When Just An Average Joe
Gets Waylaid By The Strange Fate Sisters-Anthony Mann’s “Desperate” (1947)-A
Film Review
DVD Review
By Si Lannon
Desperate, starring Steve
Brodie, Raymond Burr, Audrey Long, directed by the legendary Anthony Mann, 1947
You know not every guy
who did his service, did his military time and came back to what we who were in
Vietnam during the 1960s called the “real” world couldn’t hack it, couldn’t
back to the nine to five idea once he had seen enough craziness, had committed
stuff he never though he would commit, and saw others do the same. Bad stuff
all around. This publication has been filled with many sketches, even a few
expanded pieces, detailing the experiences of a bunch of corner boys from North
Adamsville and their troubles trying to readjust after their fucking war. I was
one of the guys who had trouble, drifted in and out of towns, relationships,
jobs, friendships, larcenies and drugs before I got my head screwed back on
somewhere near the right way. Of course nobody associated with this publication
in even an attenuated form can forget the toll that war business took on one
Peter Paul Markin, the Scribe, who although we didn’t appreciate it that much
at the time took his Vietnam time real hard. Not right away, but several years
after having done an incredible job detailing the lives of a bunch of fellow
veterans who were so bummed out by the world they came back to that they
eventually formed an “alternate universe” down along the railroads and
riverbanks of Southern California. Whatever haunted Markin, the Scribe, was
just too deep for him to keep his own head on straight and he succumbed to
serious drugs and treachery down in Mexico in the mid-1970s.
Like I said not every
guy reacted the same way as I did, as Markin did and just went back to the real
world and forgot about the past or at least didn’t let it get in the way.
Probably most guys who served followed that road. And some guys, some
straight-shooters still got fucked around with. Take the guy in Desperate, take Steve Brodie as straight
a guy as ever wore shoe leather. Maybe the guys who came back from World War II
were different from us, although the more stories I hear the more it sounds
like the same old, same old only guys like my father and a couple of uncles
kept it tightly under their lids. Steve came back after European Theater time,
a few medals, a skill as a mechanic and truck driver to tide him over on cold
night. Married a country girl from Wisconsin or one of those cow country
places, started up his own small independent trucking operation in some Every
town, they were, are legion. Hell, started out in a dinky cold water flat,
didn’t even have a personal telephone but had to keep a stash of nickels like some
rooming house joker which that country-bred blonde kept bitching about, had
ideas about living in a ranch house and raising a parcel of kids and dogs.
Sticking with his Anne, his love of his life through good times and bad. Then
all hell broke loose, and he got caught in a grinder he couldn’t work his way
out of.
The problem with Steve,
like a lot of guys who are clueless about the ways of the world, is he couldn’t
pass up a buck in order to help put up that down payment on his, their dreams. For
fifty buck the world could toss and turn him around and spit him out. See the monthly
payments, the bane of small dream guys, the truck insurance, or something was a
little behind (Anne parceling out the weekly white envelopes each a little short
in each bill packet, Jesus) so he took the job from an old friend, a guy from
the old days back in the old neighborhood. Easy dough. Problem, problem is that
old corner boy, a guy named Walt, but I knew him as Ray, Ray something, never
got off the corner, always had to have the best of it, play every crooked angle.
The job, the need a Steve truck job was a heist of some dark alley warehouse.
Except things went awry as they do when you have small time crooks working the
inside dope. Steve, once he knew the score took a pass, or tried to but the
fate sisters weren’t rolling his way that night and he went for a fall. Worse,
the botched job got a cop killed which meant the squeeze was on, somebody had
to step off, take the big fall in the state pen for this one.
This is where thing gets
weird. The guy who got caught, the actual cop killer, a guy named Johnny, something
like that, was this small- time hood Walt’s kid brother. Walt had an unexpectedly
strong fondness for this brother and didn’t want to see him get the chair, the electric
chair sitting waiting for him. Ray, Walt wouldn’t dream of taking the sword himself
even though it was his botched caper so he came up with the bright idea that
Steve should take the fall. Nice guy. At least Steve had sense enough to put a
big bite into that plan once he got free from Walt’s clutches. The problem was
that Ray, no, Walt threatened to do bodily harm to his wife, to Anne of the
nickels, if he didn’t play ball, tell the coppers he was the cop-killer. Jesus,
again. They had to blow town, blow town
fast and without a lot of fanfare.
Steve had to get his
Anne to safety especially when she told him she was pregnant, was with child
(she would deliver a daughter on the run, nice way to start life). But Walt was
relentless especially after a jury put an X next to Johnny’s name. No matter
where they went Walt and his cronies caught up to them. Finally, on the night
Johnny was to meet the grim reaper, was to what did Seth Garth call it in a
recent film review of Fallen Angel hear
the noise of wings very close Walt cloistered Steve and expected to have a join
execution with Steve as the sacrificial lamb who would cleanse the world for
Walt over his Johnny boy. After a little gunplay Walt took a fall, although
Steve did too. Yeah, not every guy had trouble coming back to the real world
from their respective wars but trouble came their ways no matter what.
