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Home , Albert Dekker, A Bullet for Joey, Big Leaguer, Cloris Leachman credits, Desert Fury, Edge of Doom

October 2, 2012 (XXV:5) , (1955, 106 min)

1999 Selected for National Film Registry

Directed and produced by Robert Aldrich Based on the novel by Screenplay by A.I. Bezzerides Original Music by Cinematography by Film Editing by Art Direction by William Glasgow Set Decoration by Howard Bristol

Cast ... ...Dr. G.E. Soberin ...Carl Evello Juano Hernandez...Eddie Yeager ...Lt. Pat Murphy Marian Carr...Friday ...Manager Mort Marshall...Ray Diker Fortunio Bonanova...Carmen Trivago Robert Aldrich (August 9, 1918, Cranston, Rhode Island – ...Harvey Wallace December 5, 1983, , ) directed 37 films and TV Mady Comfort...Nightclub Singer episodes: 1981 ...All the Marbles, 1979 , 1977 The James McCallion...Horace Choirboys, 1977 Twilight's Last Gleaming, 1975 Hustle, 1974 The Robert Cornthwaite...FBI Agent Longest Yard, 1973 Emperor of the North, 1972 Ulzana's Raid, 1971 Silvio Minciotti...Mover , 1970 Too Late the Hero, 1969 The Greatest Nick Dennis...Nick Mother of Them All, 1968 The Killing of Sister George, 1968 The Ben Morris...Radio Announcer Legend of Lylah Clare, 1967 , 1965 The Flight of the ...Charlie Max Phoenix, 1964 Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, 1963 4 for Texas, 1962 ...Attacker What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, 1962 Sodom and Gomorrah, Jesslyn Fax...Horace's Wife 1961 The Last Sunset, 1959 “Adventures in Paradise”, 1959 “Hotel ...FBI Agent de Paree”, 1959 The Angry Hills, 1959 , 1957 The ...Doc Kennedy Garment Jungle (uncredited), 1956 Attack, 1956 Autumn Leaves, Leigh Snowden...Cheesecake 1955 , 1955 Kiss Me Deadly, 1954 Vera Cruz, 1954 Jack Lambert...Sugar Smallhouse Apache, 1954 (uncredited), 1953-1954 “Four Star Jerry Zinneman...Sammy Playhouse”, 1953 , 1952-1953 “The Doctor”, 1952 Maxine Cooper...Velda “Schlitz Playhouse”, and 1952 “China Smith.” ...Christina Bailey Gaby Rodgers...Carver Mickey Spillane (b. Frank Morrison Spillane, March 9, 1918, Brooklyn, – July 17, 2006, Murrells Inlet, South Carolina) had 19 of his novels or stories turned into films or TV series: 1997- Aldrich—KISS ME DEADLY—2

1998 “Mike Hammer, Private Eye” (26 episodes), 1995 “Fallen “Have Gun - Will Travel” (10 episodes), 1958 Blood Arrow, 1957 Angels”, 1994 “Come Die with Me: A Mickey Spillane's Mike Copper Sky, 1956-1957 “” (6 episodes), 1956 Attack, 1955 Hammer Mystery”, 1989 “Mike Hammer: Murder Takes All” The Big Knife, 1955 Kiss Me Deadly, 1954 World for Ransom, 1951 (characters), 1984-1987 “The New Mike Hammer” (44 episodes), Stop That Cab, 1947 The Return of Rin Tin Tin, 1940 Gang War, and 1984 “” (characters), 1983 “Murder Me, Murder 1938 Man's Country. You” (character), 1982 I, the Jury (novel), 1981 “Margin for Murder”, 1970 The Delta Factor (novel - uncredited), 1967 The Lion- Ralph Meeker...Mike Hammer (Ralph Rathgeber, November 21, Hearted Tough Guy (novel "The Deep"), 1963 The Girl Hunters 1920, , Minnesota – August 5, 1988, Woodland Hills, (novel - uncredited / screenplay), 1958-1959 “Mike Hammer” (78 Los Angeles, California) has 108 acting credits, some of which are episodes), 1957 My Gun Is Quick (novel), 1955 Kiss Me Deadly 1980 Without Warning, 1979 “CHiPs”, 1979 Winter Kills, 1978 The (novel "Kiss Me, Deadly"), 1954 Ring of Fear (uncredited), 1954 The Alpha Incident, 1977 “Police Woman”, 1975 “Harry O”, 1973-1975 Long Wait (novel), 1954 “Mickey Spillane's 'Mike Hammer!'” “Police Story”, 1975 “Barbary Coast”, 1975 “Movin' On”, 1975 “The (characters), and 1953 I, the Jury (novel). Rookies”, 1975 “Cannon”, 1974 “Toma”, 1968-1974 “Ironside”, 1974 “Room 222”, 1972 The Happiness A.I. Bezzerides (Albert Isaac Bezzerides, Cage, 1972 “The Night Stalker”, 1966- August 9, 1908, Samsun, Turkey – 1971 “The F.B.I.”, 1971 The Anderson January 1, 2007, Los Angeles, California) Tapes, 1970 I Walk the Line, 1970 “The has 27 screenwriting and TV credits: Virginian”, 1970 “Lost Flight”, 1969 The 2012 The Big Valley (creator) (post- Devil's 8, 1968 The Detective, 1967 “The production), 1965-1969 “The Big Valley” High Chaparral”, 1967 “Custer”, 1967 The (112 episodes), 1965 “The Virginian”, St. Valentine's Day Massacre, 1967 The 1962 “77 Sunset Strip”, 1961 “The Dirty Dozen, 1967 “The Green Hornet”, Show”, 1959 The 1964 “The Doctors and the Nurses”, 1963 Jayhawkers!, 1958 “Tales of Wells “The Outer Limits”, 1962-1963 “Route Fargo”, 1956 “Screen Directors 66”, 1961 Something Wild, 1961 “Walt Playhouse”, 1955 Kiss Me Deadly, 1955 Disney's Wonderful World of Color”, , 1954 Track of the Cat, 1951 Sirocco, 1949 Thieves' 1958-1961 “The Show”, 1959-1960 “Not for Hire” Highway (novel "Thieves' Market" / screenplay), 1947 (39 episodes), 1960 “Dillinger”, 1958-1959 “Schlitz Playhouse”, (screenplay - uncredited), 1943 Action in the North Atlantic 1959 “Wanted: Dead or Alive”, 1958 “Wagon Train”, 1957 Paths of (additional dialogue), 1942 Juke Girl, and 1940 Glory, 1957 The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown, 1957 Run of the