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Seeing Through the Shadows MUSIC IN THE SHADOWS Jazz, Race & Ideology in Classical Film Noir Erlend Flydal Finstad Master of Film and Television Studies Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences Spring 2019 Acknowledgement I want to thank my lecturers at the University of Manchester and Inland Norway University, where I have undertaken my bachelor’s and master’s degree, respectively, for inspiring me in the process of researching and writing this thesis. I am also indebted to the UCLA Special Collections, the Margaret Herrick Library, the USC Warner Bros archives, and the BFI Special Collections for granting me permission to view the screenplay material and other production files for the films that are explored in this study. My masters project would have looked very different without insights into these files, which have offered me invaluable information on the varying stances that Hollywood filmmakers took towards jazz in the 1940s and 1950s. Gratitude also goes out to jazz archivist Mark Cantor for helping me identify some of the unbilled and uncredited jazz musicians that appear onscreen in classical film noir. 3 Contents Acknowledgement ................................................................................................. 3 Illustrations ............................................................................................................ 6 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 8 1. Context, Method, & Theory ..............................................................................13 1.1 What is Film Noir? ....................................................................................13 1.2 Origins of Film Noir ..................................................................................15 1.3 Film Noir & Ideology ................................................................................18 1.4 Film Noir & Race: Existing Literature ......................................................19 1.5 Jazz: A Social History ...............................................................................24 1.6 The Hip, The Cool, & The Beat Generation ..............................................27 1.7 Methodology .............................................................................................34 1.8 Theoretical Framework .............................................................................35 2. The Horns Blowing in the Clubs: Jazz & Band Music in ‘40s Noir ...................42 2.1 Blues in the Night (1941)...........................................................................43 2.2 When Strangers Marry (1944)...................................................................49 2.3 The Crimson Canary (1945)......................................................................52 2.4 The Dark Corner (1946)............................................................................55 2.5 Kiss of Death (1947) .................................................................................57 2.6 The Unsuspected (1947) ............................................................................60 2.7 Out of the Past (1947) ...............................................................................62 2.8 D.O.A. (1949)…. .......................................................................................68 2.9 Force of Evil (1949) ..................................................................................73 4 2.10 The Secret Fury (1950) ............................................................................76 2.11 The Strip (1951) .......................................................................................78 3. I’d Rather Have the Blues: The Singers & Songs of Film Noir .........................85 3.1 The Glass Key (1942) ................................................................................88 3.2 House of Strangers (1949) ........................................................................90 3.3 They Live By Night (1949) ........................................................................92 3.4 In a Lonely Place (1950) ...........................................................................96 3.5 The Big Night (1951) ............................................................................... 100 3.6 Night Without Sleep (1952) ..................................................................... 108 3.7 The Blue Gardenia (1953) ....................................................................... 113 3.8 Kiss Me Deadly (1955)............................................................................ 118 4. All Men Are Evil: Modern Jazz & the Black Musician as Protagonist ............ 127 4.1 Sweet Smell of Success (1957) ................................................................. 127 4.2 I Want to Live! (1958) ............................................................................. 130 4.3 Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) .............................................................. 133 Concluding Comments........................................................................................ 140 Filmography ....................................................................................................... 142 Bibliography ....................................................................................................... 146 5 Illustrations 1. Jazz in Silhouette: Gerald Wilson, Snooky Young, and Paul Webster in Blues in the Night (1941). 2. The Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra reacting to Leo’s invasive musical showoff in Blues in the Night (1941). 3. Harlem Jazz: Lennie Bluett, Marie Bryant, and Lorenzo Flennoy in When Strangers Marry (1944). 4. The Coleman Hawkins Orchestra performing “Hollywood Stampede” in The Crimson Canary (1945). 5. “Music Like That Does Something To Me:” A High-Hatted Heywood in The Dark Corner (1946). 6. “How Do You Like That Music:” J.C. Heard, Al McKibbon, and Jimmy Jones in Kiss of Death (1947). 7. Dark Jazz: A Jo Jones quintet in The Unsuspected (1947). 8. More Harlem Jazz: Gerald Wilson in Out of the Past (1947). 9. “Blowin’ Up a Storm:” The Fishermen in D.O.A. (1949). 10. “Play Louder:” John Garfield unsuccessfully conducting a Buddy Collette band in Force of Evil (1949). 11. Cool and Careless: Ernie Royal in The Secret Fury (1950). 12. The ‘Fatha’ of Modern Jazz Piano: a grinning Earl Hines in The Strip (1951). 13. “Oh Baby, Please Come Back:” Lillian Randolph singing the blues to William Bendix in The Glass Key (1942). 14. “Can’t We Talk it Over:” Dolores Parker singing the blues in House of Strangers (1949). 6 15. A glittery Marie Bryant in They Live By Night (1949). 16. Shot-reverse-shot: Gloria Grahame, Humphrey Bogart, and Hadda Brooks in In a Lonely Place (1950). 17. Villain superimposed over a frantic drummer in The Big Night (1951). 18. Wounded: Mauri Lynn responding to George’s racial comment in The Big Night (1951). 19. Gary Merrill and Linda Darnell in a Harlem nightclub in Night Without Sleep (1952). 20. Buddies: Meade Lux Lewis and Kevin McCarthy in Nightmare (1956). 21. Nat King Cole eerily crooning the title song in The Blue Gardenia (1953). 22. A sexy Madi Comfort delivering Nat King Cole’s “I’d Rather Have the Blues” in Kiss Me Deadly (1955). 23. Mike Hammer looking on sultrily. 24. The Chico Hamilton Quintet in Sweet Smell of Success (1957). 25. Art Farmer performing a bebop solo in I Want to Live! (1958). 26. Trademark Wise Transitioning: Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte in Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). 7 Introduction I sometimes wonder why the French term ‘film noir’ was never translated into English in American academia and popular culture. Why keep a foreign name for an ingeniously American style? To honor the French writers who originally coined the term? Maybe. Because ‘noir’ sounded fancier than any English equivalent word that might be used? Probably. But if these answers are unsatisfactory, another possible explanation lies in the fact that ‘noir,’ of course, is ‘black’ in the English language. In the late 1960s, when white American intellectuals first started writing on the subject, ‘black’ held very delicate meanings in U.S. society, meanings that they might not would want their unique film phenomenon to be associated with. ‘Black film’ would have invited the analysis of blacks in film and, more specifically, encouraged the examination of race in what we have come to know as film noir. Ironically, questions of race and racial ideology in classical film noir remain relatively unexplored. This is, of course, partly because racial and ethnic outsiders rarely appear in the original cycle. Although New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, indeed archetypical noir cities, had large black populations in the immediate postwar years, few African- Americans made it to the screens of film noir. Which is another unfortunate irony given that noir has always been celebrated for its realism and so-called honest view of American life. The lack of racial minorities in the noir versions of these cities mismatched the actual look of these cities in real life. But underrepresentation, though it can signify invisibility, does not equal absence. Black players do occasionally surface in classical noir, primarily as jazz musicians performing in sleazy, haze-filled nightclubs, speakeasies, and basement joints. It is in these arenas, which Vivian Sobchack calls the “concrete grounds” and “rented space” of film noir, that the canon’s “cultural truth” is exposed (in Browne 1998: 137). In terms of race, noir nightclubs
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