Killer Tomatoes

by Ray Hagen

  She appeared briefly in Somebody Loves Me (1952), making a strong impression with her nasty segment. She was dubbed by Barbara Ames on two songs: “Honey, Oh, My Honey” and “Toddling the Todalo.” No one had to dub her bitchy attitude. It was pure, unadulterated Jergens.

  A break following the birth of her son, she claimed, changed her outlook. “Sexy clothes and dialog were firmly associated with me in film,” Adele told Howard McClay in 1953, “and nobody would listen when I protested that marriage and motherhood had made ‘an honest woman’ of me. All anybody could remember was that I had a come-hither look and burned the candle at both ends and in the middle, in my screen roles. I don’t think any self-respecting young mother would feel right in spending eight hours a day on movie sets displaying her baser instincts, so I turned down several parts like that.

  “But eventually it became apparent that I’d have to readjust myself to that kind of portrayal if I wanted to work again, and I do like to work, so I talked myself into trying one of those parts.

  “Fortunately, my first comeback part was in a television play with Paul Muni called “The People vs. Johnson” [on Ford Theatre]. I told myself that at least I’d be doing a tarnished type for only half an hour, and not for an hour-and-a-half, as I’d have to in a motion picture.

  “After that job was finished I began to feel like my old self once more. I practiced putting a gleam in my eye and letting my hips sway when I walked around in front of my mirror, and that old feeling came back.”

  It’s doubtful Adele felt she was losing her touch in the bad girl roles she was playing, although saying so made good copy. It was a nice try, an obvious attempt at getting better roles. She couldn’t very well turn her back on such roles now—not after years of doing them so well. It was impossible at this late stage. There would be no great dramatic roles or sophisticated comedies in her movie future. Just B movies.

  And television. Jergens wasn’t given a substantial amount of work in the medium, but her regular appearances on Mike Stokey’s Pantomime Quiz, starting in 1949, showed off the engaging sense of humor that motion pictures kept under wraps. Adele became a regular from 1950 to 1952. Her involvement with the show would earn her a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

  But, yes, on film, the old feeling was back, and was showed to full effect in Overland Pacific (1954), which, although minor, proved how good an actress she could be, if given half the chance. She again works in a saloon, the Silver Dollar this time, owned by the unsavory William Bishop. The brunette Adele, a tart with a heart of gold, pines for ex-lover Bishop, but he’s engaged to sweet Peggie Castle. “Why don’t you forget the little princess,” Adele tries to convince him, “and come back to the common herd?” He doesn’t. She later attempts to turn him in for a series of murders, because she loves him. He kills her instead. She gave a deep emotional edge to her role, which lacked none of the toughness she was now known for.

  The Big Chase (1954), a lively crime yarn from Lippert, co-starred her again with her husband. Even though she had the female lead, Adele was lamentably domesticated as the loving housewife of patrolman Langan. While her husband goes on “the big chase” (footage from the previous year’s 3-D short Bandit Island), Adele is stuck in a hospital suffering from pregnancy complications. Her part was not worthwhile in regard to time or substance. She and Langan would co-star only once more on screen, in the trivial western Outlaw Treasure (1955), produced by American Releasing Corporation (soon to be AIP). The couple also attempted two short-lived radio programs, Stand By for Crime (Syndicated, 1953) and Those Young Bryans (NBC, 1956), but it was too late for shows like this on radio.

  In general, her roles were diminishing in screen time. Her slight part in Fireman, Save My Child (1954) didn’t even warrant a character name. Hanging around The Miami Story (1954), she acted sexy, but did little else. She was Charles Boyer’s rarely seen secretary-mistress in The Cobweb (1955), and showed up in a flash as a saloon keeper in Strange Lady in Town (1955), starring Greer Garson. Her two-minute bit allowed her to snarl, after Cameron Mitchell shoots a man in her saloon, “All right boys, take this monkey in the back.” Not Shakespeare, but handled like a real pro.

  She second-fiddled in The Lonesome Trail (1955) as the drunken floozy Earle Lyon plays around with. When he shows too much interest in leading lady Margia Dean, Adele gets riled and a slap-fest ensues between the two women as bartender Wayne Morris and various bar patrons look on in amusement. It was a small part, but not without its fun.

  Her film stock went up considerably when Alex Gordon, producing for AIP, gave her roles in three now-classic exploitation features that were popular at the box office. All three contained prime, definitive Jergens performances.

  In Day the World Ended (1956) she is one of seven survivors of a nuclear blast who come together under one roof. Adele plays an ex-stripper fatally in love with the rotten Mike Connors, who was “spawned in bilge water,” according to her. When he takes more than a passing fancy in innocent Lori Nelson, good dame Adele helps the kid out, but pays for it with a ride down a cliff to her death courtesy of the not-very-amused Connors. Her best scene is the one where, drunk on moonshine, she relives her past glories in burlesque, only to break down sobbing at the end of her seductive dance.