Arrow, 1957 (novel "Long Haul"). “Zane Grey Theater”, 1956 “Studio 57”, 1952-1956 “Lux Video Theatre”, 1956 “The Alcoa Hour”, 1955 Desert Sands, 1955 Kiss Me Ernest Laszlo (April 23, 1898, Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Deadly, 1955 Big House, U.S.A., 1953 The Naked Spur, 1952 Shadow Hungary) – January 6, 1984, , California) won a Best in the Sky, 1952 Glory Alley, 1951 Teresa, and 1951 . Cinematography, Black-and-White Oscar for Ship of Fools (1965). Some of his other 71 cinematographer credits are 1977 The Domino Albert Dekker...Dr. G.E. Soberin (Albert Van Dekker, December Principle, 1976 Logan's Run, 1970 Airport, 1968 Star!, 1967 Luv, 20, 1905, Brooklyn, New York – May 5, 1968, Hollywood, 1966 Fantastic Voyage, 1965 Ship of Fools, 1965 Baby the Rain Must California) has 106 acting credits, among them 1969 , Fall, 1963 4 for Texas, 1963 It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, 1961 1968 “”, 1968 “I Spy”, 1967 “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”, Judgment at Nuremberg, 1960 Inherit the Wind, 1959 “The Rebel”, 1966 “Mission: Impossible”, 1966 “”, 1965 1959 Ten Seconds to Hell, 1958 Attack of the Puppet People, 1957 “Rawhide”, 1964 “The Defenders”, 1964 “Kraft Theatre”, Omar Khayyam, 1957 Valerie, 1956 While the City Sleeps, 1955 The 1961 “Naked City”, 1961 “Westinghouse Presents: The Big Knife, 1955 The Kentuckian, 1955 Kiss Me Deadly, 1954 Vera Dispossessed”, 1961 “Route 66”, 1959 Suddenly, Last Summer, 1959 Cruz, 1954 Apache, 1954 About Mrs. Leslie, 1954 The Naked Jungle, The Sound and the Fury, 1957-1958 “ITV Play of the Week”, 1957 1953 Houdini, 1953 Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach, 1953 The Moon Is She Devil, 1955 Illegal, 1955 Kiss Me Deadly, 1955 “Goodyear Blue, 1953 Stalag 17, 1953 Scared Stiff, 1952 The Star, 1952 Mutiny, Playhouse”, 1955 East of Eden, 1954 The Silver Chalice, 1951 1951 The Well, 1951 M, 1950 The Jackie Robinson Story, 1950 “Celanese Theatre”, 1951 “Pulitzer Prize Playhouse”, 1950 The Kid D.O.A., 1949 Impact, 1949 Cover Up, 1948 The Girl from from Texas, 1949 Search for Danger, 1949 Tarzan's Magic Fountain, , 1948 Lulu Belle, 1947 Road to Rio, 1946 Two Years 1948 Fury at Furnace Creek, 1947 Gentleman's Agreement, 1947 Before the Mast, 1929 Linda, 1929 The White Outlaw, and 1928 The Cass Timberlane, 1947 Wyoming, 1947 Slave Girl, 1946 The Killers, Pace That Kills. 1946 Two Years Before the Mast, 1945 , 1945 Salome Where She Danced, 1943 The Woman of the Town, 1942 The Michael Luciano (May 2, 1909, Mcadoo, Pennsylvania – September Forest Rangers, 1942 Wake Island, 1942 In Old California, 1941 15, 1992, Los Angeles, California) has 51 editing credits, among Honky Tonk, 1940 Seven Sinners, 1940 Dr. Cyclops, 1940 Strange them 1981 Stripes, 1977 Twilight's Last Gleaming, 1974 The Longest Cargo, 1939 Beau Geste, 1939 The Man in the Iron Mask, 1938 The Yard, 1973 Emperor of the North, 1972 Ulzana's Raid, 1968 The Last Warning, 1938 The Lone Wolf in Paris, 1937 The Great Garrick, Killing of Sister George, 1967 The Dirty Dozen, 1965 The Flight of and 1935 The Lady in Black. the Phoenix, 1964 Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, 1963 4 for Texas, 1962 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, 1959 The Wonderful Paul Stewart...Carl Evello (b. Paul Sternberg, March 13, 1908, New Country, 1958 “The Donna Reed Show” (12 episodes), 1957-1958 York City, New York – February 17, 1986, Los Angeles, California) Aldrich—KISS ME DEADLY—3 was in 11 films and TV series, among them 1983 “Remington Red Badge of Courage, 1950 The Asphalt Jungle, and 1950 The Steele”, 1982 Tempest, 1981 Nobody's Perfekt, 1981 S.O.B., 1979 Damned Don't Cry. “Lou Grant”, 1978 Revenge of the Pink Panther, 1977 “”, 1975 “Matt Helm”, 1975 “Ellery Queen”, 1975 The Day of the Jack Elam...Charlie Max (b. William Scott Elam, November 13, Locust, 1975 “The Streets of San Francisco”, 1973 “”, 1969- 1920, Miami, Gila, Arizona – October 20, 2003, Ashland, Oregon) 1971 “The Name of the Game”, 1968-1970 “”, 1970 “Mod has 205 acting credits, among them 1995 “Bonanza: Under Attack”, Squad”, 1970 “Gunsmoke”, 1968 Jigsaw, 1965 The Greatest Story 1994-1995 “Lonesome Dove: The Series”, 1993 “Bonanza: The Ever Told, 1964 “Dr. Kildare”, 1960 “Johnny Staccato”, 1956 The Return”, 1993 Uninvited, 1992 “Home Improvement”, 1986-1987 Wild Party, 1956 “”, 1955 Hell on Frisco Bay, 1955 The “Easy Street” (22 episodes), 1984 Cannonball Run II, 1981 “Father Cobweb, 1955 Kiss Me Deadly, 1954 Deep in My Heart, 1954 “Inner Murphy”, 1978-1981 “”, 1981 Soggy Bottom, U.S.A., Sanctum”, 1953 The Joe Louis Story, 1952 The Bad and the 1981 The Cannonball Run, 1979 The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Beautiful, 1952 Carbine Williams, 1950 , 1949 Twelve Again, 1978 “How the West Was Won”, 1978 “The Life and Times O'Clock High, 1949 The Window, 1949 Champion, 1943 Government of Grizzly Adams”, 1977 “How the West Was Won”, 1974-1975 Girl, 1941 , 1941 , and 1937 Ever Since “The Texas Wheelers” (8 episodes), 1975 “Huckleberry Finn”, 1969- Eve. 1975 “Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color”, 1973 “Kung Fu”, 1973 Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, 1959-1972 “Gunsmoke” (15 Juano Hernandez...Eddie Yeager (Huano G. Hernandez, July 19, episodes), 1972 “Alias Smith and Jones”, 1971 Hannie Caulder, 1971 1901, San Juan, Puerto Rico – July 17, 1970, San Juan, Puerto Rico) Support Your Local Gunfighter, 1961-1970 “Bonanza”, 1970 Rio has 35 acting credits, among them 1970 They Call Me Mister Tibbs!, Lobo, 1970 Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County, 1970 “The 1969 The Reivers, 1969 The Extraordinary Seaman, 1964 The Virginian”, 1969 “The Over-the-Hill Gang”, 1969 Support Your Pawnbroker, 1963 “Naked City”, 1962 Hemingway's Adventures of a Local Sheriff!, 1968 Once Upon a Time in the West, 1968 “The High Young Man, 1961 “Westinghouse Presents: The Dispossessed”, 1961 Chaparral”, 1968 Firecreek, 1967 “”, 1967 “Route 66”, 1961 The Sins of Rachel Cade, 1960 Sergeant Rutledge, “Tarzan”, 1965 “Daniel Boone”, 1963-1964 “Temple Houston” (26 1959 “Johnny Staccato”, 1959 “ Presents”, 1958 St. episodes), 1963 4 for Texas, 1963 “The Dakotas” (20 episodes), 1962 Louis Blues, 1957 Something of Value, 1955 Trial, 1955 Kiss Me “Ben Casey”, 1960-1962 “The Untouchables”, 1962 “Rawhide”, Deadly, 1953 “Medallion Theatre”, 1950 The Breaking Point, 1950 1959-1962 “Have Gun - Will Travel”, 1961 Pocketful of Miracles, Young Man with a Horn, 1949 Intruder in the Dust, and 1932 The 1961 “Outlaws”, 1958-1961 “”, 1961 The Girl from Chicago. Comancheros, 1961 “Twilight Zone”, 1961 “Gunslinger”, 1960 “The Slowest Gun in the West”, 1959 “Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse”, Strother Martin...Harvey Wallace (March 26, 1919, Kokomo, 1958 The Gun Runners, 1958 “Zorro”, 1957 Baby Face Nelson, 1957 Indiana – August 1, 1980, Thousand Oaks, California) is probably Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, 1956 Jubal, 1955 Artists and Models, best known for his “What we have here is a failure to communicate 1955 The Man from Laramie, 1955 Wichita, 1955 Moonfleet, 1955 line in Cool Hand Luke (1967). Some of his other 166 acting credits Kiss Me Deadly, 1955 “The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin”, 1955 Man are 1980 Hotwire, 1979 The Villain, 1979 Without a Star, 1953-1955 “Schlitz Playhouse”, Nightwing, 1979 The Champ, 1978 1955 Tarzan's Hidden Jungle, 1954 Vera Cruz, “Vega$”, 1975-1977 “Baretta”, 1977 “The 1954 Cattle Queen of Montana, 1954 Princess of Rockford Files”, 1975 Rooster Cogburn, the Nile, 1953 Ride, Vaquero!, 1952 High Noon, 1975 Hard Times, 1956-1974 “Gunsmoke” 1952 Rancho Notorious, 1951 The Bushwhackers, (11 episodes), 1964-1972 “Bonanza”, 1971 1951 Rawhide, 1951 Bird of Paradise, 1950 Hannie Caulder, 1971 Fools' Parade, 1971 Quicksand, 1950 The Sundowners, and 1947 The Brotherhood of Satan, 1970 The Ballad Mystery Range. of Cable Hogue, 1965-1970 “The Virginian”, 1969 Butch Cassidy and the Maxine Cooper...Velda (May 12, 1924, Chicago, Sundance Kid, 1969 The Wild Bunch, 1969 Illinois – April 4, 2009, Los Angeles, California) True Grit, 1969 “The Show”, appeared in 34 TV series and three films, some of 1968 “It Takes a Thief”, 1967 “Tarzan”, which are 1980 “High Ice”, 1962 What Ever 19677 The Flim-Flam Man, 1966-1967 “The Happened to Baby Jane?, 1960 “The Donna Reed Big Valley”, 1966 “Lost in Space”, 1966 Show”, 1960 “Wanted: Dead or Alive”, 1960 Nevada Smith, 1966 Harper, 1961-1965 “Philip Marlowe”, 1959 “Twilight Zone”, 1959 “Perry Mason”, 1965 The Sons of Katie “Richard Diamond, Private Detective”, 1958- Elder, 1964 “The Fugitive”, 1962 “Ben 1959 “Perry Mason”, 1957 Zero Hour!, 1957 Casey”, 1962 The Man Who Shot Liberty “Maverick”, 1956 “G.E. True Theater”, 1956 Valance, 1961 “Twilight Zone”, 1959-1960 “The Count of Monte Cristo”, 1956 “Dragnet”, “Hotel de Paree” (29 episodes), 1959 The Horse Soldiers, 1959 “The 1954-1956 “Schlitz Playhouse”, 1955 “The Millionaire”, 1955 Texan”, 1958 “Boots and Saddles”, 1957 Copper Sky, 1955-1957 “Studio 57”, 1955 Kiss Me Deadly, 1955 “The Star and the Story”, “Lassie”, 1957 “The Millionaire”, 1957 “Zane Grey Theater”, 1956 and 1948 “The Front Page.” “”, 1955 The Big Knife, 1955 Kiss Me Deadly, 1955 Strategic Air Command, 1954 The Silver Chalice, 1954 A Star Is Cloris Leachman (April 30, 1926, Des Moines, Iowa) won a Best Born, 1952 Androcles and the Lion, 1952 Storm Over Tibet, 1951 The Actress in a Supporting Role for (1971). Among her other 247 film and TV roles are 2013 The Bronx Bull Aldrich—KISS ME DEADLY—4

only brief period as persona non grata in Hollywood was because of a disagreement with Harry Cohn on the Columbia project The Garment Jungle (1957). Aldrich was active in the Directors Guild of America throughout his career and ultimately served as its president, overseeing the negotiation of a break-through contract in terms of creative rights in 1978. Ironically for a director seldom regarded as an artist by American critics, Aldrich’s union activism on behalf of directors’ prerogatives alienated studio heads and cost him work at the end of his career.

