Don’t Bother to Knock.

In her first dramatic role Marilyn Monroe plays an emotionally disturbed babysitter, Nell Forbes who unbeknown to the child’s parents, Ruth and Peter Jones, is suffering from a traumatic psychoneurosis brought on by the death of her fiancé. When Nell invites Jed Towers, who reminds her of her dead pilot to the Jones room, they are at a convention downstairs in New Yorks upmarket McKinley Hotel, he is happy to oblige this beautiful young woman. Until the child’s safety becomes an issue he is unaware of her fragile mental state.

 

The babysitter....

....reads a bedtime story.

Roy Ward Baker, best known for A Night to Remember (1958) and The Singer Not the Song (1961) which featured a delightfully camp performance from Dirk Bogarde, directed Monroe in her 13^th credited film at a time when she was trying to prove her dramatic acting skills. Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) was her first starring role and to be honest she is the main reason to see this rather forgotten movie. She gives a very believable performance as a mentally deranged person and it is alleged that she based her character on how her mentally troubled mother behaved.

 

Nell Forbes gets to know her neighbour.

This melodramatic noir type thriller was based on a novel entitled Mischief written by Charlotte Armstrong and published in 1951, the screenplay was written by Daniel Taradash. Along side Monroe it starred Richard Widmark as the pilot Jed Towers, Anne Bancroft, in her first feature film as Lyn Lesley, Towers love interest and the bar singer at the Manhattan hotel.   

 

But Jed Towers is in love with ....

....the hotels singer.

The studio gave it a tag line that tried to cash in on both her looks and her acting skill ‘Every inch a woman, ever inch an actress’ they also described her as ‘a wicked sensation as the lonely girl in Room 809’ not sure if they really knew how to market the ever improving star.  It was bookended by a rom-com We’re not Married (1952) and the screwball comedy Monkey Business (1952). Even in what was regarded as her breakthrough role, Niagara (1953) 20th Century-Fox still treated her like a sex object , at least in Don’t Bother to Knock they allowed her to act without the sexual connotations that had accompanied her career to date.

Perhaps Nell was not cut out for babysitting? 

During the filming in early 1952, the revelation that Marilyn had posed nude for a calendar five years earlier hit the media. Although the studio tried to persuade her to deny the story she would not, explaining that she was broke and needed the money. She also admitted that she was not ashamed of it. Her truthfulness and the beauty of the photo turned a potential career-ruining act into a great deal of public sympathy and publicity for MM.

The Singer not the Song.

By 1961 Dirk Bogarde had been under exclusive contract to the J Arthur Rank Organisation for fourteen years, double the length he had planned. The actor who is now seen to be one of Britain’s best was at that time fed up with playing what he deemed to be unrewarding roles and was deeply dissatisfied with the screenplays on offer. He decided that the time had come for a change of direction.  ‘Despairingly I asked for release from my contract, not out of pique, but from a steadily mounting sense of hopelessness. I was determined to break into a new kind of cinema, they were equally determined not to... My release was refused, but I heard growing rumours that plans were afoot to sell the remainder of my contract elsewhere... I was in a state bordering panic, and bitterly resented the idea that after so many years loyal work I should be offered up like a packet of the Miller’s own flour.’ [1] He began formal negotiations to bring his contract to an end and it was with grudging reluctance that Rank agreed to let him go but not before one final film; the rather notorious The Singer not the Song (1961).

A love triangle? 

In this rare British ‘western’, set in Mexico, filmed at Pinewood Studios with location shooting taking place in Spain, Bogarde plays the 29 year old Anacleto the atheist leader of a vicious outlaw gang that runs the remote Mexican town of Quantana. When Rome sends a Catholic priest Father Michael Keogh (John Mills) to replace the existing one who the outlaw gang have ridiculed and bullied. The resolute Father Keogh is determined to break the outlaws power and reopen the church, which has fallen into disrepair, but Anacleto is equally determined to drive the priest away at all costs. Based on a novel by the English authoresses Audrey Erskine Lindop the basic story involves the struggle between good and evil with Gods representative in the form of the priest arriving in the town to save the villagers from Anacleto, the devil incarnate, owning their souls. 