  “Funny how scum like us thinks alike … well, I’m having some guns shipped in just in case …” With these potent words, uttered while cooped up in her jail cell, tough dame Jergens makes it entirely believable that those guns are as good as delivered. In fact, every move Adele makes in Girls in Prison (1956) is plausible, or as cell-mate Helen Gilbert warns newcomer Joyce Taylor: “Don’t fight her. She’s cruel and vulgar, but she is important. She can get you anything you want from the outside.” After their initial tiff, shrewd Adele plays up to Taylor, knowing Joyce is hiding a stash of stolen loot on the outside.

  It’s hard not to enjoy the rough-and-tumble charm of Girls in Prison, with its cat fights in the mud, love-starved lesbians, kooky stoolies and, especially, veteran actress Jane Darwell, as the prison matron, yelling, “It’s a gang-up!!” For Jergens fans, there is the customary dominant attitude, but, as an added attraction, she also hot-wires a truck and goes out in style by shootin’ it out with Lance Fuller for the dough.

  She played a nothing role in Fighting Trouble (1956), which interrupted the flow of her AIP successes. It was a painful Bowery Boys entry, sans Leo Gorcey, and any kind of humor.

  Adele bounced back in style, as well as displaying a little more compassion, in Runaway Daughters (1956), as a dance hostess who advises three teenage girls to take the right path. One girl in particular, Gloria Castillo, sister of Adele’s boyfriend Lance Fuller, is the most troubled of the trio (“Maybe I’ve never grown up. Maybe I’m a psycho!”), and she and Adele have an instant aversion to each other. “What formula did your mother feed you on?” asks Adele. “Vinegar … and what else?” When Fuller calls Jergens “the best little coffee-maker in California,” Castillo snaps back, “Where did she learn how—state prison?” All this back and forth trashing prompts Adele to marvel, “Nice kid. I better search her for poison darts.”

  With angst-ridden girls brawling and smoking, burdened with unwed pregnancies and suicidal tendencies, not to mention neglectful parents, Runaway Daughters, tame by today’s standards, is a classic of its kind. Campy, to be sure (“You can tell the principal that he can’t expel me—because I quit!”), but diverting fun, with Jergens leaving her film work behind in a snappy, fun and, even, maternal way.

  In 1956 Adele suddenly up and quit. Either she had lost interest, particularly with a child to raise, or she was receiving pressure at home from her husband. Or possibly, nearly 40, she realized her chances were getting slimmer in the glamour girl department. She still was attractive, but it was better to get out when the getting was good without ending up as an aging gun moll.

  Langan continued to work off-and-on in film (his most famous: the title role in The Amazing Colossal Man), but stopped completely aft
er 1971’s The Andromeda Strain. He tried real estate for awhile, but eventually, according to David Ragan in Who’s Who in Hollywood, “became a prosperous sales manager for the National Utility Service of San Francisco, handling all the Western states and Hawaii.”

  Not much was heard from Adele through the years. She turned up in late 1976 to announce, “Now that I’ve spent so many years in retirement, I have the urge to get back into the acting profession and have been concentrating on the TV/commercial field.” Unfortunately, nothing really came through.

  Their retirement years were disrupted in the early ’90s when Langan succumbed to cancer on January 19, 1991, at the age of 73. Their son Tracy followed in 2001, victim of a brain tumor. Adele was especially hit hard by this last tragedy. She became a recluse and her health deteriorated. Developing a severe cold, it quickly slipped into pneumonia. Jergens passed away on November 22, 2002, four days away from her eighty-fifth birthday.

  The London Times remembered her as a “sultry B-movie actress who specialized in bad-girl roles during a brief but busy career,” while The Washington Post labeled her “a leading pinup model during World War II.”

  Gorgeous but deadly, the screen career of Adele Jergens might have been, to some, minor—even trivial. She was hardly an important star, but she was vividly and divinely one of the best of the floozies and bad girls who graced the silver screen.

  She was pure dynamite. And possibly no one knew that better than Randolph Scott in Sugarfoot, who sees his soft-spoken leading lady turn into a wildcat when his life is threatened by town baddies: “If you were taken away from me, I’ll see to it that someone dies.” Then, noticing his shock, she sneers, “Do you think I’m some tame, pampered girl from Alabama? I can hate as well as a man and I would hate more dangerously than a man.”

  Leaving Adele to her deadly thoughts, a dazed, but clearly loved Scott turns toward the camera, shaking his head and breathing an impressed sigh of relief. As if to say: “That’s a lot of woman.”

