The Lodger **** (1944, Laird Cregar, Merle Oberon, George Sanders, Cedric Hardwicke, Sara Allgood) – Classic Movie Review 2639

Director John Brahm’s thrilling 1944 American Victorian melodrama horror film The Lodger provides a wonderful role for Laird Cregar, who is superb as Mr Slade, the mysterious stranger who finds lodgings in London’s Whitechapel district and may, or may not, be an infamous serial killer.

Mrs Ellen Bonting (Sara Allgood) and Mr Bonting (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) are forced to accept a lodger because of their financial hardship and take in Mr Slade, who at first seems like a nice young man. But landlady Mrs Bonting starts to suspect that her new lodger is Jack the Ripper because of his mysterious and suspicious nocturnal habits.

She fears for the safety of Kitty Langley (Merle Oberon), her beautiful actress niece who lives with them and worries that she will be the next victim as the Ripper is targeting actresses in the night.

Brahm’s movie is the third version of Mrs Marie Belloc Lowndes’s famous 1913 novel The Lodger, this time set at the proper time of Jack the Ripper in the late 19th century.

It also stars George Sanders as the cop on the case, Inspector John Warwick, and Aubrey Mather as Superintendent Sutherland.

There’s great swirling foggy London atmosphere from director Brahm and, though the film is made in Hollywood, a fine gallery of British support propels a period thriller that is really well done and gripping throughout and doesn’t outstay its welcome at a tense, taut and pacey 84 minutes. The slick and efficient screenplay is by Barré Lyndon. It is stylishly shot in black and white by cinematographer Lucien Ballard.

The Lodger is made by 20th Century Fox and released by 20th Century Fox on 19 January 1944 in the US. It cost $869,300 and earned $3 million, making a declared profit of $657,700.

It was made in 1943 and tragically, Cregar died aged 31 after it was released in 1944 when he suffered a heart attack following a crash diet he undertook so that he could look the part for Brahm’s follow-up film, Hangover Square (1945). Hangover Square was released two months after his death.

Marie Belloc Lowndes’s story was previously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927 as the famous silent movie The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog and was remade with sound in 1932 as The Lodger. It was remade again in 1953 as Man in the Attic starring Jack Palance and it was filmed yet again as The Lodger in 2009, directed by David Ondaatje and starring Alfred Molina, Hope Davis and Simon Baker.

Four works of Marie Belloc Lowndes are adapted for the screen: The Chink in the Armour (published 1912; adapted for the screen 1922), The Lodger (1913; adapted several times), Letty Lynton (1931; adapted in 1932 as Letty Lynton starring Joan Crawford), and The Story of Ivy (1927; adapted into the 1947 film Ivy starring Joan Fontaine).

Her most famous novel, The Lodger (published 1913), is based on the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.

Also in the cast are Lumsden Hare (as Dr Sheridan), Frederick Worlock, Helen Pickard, Queenie Leonard (as Daisy the maid), Billy Bevan, Doris Lloyd, David Clyde (as Sergeant Bates), Helena Pickard, Olaf Hytten, Edmund Breon, Anita Sharp-Bolster, Forrester Harvey, Crauford Kent and Colin Campbell.

Laird Cregar: July 28 1913 – December 9 1944.

The cast include Merle Oberon as Kitty Langley, Laird Cregar as Mr. Slade, George Sanders as Inspector John Warwick, Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Robert Bonting, Sara Allgood as Ellen Bonting, Aubrey Mather as Superintendent Sutherland, Queenie Leonard as the maid Daisy, Doris Lloyd as Jennie, David Clyde as Sergeant Bates, Helena Pickard as Annie Rowley, Ted Billings as News Vendor, Cyril Delevanti as Stagehand, Stuart Holmes as King Edward, Olaf Hytten as Harris, Lumsden Hare as Dr Sheridan, Edmund Breon, Anita Sharp-Bolster, Forrester Harvey, Crauford Kent and Colin Campbell.

Merle Oberon’s singing voice is dubbed by Lorraine Elliott.

Merle Oberon fell in love with Lucien Ballard during filming and they married next year. As Oberon’s face was scarred in a car accident, Ballard developed a light for her that hid her blemishes, still known as the Obie.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2639

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