A Life at Stake ***½ (1955, Angela Lansbury, Keith Landes, Douglass Dumbrille, Claudia Barrett, Jane Darwell, Gavin Gordon) – Classic Movie Review 12,147

‘A Cheat At Heart From Her Painted Toes To Her Plunging Neckline!’ Angela Lansbury! Really?

The 1955 American black and white film noir A Life at Stake is directed by the actor Paul Guilfoyle, and stars Angela Lansbury, Keith Landes, Douglass Dumbrille, Claudia Barrett, Jane Darwell, and Gavin Gordon. It is an independent production, made by Hank McCune Productions and distributed by Filmakers Releasing Organization outside the main Hollywood studios.

It is written by Russ Bender (screenplay) from a story idea by the producer Hank McCune. They could have developed it a little bit more but it is an excellent a story idea and very serviceable, and even so has interesting characters, sharp dialogue and well constructed scenes.

Keith Andes plays a handsome out-of-work, broke architect and builder called Edward Shaw, who is introduced to a young sexy married woman called Doris Hillman (Angela Lansbury) and her aging husband Gus Hillman (Douglass Dumbrille), offering him a much needed business proposition that will pay off his debts, but they insist on him signing a very large life insurance policy. Doris mounts a love attack on Edward, but the architect begins to suspect the woman’s interest in him is not just love, and the man’s interest in him is not just financial, and in both cases it may be deadly, as he starts to become certain that they are trying to kill him for the insurance payoff.

Doris’s seduction of Edward does not go down at all well with her old husband. And meanwhile Doris’s sister Madge (Claudia Barrett) comes on to Edward too, and provides the info he needs to go to the police to claim his life is in danger, who are singularly unhelpful, saying they hear this story all the time.

A Life at Stake recalls Double Indemnity (1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1944), and, while not in their class, is enjoyably teasing and involving, with a seductive mini tour-de-force by Lansbury, vamping alluringly (‘Mmmm, I feel just luscious’), a very reliable star turn by old-style handsome Landes, and ideal performances by Dumbrille and Barrett, plus Jane Darwell adding character as Edward’s landlady. Director Paul Guilfoyle and cinematographer Ted Allan contribute some style and flavour to the film, and it is especially good when it gets out of doors, if a little cramped in the studio set scenes, showing its low budget, but in a good way. Lansbury’s and Landes’s cars and the odd street scene really bring the taste of Fifties noir.

Lansbury has top billing though Landes has the main role, and it is his character’s story. Good though everyone else is, the film does take a dip when she is not on screen. That shows how brilliant she is, even in these relatively humble circumstances, and even cast in a femme fatale minx role that seems outside her comfort zone, though she was used to playing villainous women.

Lansbury was signed to a seven-year contract with MGM in 1944. After her success in Gaslight, National Velvet and The Picture of Dorian Gray, MGM cast Lansbury in 11 more films but kept her among their B-list stars and used her less than their actresses of a similar age. She was made to play older women, often villainous women, and became increasingly dissatisfied with working for MGM, saying: ‘I kept wanting to play the Jean Arthur roles, and Mr [Louis B] Mayer kept casting me as a series of venal bitches.’ After her contract with MGM ended in 1952, as a freelance actress she found herself typecast as women older than herself (‘Hollywood made me old before my time’). She described The Purple Mask (1955) as ‘the worst movie I ever made’.

The cast are Angela Lansbury as Doris Hillman, Keith Andes as Edward Shaw, Douglass Dumbrille as Gus Hillman, Claudia Barrett as Madge Neilan, Jane Darwell as Landlady, Gavin Gordon as Sam Pearson, Charles Maxwell as Lt. Hoff, William Henry as Myles Norman, Kathleen Mulqueen as Mary, Dan Sturkie as Officer Biff, Jeane Wood as maid Mabel, and Robert Haver as Mechanic.

A Life at Stake runs 76 minutes, and it could happily have run a quarter of an hour longer.

It was released on March 18, 1955. It was released by Monarch Film Corporation in the UK.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,147

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