Word: caine
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...early to be sure, but perhaps a new school in the American novel is in the making. The Los Angeles school, it might be called, for its two principals, James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler, are residents of Los Angeles County. And it is against the background of Southern California that they both have set their tautly-wound, sense-shocking novels. The theme that runs throughout their work is common to both men: the tough people of this twentieth century world, the people with the inteness desire for possession, the ones who murder for money and kill for love...
Their black-and-white style is peculiarly fitted for motion pictures. Cain's "Mildred Pierce" and "Double Indemnity" and Chandler's "Farewell My Lovely" (filmed under the title "Murder, My Sweet") were made into pictures of real power. Chandler's latest is "The Blue Dahlia," a story of three discharged Navy fliers just back in L.A. from the South Pacific. One of them, played by Hugh Beaumont, is the straight man; there's nothing wrong with him. William Bendix, who has never turned in a bum performance, does a beautiful job as the ex-gunner who has a steel plate...
...James M. Cain, 53, cold blood-&-thunder novelist whose second wife complained he once threw her clear across the room, was sued for divorce by Wife No. 3 -oldtime cinema siren Aileen Pringle, 45, who had lasted almost two years with him. The charge: cruelty...
...once, don't blame Hollywood censorship. Cain's super-sexed passages were the weakest parts of his story, and their removal is not responsible for the animated skeleton that MGM, has produced. Rather it is the inexplicable changes that have been made in the structure of the novel, changes that confuse and obscure the basic thread of love, changes that transform a dynamic series of events into an almost comically catastrophic succession of messes...
Like "Double Indemnity" (also based on a Cain yarn), "Postman" involves the extra-curricular love affair of a married woman, the murder of the husband by wife and lover, and the net of justice that ensnares them. But where Barbara Stanwyck clearly was a woman powerless in the grip of passion, Lana Turner plays a peculiarly ill-defined character, driven in conflicting directions by muddled motives. Nor is Garfield, while more suitably cast, given a better organized role. The smaller parts are much neater; Cecil Kellaway as the husband and Hume Cronyn, as a lawyer who gets Miss Turner...