In The Days When Crime
Paid And The Coppers Took Their Graft Anyway They Could-Gene Tierney and Dana
Andrew’s “Where The Sidewalk Ends” (1950)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Will Bradley
Where The Sidewalk Ends
(yeah, I know, they must have spent about three dollars to some starving
stringer in the scriptwriters’ quarters to come up with that title), starring
lovely Gene Tierney and pretty boy Dana Andrews, directed by Otto Preminger, 1950
I get down on my hands
and knees every day and pray that the day never comes when professional
writing, review writing, ever stops being a dog eat dog proposition. Stops
being what young, well she is younger than I am after all, Sarah Lemoyne, a
fellow reviewer here following her mentor old greybeard Seth Garth has called a
cutthroat business where only the strong and ruthless survive-once they get
their coveted by-lines. Of course I would discount out of hand anything Mr.
Garth has to inform the young and unwashed with, impressionables like Ms.
Lemoyne, since I took the full measure of the man when he went down in flames
in our “dueling” film review set-too on the question of the iconic nature of
Sherlock Holmes and Doc Watson in their long and illustrious film series. I
won’t bore the reader with details here but Garth insisted that the whole
series was nothing but an ill-disguised homage to the Homintern, to their kinky
little high-brow male same-sex club complete with every thief and con man in
the kingdom doing their bidding. And Ms.
Lemoyne bought into that madness, following Seth’s lead about me being wet
behind the ears since I didn’t catch on to the importance of “dilly boys,”
young male whores, riffraff really in the whole scheme of their illegal Baker
Street operations covered up by a see no evil landlady. But enough of that
since if anybody is still interested in that what did wizened and senile, for
once Sarah got it right, Sam Lowell call it, oh yes, a tempest in a teapot they
can thumb through the archives at this publication (and American Film Gazette with whom this publication has reciprocal
agreements on high profile reviews).
Yes, I gladly bent the
knees for the glories of beating down so-called film reviewers who have passed
their prime and hope the nightmarish day never comes when, egged on by the
likes of Amazon and Netflix, every buffoon who has access to
the Internet, to endless cyberspace decides without any evidence that they can
take on the lions, the real film reviewers. I have made a point of this mainly
to respond to Ms. Lemoyne’s comments in her baffling film review of the first
of the Star Wars episodes where she
castigated me for not being a whirling dervish slave of the series after I
panned, dismissed out of hand, Star Wars:
The Last Jedi where ancient has-been, maybe never was, Mark Hamill as some
sullen greybeard AARP-type Luke Skywalker finally gives us some relief from his
tedious attempts at fighting inter-galactic evil from some ill-thought out
self-imposed exile while younger,
fresher forces are willing to do battle up close and personal. Hell, I
just realized that the plot-line of that movie could stand in for the
controversy swirling around this joint’s water cooler between the has-beens and
the new vanguard forces.
Maybe I had better step
back a bit and describe what the whole sad saga, this eternal office politics
struggle is all about. Sarah was
assigned, and in this I think rightly so, a nice six-pic review package of
cheaply produced and scripted psychological thrillers outsourced by Columbia
Pictures to low-rent, low overhead Hammer Productions over in England back in
the late 1950s. Then wizened and senile Sam Lowell who seems to endlessly hangs
around the water cooler looking for young women to recognize him as the max
daddy, his expression I think, of the film noir world based on some book he wrote
or ghosted I never got it straight stormed into site manager Greg Green’s
office and demanded based on some film noir series he had done put out by the
same production company years ago to do Sarah’s series. Greg, needless to say,
caved in automatically. Reason: Sam Lowell’s by-line is still a watch-word
among noir aficionados. Real reason: Sam was the decisive vote when he cut his
old friend Allan Jackson’s throat which gave the job to Greg. Yeah, office
politics.
Moving along. Sarah
outraged turned to her mentor Seth hanging out at the water cooler just after
her banishment. I would discount any denials by either one of them that
nothing, noting romantic is in the cards between them but that is not germane
to what happened next so I will can it. I will say old-time mentor Seth really
did give some good advice on this score. He told Sarah to get right back in
there before things cooled off and demand some kind of equivalent assignment.
Hence her Star Wars package. Hence
her stabbing me in the back over my perfectly righteous review of a bunch of
has-beens whose only real existence now is to keep extorting sad sack parents
for tickets, sodas and that awful popcorn for sullen underfoot kids that keeps
the studios humming along.