 

The lovely Mylene Demongeot with Bogarde.

On the surface temptation for Father Keogh comes in the form of local beauty Locha de Cortinez (French actress Mylene Demongeot) who falls in love with the priest and him with her. But below this is the perceived homosexually of the film, if you read some of the criticism of the film its the sexual side of the movie that upset the more staid critics.  It was Bogarde’s camping up of the role of Anacleto, dressed from head to foot in black and resplendent in the tight leather trousers, swishing his black leather crop atop a white stallion and the ‘hand holding’ that takes place at the end of the film, although this can be read a number of ways, is said to put a gay prospective on the story. Bogarde was unhappy with the production, believing he should have worn jeans and driven an old pickup. Nor was he happy with the choice of John Mills as the priest, having envisaged a younger actor more innocent and virile looking rather than Mills, who incidentally had played his elder brother in The Gentle Gunman (1952).

 

"say one for me father"

Criticism of the casting was also raised but not because of the three main protagonists acting talents; Bogarde in particular was splendid with his eyes saying more than words, but because of the accents. Mills Irish accent kept disappearing, Mylene Demongeot’s Locha was supposed to be the daughter of a Mexican Baron but spoke with a French accent and Bogarde who you will remember was a Mexican bandit spoke with his normal British accent!

 

Those leather trousers!

Three main questions arise, could a man love another man, certainly not in 1961 as demonstrated by Bogarde’s first film away from Rank, Basil Dearden and Michael Relph’s Victim (1961)[2] but thankfully things have know changed but you can imagine the fuss when The Singer not the Song first came out (no pun intended!). The second question that the film broaches, which has still to be answered, is why a Catholic priest cannot marry?  And the final question is - is the church capable of forgiving sinners or only sinners that are members of its congregation - something I am not sure of? So you can see why this fascinating cult film is still worth seeing today, and not just because of the sprayed on black lustrous leather trousers!  ‘It’s a film demented by lust and repression, one blissfully unrestrained by the straightjackets of conventional good taste’[3].

---

[1] Snakes and Ladders 1978. The second of Dirk Bogarde’s memoirs.

[2] Which shattered Dirk Bogarde’s matinee idol image forever.

[3] James Oliver. Offbeat.

Flame in the Streets.

Original  Poster.

In 1958 Ted Willis (best known for creating Dixon of Dock Green) wrote a stage play called Hot Summer Night that was adapted for the Armchair Theatre series on British television. Then in 1961 it was revamped and reproduced as a drama feature film Flame in the Streets, directed by Roy Ward Baker. The main action takes place on Guy Fawkes Night in West London. In the busy furniture factory the trade’s union leader Jacko Palmer (John Mills) fights for the right of a black worker Gabriel Gomez (Earl Cameron) to become the loading bay foreman. When Jacko’s daughter Kathie (Sylvia Syms) breaks the news that she intends to marry a West Indian school teacher both her parents struggle to come to terms with it, especially her mother (Brenda De Banzie) whose latent racial prejudice shocks the whole family.

Forbidden Love?

In 1959’s Sapphire we were introduced to a section of society previously ignored by British cinema but Bakers handles the subject of race differently from the Basil Dearden’s film. Willis’s screenplay highlights the squalid living conditions of the black immigrants and the day-to-day prejudice they incurred. The bigotry is presented as deeply rooted in the cosmopolitan community highlighting the sexual frustrations of racially mixed marriages. Shot on location in the streets of Notting Hill Gate, this is an exceptionally brave attempt to deal with the issues of that period. The film is obviously helped by having a script written by someone who completely empathies with his working class characters. Critically acclaimed but never a box office success, both this and Sapphire can now be obtained on DVD and both are well worth a look especially by people interested in the social history of that time.