If there is a core to Aldrich’s worldview as expressed over the course of thirty feature films, it would simply be the oft-confessed proclivity (post-production), 2012 Adult World (post-production), 2012 Gambit for “turning things upside down.” Aldrich conforms to the traditional (completed), 2010-2012 “Raising Hope” (39 episodes), 2011 The narrative requirements of heroes and villains, but within that he often Fields, 2009 “The Office”, 2001-2006 “” (11 skirts the issue of good and evil in favor of personal codes and episodes), 2006 Scary Movie 4, 2005 The Longest Yard, 2004 moralities. “He didn’t divide the world up into good and evil,” Spanglish, 2003 Alex & Emma, 2001-2002 “The Ellen Show” (18 Abraham Polonsky said of Aldrich, “he didn’t see it that simply. He episodes), 1999 The Titanic Chronicles, 1993 , found himself as someone who knew that his idea of himself was why 1991-1992 “Walter & Emily” (13 episodes), 1990 Texasville, 1986- he existed; and that his self-esteem and respect for himself could 1988 “The Facts of Life” (48 episodes), 1984-1985 “”, never be jeopardized by any compromise that involved that deep 1980 “The Oldest Living Graduate”, 1977 , 1970-1977 portion of himself.” “” (34 episodes), 1975-1977 “Phyllis” (48 episodes), 1974 , 1974 Daisy Miller, 1973 Perhaps the best example of this process is Aldrich’s adaptation of Dillinger, 1973 Charley and the Angel, 1972 “Rod Serling's Night Kiss Me Deadly (1955). A quest for the Grail, in the sense that social Gallery”, 1971 The Last Picture Show, 1971 The Steagle, 1970 historian Mike Davis describes as “that great anti-myth usually WUSA, 1970 Lovers and Other Strangers, 1969 Butch Cassidy and known as noir,” Kiss Me Deadly is equally what Borde and the Sundance Kid, 1967 “The Big Valley”, 1965 “A Man Called Chaumeton call a “dark and fascinating close” to the noir era, whose Shenandoah”, 1965 “Mr. Novak”, 1964 “The Defenders”, 1961-1963 main character is an “anti-Galahad” in search of his “great whatsit.” “77 Sunset Strip”, 1962 “Stoney Burke”, 1962 “Saints and Sinners”, This tension between myth and anti-myth, between hero and anti- 1962 “Going My Way”, 1962 The Chapman Report, 1962 “Kraft hero, is the key to Aldrich’s work. Hammer is a radically different Mystery Theater”, 1955-1962 “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, 1962 character than many who preceded and followed him in Aldrich’s “The New Breed”, 1962 “Wagon Train”, 1955-1962 “G.E. True work, equally unlike the defiant warrior Massai in Apache (1954) and Theater”, 1962 “Laramie”, 1962 “Route 66”, 1961-1962 “The the tormented Charlie Castle in The Big Knife (1955). But all these Untouchables”, 1961 “Twilight Zone”, 1956-1961 “Gunsmoke”, characters inhabit the same cinematic milieu, a world where men’s 1960 “The Loretta Young Show”, 1960 “Shirley Temple Theatre”, greed for land, money and power challenge the individual to survive. 1957-1958 “Lassie” (28 episodes), 1955 Kiss Me Deadly, 1953-1954 “I guess you have a weakness for a certain kind of character,” Aldrich “Ponds Theater”, 1950-1954 “The Philco-Goodyear Television readily admitted; “It’s the same character in a number of pictures that Playhouse”, 1951 “Tales of Tomorrow”, 1951 “Armstrong Circle keeps reappearing, characters that are bigger than life, that find their Theatre”, 1951 “Studio One in Hollywood”, 1951 “Somerset own integrity in doing what they do the way they do it, even if it Maugham TV Theatre”, 1951 “Pulitzer Prize Playhouse”, 1948-1949 causes their own deaths.” Although they are culturally quite different, “Actor's Studio” (6 episodes), 1948 “The Ford Theatre Hour”, and both Massai and Charlie Castle appealed to Aldrich because of their 1947 Carnegie Hall. idealistic struggle. As supporting characters remark, Massai cannot give up his fight and Charlie cannot sustain his; both are fatally imperiled by “doing what they do the way they do it.” From Aldrich’s Alan Silver: Robert Aldrich. From Senses of Cinema 20, 2002 earliest work, cynicism and idealism combined to create violent, The critical reputation of Robert Aldrich, scion of the Eastern angst-ridden outbursts of existential despair. Little wonder that such a establishment and graduate of the best finishing schools in thematic outlook should give Aldrich a cutting edge status with Hollywood, burst out of Europe with la politique des auteurs. As European observers. As a filmmaker, Aldrich always came straight early as 1957, Aldrich became No. 7 of the “Les Grands Créateurs du on, usually with more visual style than Ray, more raw energy than Cinéma” series of director monographs published by the Belgian Fuller, and more social consciousness than Losey. Club du Livre du Cinéma, which followed studies of Robert Bresson, John Huston, Jean Renoir, Vittorio De Sica, Luis Buñuel, and