I took her measure and
the next Star Wars review I will give
my considered judgment of the film and of her work but today I have a bigger
score to settle. Have to take down one Samuel Lowell (don’t know his middle
name or if he has one) and his sullied reputation as the king hell king, his
expression of the film noir world. A reputation based on his “definitive” work The Night Belongs To Film Noir way back
in the late 1960s and which even Sarah Lemoyne mentioned was something that
every serious aficionado or noir reviewer has to acknowledge as the cat’s meow.
Then it might have been true, and even today there are probably kernels of
wisdom which a reviewer could profit by. But some of the stuff he spewed out
was, well, bullshit. How do I know this?
Greg Green who is all
over the place on what he does, or does not, want to see this publication
become has latched onto a new idea that the younger writers like Sarah and I,
maybe Minnie Moore, should take a fresh eye look at some older material that
has withstood the test of time-or Hollywood is still putting out. Hence Sarah’s
Star War look, hence my Sherlock
Holmes take, and now I have been assigned to do a fresh-eyed look at film noir.
Starting with the classic Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney film noir Where The Sidewalk Ends.
Reason: this is one of
the films Sam reviewed, or somebody under his direction reviewed, many years
ago. Re-reading his piece gave me a better idea that the old man really did
have one idea and blasted a gullible world with ever since. I will explain
below but you should also know that Sam was notorious for either having
somebody, a stringer, write his stuff once he got his lifeline by-line or just
ripped off whatever the studio publicity department put out and signed his name
to it. I think the latter here.
My late grandfather who
was a cop’s cop which I believed until I found out that he like all his
brethren never paid for his coffee and crullers at Ida’ Bakery once some older
cop clued him in always said that if a cop turns, if a cop goes rogue then get
rid of him (and now him or her). And he should have known since he was a
captain in the Albany Police Department and had seen it all, done it all. That
seemed to be the family consensus as well since the family was infested with coppers
who paid attention to the old man and probably took their coffee and cruller
graft too. That idea, that getting rid of a bum cop is the story line behind
this cute little noir. My grandfather would have been happy with the ending
here. Of course Sam Lowell went to great lengths to yak about how one Mark
Dixon, played by Dana Andrews, should have been lauded not lammed (and old town
expression meaning given the boot, unceremoniously given it). And in the
process destroying the whole premise of noir that no evil deed will go
unpunished even as the bodies pile up. But maybe I had better run the
story-line and you will see how Sam booted the ball something terrible.
Even Sam Lowell, if not
now then in his prime, in the time of his so-called definitive noir primer,
would have to agree with my contention that it was a lot easier to say what a
good noir private detective is than what a good public copper was when it came
right down to it before he got all soft and dewy-eyed about reformed coppers.
Jesus, Sam set the table on private eyes, guys, always guys in those days, who
maybe had gotten some higher education (a good observation by him noting the
germane reason why private dicks always were one or seven steps ahead of the
slothful by-the-book, a book they couldn’t read in most cases, public coppers),
had worked the public racket maybe in the DA’s office but saw the graft and
gaff and didn’t worry about the pension twenty years out for staying low and
unobserved, ready to take a slug or two, a fist or two to get a little rough
justice in this wicked old world. If a good-looking dame, a femme, a what did
Sam call them in the prime, frails, twists crossed his path and maybe curled
his toes, and I hope I don’t have to explain what that meant to the good reader
so much the better. If he rode off in the sunset with her fine, if he had to
throw her over, well that was the breaks, that’s the way the ball bounced. Guys
like Sam Spade, Phil Marlowe, Lance Larkin, and a host of others lighted up the
firmament and raised hell with the public coppers just for kicks while getting
their respective cases closed.
Film noir good public
coppers, guys like Mark Dixon under review here are harder to figure in those
pre-Miranda days. Mostly they didn’t
have a pot to piss in, my grandmother’s expression, the one married to the
police captain, could have given a fuck about criminal rights save that for the
ACLU lawyers and the faint-hearted liberals and had the mindset of desert rats
in heat. I would have taken Mark Dixon, bright boy Mark Dixon for what passed
for a good cop in those days. Unlike my uncles who were afraid to get out of
the squad car for fear they might have to do something which might jeopardize
their heavenly pensions, who were mostly “on the take” from one guy or another
(unknown to grandpa while he was alive anyway) and whose idea of justice was
roughing up, pistol-whipping, Ida of Ida’s Bakery for having the audacity to
ask them to pay for their coffee and crullers when she was having trouble
meeting the rent money Mark Dixon was a straight-arrow copper. Did a little
“third degree” here, a little rabbit punch there, a cold-cocked pistol-whipping
for kicks. A little over the top but not enough to get the commissioner and
his underlings in a snit unlike when the Mayfair swells complained when he
busted up their floating crap games or they had to fork over cases of high
shelf whiskey. Mark’s idea of justice, if he knew the word, ran to hard fists
and no bullshit.
