Robert Taylor often turned in vapid performances, but that was not the case in "High Wall," a rarely remembered film noir that premiered on this day in 1947.
Taylor's character, a decorated war veteran, found himself in a situation like The Fugitive of the classic 1960s TV series. His wife was dead, and he stood accused of her murder, but he insisted he was innocent and tried to find the real murderer.
Initially, Taylor caught his wife being unfaithful to him with her boss (Herbert Marshall), and she ended up being strangled. All evidence indicated Taylor was responsible. He tried to kill himself by driving his car into the river, but he survived and was sent to a psychiatric hospital. He had no memory of what had happened to his wife, possibly due to an injury he suffered during the war.
It was strongly suggested that Taylor could be cured by surgery, but he refused, preferring to remain in the hospital rather than facing conviction of his wife's murder. It was only after he learned that his young son would be sent to an orphanage that he changed his mind.
In an attempt to cure his amnesia, Taylor tried to re–create the scene of the crime with the help of a doctor (Audrey Totter), who doubted his guilt and became his staunchest ally.
It is probably appropriate at this point to say a word or two about Totter. I have watched a fair number of film noir movies in my life, and Totter was frequently cast in them. She usually played a bad girl, but this time she played against type.
I have always found Totter to be an underappreciated talent. She appeared on the silver screen with many of the top stars of her day, but her kind of character fell from favor in the 1950s, and she gravitated to television, where she found steady work.
She was always good, but she may have delivered her best film noir performance in "High Wall."
The whole cast was at the top of its game, but particular mention should be made of Marshall, who was suitably creepy in his role.
But I have learned that you will never find unanimity in anything, and so it is with this movie — or at least the individual performances. I know one person, for example, who thought Taylor's performance was the redeeming feature of a movie in which Totter was a cold fish and Marshall was miscast. That was precisely the opposite of my reaction — and the reactions of most of the people with whom I have discussed "High Wall."
"High Wall" also introduced audiences to a term with which many were still not familiar in 1947 — sodium pentathol or "truth serum."
"No one ever takes a photograph of something they want to forget."
Sy (Robin Williams)
Most people probably remember Robin Williams for his many comic and semi–comic roles. Nothing wrong with that. He was a gifted man in that department.
But what is often overlooked is the fact that Williams could do other things, too, as he proved in "One Hour Photo," which premiered on this day in 2002. It just might have been Williams' finest performance — even though it wasn't nominated for an Oscar.
You have heard, I presume, of an actor playing against type? Well, Williams' performance in "One Hour Photo" was the definition of playing against type. Most people, as I say, remember Williams as a zany character who sometimes played dramatic roles — but he never, as far as I can recall, ever played a character like Sy, an introverted film processor at a one–hour photo lab in a shopping mall. Sy was one of those faceless and nameless people who surround us daily, and most live their lives without drawing attention to themselves or causing others harm.
(I know. Robin Williams? Introverted?)
Sy was somewhat given to obsession. He was obsessed with his work and, through it, he became obsessed with a young family. He had been developing their photos for years and had been secretly copying their photos and decorating his apartment with them.
Truth be told, Sy was emotionally involved with everyone who brought in their film to be processed — but he was particularly obsessed with this family, primarily the mother (Connie Nielsen) and her son (Dylan Smith) since they were always the ones who dropped off the film and picked up the prints. The father (Michael Vartan) was only known to Sy through the photographs in the rolls of film he developed.
In his mind they were his family. I suppose a lot of people who live alone are like that. OK, they don't process film anymore, but fantasy utilizes whatever one's reality is and embellishes it. Sy's reality was the solitude of the dark room and his cramped apartment. That was his life ... such as it was.
In Sy's case, his work was his life. It wasn't so odd, really, that the two should merge. If only in his mind.
He didn't really have much of a life, anyway, so he projected his expectations of the perfect life and the perfect family on this young family with whom he was so obsessed. You don't need to be an expert to know that isn't healthy.
But Sy was seen as harmless enough so his ham–handed attempts to get closer to the young family were politely and discreetly brushed aside.
And I guess you don't need to be a trained psychologist to know that when someone is obsessed with someone else and a blemish arises, it can be a shattering experience. So it was with Sy and this young family.
The young husband was having an extramarital affair, and that didn't set well with Sy when he discovered it.
Now, Sy was clearly a disturbed individual, but I wondered when I first saw this movie whether someone like Sy would have done what he did if he had not been dismissed from his job by the store manager (Gary Cole).
Sy's habit of making prints for himself for which he had not paid caught up with him along with some other transgressions. Cole fired him — and that really was the catalyst for a string of events.
Sy tracked down the young husband and his mistress in a hotel and forced them, at knife point, to perform sex acts while he photographed them.
Later, when being interrogated, Sy's remarks strongly implied that he had been sexually abused by his father and perhaps ordered to perform sex acts as a child while being photographed by his father.
