'Laura' Was Baffling, Even for Film Noir

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"I shall never forget the weekend Laura died. A silver sun burned through the sky like a huge magnifying glass. It was the hottest Sunday in my recollection. I felt as if I were the only human being left in New York. For Laura's horrible death, I was alone. I, Waldo Lydecker, was the only one who really knew her."

Waldo (Clifton Webb)
Opening line

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"Film noir is known for its convoluted plots and arbitrary twists," wrote movie critic Roger Ebert more than 10 years ago, "but even in a genre that gave us The Maltese Falcon, this takes some kind of prize."

That's for sure. Not only is "Laura" a whodunnit, it's a whogotit as well. As in who got killed? For that matter, did anyone get killed?

From the beginning, viewers were told that Laura (Gene Tierney), a young advertising executive, had been murdered. A streetwise detective (Dana Andrews) investigated.

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As the detective went deeper and deeper into the case, he began to fall in love with the beguiling Laura, a woman he had never met but had seen frequently in a portrait.

Then, just when Andrews (and the audience) thought the case was wrapped up, who should walk in but Laura herself, very much alive?

There were several interesting characters in the story — a rather prissy newspaper columnist (Clifton Webb), Laura's leech of a boyfriend (Vincent Price), her affluent aunt who was also interested in the boyfriend and her housekeeper.

When Laura was believed to be dead, any one of them would have been a worthy suspect.

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But it turned out that she wasn't the victim after all, which changed the whole emphasis of the investigation.

I won't tell you how the investigation turned out — or who the victim turned out to be.

I will say that I thought it was an excellent film noir, the kind that would really keep you guessing — but I probably would have tried to find a different leading lady. Tierney was pretty, yes, but she came across as a bit young for the role of an advertising executive (she was not yet 24 when "Laura" premiered). She seemed better suited for the role of a schoolgirl.

Maybe the movie's producers tried to get someone else to play the part. Maybe Tierney wasn't their first choice. Not that she didn't give it her best shot. I just thought that someone else would have been more effective. She was a veteran of nearly a dozen movies by that time, but she just didn't have the look for it. She needed to look like someone who was old enough to be teaching a college class, not leading cheers on Saturday afternoons.

Anyway, that would have been my recommendation. Someone with a little more gravitas.

"Laura" was nominated for five Oscars and won one (Joseph LaShelle for Best Black and White Cinematography).

A Flawless Dramatization of a Murder Trial

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"Twelve people go off into a room: 12 different minds, 12 different hearts, from 12 different walks of life; 12 sets of eyes, ears, shapes and sizes. And these 12 people are asked to judge another human being as different from them as they are from each other. And in their judgment, they must become of one mind — unanimous. It's one of the miracles of man's disorganized soul that they can do it, and in most instances, do it right well. God bless juries."

Parnell (Arthur O'Connell)

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Jimmy Stewart is one of my favorite actors, and he gave many astonishing performances in his career.

One of my favorites was in Otto Preminger's "Anatomy of a Murder," which premiered on this date in 1959. My personal opinion is that it was flawless.

In the movie, Ben Gazzara played a young soldier who killed a man for allegedly raping and beating his wife (Lee Remick). One small problem, though. No evidence of a rape could be found. Stewart, a small–town lawyer, was retained to defend him in court, and Stewart discovered via interviews and his own observations that the defendant was jealous and possessive and his wife apparently had been promiscuous.

That would be a hard sell in court.

The alternative theory of what happened went something like this: Remick and the man were lovers. Gazzara found out about it, killed the man and beat up Remick, then coerced her into backing up his version of events. That would sound more logical to a small–town jury, especially given Gazzara's defense.

Gazzara said he was not guilty because he had been in the grip of an irresistible impulse, a rather complicated mostly legal concept that seemed to offer a plausible explanation for what happened — but was seen as hard for juries to get their minds around.

And I speak from experience.

At one time, I covered the police beat in a rather modestly sized county in Arkansas, which also meant covering local trials from time to time. In that capacity, I observed the usual courtroom procedures, from selecting a jury to examining and cross–examining witnesses.

I witnessed attempts to explain complicated legal concepts to largely rural juries, and I have a great deal of respect for any lawyer who tries to do it. It's a lot more difficult than a casual observer might think.

I also got to observe judicial sidebars, in which the attorneys for both sides would approach the bench and confer on issues, usually out of earshot of those in the courtroom.

Such a conference in "Anatomy of a Murder" never fails to amuse me. It concerned the alleged rape of the defendant's wife and the panties she had worn that night, which were unaccounted for.

The rape had been mentioned in a witness' testimony, and the judge felt it was necessary, at that point, to fully address the subject of rape, and that meant introducing the topic of the panties.

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"There's a certain light connotation attached to the word 'panties,'" the judge said. "Can we find another name for them?"

"I never heard my wife call 'em anything else," the local prosecuting attorney said.

The judge looked at Stewart. "Mr. Biegler?"

"I'm a bachelor, your honor," Stewart replied.

"That's a great help," the judge said and turned to the prosecuting attorney from the state capitol (George C. Scott). "Mr. Dancer?"

"When I was overseas during the war," he said, "I learned a French word. I'm afraid that might be slightly suggestive."

"Most French words are," said the judge.

Always makes me laugh. Never fails.

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Then the judge announced to the court, "For the benefit of the jury, but more especially for the spectators, the garment mentioned in the testimony was, to be exact, Mrs. Manion's panties."

As one might expect, hoots of laughter greeted this announcement, and the judge continued.

"I wanted to get your snickering over and done with. This pair of panties will be mentioned again over the course of this trial, and when it is, there will not be one laughter, one snicker, one giggle or even one smirk in my courtroom. There is nothing comic about a pair of panties that resulted in the violent death of one man and the possible incarceration of another."

That is precisely the sort of thing that the judges I covered would have said, too.

The conclusion of a courtroom drama, like that of a murder mystery, should never be revealed to someone who has not yet seen (or read) it — so, to be on the safe side, I won't tell you what happened.

I will tell you it was a very realistic depiction of a trial. It even took on some legal subjects about which I often wondered when I was covering the police beat.

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In particular, I wondered the same thing that Gazzara's character wondered when the judge instructed the jury to disregard a certain piece of testimony.

Gazzara leaned over to Stewart and whispered, "How can a jury disregard what it's already heard?"

And, in perhaps the most honest line in the movie, Stewart replied, "They can't, lieutenant. They can't."

"Anatomy of a Murder" received seven Oscar nominations, including two for Best Supporting Actor (Scott and O'Connell), but not one for the Duke Ellington jazz music that gave the movie such a distinctive flavor.

It probably wouldn't have mattered if the music had been nominated, though. It was the year of "Ben–Hur," and "Anatomy of a Murder" lost four Oscars to that movie alone.