Slightly Scarlet **** (1956, John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, Arlene Dahl) – Classic Movie Review 8826

‘Out of the shadows of a vice-ridden city comes James M Cain’s most explosive drama!’

Director Allan Dwan’s sharp and stylish 1956 colour film noir crime thriller Slightly Scarlet is a neatly acted and smartly directed modestly-budget effort, with a complex, potboiler screenplay by Robert Blees taken from a James M Cain novel called Love’s Lovely Counterfeit (1942).

Technicolor shows the two redhead stars Rhonda Fleming and Arlene Dahl off to best advantage, luridly captured in John Alton’s superb, shadowy widescreen cinematography.

John Payne stars as fast-talking, small-time mobster Ben Grace, who gets involved with flame-haired sisters June and Dorothy Lyons (Fleming and Dahl). Grace (Payne) hesitates when he gets the chance to take over as mob boss of Bay City from Solly Caspar (Ted de Corsia). Dorothy (Dahl) is a habitual thief, paroled in custody of her sister June (Fleming), secretary to the big-city election reform candidate, Frank Jansen (Kent Taylor).

The RKO Radio Pictures studio advertised: ‘With brains, bullets and women, he fought his way to the bottom!’

Also in the cast are Lance Fuller as Gauss, Buddy Baer as Lenhardt, Ellen Corby as June Lyons’s maid, Frank Gerstle as Detective Lt. Dave Dietz, Myron Healey as Caspar thug Wilson, Roy Gordon, and George E Stone.

Slightly Scarlet is directed by Allan Dwan, runs 99 minutes, is made by Benedict Bogeaus Productions [Filmcrest Productions], is released by RKO Radio Pictures, is written by Robert Blees, based on James M Cain novel’s Love’s Lovely Counterfeit, shot in Technicolor and widescreen by John Alton, produced by Benedict Bogeaus, scored by Louis Forbes and designed by Alfred E Spencer.

Fleming did other thrillers that year: The Killer Is Loose (1956) with Joseph Cotten and Fritz Lang’s While the City Sleeps.

Dwan directed 386 films in a 50-year career, starting in 1911 and ending in 1961.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8826

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