Marcel Aldrich’s films concentrate on the most basic situation: man Carné. This was certainly heady company for a new American attempting to survive in a hostile universe. Like most filmmakers, director, not yet forty years old. Aldrich’s relatives included Aldrich uses and reuses such general devices as narrative tension politicians and bankers – the Rockefellers were both – but the first between subjective and objective viewpoints and the frustration or and last favor he asked from any of them was when an uncle at Chase fulfillment of the audience’s genre expectations. In order to survive, Bank helped him get his first job as a production clerk at RKO. From certain Aldrich heroes can be more consistently vicious, self-centered there he progressed through the ranks of assistant directors and and cynical than any villain. Christina’s assessment of Hammer – graduated to directing television in the early 1950s. Although a “You’re the kind of person that has only one true love: you” – in Kiss lifelong liberal and the co-worker of many blacklistees, Aldrich’s Me Deadly is echoed in the admission by Zarkan in The Legend of Aldrich—KISS ME DEADLY—5

Lylah Clare (1968): “I’m not sick, I’m in love…with me.” Others like Frennessey in World for Ransom (1954) and the title character in The Massai in Apache, Joe Costa in Attack! (1956), and Phil Gaines in Legend of Lylah Clare are also performers and bisexuals. For both, Hustle (1975) are driven by an irreducible and essentially idealistic Lesbianism is an alternative to the men who love them obsessively personal code. In following it, their behavior becomes even more and want desperately to control their behavior. The societal extreme than either Hammer’s or Zarkan’s. Characters who are in assumptions which make relationships between men and women so narrative terms antagonists, like Joe Erin in Vera Cruz (1954) and difficult are most clearly addressed – and left unresolved – in Hustle. Karl Wirtz in Ten Seconds to Hell (1959), reflect on and try to The man is too alienated to make a commitment; the woman is forced explain their compulsive destructiveness by telling essentially the to separate sex from love by working as a prostitute. For Aldrich, the same story: learning from and eventually murdering a father figure gender of his protagonists was less important than their struggle: a who had taught them to look out for number one. film is only “‘masculine’ in the sense that it was done by a majority of masculine players. In theory, it was In films such as these, the presence of a supposed to be metaphorical. In practice, it ruthless pragmatism in one of the two wasn’t that important.” Beyond Westerns and principals would normally promise a war films, Aldrich’s films have a generic clear-cut alignment into hero and villain, breadth matched by few other filmmakers. into Erin versus Ben Trane, Wirtz versus Aldrich’s work ranges widely from the self- Eric Koertner, black versus white. The described “classy soap opera” Autumn Leaves actual result is ambiguous. Each film is (1956) to the “sex and sand epic” Sodom and less than absolute in its definition of a Gomorrah (1963) to the “desperately moral man yet is absolute in its definition important” political thriller Twilight’s Last of morality. In Vera Cruz and Ten Gleaming. In between, there are a few Seconds to Hell, the protagonist does comedies and several noir films, as well as the finally defeat the antagonist; but the occasional psychological melodrama and the triumph is more societal than personal. In neo-Gothic. There are prison pictures, cop The Flight of the Phoenix (1966) and Too pictures, sports pictures, and pictures about Late the Hero (1970), the moral people who make pictures. The interior distinctions among the members of a consistency of theme and style in Aldrich’s group are so finely drawn that the chance films resists classification according to genre. or haphazard manner deciding which of them live and which die Erin and Wirtz recount their twisted, nearly identical histories in the constitutes the pervasive irony of the films. As Major Reisman context of an adventure and a return-from-the-war counsels the prisoner Wladislaw early in The Dirty Dozen (1967), melodrama respectively. Zarkan is a retired film director, Hammer is innocence or guilt, reward or condemnation, are purely matters of a private detective: yet their self-love, their egocentric disdain for the circumstance. “You only made one mistake,” he says, pausing by the lives and feelings of others, and their inability to rectify this attitude cell door and grinning back at the man sentenced to death, “you let even when presented with second chances are traits which mark them somebody see you do it.” as sibling personalities from radically different genre backgrounds.

