 3 attitude continues to bear out as more genre films and practitioners are reappraised from this socially and politically charged era.