Desert Fury **** (1947, John Hodiak, Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster, Mary Astor, Wendell Corey) – Classic Movie Review 2168

The lurid, hard-to-resist 1947 film noir crime drama Desert Fury stars Lizabeth Scott as gorgeous young husky blonde Paula Haller, daughter of powerful Nevada saloon and casino owner Fritzi (Mary Astor).

Director Lewis Allen’s lurid, racy, hard-to-resist 1947 film noir crime thriller melodrama Desert Fury stars Lizabeth Scott as gorgeous young husky blonde Paula Haller, daughter of powerful Nevada saloon and casino owner Fritzi (Mary Astor). It’s called the Purple Sage, which wouldn’t have been a bad title for the movie.

Paula quits school, returns to her (fictional) Chuckawalla, Nevada, small mining town and soon falls for gambler and racketeer Eddie Bendix (John Hodiak), who has also just come back after leaving quickly when his first wife died in suspiciously strange circumstances. Eddie and Fritzi were once involved. So now Fritzi hires Paula’s old lover Tom Hanson (Burt Lancaster) to try to distract her daughter’s attention away from Eddie and separate them.

This steamy, event-packed noir-style crime melodrama has preposterous plot elements that are sometimes hard to swallow. But, despite its artificiality and its credibility gap, the movie still manages to exert a powerful hold with the help of the energetic and charismatic performances by its intriguing cast of players and the gorgeous look of it all in Edward Cronjager and Charles Lang’s glorious Technicolor cinematography, which exactly suits its artificiality.

Great though Scott, Hodiak and Lancaster are, the veteran Astor still manages to upstage everybody else in an excellent role for her. Wendell Corey makes his mark too, in his film début as Eddie’s buddy, Johnny Ryan, who also tries to break up Paula’s relationship with Eddie.

Eddie tells Paula how he and Johnny met: ‘It was in the automat off Times Square, about two o’clock in the morning on a Saturday. I was broke, he had a couple of dollars. We got to talking. He ended up paying for my ham and eggs. I went home with him that night. We were together from then on.’

Also in the cast are Kristine Miller, William Harrigan, James Flavin, Jane Novak, Anna Camargo, John Farrell, Milton Kibbee, Mike Lally, Ralph Peters, Ed Randolph, Tom Schamp, Ray Teal and Harland Tucker.

The story is adapted for the screen by Robert Rossen and A. I. Bezzerides (uncredited) from the novel Desert Town by Ramona Stewart.

Desert Fury runs 96 minutes, is made by Hal Wallis Productions, is released by Paramount Pictures, is produced by Hal Wallis, with music by Miklós Rózsa and cinematography in Technicolor by Edward Cronjager and Charles Lang.

The world premiere at Salt Lake City on 23 July 1947 was attended by Burt Lancaster and Lizabeth Scott. It was released on 15 August 1947 in the US.

Filming took place in the Ventura County, California, small town of Piru, with the northwest side of Center Street, at Main, used as the exterior of Fritzi’s saloon and casino. The Piru Mansion stands in for the Haller home. The location of the car crash is the historic Piru bridge. Some scenes were shot in Clarkdale, Arizona, and in the Old Town section of Cottonwood, Arizona.

The cast are John Hodiak as Eddie Bendix, Lizabeth Scott as Paula Haller, Burt Lancaster as Tom Hanson, Wendell Corey as Johnny Ryan, Mary Astor as Fritzi Haller, Kristine Miller as Claire Lindquist, William Harrigan as Judge Berle Lindquist, James Flavin as Sheriff Pat Johnson, Jane Novak as Mrs. Lindquist, Anna Camargo as Rosa, John Farrell, Milton Kibbee, Mike Lally, Ralph Peters, Ed Randolph, Tom Schamp, Ray Teal and Harland Tucker.

Lizabeth Scott, who was born Emma Matzo on 29 September 1921, made her last film Pulp in 1973. After that, she was engaged in real estate development and volunteer work for various charities, such as Project HOPE and the Ancient Arts Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Scott suffered heart failure at Cedars Sinai Medical Center and died on 31 January 2015, aged 93.

She was a leading lady in all but one of her 22 films, such as The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), Dead Reckoning (1947), Desert Fury (1947), and Too Late for Tears (1949).

© Derek Winnert 2015 – Classic Movie Review 2168