In this sense, Aldrich is a rigorous determinist. His fables about bands Aldrich’s visualization also transcends the conventions of genre. of outsiders remain remarkably consistent across generic lines. Strong side lighting, the camera placed in an unusually high or low Attack!, Ten Seconds to Hell, The Flight of the Phoenix, The Dirty position, foreground clutter, and staging in depth appear as frequently Dozen, Too Late the Hero, Ulzana’s Raid (1972), The Longest Yard in his Westerns, war pictures, neo-Gothic thrillers, even in his (1974), and Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977), adventure films, war television work, not just where they might be expected in a ’50s film films, and Westerns – all isolate a group of men in a specific, self- noir like Kiss Me Deadly or the richly colored frames of a Hollywood contained and threatening universe. The core plots are diverse: melodrama like The Legend of Lylah Clare. Transmuting and soldiers behind enemy lines; a bomb disposal unit in post-World War expressing in sensory terms the physical and emotional make-up of II Berlin; passengers on a plane down in the Sahara; inmates of a the situation, of the characters caught in these frames, remains the prison; ex-convicts in a missile silo. Yet in each situation, the basic dynamic of an Aldrich picture regardless of genre. Aldrich’s characters undergo the same, inexorable moral reduction. And often camera may capture a figure crouching behind a lamp, like Charlie both the idealists and the cynics – the social extremists – perish. Castle in The Big Knife, or lurking at the edge of a pool of light, like Lily Carver in Kiss Me Deadly. Grimacing faces or dark objects will Usually, these conflicts are between men and nature and between men suddenly intrude into the foreground of medium long shots, and other men. All three war films as well as The Flight of the disturbing previously flaccid compositions, possibly in anticipation of Phoenix and Ulzana’s Raid have effectively no women characters at a violent turn in plot events. Recurring high angle medium shots peer all. In The Longest Yard and The Choirboys (1977), the restricted down from behind ceiling ventilators in every type of film, World for perspective of convicts and cops respectively reduces women to Ransom, The Angry Hills (1959), Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, and objects, and unattractive ones at that. In the few films that do focus Too Late The Hero, so that the dark blades slowly rotating above the entirely on them, The Killing of Sister George (1968), What Ever characters’ heads become an ominous shorthand for the tension Happened To Baby Jane? (1962) or Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte whirring incessantly inside them. Conversely, the hissing sound of (1964), many of the women are deviate or psychotic. Notably, Baby man’s life leaking out in Kiss Me Deadly or a postmortem burst of Jane and Sister George are performers, personas behind which some gunfire in Attack! become objective correlatives to the dissipation of women retreat in a male-dominated society. Even more notably, the audience’s tension. In a subjective manner, the characters Aldrich—KISS ME DEADLY—6 sometimes “choose” to situate themselves within the frame. For the men might be. If there is any vulgarity in the way they are presented, guilt-ridden Charles Castle, the lamps about the room have a it is less a formal deficiency than an appropriate reflection of the symbolic value which unconsciously draw him back to them again lifestyle in which they are trapped. Ultimately, characterization and and again. Or characters may be placed objectively: Lily Carver at the caricature, like all of Aldrich’s thematic and stylistic components, edge of the light in Kiss Me Deadly is simultaneously in a figurative refocus on the basic question: survival. darkness appropriate to her mental state. In Hustle, Lt. Phil Gaines’ partner remarks as the two watch Even an off-beat, particular icon, such as a ceiling fan, can become a pornographic home movies featuring a suicide victim that her action variable metaphor. In World for Ransom the slowly turning overhead was rash because “her survival wasn’t threatened.” Gaines’s reply is: blades in the room where Mike Callahan is interrogated by an “It depends on how you define survival.” Reflecting this personal underworld figure are not only a distracting influence at the frame’s belief, Aldrich’s judgment of Ben Trane or Eric Koertner, of Zarkan center but cast multiple shadows on the surrounding walls. This de- or Joe Costa is more severe than the judgment he passes on characters focuses the reading of the shot away from the human figures to create less idealistic or with less sense of honor. The former are foolish a visual confusion equivalent to enough to place their faith in Callahan’s mixed emotions. In societal institutions, which The Angry Hills, a crane down to collapse around them or betray eye level from an opening them. They repress personal values position behind a similar fan for the vaguely postulated good of diminishes the object’s society at large; their importance as a distraction and disillusionment and sometimes suggests an unwinding, an fatal alienation is the price that impending détente rather than a must be paid. Not that the “mealy- knotting up of plot events. In mouthed” compromisers from the both these pictures, Aldrich self-immolating Charlie Castle to adapts the photographic styles of the craven Captain Cooney in to make specific visual Attack! fare any better. Aldrich and statements about characters and most of his heroes are caught in a events. In Callahan’s initial dichotomy between natural and movements through the somber streets, alleys, and stairwells of artificial, between chaotic and ordered, between instinctual and Singapore, angle and editing shift the wedges of light and the dim institutionalised conduct that impels the unaware or unprepared into boundaries of narrow passageways as if he were traveling through a indecision and that can short-circuit a saving or creative act into an dark maze, anticipating for the audience the uncertainty of his actual, impotent or deadly one. The ending of Ten Seconds to Hell is a emotional condition. From early films as narratively diverse as montage of the introductory close-ups of the men of the unit intercut Attack!, Autumn Leaves and The Angry Hills, Aldrich’s characteristic with shots of the rebuilt city. A quick reading might be that those who low light and side light cast long shadows on interior walls and floors died did so meaningfully, for a reconstructive purpose. The and form rectangular blocks to give the frame a severe, constricting conclusion of Ten Seconds to Hell is echoed in The Dirty Dozen geometry which can symbolise the director’s moral determinism. which uses similar shots of the commando unit at the dinner celebration before the mission that will kill most of them. The same While Aldrich’s definition of milieu may be superficially realist – reiteration of the “male unit” takes place in the end credits of The must be so, in fact, as the overall context of the films themselves is Choirboys. superficially realist – selection of detail is the most readily applicable method by which figurative meaning may be injected. In The Legend “What really gets you is the idea that maybe you’re wrong” is the of Lylah Clare, the contrast between Barney Sheean’s office and accusation aimed at Frank Towns in The Flight of the Phoenix. It Lewis Zarkan’s home, between autographed black and white photos could be hurled at many other Aldrich heroes as well. Trane and of various stars on the walls and