I love immersing myself into the atmosphere of a mystery novel or movie. The stories are set in milieu that I can only experience through their pages or onscreen drama, but if they’re well done they draw me inside for a few hours.
My favourite authors are all British – Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Daphne DuMaurier, Arthur Conan Doyle – so whenever I want to read their works I feel the need for a steaming cup of freshly-brewed tea beside me on my lamp table.
But to watch some of my favourite mystery films, I always have the urge to pull out a glass pitcher and long-handled cocktail spoon, or a cocktail shaker, and mix a slinky, smoky cocktail that evokes the ambience of 1940s film noir. Perhaps a Sidecar, which, since it includes citrus, should be shaken, not stirred. A little brandy, a little Cointreau, a squeeze of lemon juice and some ice, shaken and poured into a classic stemmed cocktail glass and garnished with a twist of lemon to give it flair.
The other day Silver Screen was showing one of my all-time favourite movies, Laura, released in 1944. The movie is a classic in cinema, for its style and its startling twist partway through (which I won’t give away).
Set in the high-society world of New York in the 1940s, where people who behaved perfectly in public at things like cocktail soirées, following the dictates of ‘polite’ society, hid seething passions behind their impeccable facades.
In the movie, Detective Mark McPherson, played with a certain crime-weariness by the great Dana Andrews, is called in to investigate the brutal murder of Laura Hunt, found dead just inside the doorway of her apartment in a very personal way by a shotgun blast to the face.
Laura was a highly successful advertising executive. She was young and very beautiful in life, as evidenced by a large and haunting portrait of her in her apartment.
She was played by the actress Gene Tierney, who studio head Darryl Zanuck called “unquestionably the most beautiful woman in movie history”. Since her contemporary female stars included Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth, that was a considerable compliment.
Tierney was the perfect woman to play Laura, whose chic but aloof personality, played out in flashbacks as the detective talks to people who knew her, was perfectly embodied by the actress with exotic, cat-like blue eyes and such a symmetrical face that it was almost unreal, as well as a coolly-elegant persona in real life that translated directly onto the screen.
We watch McPherson interview her mentor, an overly-refined older man named Waldo Lydecker. He’s a famous newspaper columnist who Laura approached for help in securing an endorsement for an ad she was working on. At first put off by her brashness, Lydecker was entranced by both her beauty and her self-possession, and decided to take her under his wing, guiding her style and introducing her to all the right people. They became almost inseparable as Laura allowed him to direct her upward mobility. Ironically, as time went on, and Laura became more well-known among his social circles, Lydecker became jealous of Laura’s various suitors, and used his influence to keep them at bay.
There seemed to be a turning point when Laura became engaged to a handsome playboy, Shelby Carpenter, who she met in his tenure as a ‘kept man’ of her wealthy, middle-aged socialite aunt, Ann Treadwell. Carpenter became infatuated with Laura, something tolerated by Treadwell, at least on the surface. Carpenter was played by a younger Vincent Price, who perfectly portrayed Carpenter’s lazy, louche demeanor, and his assumption that his charm and looks would get him through any situation. (If you’re only familiar with Price as a horror movie villain, this role will be quite a surprise for you.)
Laura’s maid/housekeeper, Bessie Clary, also interviewed by McPherson, is also almost obsessively attached to Laura.
As the investigation proceeds, McPherson himself appears to develop the same obsession with the victim, and becomes part of the tangle of passions and mysterious activities that he’s trying to puzzle out. And then something happens that casts everything in a new light.
Lydecker was personified by Clifton Webb, another veteran actor whose career was also most defined by this movie, which gave him his first screen success at the age of 55. Early in his life he was a ballroom dancer. Apparently he was inseparable from his overbearing mother, and both of these influences probably added a certain flavour to his work in this role.
The story was taken from a serialized novel in Collier’s magazine written by author Vera Caspary called Ring Twice for Laura. Caspary was also an activist, and wrote many novels about women’s journeys for identity and love, usually with an element of murder – all of which are strong themes in Laura. And as with most interactions with Hollywood, the production of the movie version didn’t go smoothly.
Director Otto Preminger was looking for a theatrical project and became aware of the novel when her agent offered him the first draft of a play by the same name. He liked the high-society setting and the unusual plot twist. However, Caspary and he disagreed about the direction they should take it for an adaptation to film, and she opted to collaborate with writer George Sklar instead. She was unable to find a producer willing to finance it and abandoned the project, eventually selling the play to 20th Century Fox.
At Fox, interim studio head William Goetz, covering while Darryl F. Zanuck was on military duty, brought Preminger back on board to develop the books for the screen. Preminger felt that the more interesting character was not Laura herself, but Waldo Lydecker, and expanded his role, which Caspary wasn’t pleased with.
When Zanuck, with whom Preminger previously had clashed, returned to the studio, he was unhappy, and announced that Preminger could produce Laura but not direct it. Several directors were offered and rejected the helm until Rouben Mamoulian finally agreed to take it on.
