Black Widow **** (1954, Ginger Rogers, Van Heflin, Gene Tierney, George Raft) – Classic Movie Review 9584

Producer-writer-director Nunnally Johnson assembles a line-up of stylish players for 20th Century Fox’s elegant and sophisticated 1954 theatre-set whodunit mystery thriller Black Widow.

Van Heflin plays Peter Denver, a married Broadway producer accused of murder when a grasping, seductive  young writer (Peggy Ann Garner) he has befriended is found dead in his apartment, where he has installed her while his wife is away. Ginger Rogers plays an aging, heartless Broadway diva star called ‘Lottie’ Marin, Gene Tierney plays the suspicious wife Iris Denver, while eternal gangster George Raft is surprisingly cast as Detective Lieutenant C A Bruce, a cop unravelling the spider’s web.

Black Widow is a fascinating puzzle, told in flashback, and based on Hugh Wheeler (aka Patrick Quentin)’s novel Fatal Woman.

This thriller is appropriately stagey and set bound, and delivered with stylishly theatrical performances. Maybe it is not quite totally suspenseful, but it will do for now.

Also in the cast are Reginald Gardiner, Virginia Leith, Otto Kruger, Hilda Simms, Cathleen Nesbitt, Skip Homeier, Mabel Albertson, Aaron Spelling, Hilda Simms and Harry Carter.

Black Widow is directed by Nunnally Johnson, runs 95 minutes, is made and released by 20th Century Fox, is written by Nunnally Johnson, is shot in CinemaScope and Color by De Luxe by Charles G Clarke, is produced by Nunnally Johnson and is scored by Leigh Harline.

Tallulah Bankhead and then Ginger Rogers had both turned down the star part, but Rogers relented when Johnson wrote to her and said she could make it into a star-turn. She had just played a Broadway diva in Forever Female (1953).

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9584

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