lustrous oil paintings of Lylah, Koertner, Towns and Lt. DeBuin in Ulzana’s Raid survive their between evenly distributed fluorescent light on flat white surfaces and mistakes and misjudgments. For others, the rectification of error candelabras glistening off the broken texture of wood paneling – all comes too late. For none is it easily accomplished. Being wrong is not this is not merely a contrast of setting, but of sensibility as well. Both a moral deficiency in Aldrich’s work. It neither mitigates nor insures are established within a stylised conception of “producer’s office” salvation. What it does is make the “offenders” into outsiders, and “director’s home” that is ambivalent, being both serious and because, as Reisman tells Wladislaw, it is getting caught, not being satirical, descriptive and analytical. Subject/object split when viewing wrong, that creates the violation of acceptable social conduct. When reality, genre preconceptions, and sensory input are all in play. Decor circumstances put the protagonist in an untenable situation, any and camera angle inform character, character affects angle and decor; solution is permitted. What separates the amoral Hammer from the and the recognition of type reconciles or estranges the audience to the self-righteous Costa are not just personal codes of conduct. Each aptness or inaptness of these interactions. protagonist also has an experiential notion of how society will react to his behavior, whether it will validate or condemn it. That is what If there is an indisputable cynicism in Aldrich’s presentation of separates Reisman from Wladislaw. figures like Zarkan and Sheean, it is bifocal, acting as both authorial opinion and authorial conjecture of what the world’s opinion of such Aldrich—KISS ME DEADLY—7

“Pilot error” is what Frank Towns ultimately enters into his log as the images, bravura sound matching, and encoded riddles the likes of cause of the crash in Flight of the Phoenix. Most of Aldrich’s films, which had not been seen in Hollywood since kissed the in their own genre contexts and particular plots, are explorations of industry good-bye. Like one of Mad’s parodies, the movie unfolds in the infrastructure of error. What each makes progressively clearer is a deranged cubist space, amid the debris of Western civilization— the conditional limitations of attributing blame. A frustrated Towns shards of opera, deserted museums, molls who paraphrase takes solace in his bitter and defensive accusations of Moran: “If you Shakespeare, mad references to Greek mythology and the New hadn’t made a career of being a drunk, if you hadn’t stayed in your Testament. A nineteenth-century poem furnishes the movie’s major bunk to have that last bottle, you might clue. have checked that engineer’s report and we might not be here.” Blaming another Kiss Me Deadly exploited as it satirized gives way gradually to the resignation Mickey Spillane, the most commercially of Fenner in The Grissom Gang (1971), successful American novelist of the cold McIntosh in Ulzana’s Raid, or Crewe in war. Spillane’s violent thrillers, including I, The Longest Yard. Some early the Jury; My Gun Is Quick; and Vengeance characters like Koertner anticipate the Is Mine, sold twenty-four million copies grim assessment of McIntosh in between 1947 and 1952; at one point, he Ulzana’s Raid: “Ain’t no sense hating was responsible for seven of the ten best- the Apaches for killing, Lieutenant. selling titles in the entire history of That’d be like hating the desert ’cause American fiction. In Mike Hammer, there ain’t no water on it.” This is a conscious expression of the Spillane imagined a new sort of hero—a vigilante enforcer who was capricious causality at work in Aldrich’s pictures. For the reasons for detective, judge, jury, and executioner in one. Spillane offered his the crash in the Sahara in The Flight of the Phoenix are as arbitrary, readers God’s Angry Man—a function that would later be satisfied by as free of pure causality, as the military assignments in Too Late the irate evangelists and talk-radio personalities, as well as fictional Hero or Ulzana’s Raid. characters like Dirty Harry. Hammer was the personification of rage, a self-righteous avenger whose antagonists were gangsters and From Mike Callahan’s rejection by the perverse and aptly named Communists. At the end of , he exults, “I killed Frennessey in World for Ransom through the fatalistic freeze-frames more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in at the end of The Legend of Lylah Clare and The Grissom Gang to cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it . . . They were Commies.” Gaines’s offhanded death in Hustle, the one constant in Aldrich’s Hammer knows he is rotten, and he knows why his rottenness is work is that ultimately no one is untouched by the savagery of the tolerated: “I was the evil that opposed the other evil.” This ends- surrounding world. For those who expose the more visceral layers of justify-the-means brutality had its contemporary political their psyche to it, the risk is intensified. It is not merely annihilation manifestation in Senator Joseph McCarthy, described by one but also, what may be worse, a descent into an unfulfilled, insensate colleague, in suitably Hammer-esque terms, as a “fighting Irish existence. If, in the final analysis, Aldrich’s sympathy resides most marine [who] would give the shirt off his back to anyone who needs with individuals who are anti-authoritarian, with anti-heroes like it—except a dirty, lying, stinking Communist. That guy, he’d kill.” In Reisman in The Dirty Dozen or Crewe in The Longest Yard, it resides late 1954, the Saturday Review published an essay by poet there because these are persons who survive. They survive by Christopher LaFarge comparing Hammer to McCarthy, also a resolving all the conflicting impulses of nature and society, of real “privileged savior.” and ideal, of right and wrong, in and through action. LaFarge noted that, however “soft, homosexual, stupid, gullible, J. Hoberman: “Kiss Me Deadly: The Thriller of Tomorrow. Criterion childish, or easily tricked,” Hammer’s antagonists also represented Notes. “the Most Dangerous Thing in the ,” and “any means which will, with Hammer, lead to their extirpation and in particular Genres collide in the great Hollywood movies of the mid-fifties cold- their death by his hand are Good.” Similarly, “with Senator war thaw. With the truce in Korea and the red scare on the wane, McCarthy, any means that will expose Communists, including the ambitious directors seemed freer to mix and match and even ponder derogation of all public servants, the telling of lies, the irreparable the new situation. The western goes south in The Searchers; the damaging of the innocent, the sensational and unfounded charge, are cartoon merges with the musical in The Girl Can’t Help It. Science justified so long as he thinks it is the right thing to do. Each, then, fiction becomes pop sociology in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. reflects the other.” And noir veers into apocalyptic sci-fi in Robert Aldrich’s 1955 masterpiece Kiss Me Deadly, which, briefly described, tracks one of This analogy seems also to have occurred to Aldrich, who was the sleaziest, stupidest, most brutal detectives in American movies already working on an adaptation of Kiss Me, Deadly around the time through a nocturnal, inexplicably violent labyrinth to a white-hot the Saturday Review article appeared. Or perhaps Aldrich and A. I. vision of cosmic annihilation. Bezzerides, whom he hired to adapt the novel, simply made use of it. In some interviews, Aldrich would characterize Hammer as “a A crass private eye looking for the big score, Mike Hammer plays cynical fascist” and call Spillane “an antidemocratic figure,” arguing with fire and gets burned. From the perversely backward title crawl before the MPAA’s Production Code Administration—which was (outrageously accompanied by orgasmic heavy breathing) through the prepared not to pass Kiss Me Deadly—that the film demonstrated that climactic explosion, Kiss Me Deadly is sensationally baroque, “justice is not to be found in a self-anointed, one-man vigilante.” eschewing straight exposition for a jarring succession of bizarre Aldrich—KISS ME DEADLY—8

