David Leonard | Through the Shattered Lens

1948’s Blonde Ice tells the story of Claire Cummings (Leslie Brooks), the society columnist for a San Francisco newspaper. Almost every man that Claire meets falls in love with her.

Les Burns (Robert Paige), the paper’s cynical sports reporter? Les is so in love with Claire that he keeps getting involved with her despite the fact that she cheats on him with almost every man that she meets.

Al Herrick (James Griffith)? Yep, he’s still in love with her too.

Carl Hanneman (John Holland), one of the wealthiest men in San Francisco? Carl is so in love with Claire that he’s willing to marry her even after he catches her kissing Les on the day of the wedding!

Congressional candidate Stanley Mason (Michael Whalen)? He’s so in love with Claire that he’s willing to sacrifice his political career just to be with her.

How about Blackie Talon (Russ Vincent), the pilot who witnesses Claire doing some things that she probably wouldn’t want the world to know about? Well, Blackie never gets around to declaring his love for Claire but his obsession with blackmailing her is probably just his way of dealing with the massive crush that he has on her.

The only person who doesn’t appear to be in love with Claire is Dr. Kippinger (David Leonard), a psychiatrist who immediately picks up on the fact that Claire is cold and manipulative. There’s a reason why Les refers to her as being …. can you guess? …. “Blonde Ice!”

Of course, even with all of these men falling in love with her, no one loves Claire as much as Claire loves herself. Claire is a narcissist and a sociopath and she has no problem killing one lover and framing another for the crime. In fact, it’s something that she attempts to do several times over the course of Blonde Ice. Claire, it has to be said, is pretty clever about it too. Her natural ability to manipulate, combined with her total lack of empathy for anyone but herself, makes Claire a dangerous character.

Blonde Ice is somewhat obscure as noirs go. It was clearly a poverty row production, with only a 74-minute running time and a cast largely made up of obscure contract players. And yet, Blonde Ice is a personal favorite of mine, largely because of the ferocious performance of Leslie Brooks. Brooks rips into the role of the femme fatale, delivering her cynical lines with aplomb and murdering anyone who gets in her way. Considering that this film was made in 1948, I was actually a bit shocked at just how high the body count climbed in just an hour and a few minutes. Claire is basically willing to kill anyone and the film often seems to take a perverse delight in showing how easily she can convince others of her innocence. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the film is that Claire attempt to frame the same man for not one but two murders and, even after all that, he still doesn’t seem to be emotionally capable of telling her to get out of his life. In a world of weak men, Claire comes in, takes control, and offers up no apologies.

Obscure though the film may be, Blonde Ice is an enjoyable noir and can be found on YouTube.

The 1959 film, Gangster Story, holds the distinction of being the only film ever directed by the Oscar-winning actor, Walter Matthau.

That’s right, this low-budget film about a bank robber and the people who want to kill him was directed by TCM’s favorite curmudgeon. The man who would later be nominated for multiple Oscars and who would star in numerous Neil Simon adaptations only directed one film and that movie was a low-budget, 68-minute, black-and-white movie about cops and robbers.

(And no, Jack Lemmon is nowhere to be found.)

Walter Matthau not only directed this film but he starred in it as well. He plays Jack Martin, a career criminal who pulls off a daring bank robbery. How does he do it? Well, first, he rents an office in the same building as the bank. He gets to know everyone at the bank. He wins their trust. No one can resist the charms of Jack Martin, which I guess is the advantage of getting to direct yourself.

On the day of the robbery, Jack approaches the cops who are hanging around outside the bank. He tells them that he’s from Hollywood and he’s going to be shooting a scene in which he pretends to rob the bank. He assures them that it will look realistic. They might even see a rather flustered bank manager leading him into the vault. But it’s just a movie and therefore, it’s very important that the cops not rush into the bank with their guns drawn or anything silly like that.

Of course, the cops fall for it. While Jack is busy robbing the bank, the cops are just hanging around and shooting the breeze outside. When Jack walks out of the bank, he thanks the cops for not ruining the scene and then promptly leaves. Needless to say, the cops are humiliated when they realize how they’ve been tricked. For them, tracking down Jack isn’t just about upholding the law. It’s about vengeance.

Meanwhile, the local mob boss is upset because not only did Jack rob the bank without permission but he also failed to shared any of the stolen money. Not only does Jack have the cops after him but he also has all the local gangsters!

What a mess!

However, Jack isn’t worried. He’s happy because he’s met and fallen in with a local librarian, Carol (played by Carol Grace). Will Jack find love or will his criminal past find him?

It’s always a bit strange to watch a film that’s been directed by an actor with a firmly entrenched persona. Matthau was famous for playing urban misanthropes and, when watching Gangster Story, your natural instinct is to look for signs of that curmudgeonly worldview. There are hints of it in the scene where Jack tricks the cops outside the bank but, for the most part, there’s really not much personality to be found in any of the film’s scenes. Matthau’s direction is workmanlike but never particularly memorable. For reasons that will soon become clear, as a director, Matthau seems far more interested in the unlikely love story between Jack and Carol than in the film’s criminal-on-the-run storyline. After making this film together, Walter Matthau and Carol Grace married. It was her third marriage and Matthau’s second and it lasted for 41 years, ending only with Walter Matthau’s death in 2000.

Not surprisingly, the scenes between Jack and Carol are the best in the film. As for the rest of it, it’s pretty much a standard crime film. As a director, Matthau struggles to keep the story moving at a steady pace and the film’s low-budget certainly doesn’t help. Watching the film, you can tell why Walter Matthau devoted the rest of his career to acting as opposed to directing. It’s hard not to feel that he made the right choice.