The Films of Gordon Douglas

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Gordon Douglas

Gordon Douglas was a Hollywood film director.

Some common characteristics found in more than one of his films include:

Highly educated, older British men who help the hero.
Strong working women.
Government workers coerced into unpleasant roles by their suave superiors.
Militarized or quasi-militarized worlds, filled with men in uniform.
Extreme, loud pinstripe suits.
Unusual California settings, shot on location.
Underground passageways.
Strange changes of scale, affecting everyday objects.
Films which do not fit into standard genres, or which combine genres (such as the science fiction / semi-documentary hybrid, Them!)

Not all of these are in every Douglas film.

The Falcon in Hollywood

Genre

The Falcon in Hollywood (1944) is a fun entry in the whodunit series.

While mainly this film falls into the whodunit genre, it has some unusual features. The extensive location shooting is unusual, and anticipates the semi-documentary crime films to come. The film takes place at a fictional film studio, Sunset Pictures Inc., and is shot on location at the real-life RKO Studios (the producer of the Falcon series). This inside look at a movie studio is one of the main appeals of the film. Later, there is a scene shot a the LA Coliseum, a giant sports arena. The huge scale of the arena, and its open space, anticipates the drainage canals shown in Them!.

Character Types

The British producer is one of a series of English intellectuals who run through Gordon Douglas' work. Like the others, he is wonderfully articulate and intellectual, and full of erudite monologue: here quotations from Shakespeare. Unlike other such characters in Douglas, he is not an ally of the hero, being a suspect in the mystery instead.

The two policemen start out by trying to coerce the Falcon. They do not get very far with this tactic. Later government officals in other Douglas films will be far more succesful at coercing hapless good guys.

Underground

Douglas once again goes underground. There is a basement prop room, reached by steps from outdoors. This is where the body is discovered.

Dick Tracy vs. Cueball

Character Types - in common with Them!

Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946) shows approaches in common with Douglas' later classic, Them! (1954). Both films are adventure stories, whose heroes are a whole group of good guys. Some of the good guys are members of an official group (the police or military); others are gifted amateurs who work with them. Both groups fight against a spreading menace that erupts on many fronts: here it is a diverse group of crooks engaged in diamond smuggling.

In both films there is a middle aged man who helps the good guys. He is a fabulously articulate intellectual with a colorful background and rich personality. Both characters are played by gifted, veteran character actors; here it is Cecil B. De Mille veteran Ian Keith, playing Dick Tracy's friend Vitamin Flintheart. Both men are British, kind hearted and friendly. Both are clearly admired by the director, and are there to show the joy of intelligence and intellectuality. This is Vitamin Flintheart's first appearance in the Dick Tracy movies; later films in the series will bring him back.

Both films have a wide diversity of characters, including people of all ages and social classes. One suspects that old Hollywood wanted people in films with whom all age groups in the audience could identify. Esther Howard, the expert comedienne who was a veteran of most of Preston Sturges' films, does a great job here as saloon keeper Filthy Flora. She is richly tacky as the proprietor of this dive. She is always sympathetic. One suspects that most women could identify with her struggles to survive in a harsh world.

Both films also have woman characters who are taken seriously as part of the good guys team. There is a consistent women's lib point of view here. The women are professionally qualified people who do good work on their jobs.

Both films deal with sinister underground passages, here the secret room under Flora's office. This aspect will be much more developed in Them!.

What Genre is This? Maybe it's a Whodunit Without Mystery

This film does not fit directly into either main classification of 1940's crime films, the whodunit and film noir. It is not a whodunit: there is no mystery to be solved, and the audience is kept fully informed of all plot events without any mystification. And it is not a film noir: there are no signs of the alienation and obsession that Alain Silver has identified as earmarks of the genre. Rather, the film is delightfully comic in tone. It has an upbeat quality, and a sense of joie de vivre.

The film is closer in tone to whodunits. Although there is no mystery, it has such whodunit features as:

being part of a series of B-movies
a police detective hero
the detective's idiotic comic assistant
many character studies among the crooks encountered
a lack of realism and much stylization among the exclusively studio sets
lots of comedy relief
bright dialogue
romance for the hero
beautiful clothes for everybody (although this was also a feature of many noirs)
a series of murders, which often take place at night in spooky places
a balance between scenes showing the heroes, and those showing the suspects
characters who less represent people in real life, and more escapist creatures of fantasy.

All of this makes it like a "whodunit without mystery": a film which is otherwise like a typical Hollywood whodunit, but which lacks a mystery to be solved.

