film

A Darker Shade of Blonde: The Film Noir Movies of Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe in ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950)
Studio promotional still of Marilyn Monroe in ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950)

Although best known for her roles as bubbly blondes in films like GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (1953), THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955), and SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959), Marilyn Monroe made a number of movies that ran counter to that caricature. Curiously, a few of them are film noir — a genre rarely associated with the icon. Playing a small part in 1950’s heist film THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, it is DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952) and, more notably, NIAGARA (1953), where Monroe really shines as shadowy, complex characters in very dark tales.

Having made a dozen or more movies by the time she was given the starring role as unbalanced babysitter in DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK, Monroe was best known for bit parts in comedies, musicals, and light dramas. It wasn’t until 1950’s ASPHALT JUNGLE that she began to be noticed as potentially more than a pretty face (“The picture that first brought fame to Marilyn Monroe,” read one poster). Mistress to a lawyer who acts as “fixer” for a heist gone bad, Monroe has few lines in ASPHALT JUNGLE, but the role established her as a character actress who could play something darker than the parts she had previously been given.

In CLASH BY NIGHT (1952), another, less memorable, film noir, Marilyn had a rather small part (as girlfriend to main character Mae’s [Barbara Stanwyck’s] brother. But the film itself was overshadowed by the publicity of being shot while the nude calendar photos of Monroe surfaced (which proved a boon to ticket sales). Suddenly, she was more of a star than ever, with some theater owners putting Marilyn’s name above Stanwyck’s on the marquee.

One month later, she would truly earn top billing in her first real breakout role: Nell, the unstable babysitter in DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK.

EVERY BIT AN ACTRESS

With DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK, Fox Studio head Darryl Zanuck wanted to sell Marilyn as a serious actress. But the studio had its cake and ate it too with the way it sold the picture. “Every bit a woman… every bit an actress,”  is how the pressbook read. Fox knew they had a hot property, but weren’t sure what would best work for the actress. But Monroe knew she wanted to be taken more seriously, and the noir themes of the picture appealed to her.

DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952) pressbook
Pressbook for DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952) featuring Marilyn Monroe.
DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK: FILM-NOIR?

What is film noir? To borrow from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s comment on obscenity, “I know it when I see it,” film noir is part genre, part style, and often open to interpretation. Its themes of guilt, disillusionment, greed, anger, loss, and misery are often played out by the lowest of the low in society: thieves, con men, killers, down-on-their-luck average Joes (and Janes) who but for one fatal mistake wouldn’t find themselves in the predicaments they are in. There are cops, detectives, loose women, and hardened criminals. Plots play out with lots of violence and sexuality (both of which were skillfully handled post-code), misogyny, betrayal, and cold, calculated murder. Visual styling and low-key lighting make grim and gritty locations all the more sinister. And someone usually ends up dead.

Additionally, many film noir movies suggest that their characters suffer some sort of defect or flaw in their character. And some come right out and tie lead characters to mental illness: depression, anxiety, even post-traumatic stress disorder.

Some form of mental illness is obvious in Monroe’s portrayal of Nell in the low budget, psychological thriller that is DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK.

A troubled babysitter — whose initially innocent evening of caring for a couple’s daughter at a hotel where her parents are celebrating at a gala in the lobby — Nell (Monroe) unravels as the film progresses, desirous of donning the clothes and jewelry of the mother as she develops fantasies about the man in a room across the courtyard. Played by Richard Widmark, Jed is just a guy who doesn’t take life and love too seriously, having been dumped for a lack of empathy by his girlfriend, played by Anne Bancroft (in her first role). His flirtation with Nell leads to her conflating their relationship in her mind, filling a void left by a lost love. In the course of trying to keep Widmark as a suitor, she abuses the girl in her care, knocks out her uncle (who is her surrogate parent), scares the older neighbors (surrogate grandparents?), and, ultimately, struggles with her charge’s mother in effort to her her fantasy intact.

It’s a stellar performance by Monroe (in a movie that is otherwise a bit reductive in its treatment of mental illness). Solid suspense — with great performances. There’s a sense that at any moment, something could go terribly wrong: violence, even murder. Its plot builds dread, leading the audience to believe that someone could, indeed, get themselves killed because of Nell’s delusions. A dark film, definitely. Film noir? It’s been since been considered by critics as one — albeit an odd entry in the genre.

Upon release, DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK was a commercial failure. Zanuck was concerned that Marilyn’s next film — where she would fully embody the femme fatale — would likewise be a flop.

He was wrong.

NIAGARA: MONROE AS FEMME FATALE
Marilyn Monroe as Rose, the femme fatale of NIAGARA (1953)
Marilyn Monroe as Rose, the femme fatale of NIAGARA (1953)

Quite unlike the timid, tortured Nell, Marilyn’s character in NIAGARA (1953) is the perfect noir villain: Rose Loomis. The unhappy wife of Korean War vet George Loomis (Joseph Cottom), Rose is the film’s central figure, and Monroe its star.

