The Blue Gardenia **** (1953, Anne Baxter, Richard Conte, Ann Sothern, Raymond Burr) – Classic Movie Review 2,600

Fritz Lang said: ‘I had to shoot The Blue Gardenia in 20 days. Maybe that’s what made me so venomous.’ The moody 1953 film noir crime thriller stars Anne Baxter, Raymond Burr, Richard Conte and Ann Sothern.

Director Fritz Lang’s enjoyable and deliciously moody 1953 film noir crime thriller The Blue Gardenia stars exactly the right cast in Anne Baxter, Raymond Burr, Richard Conte and Ann Sothern.

Baxter plays jilted telephone operator Norah Larkin who goes on a blind date to the Blue Gardenia Club with the caddish calendar girl photographer Harry Prebble (Burr) and ends up drunk and at his mercy in his apartment.

The next morning she wakes up in her own apartment with a hangover, no memory of the night before and the fear she may be a killer when she reads the newspaper and finds that Harry is dead and the police have her handkerchief, her high heels and her blue gardenia.

Vera Caspary’s original story provides the entertainingly artificial and far-fetched yarn in which newsman Casey Mayo (Conte) believes Baxter didn’t really kill her seducer and tries to prove it. George Reeves plays Police Captain Sam Haynes.

There is a lot of polish from the players and from Nicholas Musuraca’s black and white noir cinematography, and particularly from director Lang. The actors and director certainly make the best of Charles Hoffman’s sometimes-sticky script, though it does have some good dialogue to recommend it.

Also in the cast are Jeff Donnell as Sally Ellis, Richard Erdman as Al, Ruth Storey as Rose Miller, Ray Walker as Homer, Dolores Fuller, and Celia Lovsky.

Nat ‘King’ Cole also appears as himself and sings the title track Blue Gardenia by Bob Russell and Lester Lee, and arranged by Nelson Riddle.

Lang said: ‘I had to shoot it in 20 days. Maybe that’s what made me so venomous.’

It is an independent production by Alex Gottlieb Productions and distributed by Warner Bros.

It is the first in Lang’s trio of newspaper noir movies, followed in 1956 by While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.

Vera Caspary’s source novella The Gardenia, which first appeared in the February–March issue of Today’s Woman magazine, had a title change for the film to The Blue Gardenia to attract audiences by recalling the unsolved Black Dahlia murder of 1947. The title also recalls the classic 1946 Hollywood film noir The Blue Dahlia.

The Black Dahlia (2006) and L A Confidential (1997) were also inspired by the Black Dahlia murder case. Aspiring actress Elizabeth Short (July 29, 1924 – January 15, 1947) was found murdered in the Leimert Park neighbourhood of Los Angeles, with her corpse mutilated and bisected at the waist. She acquired the nickname of the Black Dahlia after a Long Beach drugstore owner told reporters that male customers named her that after the film The Blue Dahlia.

Shooting ran from 28 November to 24 December 1952.

Actress Ruth Storey was visiting her husband Richard Conte on-set during filming when she accepted producer Alex Gottlieb’s spontaneous offer to play Rose in a small but pivotal role. Another key role is played by Celia Lovsky, who had been instrumental in Lang’s casting her husband Peter Lorre in M (1931). Bit parts at the newspaper office are played by producer Alex Gottlieb and his wife, retired stage actress Polly Rose (sister of the composer Billy Rose).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,600

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