Lady Scarface

B-movies like "Lady Scarface" from 1941 are all of a piece. The basic plot usually concerns an ambitious female reporter and the good- looking police detective in her way; they're in love but don't know it yet.

This film, starring Dennis O'Keefe as the detective and Frances Neal as the reporter, is no different with one exception. Dame Judith Anderson stars as Slade, the the scar-faced head of a robbery gang. This isn't the first time I've seen Anderson go off-type - in the film Blood Money, a precode, she plays a glamorous bejeweled nightclub owner. When you think about one of the great stars of the theater getting these kinds of roles, it's laughable, particularly after her performance in Rebecca as Mrs. Danvers.

Anyway, the film concerns robbery money mistakenly picked up by newlyweds (Mildred Coates and Rand Brooks) and detective O'Keefe following the money in an attempt to trace the crooks.

Rand Brooks of course was Charles Hamilton in "Gone with the Wind". A little bit of trivia - despite enjoying a long career in films and television, Rand owned a private ambulance service, recognized as one of the best in the country.

Entertaining film, worth seeing for Anderson.

Obviously swiftly dashed off by RKO to exploit Judith Anderson's recent notoriety as Mrs Danvers; although in the title role she's - androgynously named Slade, improbably teamed with Arthur Shields and at the conclusion dressed as a maid and brandishing a gun like Rosa Klebb - sadly onscreen for only a few minutes.

Although there are a couple of noirish moments atmospherically lit by veteran cameraman Nicholas Musuraca, the presence of Eric Blore indicates that little of it is to be taken too seriously; and most of the action actually consists of talk in hotel rooms.

`Always leave them wanting more' is one of the hoary axioms of show business, but why there isn't more of Lady Scarface in Lady Scarface is a better mystery than anything the movie has to offer. The title role, a tough Chicago mob boss, falls to Judith Anderson, who more often than not was the best thing in any movie where she happened to appear (e.g. her Mrs. Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca). Title character or no, she takes second billing to Dennis O'Keefe as a minion of the law pursuing her; the billing accurately reflects the screen time each is allotted.

It's a pity, since, apart from Anderson, Lady Scarface is just another print struck from the template of light crime programmers. The bulk of the movie has to do with O'Keefe's following money to New York in order to smoke out the gang. And, to cover all the bases, there's mistaken identity involving a newlywed couple; comic relief in the form of a beef-witted hotel detective and fussy Eric Blore; and a matey romance between O'Keefe and Frances Neal.

But Anderson took her assignments seriously; she brings the same steel to Lady Scarface as she would later to Lady Macbeth. (The movie could have settled for a lesser villain, and Anderson should have held out for a better movie.) The last scene, in which she steals into the Leonard Sheldon Hotel disguised as a chambermaid, looks very much like the final confrontation between James Bond and Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love. Was that an hommage, or just a steal?

Here's one more little jewel from the RKO collection. An exciting thriller, well plotted, amusing and concise (it hardly arrives to 70 minutes!).

But what makes this film so special is its revolutionary treatment of the noir's conventions and the advanced-for-its-times feminist touch: here, the devious gangster is a woman (fantastic Judith Anderson)instead of a man, opposite to a brave female journalist who will help the police to catch her. The film deals admirably with the confusion game, relaying on the male centric point of view in noir's genre only to turn it down: the male main characters appear here as incompetent (those policemen who think they go after a man because they can't bear the idea of being defeated by a woman) and weak (the whole male gang is completely dominated by the powerful lady Scarface).

Without doubts, "Lady Scarface" is one to watch! Don't miss either "The Curtain Call", from the same director, Frank Woodruff, and a funny screenplay by Dalton Trumbo.

Judith Anderson is lots of fun as the gangster of the title. She's a bad woman, all right. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark: Anderson. (References and allusions to "Hamlet," in which she played the Melancholy Dane on stage, abound here.) She is beautifully shot in shows by Nick Musaraca. But alas! The movie is for the most part a routine romantic faux thriller. It's kind of a riff on the Torchy Blane series: A police detective investigates a case. A female reporter is after the same story. Which of them will get it? Will they get each other? These concerns (never mysterious in any incarnation) are the primary concerns.

Alas poor Judith! She did so well.