That scene has always made me think of Anthony Perkins in the final scene of "Psycho". The stories were different, but they were essentially indictments of what the fathers had done with their children were young.
The sins of the father.
It was a character — and a performance — worthy of Hitchcock.
It reminded me of when I was a young reporter covering the police and crime beats at my first newspaper job. Although the county in which I lived and worked was rather sparsely populated, it had about half a dozen murder trials while I was there — and I covered them all.
On one occasion I covered a murder trial in which the defendant was found guilty — but then, during the punishment phase of the trial, the defense presented evidence of something even the defendant knew nothing about — his mother had been mentally retarded and had been incapable of defending him when his father abused him.
Apparently the mother had been aware that something bad was happening, but the defendant did not understand that she could not come to his defense, and it had planted a seed of resentment within him that was manifested in many complicated ways when he became an adult — one of which was his brutal rape and murder of a young girl.
He was overcome with emotion after hearing testimony about his mother during his penalty phase, and the jury was moved to sentence him to life in prison instead of execution.
Sy didn't commit a violent act, but if his conversation with the detective at the end of the movie said nothing else, it bore witness to the lasting — and tragic — consequences of physical and emotional abuse.
In the last season of the All in the Family series, Archie (Carroll O'Connor) and Edith (Jean Stapleton) visited Mike (Rob Reiner) and Gloria (Sally Struthers) in California for Christmas.
The result was one of the most honest and thought–provoking episodes of the entire run of the series. It aired 35 years ago tonight.
The Bunkers, along with their young charge, Edith's grandniece Stephanie (Danielle Brisebois), made the trip from New York to California for the holidays. They didn't know that Mike and Gloria were separated, and Mike and Gloria were determined to keep it that way. Well, Gloria was. Mike wanted to tell the Bunkers the truth, but Gloria wanted to keep up appearances through Christmas.
So Mike stayed overnight on Christmas Eve to keep up the charade. Apparently, the original plan called for Mike and Gloria to give Archie and Edith their bed and they would sleep on the sofa bed in the living room — presumably, when everyone was asleep, Mike would leave. But Edith double–crossed him, insisting that Mike and Gloria sleep in their own bed.
Gloria, however, did not feel comfortable sharing a bed with Mike, which led to an amusing bit of physical comedy in which Gloria tried unsuccessfully to go to sleep in a piece of bedroom furniture that clearly wasn't made for sleeping. Finally, at 5 a.m. on Christmas morning, Gloria had had enough, and she told Mike she wanted to trade. He refused, and they fought. Gloria fled the bedroom and went, sobbing, to the bathroom. Edith followed her in, and Gloria told her the whole story.
She and Mike had drifted apart since coming to California, Gloria told Edith. Mike had a whole new life with his career, one that kept him busy day and night, and Gloria stayed at home with the child — and ate.
And then she met a man, and she confessed to Edith that she had started a relationship with this man.
Edith returned to the living room, where Archie wanted to know what was going on — so Edith told him, and Archie stormed into the bedroom to confront Mike.
Archie was under the mistaken impression that Mike had been cheating on Gloria and that was what had led to their breakup. But he soon learned that Mike hadn't been unfaithful.
And that led to the dialogue that made this Christmas episode unique among Christmas episodes.
The four adults had a conversation about love and marriage and commitment and infidelity. It's the kind of conversation that could happen — and almost certainly has happened — under different circumstances in different families the world over. It's probably not much of a stretch to say that it probably happens somewhere every day.
The critical moment came when Archie implied that Gloria and her male friend had been sleeping together, and Gloria said she wouldn't say anything because it was none of Archie's business. And Edith sided with her daughter.
"No matter what she's done, it's none of your business," she told Archie.
"What are you talking about?" Archie asked. "It's the world's business."
"No," Edith replied, "it ain't the world's business, neither."
It was so often the case that Edith was the wisest, most insightful member of the family.
Edith wanted to know if Mike and Gloria loved each other. When they admitted they did, she asked if they loved each other enough to save their marriage. Mike said yes; Gloria said she wasn't going to talk about it in front of her father. But Archie and Gloria reconciled, sharing a heartfelt father–daughter embrace and joining the rest of the family in the living room to celebrate Christmas.
That's what Christmas is about — love, forgiveness, acceptance.
As far as I am concerned, the folks who write the Christmas specials and Christmas movies these days forget that and emphasize more of the commercial aspects of the season. But the folks who wrote this hour–long episode — Milt Josefsberg, Phil Sharp, Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf — were nominated for a Primetime Emmy for their work, as was director Paul Bogart and deservedly so.
The series was frequently nominated in both categories, and sometimes it won. But it won neither of the nominations it received for this episode.
That's a shame. As all truly good comedies do, All in the Family often balanced humor and poignance — rarely, if ever, better than it did 35 years ago tonight.
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
