Saturday, February 13, 2021 at 7:10:00 P.M. EST
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week is not on this week. The Fox Movie Channel shows two interesting films on Monday morning, February 15 at 7:35 a.m. ET. Richard Fleischer’s Compulsion (1959), with Orson Welles, Dean Stockwell, and Bradford Dillman, followed by Tony Rome (1967), starring Frank Sinatra and Jill St. John. The FMC repeats both at 6 a.m. ET the following day (Wednesday).
Compulsion is based on Meyer Levin’s novel about the Leopold-Loeb murder. The movie, like other 50’s films intended to oppose capital punishment, doesn’t show the actual crime. Orson Welles chews the scenery playing a lawyer based on Clarence Darrow, arguing against the death penalty. Levin was a contemporary of Leopold and Loeb and advocated Leopold’s parole from his “Life” sentence, which he got in 1958. Nathan Leopold thanked Meyer Levin by suing him, to Levin's chagrin—“Leopold is trying to collect the reward 35 years later.”
Tony Rome is one of the ‘60s private eye films. Frank Sinatra fans will enjoy it.
N.S.: I recall finding Compulsion riveting, but as David in TN implied, it’s all about defending the indefensible.
Leopold and Loeb were a couple of homosexual German Jews from wealthy families, were allegedly brilliant, and thought of themselves as Nietzschean supermen (hence my use of “allegedly brilliant”). They proved themselves "supermen" by suckering a 14-year-old boy, Bobby Franks, into going for a ride with them in a rented car, and bludgeoning him to death with a chisel, for a mere “thrill,” and to get away with “the perfect crime.”
It’s hard to imagine a crime more deserving of justice.
Darrow’s m.o. was to talk the jury (in this case, the judge) to death, in what must have been one of the most long-winded closing arguments ever given--12 hours!--in order to thwart justice. His defense against the death penalty was decidedly un-Nietzschean.
The problem with the trial was that the killers opted for a bench trial, and got a soft-headed judge. The crime has been called the first case of “affluenza.”
The title of the picture, Compulsion, came from Darrow’s pathetic summation:
“The trial reached its climax with Clarence Darrow’s closing argument, delivered over twelve hours in a sweltering courtroom. Darrow admitted the guilt of his clients but argued that forces beyond their control influenced their actions. Law professor Phillip Johnson describes Darrow’s argument this way: ‘Nature made them do it, evolution made them do it, Nietzsche made them do it. So they should not be sentenced to death for it.’ Darrow convinced the judge to spare his clients. Leopold and Loeb received life in prison.”
At the same time, decadent, Weimar Germany saw the rise of serial killers, whose pseudo-scientific champions re-defined them as—“Triebmörder,” “compulsion killers.”
Fritz Lang, a Jew, and his ardent Nazi wife, Thea von Harbou, made a plea for mercy for such monsters, in their early sound masterpiece, M (1931), about a Berlin serial killer who preys on little children.
(The end of the picture, which shows the panel of judges sentencing the serial killer, has unfortunately been lost.)
As David sardonically observed, via scare quotes, a life sentence meant little in this case.
A fellow inmate murdered the 30-year-old Loeb by slashing him to death with a razor, in 1936. However, no justice was ever meted out to his boyfriend, who was paroled in 1958, married a rich widow in 1961, profited off of his crime with a book, and who died a free man in 1971.
Tony Rome: For approximately 12 years—1953-1965—Frank Sinatra was one of the world’s greatest movie stars. Then he slipped into what became one of the world’s longest mid-life crises. Sinatra fanatics, as always, forgave him his trespasses. Tony Rome was one of them.
Sinatra’s female lead, Jill St. John, who later became a “Bond girl,” was considered one of the silver screen’s most beautiful creatures. In 1990, St. John married Natalie Wood’s murderer, er widower, Robert Wagner, who has yet to kill her.
4 comments:
How did Jill St John go to bed at night with Wagner--a probable killer of Natalie Wood--and sleep confidently that she wouldn't have a pillow placed over her face?
--GRA
Part of the sentencing phase of the trial for Leopold and Loeb was whether Bobby Franks had been molested. Important as this would have been an aggravated offense warranting the death penalty be applied. The testimony of the doctor was inconclusive. Given the behavior of Loeb in prison [molesting the other men] we can we reasonably assume Bobby Franks was raped.
TCM shows Richard Brooks' In Cold Blood (1967) Monday Night, February 15, at 8 pm ET. Robert Blake and Scott Wilson play the two killers of a Kansas farm family.
Brooks bought the rights from Truman Capote and made the film as a vehicle opposing the death penalty. Brooks called the crime "senseless" and the execution of the killers "also senseless," which "solved nothing." Brooks built sympathy for Perry Smith (Robert Blake) in particular.
Brooks put a cynical reporter in the film, played by Paul Stewart. At the end, when Perry Smith is being hanged, Stewart bows his head and cries. The character constantly says the executions are the same as the murders. This trope has been used for over a century.
Robert Blake appears again on TCM Tuesday, at 5:30 pm ET in The Purple Gang (1960), a B picture about the Detroit prohibition-era gang. Blake certainly was convincing as a brutal murderer.
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning is worth skipping. For black history month Eddie Muller is showing Native Son (1951). The author Richard Wright plays his own creation even though the character is supposed to be a "teen" (what else), and Wright was in his 40s.
It's the Bigger Thomas myth. This film was never considered part of the noir cannon or even a particularly good film.
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