Cause for Alarm!

Loretta Young was 38 when she made "Cause for Alarm" and the actress, who started in silent films, was a couple of years away from beginning her highly successful television series. Because Hollywood back in the golden era didn't have much use for actresses over 30, and no use for actresses over 35, Young, like many of her counterparts, had descended into B films by the time the '50s hit. This is one. Her costar is Barry Sullivan, who plays her bedridden husband. Ill with a heart condition, the troubled man has given into his paranoid instincts and become convinced that his best friend, a doctor, and Young, who was once his nurse, are trying to kill him. He writes a letter to the district attorney and gives it to his wife to mail. When he later tells her what's in the letter, she spends the rest of the film trying to get it back. Irving Bacon is quite funny and irritating as the talkative, whiny postman.

The beautiful Young is over her head in this drama - she's totally hysterical and the character as essayed by her can't keep control over her panic for two seconds. It's an annoying performance rather than being a sympathetic one. You just want her to calm down. Loretta Young's greatest asset during her career was her great beauty, fashion sense, and the gentle, lovely quality she brought to many roles, such as in "The Bishop's Wife." Playing a frantic, middle class housewife just wasn't her thing.

Sullivan's role is not well drawn; the story had more potential than was able to be explored even in the hands of a fine director like Tay Garnett. All in all, pretty routine.

Cause for Alarm! is directed by Tay Garnett and adapted to screenplay by Mel Dinelli and Tom Lewis from a story written by Larry Marcus. It stars Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan and Bruce Cowling. Music is scored by Andre Previn and cinematography by Joseph Ruttenberg.

George Jones is suffering from a heart condition and confined to his bed. An aloof and suspicious man, he assumes his wife and doctor, the latter a good friend, are conspiring to poison him and outlines his suspicion in a letter to the District Atttorney. Getting his wife to pass the letter on to the postman, he gleefully tells his wife what he has done. So when he actually does die, shortly after, wife Ellen panics and sets about retrieving the letter.....

Slight plot but well acted, Cause for Alarm! is an efficient pot boiling thriller. Tagged as a "suburban noir," it's a film that has had an up and down experience in terms of critical appraisal. What we can say now is that it does carry with it a degree of ambiguity, where once back in the day it was seen as a straight forward narrative, with Young's ever increasingly fraught wife trying to correct a wrong she hasn't in fact done; now it's quite possible that her telling of the story (via narration) is "arguably" a hokey smoke screen for a dastardly deed. It's the ambiguity, to me at least, that gives the film watchable value. For without it the film just plays out as a chase and deceive movie, one with a couple of colourful characters inserted in for plot suspense enhancement, and featuring a clumsy character thread about parental yearning.

Production (in 14 days) and cast performances are good. Young engages by exuding genuine sweaty stress, and supporting turns from Margalo Gillmore and Irving Bacon, as annoyingly talkative aunt and postman respectively, leave favourable marks. Direction from multi genre helmer Garnett is nicely on the simmer, while Ruttenberg's photography brings shadows and light to this twitchy part of suburbia. But the ending, if indeed there are no tricks being played, is a thoroughly unsatisfying outcome. There are those who have delved deep in search of meaning and explanations of character motives and reactions, with that the film has an aura of mystery about it. Certainly there are more questions than answers unfolded during the relatively short running time, and that's OK, we like that Sullivan's bile based husband courts no sympathy. However, it may well be that the film was merely just meant to be a suspenseful little ole race against time drama, a tale about a woman who just married a less than honourable man.

It's watchable and the paranoia elements do indeed bring it into the film noir realm, but your enjoyment of it may depend on if you side with the theory that there is more than meets the eyes and ears. Personally I have my doubts, and the thought of having to watch it again is about as appealing as painting Loretta's picket fence on the hottest day of the year. 5/10

The film deals with a husband who believes his wife with the help of his doctor are trying to kill him. The wife was a nurse at a veterans hospital where they met and fell in love. The doctor was an old friend of the husband. The husband is so convinced of their plot that he writes a letter to the District Attorney stating all the facts and evidence pointing to the murder plot. The wife not knowing the contents of the letter gladly mails it for her husband who is confined to a bed. The entire story deals with her trying to recover the letter which implicates her and the doctor in the husband's death. This film moves at a good pace and most likely is one of those overlooked films because it lacks the flash and glaze of a big Hollywood film. Great little film that accomplishes what it intended. Lastly, you begin to feel sorry for the wife.

In addition to a really good performance from Loretta Young as the increasingly desperate Ellen Jones, I give great credit to director Tay Garnett for the very effective build-up of suspense, which shifts gears partway through the movie but doesn't miss a beat in doing so. As Ellen, Young is playing a woman trying to nurse her gravely ill husband back to health. Unfortunately, George Jones' poor health has led him to become increasingly paranoid, and he's come to the conclusion that Ellen and his doctor are in love and trying to murder him. Ellen tries her best to "put on a happy face" as she deals with her increasingly difficult spouse, and then discovers that a letter she mailed for him was actually directed to the District Attorney, and accused her and the doctor of planning his murder. (As an added complication, George actually dies after the letter is sent.) The movie then shifts from George's paranoia to Ellen's desperation, as, after George dies, she frantically tries to get the letter back before it reaches the DA, but with every more desperate attempt to get the letter she seems to set herself up as more guilty. Where and how will this end?

It's a very well done movie, with a lot of little things that gave it a feel of authenticity: the nosy neighbours, and the neighbourhood kid who pretends to be Hopalong Cassidy showing up at Ellen's house looking for cookies. The opening scenes, explaining how George and Ellen met and their mutual relationship with Dr. Graham, went on perhaps a bit too long. Then, at the end, there is an expected twist (because you always expect a surprise twist in a movie like this) but the expected twist wasn't the twist I was expecting, and it provided a somewhat humorous (and perhaps, therefore, slightly out of place) ending to an overall very enjoyable film.

"Cause for Alarm" isn't a great film but it captures the noir cinematic scene of the postwar period fairly well. Loretta Young's frenetic pursuit through hot suburban California streets to retrieve a dangerous missive is well done. Is anyone really convincing in a story of a WWII pilot working in the insurance industry and detouring into paranoia while stricken with a cardiac condition? Nah, probably not. But the movie is a nice visit back to the fifties.

Early in the film Loretta Young walks out to her driveway and encounters - a celluloid ME. Attired in the exact same garb I wore in '51, a black cowboy outfit with two six(cap)-guns and riding a trusty trike, a not particularly adept child actor passes himself off as the one-and-only Hopalong Cassidy (as we grew older he became "Hopalong Catastrophe" but in the early fifties he was our unsullied hero). This kid even has the same toy I remember treasuring.

All that nostalgia aside, this short film is diverting albeit not the finest example of noir cinema. Loretta Young was as beautiful as she was talented. Barry Sullivan is appropriately nuts and most of the rest of the cast give dependable color to their roles.

This film definitely belongs in any noir retrospective.