Costumes

Dick Tracy's clothes are visually heightened and exaggerated, perhaps to recall those in the comic strip. He wears some of the loudest pin stripe suits in the history of Hollywood here. He looks great in them. Still, most Hollywood leading men would have been given a subtler, less vivid chalk stripe in their suits. They give the hero a vivid, hero of a fantasy type appearance. Tracy also wears a spectacular, full length overcoat here. It is light colored; although one cannot tell in this black and white film, one suspects the coat is the same yellow as Tracy's famous overcoat in the comic strip.

Tracy's assistant Pat Patton is in the trenchcoat that was so popular for film noir heroes.

San Quentin

San Quentin (1946) is a melodrama, centering on prison reform at the famous federal prison. Unlike many prison movies, much of this one takes place outside the prison. Much of it is a gangster thriller.

Like other of Douglas' works, takes place in a militarized world. The hero (ultra-tough guy Lawrence Tierney) is just back from World War II in the Army, and wears his Sergeant's uniform in much of the early film. The prison scenes are full of uniformed guards. The later parts of the film outside of the prison are full of police characters. All of the this contributes to a world in which the men are in military or quasi-militarized institutions.

Costumes

The costumes here continue Douglas' enthusiasm for an almost exaggerated version of 1940's macho. When Tierney finally gets out of uniform and starts wearing civilian clothes, he is in one of the loudest pin stripe suits in the history of the movies. It is dark, with heavily accented lines. It looks terrific, but it is very underlined and emphatic. He also wears his hat too, and is a natty dresser in double breasted suits throughout the film. His police detective nemesis is also well dressed in suits.

Tierney's best friend wears a leather bomber jacket, one of the first movie characters to wear leather jackets, a new fashion trend of post World War II America. This anticipates James Whitmore's leather police jacket in Them!.

I Was a Communist for the FBI

Far Right Wing Politics, Anti-Communism, Defense Committees

I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951) is about the most far right wing film made in post-1929 Hollywood. It depicts much of the racial tension and labor unrest in America as being directly Communist inspired. It also glorifies the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). These are not attitudes expressed briefly in passing; instead, the film offers very detailed commentary on all of these subjects. It is odd to see this film being distributed by Warner Brothers, which just a few years before, had made equally extreme Communist propaganda movies like Mission to Moscow and Watch on the Rhine. The film is unusual for its detailed commentary on domestic American politics. Most Hollywood films about Communism in America are spy thrillers, with little to say about politics: for example, Robert Stevenson's I Married a Communist (1950), Leo McCarey's My Son John (1952) and Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street (1954). By contrast, at least half the screen time of this film is devoted to a detailed exposition of its filmmakers' political beliefs.

The film is particularly negative about "defense committees", which raised funds for minority group members accused of crimes. The film repeatedly suggests that these are nothing but fund raisers for Communism. By contrast, The Underworld Story (1950), made by the soon to be blacklisted Communist director Cy Endfield, had glorified such defense committees. I am not a professional historian, and am unable to comment about the accuracy of depictions in such films. In real life, Orson Welles and boxer Joe Louis had appeared at such a fund raiser in 1946.

The film shows some of Douglas' personal traditions. Active, capable women are a constant feature of Douglas' films:

Women are shown as being heavily involved with Communist party activities.
There are also women working at the FBI, but they seem to be entirely in subordinate positions. The main FBI agents in this film are all male.

Oddly enough, leading man Frank Lovejoy had just appeared in Endfield's Try and Get Me! (1950). The two films are among the few leading roles for character actor Lovejoy, who had a radio background. What Lovejoy is doing working first for a Communist, then an anti-Communist, is anybody's guess.

Semi-documentary film noir: Undercover FBI agents

Several aspects of the film are in the semi-documentary tradition:

Most of these films starred a government institution. Here we get an inside look at the FBI.
A government agent goes undercover, infiltrating the bad guys.
There is much about the use of high technology in their work, in this case, listening devices.
There is a thriller sequence involving an industrial structure, in this case, a railroad bridge. But it is not at the film's end, unlike the typical industrial episode in a semi-documentary.
The film is based on a true story, and much of it is shot on location, here Pittsburgh.

All of these are features of the semi-documentary tradition.