Mamoulian immediately ignored all of Preminger’s directives as producer and began to rewrite the script. To Preminger’s dismay, he cast Laird Cregar, known for his portrayal of Jack the Ripper, as Lydecker. Preminger felt that Cregar, who came from a society background himself, but who had a reputation for playing such sinister roles, gave the wrong ‘cast’ to the role (forgive my pun 😉). Cregar, by the 1940s, was middle-aged and looking very much like a ‘heavy’ in a gangster film. Preminger preferred Clifton Webb, by then a noted Broadway actor, but both Zanuck and the Fox casting director thought that Webb’s mannerisms were too effeminate. Preminger filmed Webb delivering a monologue from a Noel Coward play, which ended up convincing Zanuck that Webb was perfect for the role as society journalist.
Zanuck wanted actor Reginald Gardiner to play the role of Shelby. If you’re a fan of movies from the era, you’ll be familiar with Gardiner – many roles of, as IMDB puts it, ‘ “silly ass” upper-crust English twits’. Not really the image of a New York playboy. Fox contract player Vincent Price finally got the role.
Apparently Mamoulian had problems with his cast from the start, and when Preminger convinced Zanuck that the material needed a more subtle approach than Mamoulian was willing to give it, Zanuck allowed Preminger to dismiss Mamoulian and direct the film himself.
Once the principal photography was done, Preminger hired David Raksin to score the film, but wanted him to use “Sophisticated Lady” by Duke Ellington for the main theme. Raksin objected to the choice, and Alfred Newman, music director for Fox, convinced Preminger to give Raksin a weekend to compose an original tune. Raksin was inspired by a “Dear John” letter he’d received from his wife while they separated, and composed the unforgettable “Laura” theme.
Preminger was so pleased with the end result that he collaborated with Raksin on four additional films. The American Film Institute voted the Laura theme the No. 7 greatest of all time, superseded only by, in order upward: Jaws, The Godfather, Psycho, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone with the Wind, and (no. 1) Star Wars. Amazingly, it didn’t receive even a nomination for an Oscar. Actress Hedy Lamarr, who turned down the leading role for the movie, said, “They sent me the script, not the score.”
Laura received an Academy Award for Best Cinematography (Black and White). It was nominated for: Best Direction, Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction (Black and White) and Best Supporting Actor (Clifton Webb).
The movie got mixed reviews upon its release, but its legacy is long and speaks for itself. It was voted the No. 4 Greatest Mystery of All Time by the American Film Institute, and has inspired artists in countless ways, from the theme song to shows paying homage with a similar plot, including Star Trek: The Next Generation, in an episode called Aquiel (the 139th episode) in which Geordie La Forge investigates the mysterious disappearance of two personnel at a Federation relay station, Lieutenants Aquiel Uhnari and Rocha. Geordie becomes fascinated with Aquiel when he examines her personal logs during the investigation.
The success of the movie Laura rested heavily on the beauty and mystique of the character, as portrayed so effectively by Gene Tierney, and her enigmatic portrait that dominated her living room. It had to be remarkable, to so entrance Detective McPherson that he became obsessed with a dead woman, and so it was.
The wife of the original director, Mamoulian, was an artist who painted the original portrait of Laura, but Preminger scrapped it. He felt that portraits didn’t photograph well, and had a photograph of Tierney enlarged and smeared with oil paint until it looked like a painting. It was an interesting solution that worked extremely well, and the impact of the portrait was one of the reasons the film earned an Oscar nomination for Interior Set Decoration.
All three stars of the movie, although they made many other films, are best-know for this moody outing.
Gene Tierney’s career had its ups and downs, due to her struggles with bipolar disease. She acquired her carriage and remote elegance from finishing school in Switzerland and Connecticut. She made her society debut when she was 17 years old, but soon became bored with that life and decided to become an actress.
Becoming an actress in Hollywood in that era wasn’t easy.
At the time, Hollywood had a strict ‘starlet grooming’ system, managing its actresses’ physical appearance, behaviour in public, and even personal life (some contracts included a ‘no-marriage’ clause). The ideal of attractive femininity was narrow and biased: white, thin, coiffed, manicured, even with no visible freckles. The all-male studio heads had battalions of make-up artists to reshape faces with items like putty for fixing imperfections, meticulously coiffed hair, and any amount of makeup necessary to make a star look like she wasn’t wearing any. Tierney was famous for her ‘natural face’, as were other actresses, even though that wasn’t the case at all.
A cameraman advised Tierney to lose a little weight, to maintain that glamorous hourglass shape that showed off the couture clothing actresses wore both onscreen and off. Accordingly, she wrote to Harper’s Bazaar magazine for a diet, which she followed for the next 25 years. Tierney said that she was hungry for 20 years because “a certain thinness would add attractive contours to my face”.
She reportedly took up smoking to lower her voice after seeing a screening of her first movie – she thought she sounded like “an angry Minnie Mouse”.
In later years, she wrote in her memoir, Self-Portrait, about her appearance and her time in mental health facilities: “I have always needed to believe that my career survived on more than how I looked. I have no deeper meaning to plumb, no point to make about beauty and craziness. A friend once asked a doctor if he thought my life might have been easier, if I might not have needed confining, if I had been less pretty. ‘No,’ he said bluntly. ‘They have ugly people in there, too.’ ”
Laura is a movie that draws you in, and like the famous portrait in it, haunts you afterward. So pull up a chair, make yourself a cocktail (or mocktail, as you choose), and see if you can figure out who the murderer is while you navigate the deep and murky waters of chic 1940s society.