Plotting with her lover, Rose plans for her husband to die in a tunnel beneath the falls. Does she succeed in getting rid of him? That question propels the plot, and the backdrop of Niagra Falls provides a dramatic setting for what becomes a none-too-perfect murder.

Whereas Nell acts on impulse, Rose carefully schemes. It is a colder, more seductive role for Monroe, and perfect noir settings (walkways shrouded in mist, the turbulent rush of the falls) make for effective backdrops in what would be Monroe’s only true turn as femme fatale.

The moment she is introduced in NIAGARA, Rose has the dual air of a woman sweet, yet seductive — even sinister. The innocent couple who become inexorably entangled in Rose and George’s troubled marriage don’t quite know what to make of Rose when they first meet her, and neither do we. That’s the power of the femme fatale. Alluring and luring.

“Flaunting her charms as she lured men on and on to their eternal destruction,” says the voice over in one of the film’s trailers. Quickly becoming a full-blown femme fatale in a scene that find Rose requesting the record “Kiss” (a song that George suspects has secret meaning) Monroe is at once a woman desired and suspect as she sings along, emphasizing certain words that lend the song a sense of foreboding. Does she drive men crazy? Is she dangerous? That is the character trope of the femme fatale.

And, like many femme fatales, Rose is the catalyst for calamity.

NIAGARA may be quite unlike most film noirs is that it was shot in 3 strip technicolor. But the saturated scenes serve the film well in establishing its fantastic locations as more sinister than serene. Rose’s fushcia dress alone would not have had the impact it does in black and white. Neo-noir? Though that term is usually used by critics to refer to noir films after 1959, it suits NIAGARA. A dark toned — if bright colored — technicolor film.

BIMBO PARTS

Despite the success of NIAGARA, Zanuck still didn’t know what to do with his star. Famously, director Howard Hawks talked Zanuck into taking Monroe’s sex appeal and playing it for laughs.

For Marilyn, being cast solely in such roles surely shook her confidence in herself as a legitimate actress. As reported in an LA Times article, Don Murray, her co-star in 1956’s BUS STOP, said “she was trying to prove she was a serious actress and not just a movie star playing bimbo parts.” Still, she received some critical acclaim for her role as Chérie, the chanteuse from the Ozarks who wants to be a Hollywood star.  As noted by Donald Spito in his excellent biography of Marilyn Monroe, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times (a long time fan of Monroe), in his review of BUS STOP, wrote “Hold on to your chairs, everybody, and get set for a rattling surprise. Marilyn Monroe has finally proved herself an actress.”

Marilyn Monroe in dress from SOME LIKE IT HOT
Marilyn Monroe, in rare color candid photo, from SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)

Still, the lighter roles continued: a superb comedic performance as Sugar “Kane” Kowalczyk in Billy Wilder’s SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959) followed by the musical comedy LET’S MAKE LOVE (1960).

It wasn’t until 1961 and John Huston’s THE MISFITS that Marilyn would really get the chance to show off her talent as a serious actress again. Her final finished film, it was a commercial flop upon release. Written by Arthur Miller, THE MISFITS proved a difficult production — with the breakup of her marriage to Miller, and her abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs. A little over a year later, she would be dead.

REDISCOVERING MONROE
Marilyn Monroe in a 1953 Photoplay
Marilyn Monroe in a 1953 Photoplay

Marilyn Monroe will forever be a pop culture icon. Photos of her are known the world over. But in recent years, there been a rediscovery of Monroe’s work with critical acceptance that she, indeed, had talent as a dramatic actress.

TCM regularly shows many movies from her filmography, and arranges its website in such a way that it is easy to take a deep dive into her films like her film noir classics DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK and NIAGRA.

Also check out TCM’s “Noir Alley,” every Saturday night at midnight ET, where DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK was recently featured.

 

culture, history, musings

Halloween, Newspapers, and Mid-19th Century America

Pouring over newspapers, and no mention of Halloween? A 1910 illustration by Charles Mills Sheldon shows Edgar Allan Poe at work. Photo: Look and Learn/Bridgeman Images

Among writers associated with Halloween, Edgar Allan Poe is arguably the one whose prose and poems are most often read this time of year. Yet Poe himself was unlikely aware of the holiday. If he were, he certainly would have noted in his letters awareness of the Robert Burns poem of 1785, or reading about Halloween and its traditions in periodicals of his time. Newspapers and magazines, after all, were his bread and butter. But there’s no mention at all of Halloween in his works. Poe died in 1849, and a brief study of American newspapers of the period would support a theory that he didn’t know much if anything about Halloween because observance of the holiday didn’t really take off in America until after 1850.

What, still no mention of Halloween? “An extensively read News paper” by
David Claypoole Johnston, 1834. Source: AAS Archive.