The film is another look at undercover FBI agents. Here, the agent has spent nine years in his undercover role. This is a new dimension to the depiction of undercover activity. Most of the semi-documentary films had depicted undercover assignments as being brief in duration. The film recalls Anthony Mann's T Men (1947), in that it shows the undercover hero as living inside his role, being cut off from his loved ones, and paying a huge personal price. These aspects of the film are really depressing. The film's tone is grim, and it has little entertainment value.

Ancestors to the TV Series Wiseguy

Like William Keighley's The Street With No Name (1948), this film is directly ancestral to the 1980's TV show Wiseguy.

Both I Was a Communist for the FBI and Wiseguy deal with FBI agents in long term undercover roles, who experience great stress. Both come from highly traditional ethnic families, who live in old fashioned houses. In both, the hero experiences anguish because he cannot tell his aged mother that he is an honest man. In both, the only person outside of the FBI that knows his true honest nature is a priest who is his confidant.

Agents Coerced by Superiors

The men here continue to wear the extremely flamboyant double breasted suits favored by Douglas. These too are part of noir tradition. The FBI agents who are the hero's superiors seem to be much younger than he is. Unlike many films, in which the FBI agents tend to be played by tough types, here the FBI agents are played almost by juveniles. They are very handsome and polished looking. These men are always dressed to the teeth. They have authoritative suits and big offices. They are always sending the hero out on miserable assignments, always with a straight face and for the good of the country. There is no camaraderie between these superiors and the hero. One hardly gets the feeling that these are all FBI agents working for a common cause. Instead, the hero seems to be regarded as being on an inferior plane by these men, someone they are there to order around, arm twist and coerce. They seem to have absolute confidence that they are on a higher level than the hero.

The agents treat the hero more as if he were really the criminal he is pretending to be. They seem certain that they are the source of correct procedure for undercover assignments.

Douglas does something similar in Them!, where the agents cause the pilot to remain in his role at the asylum, against his will. The young government agent absolutely coerces the Texas pilot, forcing him into a role. Once again, it is for national security. Here the enforcement is made doubly secure by being unbeknownst to the pilot, who is lied to.

In both films, the man in the enforced role seems of lower class origin. This contrasts with the polished upper middle class image of the FBI agents. He is definitely below them in social status. It gives their treatment of him as a subordinate an extra forcefulness. In I Was a Communist for the FBI, there are signs that this status differential is artificially created by the FBI. They have created the hero's undercover role. They made sure it was purely working class, and restricted to his job at a factory and life in a working class neighborhood and school system. They also made sure that the hero is entirely alone in his role, without any support. By contrast, they always meet with the hero as a group.

Them!

Semi-documentary - but science fiction, not a crime thriller

Them! deals with a militarized America. Virtually everybody is part of some government institution, whether police, military or scientific.

In this it has a certain affinity to the semi-documentary film noir. This is a science fiction film, not a crime thriller, however, and the sinister "gang" the good guys are going after consists not of human crooks, but of giant ants. Still, the emphasis on men in uniform recalls the semi-docs; so does all the high technology used by the good guys. So do the huge personal sacrifices ultimately extracted from the heroes of the film. As in the semi-docs, the principal emotional relationships of some of the heroes, notably James Whitmore's cop, seems to be mainly with his partner.

The finale of Them! takes place in the storm drains under Los Angeles. These had previously been seen in Anthony Mann's He Walked By Night (1948). There is even a repeat of the same statistic used in the earlier film, that there are 700 miles of such drains under the city. The way Them! has a finale in an industrial area underscores its relationship to semi-documentary film noir.

Douglas films like to go to unusual locations near Los Angeles. The whodunit The Falcon in Hollywood (1944) goes backstage at a movie studio (actually RKO Studios), and gives a guided tour of the place.

Links to Shadow on the Wall

The opening scenes in Them! with the little girl also recall a crime film: Patrick Jackson's Shadow on the Wall (1950), based on the novel Death in the Doll's House (1943) by Hannah Lees and Lawrence Bachmann. Both films deal with a little girl who is terribly traumatized after seeing the killing of a family member. In both, the girl winds up being treated in a hospital, under the care of highly competent female psychologists. Both films center on a attempt to get the little girl to remember the events she has witnessed but repressed, and to speak out about them. This is another link between Them! and film noir.

Changes of scale

In Them!, ants grow to giant size, and ant architecture, such as ant holes, tunnels and anthills, also grows enormously.

Such "changes of scale" also show up in other Douglas films. In The Falcon in Hollywood, part of the backstage tour of the studio shows us the workshop where miniatures are made, for special effects. There is a neat shot of a man who puts an airplane under his arm - it's a miniature model.