The Scarlet Hour

This is a superb film noir directed by Michael Curtiz, which has never been officially reissued in video or DVD format. The film introduces three new lead players, Carol Ohmart, Ton Tryon, and Elaine Stritch, who here all appear in their first feature film. This was clearly a conscious decision by Paramount to try and create new stars. They took an excellent script and entrusted the project to the capable hands of Oscar-winner Michael Curtiz, who is of course most famous for directing CASABLANCA (1942). Carol Ohmart is the femme fatale. She has a low dusky voice and moves, speaks and acts like Barbara Stanwyck. Stanwyck was twenty years older than Ohmart, and perhaps it seemed time to try and reinvent her. Ohmart does an excellent job and there is nothing to complain of about her performance except for one thing, and that is that she did not possess the natural magic of a true star. In this film she is highly effective, but we are not entranced. What is there that makes one woman spellbinding and another not? We will never know the answer. Young Tom Tryon as the earnest, love-crazed male lead is very good, though at that age he looked a bit weird, and he was much more effective and better looking when he was older and had developed a bit of gravitas, as for instance in THE CARDINAL (1963). Elaine Stritch is given a substantial supporting role, and she makes the most of it, stealing plenty of scenes (though apparently without meaning to do so) and showing what stuff she is made of, as the decades which followed have proved. Michael Curtiz does his usual excellent job of directing, and the story really does have some surprises and twists. This is no B picture, it is the real thing. Ohmart is a gold-digger who has married a rich older man (played by James Gregory) for whom she has no affection whatever. But then, her affection is reserved for herself. She does however have a mad passion for Tryon, and must have him. 'I want you,' she says to him repeatedly, like a Roman Empress deciding to conquer Cilicia before the week is out. They can't keep their hands off each other, and their mouths are glued together and they simply can't tell whose arms are which. A slight problem! Tryon works for the husband. Also, the boss's secretary, played with doe-eyed devotion by Jody Lawrance (who retired from acting only 12 years later at the age of 38, and died aged only 55 in 1986), is hopelessly in love with Tryon, who does not notice. This film is notable for an appearance by the singer Nat King Cole, who sings an entire song, 'Never Let Me Go' (composed specially for this film), standing and smiling in a nightclub into which Ohmart briefly goes before slipping out on one of her sinister errands of passion. The film begins with Ohmart and Tryon sitting in an open convertible on a warm summer night on the hills overlooking the lights of Los Angeles. They have been necking passionately and suddenly two other cars drive up nearby, which do not see them. Men get out of each car and a rendezvous takes place, in which a jewel robbery is planned, and the couple overhear all the details. Who is the mysterious and genteel man who is organising it? Later in the film we get a real shock when we find out who he is. (No, it is not Ohmart's husband. Try again. Give up, you could never guess.) Ohmart wants to run away with Tryon, who 'has no money' (at least not enough for her), so she browbeats him into robbing the robbers and taking the $350,000 worth of jewels from them as 'running away money'. When Tryon protests, Ohmart ruthlessly scorns his comparative poverty, and says 'I've been poor before.' But of course, this being a film noir, things go terribly wrong. And go on going wrong. And go on going even more wrong. And everything becomes impossibly tense, so that sweat practically breaks out upon the celluloid itself. And then more surprises come, and yet more tension. The screenwriter has no mercy on us. And Ohmart is relentless, as greedy and passionate as Stanwyck in DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), a role on which she clearly modelled her own performance. This really is a good one. I would say don't miss it, but first you have to find it, and that is even more difficult than solving the plot. Type it into Google with the word 'buy'.

Carol Ohmart and Tom Tryon are having a little rendezvous on a deserted road, when they overhear three guys plotting to knock over a house and steal $350,000 worth of jewelry. Since Ohmart is trying to ditch her husband (James Gregory), she eventually concocts a plan to rob the burglars, and suckers Tryon into it. The plan almost comes off … except that Gregory suspects the two are getting it on, and follows them. Tryon holds up the burglars, but as he makes his escape, the two burglars fire at him. Meanwhile, as Ohmart waits for Tryon in the getaway car, Gregory confronts her. Ohmart shoots him, and lets Tryon think the burglars hit him by accident. Of course, things slowly unravel from there, and there is also a neat twist involving the owner of the jewels.

There is some talent involved – Michael Curtiz directed, and keeps the pace moving fairly well. The supporting cast is good, and features Elaine Stritch as Ohmart's friend, and E. G. Marshall and Edward Binns as a couple of detectives. Richard Deacon has a bit as a jeweler. David Lewis (who played Edward Quartermaine for so many years on "General Hospital") makes his film debut. As a bonus, Nat King Cole appears and sings "Never Let Me Go." Tryon is acceptable in his role, but that's about it. Ohmart, who was wonderfully treacherous as Vincent Price's wife in House on Haunted Hill, looks great, but her voice is a little too monotone to suit me.

