The Postman Always Rings Twice ***** (1946, Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway, Hume Cronyn, Leon Ames, Audrey Totter) – Classic Movie Review 744

Based on the sizzling thriller novel by James M Cain, the 1946 movie The Postman Always Rings Twice is a beloved film noir classic. Cain thought Lana Turner was the perfect choice for lethal diner waitress Cora, and Lana said it was ‘the role I liked best’. 

Based on the sizzling 1934 hardboiled thriller novel by James M Cain, director Tay Garnett’s 1946 American movie The Postman Always Rings Twice is a beloved classic of film noir cinema. It remains the best known of the film adaptations of the novel. Cain thought Lana Turner was the perfect choice for lethal diner waitress Cora, and Lana said it was ‘the role I liked best’.

Ironically wearing white almost throughout, Lana Turner glows and smoulders in what is undoubtedly her best performance in her finest movie as luscious young white trash Cora Smith. And John Garfield’s rather chilly, blue-collar charms are ideal as restless punk drifter Frank Chambers, who turns up on her roadside restaurant doorstep. District Attorney Kyle Sackett (Leon Ames) has dropped Frank off at a rural diner/ service station named Twin Oaks on a highway in the hills outside Los Angeles.

The veteran character actor Cecil Kellaway, borrowed from Paramount Studios even though MGM was full of veteran character actors, is just right too as Cora’s much older, stodgy and fussy husband Nick, the café/ diner proprietor, who hires Frank as a handyman.

Cora and Frank instantly fall madly for each other in a heat of passion and begin a torrid affair. Soon Cora talks Frank into helping her kill the old husband she so despises and they plot to kill him in an ‘accident’.

This version of The Postman Always Rings Twice is extraordinarily sexy and steamy for a Forties Hollywood movie, especially when you consider that it was made by family-friendly MGM studios, better known for their musicals. Even so, it took 12 years to adapt the novel into a screenplay to comply with the Forties US censorship Production Code. However, some cinema-goers were shocked when Garfield uses his tongue in one of his kissing scenes with Turner. Gosh!

In 1934, the Production Code Administration persuaded RKO to abandon its plans to film Cain’s story as ‘definitely unsuitable for motion picture production.’ MGM the bought the rights to film the novel and only decided to go ahead i12 years later in 1944 after the success of Paramount’s film of Cain’s book Double Indemnity.

Harry Ruskin and Niven Busch’s expert screenplay brings out the novel’s strong sense of doom and desperation, creates lovely dialogue and keeps a long movie riveting. Director Garnett and cinematography Sidney Wagner bring out the low-life, loser atmosphere. They really bring it on.

The magnetic playing of the two stars brings the characters to fiery life, and there are engrossing turns too from Hume Cronyn, Leon Ames, Audrey Totter, Alan Reed, Wally Cassell, Morris Ankrum (the judge) and Jeff York.

Also in the cast are Charles Williams, Cameron Grant, Garry Owen, Dorothy Phillips, Edward Earle and Byron Foulger.

Approved as Cora by Cain, who said she was the perfect choice, Turner said it was ‘the role I liked best’. Cain was so impressed with her performance that he presented her with a leather-bound copy of the novel inscribed: ‘For my dear Lana, thank you for giving a performance that was even finer than I expected.’

It cost $1.6 million, earned over $5 million and made a profit of $1,626,000. Even so, family pictures MGM head Louis B Mayer hated it.

The Postman Always Rings Twice is directed by Tay Garnett, runs 113 minutes, is made and released by MGM, is written by Harry Ruskin and Niven Busch, based on the novel by James M Cain, is shot in black and white by Sidney Wagner, is produced by Carey Wilson, is scored by George Bassman, and is designed by Cedric Gibbons and Randall Duell.

James M Cain’s gritty novel was first filmed as Le Dernier Tournant in 1939, then as Ossessione in 1942 and was remade as The Postman Always Rings Twice in 1981 with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange. All of them are great, and this 1946 version easily stands comparison with them. The heroine is renamed Cora Papadakis in the 1981 film – not the plain, ordinary Cora Smith of this one.

Cora wears all white throughout except for three scenes in which she wears all black: with the knife in the kitchen contemplating suicide, at the train station returning from her mother’s death, and when she calls a taxi to leave Frank.

When Turner found out that Garfield was cast as the male lead, she said: ‘Couldn’t they at least hire someone attractive?’ But on their first day of filming, he shouted: ‘Hey, Lana, how’s about a little quickie?’, she replied: You bastard!’ and they allegedly had a brief love affair off-screen as well as on-screen.

Unusually, MGM agreed that Tay Garnett could film in as many actual locations as possible. He took the cast and crew to Laguna Beach for the seaside love scenes, but a fog made shooting impossible. Garnett holed up in his hotel room, and nobody could get him to stop drinking. But Turner managed to convince him to go back to Los Angeles for treatment. When he returned a week later, the fog lifted, and they all went back to work filming.

The cast are Lana Turner as Cora Smith, John Garfield as Frank Chambers, Cecil Kellaway as Nick Smith, Hume Cronyn as Arthur Keats, Leon Ames as Kyle Sackett, Audrey Totter as Madge Gorland, Alan Reed as Ezra Liam Kennedy, Jeff York as Blair, Morris Ankrum as Judge Dudly Parkman, Byron Foulger as Picnic Manager, Frank Mayo as Bailiff, Charles Williams, Cameron Grant, Garry Owen, Dorothy Phillips, and Edward Earle.

Audrey Totter, MGM contract player from 1944 who became a star by playing tough-talking femmes fatales in 1940s film noirs, including Lady in the Lake (1947), died on December 12 2013, aged 95. She first made an impression in a fleeting role here as Garfield’s waitress pickup. ‘It’s a hot day and that’s a leather seat. And I’ve got on a thin skirt,’ she murmurs.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 744

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Lana Turner is far from plain, ordinary Cora Smith in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).