The Library of Congress’ “Chronicling America” service is a great resource for finding answers. At first only referenced in stories about the crimes of Burke and Hare occurring on October 31, the words “Halloween,” “Hallowe’en” and even “All Hallow’s Eve,” appear infrequently in American newspapers of the eighteen twenties and thirties. Other than Burns’ poem being referenced in a story about Christmas in Virginia’s Phenix Gazette in late 1832, it’s not until a brief mention in an 1836 issue of “Ladey Book” (aka Godey’s Magazine) that festivities of the day are given more than a passing reference [note: the author mistakenly credits “Ladey’s Book” as the earliest mention, which, as shown previously with Phenix Gazette, is not the case].

But in November of 1848, in a story in New Orleans’ Daily Crescent Gazette, Halloween is finally discussed by a journalist in some detail:

A future husband’s face revealed on Halloween. Postcard from 1904. Wikimedia Commons.

“The Eve of All Hallows, or Hallow E’en, is a memorable day throughout all Scotland ; but it is regarded more as a festival, which is consecrated to the interests of lads and lassies, and the revelation of the future destinies of loves, than a commemoration of the virtues of the saints. Many a foolish rite is performed more for amusement than from any real expectations of lifting up the veil of futurity and discovering things to come.”

There’s no mention of ghosts and witches, however. Nothing of the supernatural we have come to associate with Halloween. More in line with Burns’ poem, really.

It wouldn’t be until 1850 that one negative aspect of the holiday — as Americans have come to know it at least — is mentioned: mischief. One writer in The New York Daily Tribune of November first that year, makes it clear his or her disdain for the day.

“HALLOWE’EN — Last night, the closing night of the month, was an anniversary which is now almost entirely disregarded in these parts — the old festival of Hallowe’en or All Hallow’s Eve, still duly reverenced in England and Scotland, as well as in some portions of our own country. Its celebration here, however, has regenerated into the practice of all sorts of mischief; the only spirits abroad are imps of fun and fancy…”

It’s the first reference (that I could find at least) that mentions “spirits” of any kind (human as they are). The article ends:

“The sober sense of our community, however, is making way against these relics of ancestral customs and the Eve, with all its more innocent rites of maids that practice mysterious spells to get sight of their future husbands faces, will soon pass out of all memory except such as lives forever in the hale, warm and homely fireside pictures of Burns.”

Oh, was this author wrong.

By 1852, references to Halloween pick up in periodicals. Virginia’s Staunton Spectator of October 27 that year has a whole article devoted to “Rites of the Scottish Halloween.”

By the time of Civil War, was Halloween known to most? Here, President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis is depicted as a reaper with all of the trappings of Halloween. Harper’s Weekly magazine, October 26, 1861.

In 1853, The Washington Sentinel on November 2nd notes vandalism on the day. A handful of other papers through 1859 make note of the holiday (mostly in passing). Then comes 1860, and an explosion of mentions.

Dozens of publications start to make note of the holiday in 1860, most notably a work of fiction called “Not a Spectre” by Mary Kyle Dallas in California’s Mountain Democrat of August 11 of that year. It could very well be the first true American Halloween-related ghost story… or is it? While the answer may be obvious from the title, the story nonetheless cements the association of the holiday with the supernatural.

A starving boy and girl rake the ground for potatoes during the Irish Potato Famine, which began in the 1840s. Illustration by James Mahoney, 1847.

But why did it take until the 1850s and (more so) the 1860s before Halloween became a more pervasive topic for mid-19th century journalists? Many posit the theory that the potato famine in Ireland (and later, Scotland) from roughly 1845 to 1852, saw Irish immigrants bring with them Celtic holidays and traditions, including Halloween. It would make sense that, as these immigrants settled into their communities — and made their way East to West across the United States — that periodicals of the time reflected the influence of this immigrant wave.

The timing is certainly right.

To be clear, Halloween is mentioned in many a work of fiction in the British Isles prior to the mid-19th century. An excellent overview is provided by Halloween expert Lesley Bannatyne. And Bannatyne also points out that what may be the first American Opera, “The Disappointment” of 1767, features a conjurer claiming possession of a diving rod cut on Halloween. Yet it’s a quick reference and not a major plot device; it is doubtful it made much of an impression on audiences of the time

Even Bannatyne — having done extensive research (for which she deserves so much recognition) — doesn’t seem to mention another instance of Halloween and American fiction until the publication of “By Cupid’s Trick” in 1885; in another article, however, she cites periodicals of the 1870s as referencing Halloween. She’s right, but as has been seen in this article, those mentions actually start as early as 1850.

Regardless, it’s clear from a search of 19th-century American periodicals that the 1850s and 1860s were the years that awareness of Halloween gained momentum.

Into the 1870s and up until the close of the century, more and more papers cover the events of October 31 — even making it all the way to The Hawaiian Gazette in 1895, where a journalist noted that

“A Scotch writer who contributed an article to an American newspaper about Halloween last year declared himself ‘very much impressed by the almost universal observance of Halloween and its old customes in America.'”

By 1900 and into the twentieth century, Halloween truly began to take shape as more of what we know today (with its witches, ghosts, and jack-o’-lanterns). But American journalists prior to 1850? Like Poe, they definitely knew little, if much at all, about the folklore and traditions of All Hallow’s Eve.

 

 

By Christopher Michael Davis