One of the screenwriters is billed as Rip Van Ronkel. Apparently he didn't want to use his real name, Rupert Stiltskin.

Warner Brothers 30s 40s director Michael Curtiz was well past his prime when he made this lower tier work rich in both mood and atmospherics for Paramount. Grazing in Billy Wilder Double Indemnity territory it lacks the first string line-up of Stanwyck, MacMurray and Robinson but the second team acquits itself well enough to make this a pretty suspenseful piece.

"Marsh" Marshall (Tom Tryon) and his boss's wife Pauline are having some illicit recreation at a local lover's lane when they overhear three men planning a major heist. Pauline, the spine in the relationship concocts an idea to rob them after they pull the job. The pliable Marsh (mellow?) blinded by Pauline's sexiness and passion reluctantly goes along.

Well paced Scarlet Hour runs on deception and betrayal with plenty of double cross along the way weaving in the thieves subplot to the major theme of the adulterous leads seamlessly as fatale Pauline must manipulate three men to her grand plan.

Tryon and Ohmarht are fine if inconsistent at times while a supporting cast of hang dog looking pros (James Gregory, EG Marshall, Edward Binns, Elaine Strich, Rene Aubuchon, James Lewis) add sober gravitas.

Special mention goes to the camera work of Lionel Liddon who keeps us in the dark (a majority of the film takes place in the evening) with some bold chiaroscuro compositions that up the noir tenor and elevate Scarlet Hour to an impressive overachiever.

Michael Curtiz had quite a few successes in his directorial career: Casablanca, Adventures of Robin Hood, Sea Wolf, Captain Blood, Mildred Pierce, Night and Day all are so well known that they obscure to some extent a true gem like THE SCARLET HOUR.

David Niven famously quoted Curtiz's order on the set as the title to his first autobiographical book: "Bring on the empty horses!" By which he meant the riderless horses. There is nothing empty about THE SCARLET HOUR. It opens with infidelity by a married woman, causing the couple to hear someone's plans to steal $350,000 from a house in Baja California, and it ends suitably openly.

I admire Curtiz's courage in going ahead with this project despite the unknown leads. In fact, the female lead, Carol Ohmart, debuts as Pauline in THE SCARLET HOUR. She is a dish, too (the camera lovingly films her curvaceous figure and long legs) and she certainly has no hangups about cheating on her rich hubby - accomplished performance from James Gregory - corrupting her standup lover, and seeking revenge on the secretary, Kathy, who catches lover Marsh's eye with her honesty and unambiguous love.

Marsh, played convincingly by Tom Tryon - also debuting, though that is not mentioned in the credits - is a well-meaning fellow who wants to do the right thing but is blinded by his love for the gorgeous Pauline. To complicate matters, Pauline decides that $350,000 is exactly what they need to elope and have a good life elsewhere on the planet. Unbeknown to the lovebirds, hubby Gregory suspects something and gets himself in the line of fire, whereupon police duo E. G. Marshall and Edward Binns arrives on the scene with a bang, almost stealing the show with their sharp inquisitiveness.

As Marsh puts it, Kathy is the sole clean character in this remarkably crisp and logical script, further buoyed by extremely competent cinematography from Lionel Lindon, and Curtiz's exacting and intelligent direction.

I recommend THE SCARLET HOUR to anyone interested in film noir.

E.V. "Marsh" Marshall (Tom Tryon) is an up-and-coming sales manager for the Ralph Nevin (James Gregory) real estate empire but little does Ralph know that his top employee is having an affair with his slinky wife "Paulie" (Carol Ohmart). Parked in a lover's lane one night, Marsh and Paulie overhear plans for a quarter million dollar jewel heist and high tail it out of there but it does plant a seed. Paulie's husband beats her and she wants out but she came from the tenements and doesn't want to go back so she begs Marsh to help her break free by ripping off the jewel robbers...

There's twists and turns galore in Michael Curtiz' suspense-filled '50s noir that for some reason remains unsung. This was no B-movie, either; it's a Paramount film in VistaVison produced and directed by an Academy Award winner with a sure hand for this sort of thing from a story by Frank Tashlin, of all people. The film "introduces" Tom Tryon, Carol Ohmart, and Jody Lawrance and although none of them went on to major stardom, Tom and Carol had respectable second tier careers. Ohmart was a very sexy lady with the kind of cruel beauty that lent itself well to femme fatale roles and handsome Tom conveys "conflicted" convincingly. Elaine Stritch (her feature film debut, as well) adds heart as Paulie's floozy friend from the old days before she married well and E.G. Marshall's on hand as the investigating police detective. Nat King Cole croons "Never Let Me Go" in the Crystal Room of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Recommended.