Private Hell 36

This taut, low-key and highly effective B-movie film noir was an early example of a style that director Don Siegel came to perfect in his later films. Although dealing with robbery and murder it's at its most effective in the small scenes of domesticity between the central characters, a crooked cop, his partner and the women they are both involved with and there are good performances from Steve Cochran, Howard Duff, Ida Lupino and Dorothy Malone in these roles. (Lupino co-wrote the movie with producer Collier Young). Excitement is generated from not knowing exactly which way the characters might go and from the degree of complexity that both the players and writers invest them with. The denouement is a bit of let-down, however, with things tidied up too quickly and too neatly. Still, it's a commendable effort.

Strolling home one night, Los Angeles police detective Steve Cochran interrupts a robbery in progress at a drugstore. He fatally shoots one of the perps and books the other. A marked $50 bill in the loot came from $300-grand robbery-homicide in New York. Cochran and his partner Howard Duff trace the bill back to the pharmacist, the bartender who passed it to him, and Ida Lupino, coat-check girl and part-time singer at the bar. She claims a drunk tipped her with it one night after she sang him `Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' five times; the cops don't quite believe her, but it doesn't matter. Cochran is falling for her, even though his cop's salary won't snare her the diamond bracelets she's after.

Over the next week, they drag her to a racetrack where more of the marked cash is being uttered, in hopes that she'll spot her tipsy tipper. When she does, Cochran and Duff go off in hot pursuit. The getaway car hurtles down an embankment, killing the driver but leaving cash blowing around the ravine. Cochran pockets about $80-grand and turns over the rest, leaving Duff angry but not angry enough to break the inviolable code: Never rat out your partner. Cochran makes Duff an unwilling accomplice by giving him a duplicate key to a rented trailer where he's stashed the money; it's parked in slip #36. But then Cochran gets a phone call from a stranger who claims the cash is his and wants to make a deal....

Opening with an initial burst of two brutal robberies, director Don Siegel then slackens the pace but not the tension; he moves the story forward through character rather than incident. The square-rigger Duff tries to dissolve his guilt in alcohol, to the distress of his wife (Dorothy Malone, in too skimpy a role); Cochran and Lupino seesaw up and down, back and forth in their more volatile liaison. The fifth major player, Dean Jagger, as the detectives' canny superior, senses that their story doesn't quite add up.

Written by Lupino and her ex-husband Collier Young, the movie departs from the usual formula by not making current spouse Duff Lupino's love interest; perhaps in consequence, Duff loses the cocky, ingratiating mien he often adopts, while Cochran runs off with the meatier role. Private Hell 36 stays lean and hard-edged (with help from cinematographer Burnett Guffey); it's among the better offerings from the latter years of the noir cycle.

Independent filmmaker Ida Lupino didn't intend to make a B picture with PRIVATE HELL 36 but that's what happened. In the early 1950s, director/writer/actress Ida and her writer/producer husband Collier Young broke away from the studio system by forming "The Filmmakers" and they used it to tackle such topical subjects as rape and "ripped from the headlines" social commentary. Young and Lupino soon divorced but they kept their working relationship going and even used each other's new spouses in their "classy" exploitation films. Ida directed Collier's wife Joan Fontaine in THE BIGAMIST (1953) and her follow-up film was going to be "The Story Of A Cop" starring her husband, Howard Duff. At the time, big city police corruption and the Kefauver TV hearings on organized crime were hot-button issues that made national headlines and were inspiration to writers like William P. McGivern who fashioned roman-a-clefs in films like THE BIG HEAT (1953), SHIELD FOR MURDER, and ROGUE COP (both 1954). Never one to let a good story go by, Ida Lupino threw her bonnet into the ring but by the time she was ready to make "Cop", she and Duff had separated. They soon reconciled but, afraid to rock the boat, Ida decided not to direct her husband and hired Don Siegel, who had just made RIOT IN CELL BLOCK 11, for the job. The result, now called PRIVATE HELL 36, is the story of L.A.P.D. partners Steve Cochran & Howard Duff and what happens when temptation proves too much for one of them. Lupino actually tackles themes that many Films Noirs have been accused of doing now and then: capitalism, materialism, and the American Dream are the mitigating circumstances propelling the self-inflicted problems everyone involved have to confront. Loyalty and "the blue wall of silence" are also thrown in for good measure but the character study the film becomes disrupts the pace. The movie starts off with a murder/robbery but the real action doesn't come until after the half-way mark; in between are slow build-ups involving family man Duff and his wife, Dorothy Malone, and the single Cochran who's fallen for a witness in the case, nightclub chanteuse Ida Lupino. Ida's a bit old for her role as a sympathetic "femme fatale" but the dynamics between her and the seemingly laid-back Cochran are one of the film's highlights. The movie takes too long by half to get where it's going but the ride is fascinating -as is the back story:

"Siegel was never comfortable working on the film and most of his memories of it are bad. He can remember little of it and readily admits that he may be blocking it out psychologically. The things he does remember are uniformly unpleasant. Siegel recalls there was a great deal of drinking on the set by the cast and producer. The script was never really in shape, ready for shooting, and Siegel was given little opportunity to work on it. He began to lose control of the picture, got into fights with Lupino and Young, had difficulty keeping Cochran sober, and got in the middle of arguments with his cameraman... One time, he recalls, Miss Lupino told Guffey that she wanted him to re-shoot something and even Guffey, whom Siegel describes as the mildest of men, exploded and became party to the bickering. 'I was terribly self-conscious on that picture,' recalls Siegel. 'I had just done a picture for Walter Wanger, RIOT IN CELL BLOCK 11, in which I had great authority, did whatever I wanted to do. Now I was on a picture battling for every decision, working with people who were pretentious, talented but pretentious. They'd talk, talk, talk, but they wouldn't sit down and give me enough time. They wouldn't rehearse. Perhaps it was my fault. Cochran was a good actor, but not when he was loaded, and I had a hard time catching him even slightly sober. I was not able to communicate with these people and the picture showed it. Strangely enough, I personally liked both Ida Lupino and Young and still do, but not to work with."

Cinematographer Burnett Guffey had just won an Academy Award for FROM HERE TO ETERNITY and would do so again with BONNIE & CLYDE over a decade later. Don Seigel hired his friend Sam Peckinpah as "dialogue coach" and Howard & Ida's little girl had a bit part. The alcohol-fueled acting (enhanced by Leith Stevens' jazzy score) is fine all the way around with Steve, as usual, being the stand-out as he slowly reveals his character to be a self-assured sociopath under the badge.

Recommended -but not for the usual reasons.

Private Hell 36 is a tale of two Los Angeles PD cops who get an assignment to track down money from a big bank robbery which is being laundered at the pari-mutual window at Hollywood Park. Howard Duff is a responsible family man with wife Dorothy Malone and an infant daughter. He's got the financial responsibilities that any middle class individual from the Eisenhower 50s has.

His partner is Steve Cochran a brooding loner who feels he's not gotten his just due from the job. Their boss is Captain Dean Jagger who gives them that assignment.

That assignment also comes with trailing singer Ida Lupino who is the only one who can finger the right bettor. She does and when they give chase the perpetrator dies and they're left with a whole lot of money and maybe, just maybe they ought to keep it themselves.

I'm not sure how any of us would have handled the issue. The police however have some strict guidelines because they get tempted in these situations a lot more often than you or I would be. Cochran goes over the edge and he's taking Duff with him.

Some of these situations were handled a dozen years later in the Glenn Ford film The Money Trap where he and Ricardo Montalban found themselves tempted the same way. If you're familiar with that film you know how it comes out and probably a bit better for one of the detectives than in The Money Trap.

Don Siegel got good performances out of his ensemble cast. See this one back to back with The Money Trap if possible.

Very watchable film, especially scenes with Steve Cochran. He is absolutely beautiful to look at, one of the most gorgeous men ever captured on film. He is also the best actor of the cast, bringing a sly grace to his role. He seems very on target as a cop who sees an opportunity to get rich off of money from a dead murder suspect. Ida Lupino does a capable job as the object of his lust, but she was a bit long in the tooth at that point, and just didn't "fit" as a femme fatale. Howard Duff went way overboard in his portrayal of the "good" cop. His teeth-clenching, jaw-rubbing portrayal of moral dilemma was kind of strained. Dorothy Malone did a suprisingly good job as Duff's wife. Her performance in the film was one of the most subtle she ever gave. The film suffered when it got really bogged down in the middle as they searched for the suspect at the racetrack. A lot of that should have been trimmed out. Otherwise, a nice film for a rainy afternoon.