For a while and for a
while Sam Lowell kept propping him up in his famous turncoat review (the first
time he went soft on a police procedural public copper when he did not have to
do so at all). Then Dixon went crazy trying to frame local mobster Jimmy
Scalise for everything from starting World War II to jacking up the price of
gold and silver. Reason: and this would be Sam’s downfall, his Achilles Heel if
you really want to know, Mark’s father, Jeep Dixon was the king-pin mobster
before Jimmy, had put Jimmy on easy street with the gambling and whorehouse
concessions and when Jeep ran afoul of the coppers for trying to cut their swag
he died in a blaze of gunfire “trying to escape.” I don’t have to draw a diagram
for you on that one. Dixon was scarred, was bleeding heart liberal scarred by
being the son of a gangster, couldn’t take it and became a hard-nosed, third
degree no holds barred copper. Sam bought that lonely hearts story hook, line
and sinker. Saw this as a breakthrough for noir coppers with brains.
Jesus.
Of course Sam all
rose-colored glasses now, or was it his ghostwriter who did him in, that will
probably be his alibi when he answers this accusation, if he has the moxie to, and
an accusation is exactly what it is, didn’t count on Mark committing about
eight thousand felonies and a few misdemeanors in the mix, trying to save his
damn ass from going up to Ossining and a “party” with a few guys he put in
stir, a few guys who needed a “girlfriend” to while away those twenty years
they were doing for crossing Dixie boy. This is where the unacknowledged
American psycho part comes in. Mark was so obsessed with getting Scalise and
his boys that he would stop at nothing. Figured when some rich Texas oilman got
bonged, got good and bonged to death for winning too much dough at one of
Jimmy’s get togethers that he had the bastard cold. Jimmy was not Jeep’s
acolyte for nothing and he easily slipped Dixon’s noose with a pretty tale
which the chief coppers bought.
Dixon was frantic, saw
his golden opportunity for a frame, a big old square frame slip away, melt like
butter on a hot summer day so he went to see the ringer, to see the guy who
brought Tex to the party, brought some pretty frill as well who will get
introduced soon. Confronted the ringer a little too hard and said ringer who
had a steel plate in his head from a war injury went dead. Oops.
From there it is all
downhill for Dixon as he makes mistake after mistake even a mental midget could
see would not work. He tried to frame Jimmy for this one and instead got the
ringer’s father-in-law, or maybe ex-father-in-law facing the big step-off in his
place. This is where Morgan, played by Gene Tierney last seen in this space
with that same Dana Andrews under different circumstances when he was trying to
find out who killed her in the noir classic Laura,
comes in and muddies up the waters, for Mark. See that ringer was her
ex-husband, had been a guy, a war veteran like so many others and who various
older writers at this publication, including Seth and Sam, have written
extensively about, who couldn’t adjust after their military service. The ringer
wanted easy street and so linked up with Jimmy. Brought Morgan along for the
ride on the Texas oilman caper.
Mark and Morgan meet and
are attracted to each other without knowing why and without knowing that Mark
did in her ex-husband, accident or no, and would set the trap for her father to
take the rap for killing his ex-son-in-law. But there is a light at the end of
the tunnel which Sam gushed all over himself about. Tough copper Dixon, falling
for the frill, can’t let her father fall fatally so devised a plan to let Jimmy
fall if he can get one of his minions to snitch. That bastard does and Dixon
grabs Jimmy for a hard fall. Here is where it gets sappy, where Sam begins his
long fall from grace, Dixon’s superior is all set to let him back on the force
when he hands back Dixon a letter he had written telling all he had done to
cover up murder, mayhem and frameups. Dixon in a fit of conscience tells the
superior to read the letter. Dixon will get to be somebody up at Ossining
girlfriend after all. Morgan, father cleared, will stand by her man now that he
has manned up. Sam has declared that scene the beginning of neo-film noir. I
swear the last original thing he had to say was in about 1964, 1965. As for his take on this film. Ugh! The
emperor has no clothes.