Ironically, Aldrich was himself something like the leader of a sadistic pleasure in violence, exhibiting a surplus of macho behavior personal rebellion. Born in 1918, he was the scion of a prominent that, aggravated by sexual repression and crass self-interest, Rhode Island family. His grandfather Nelson Aldrich served as a U.S. ultimately becomes a criticism of itself. The movie stops in its tracks senator; his uncle was ambassador to Great Britain during the period to focus on his excited grin as he snaps a collector’s priceless 78 Kiss Me Deadly was made; his aunt married John D. Rockefeller Jr., record, a crime also committed by the punks of Blackboard Jungle, or and his first cousin was Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. slams a desk drawer shut on another potential informer’s fingers—or when, with a mix of pity and contempt, a police detective gives him Aldrich broke with his family in 1941, when he went to work at the clue “Manhattan Project” as though addressing a dumb animal. RKO. During the forties, he served a distinguished apprenticeship as Everyone is under surveillance, everything is a secret; the protagonist, an assistant director with Jean Renoir (The Southerner), Lewis who is described as returning from the grave, is a walking corpse. Milestone (Arch of Triumph), William Wellman (The Story of G.I. Jagged and aggressive, Kiss Me Deadly is one paranoid movie—with Joe), and Charles Chaplin (). Most crucially, all that implies. Fear of a nuclear holocaust fuses with fear of a Aldrich worked with leftists Abraham Polonsky, , and femme fatale. Hammer pursues and is by a shadowy cabal— and Force of Evil, and Joseph Losey a mysterious “They,” as they’re called in the film’s key exchange, on The Prowler and M (another Kiss Me Deadly precursor). Among “the nameless ones who kill people for the Great Whatsit.” his first solo features were the anti-American Apache, which, starring as the last unreconciled member Some months before Kiss Me Deadly opened, of Geronimo’s band, was the top-grossing Aldrich pragmatically defended the movie’s western of 1954, and the remarkably cynical violence in a February 20, 1955, New York mercenary oat opera Vera Cruz, also from 1954. Herald-Tribune article titled “You Can’t Hang Up the Meat Hook”: “We think we have kept Given this background, and the company he faith with the sixty million Mickey Spillane kept, Aldrich expected to be named during the readers” while making “a movie of action, Hollywood witch hunt. He wasn’t, nor does he violence, and suspense in good taste.” Only seem to have inspired an FBI file. Perhaps he days before, the director had written to the was too unimportant, or, conversely, too well MPAA with thanks for its reconsideration of connected. When he teamed with producer its decision not to approve the production— to make Kiss Me Deadly, he hired and about two months later, he would be Bezzerides, another Hollywood fellow traveler, appealing to the association for help: in May, to adapt Spillane’s novel. Bezzerides’s script just as the film was to be released, the Legion was saturated with cynicism and predicated on of Decency condemned it, demanding “over free association: “I wrote it fast because I had thirty changes, cuts, and deletions.” Aldrich contempt for it. It was automatic writing. made minor cuts, ensuring a B rating Things were in the air at the time, and I put (condemned in part). them in.” Bezzerides shifted the novel’s location from Kiss Me Deadly’s ads were displayed in June New York to Los Angeles, eliminated the first- 1955 during Senate hearings on juvenile person voice-over, and downgraded Hammer delinquency, with Senator Estes Kefauver from private eye to divorce dick. Rather than an interrogating the director of the MPAA’s adoring fiancée who “could whip off a shoe and crack a skull before Advertising Code Administration, Gordon S. White. Pointing to a you could bat an eye,” Hammer’s secretary Velma is his devotedly poster for “Mickey Spillane’s Latest H-Bomb!” Kefauver lectured amoral mistress, serving as sexual bait to entrap the husbands of White: Hammer’s female clients. It’s a not unprofitable line of work. The These producers have told us that in all of the pictures, horror and detective, played by Ralph Meeker (the actor who replaced Marlon crime and sex pictures, there is some moral they are trying to prove. I Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire), drives a Jaguar, has a futuristic just wonder if you get the moral in this advertising up here. There is a telephone answering machine built into his bachelor pad’s wall, and, “Kiss Me Deadly. White-Hot Thrills! Blood-Red Kisses!” That is all a bag of golf clubs in the corner, lives a version of what was not yet it says about it. What is moral? called the Playboy philosophy. The faux Calder mobile and “I don’t like that any more than you do, Senator,” White maintained, checkerboard floor pattern add to the crazy, clashing expressionism. without answering the question, even though Kiss Me Deadly had a good deal to say about greed, corruption, vigilante justice, and the After reading the script that Aldrich submitted in September 1954, the apocalypse. MPAA informed him that his story was totally unacceptable, both for its treatment of narcotics and for the hero’s cold-blooded, never Taken for trash, this great movie was never reviewed in the New York entirely justified vigilante killings, as well as “numerous items of Times and was banned in Britain. In France, Kiss Me Deadly was brutality and sexual suggestiveness.” The script was resubmitted in admired mainly by the young critics at Cahiers du cinéma, where it early November sans drugs and with atomic spies substituted for was considered “the thriller of tomorrow” and Aldrich, dubbed gangsters. The context shifted, the mercenary antihero remained. As Le gros Bob, was hailed as “the first director of the atomic age.” Kiss embodied by the muscular, smirking Meeker, Hammer is a hustler Me Deadly, Claude Chabrol wrote in his passionate review, “has who, as one cop grudgingly allows, “can sniff out information like chosen to create itself out of the worst material to be found, the most nobody I ever saw”—not to mention a voyeuristic creep who takes deplorable, the most nauseous product of a genre in a state of Aldrich—KISS ME DEADLY—9 putrefaction: a Mickey Spillane story.” Aldrich and Bezzerides “have into rich patterns of the most enigmatic arabesques.” Amen. taken this threadbare and lackluster fabric and splendidly rewoven it

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2012 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXV: Oct 9 LONELY ARE THE BRAVE David Miller 1962 Oct 16 FAIL-SAFE 1964 Oct 23 THE STUNT MAN Richard Rush 1980 Oct 30 COME AND SEE Elem Klimov 1985 Nov 6 GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES Isao Takahata 1988 Nov 13 MAGNOLIA Paul Thomas Anderson 1999 Nov 20 RUSSIAN ARK Alexander Sokurov 2002 Nov 27 WHITE MATERIAL Claire Denis 2009 Dec 4 Asghar Farhadi 2011

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