  1943: Hello, Frisco, Hello (TCF), The Gang’s All Here (TCF), Sweet Rosie O’Grady (TCF). 1944: Pin-Up Girl (TCF), Jane Eyre (TCF), Together Again (Columbia), Black Arrow (Columbia serial). 1945: Dancing in Manhattan (Columbia), Tonight and Every Night (Columbia), A Thousand and One Nights (Columbia). 1946: She Wouldn’t Say Yes (Columbia). 1947: Down to Earth (Columbia), Blondie’s Anniversary (Columbia), When a Girl’s Beautiful (Columbia), I Love Trouble (Columbia), The Corpse Came C.O.D. (Columbia). 1948: The Fuller Brush Man (Columbia), The Dark Past (Columbia), Ladies of the Chorus (Columbia), Prince of Thieves (Columbia). 1949: Law of the Barbary Coast (Columbia), Make Believe Ballroom (Columbia), The Woman from Tangier (Columbia), The Crime Doctor’s Diary (Columbia), The Mutineers (Columbia), The Treasure of Monte Cristo (Lippert), Slightly French (Columbia). 1950: Edge of Doom (RKO/Goldwyn), Armored Car Robbery (RKO), Beware of Blondie (Columbia), Everybody’s Dancin’ (Lippert), Blonde Dynamite (Monogram), Blues Busters (Monogram), Side Street (MGM), Radar Secret Service (Lippert), The Sound of Fury (UA), Traveling Saleswoman (Columbia). 1951: Sugarfoot (WB), Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (Universal), Show Boat (MGM). 1952: Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick (Paramount), Somebody Loves Me (Paramount). 1954: Overland Pacific (UA), Fireman, Save My Child (Universal), The Miami Story (Columbia), The Big Chase (Lippert). 1955: The Cobweb (MGM), Strange Lady in Town (WB), The Lonesome Trail (Lippert), Outlaw Treasure (ARC). 1956: Day the World Ended (AIP), Fighting Trouble (AA), Girls in Prison (AIP), Runaway Daughters (AIP).

  Ida Lupino: Triumph of the Will

  by LAURA WAGNER

  Under contract to Warner Bros. (1940–47) at the same time Bette Davis was reigning Queen of the Lot, Ida Lupino showed she was no mere underling. Ida, pegging herself “a poor man’s Bette Davis,” was much better than that. She was a powerful actress of substance. She also, unlike the much-touted Davis, became a first-class director, writer and producer (through her own company Filmakers), in a time when that was never done. Dorothy Arzner was the only recognized female director of any importance in talkies, and a woman Lupino greatly admired. But Ida went a step further with her non-acting work, choosing cutting-edge, before-their-time material. Lupino did it all.

  Her family lived and breathed show business, going back to the Victorian era; most of the family was involved with the British stage. Ida’s cousin Lupino Lane was an acrobatic comic on stage and film, as well as a director. Her father, Stanley Lupino, was highly revered in revues and film for his comedic skill. It’s ironic that Ida was rarely given the opportunity to show her funny side in movies.

  Ida Lupino was born on February 4, 1918, in London (a sister, Rita, followed in 1921). Her maternal grandfather George O’Shea, likewise a once-popular comedian, was especially important to young Ida, teaching her to sing, draw, compose and generally develop her artistry. When she was quite young, she wrote the play Mademoiselle, as a school production; in typical Lupino style, she also starred. Her father, sensing his legacy passed on by Ida’s obvious prodigy, began to coach her extensively. “I never had a childhood,” she once noted, but that was because strong-willed Ida’s purpose was always to be an actress.

  Ida made her film debut as a crowd extra in The Love Race (1931) starring Stanley Lupino and directed by Lupino Lane. This bit bolstered her desire to become an actress, and she convinced her parents to allow her to enroll in the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1932. During her two terms, she performed in many plays, including Julius Caesar, Pygmalion and The Last of Mrs. Cheyney.

  Her official film debut, Her First Affaire (1932) was a fluke. Director Allan Dwan said that her mother Connie had tested for the part, but it was 14-year-old Ida who perked his interest. She won the part of a young girl smitten with a married novelist. Film offers poured in.

  She had a quick succession of movie roles in 1933 (including Money for Speed and Ghost Camera), and Paramount Pictures in America was advised of her potential. They were eager to obtain her services for the title role in their upcoming Alice in Wonderland (1933).

  Alice in Wonderland. It even sounded absurd to Ida: “You can’t play naive if you’re not.” She was the right age (15), but hardly the innocent dreamer. Regardless, she accepted the studio’s invitation to come to Hollywood, mainly due to her father’s counsel, which she valued. She sailed to America with her mother to play or not play little Alice.

  Ida’s screen test revealed what she knew all along—she was too mature. Paramount, however, was at a loss. What to do with Lupino?

  The answer was simple: put her under contract (at $600 a week), promise her “great things,” then slowly waste away her talent. It’s disheartening today to watch these ’30s Paramounts—among them, Search for Beauty, Anything Goes, Yours for the Asking and others of their ilk—and realize that no one had a handle on Lupino, no one knew what she was capable of, and surely no one seemed to care. Her blonde, over-glamourized look helped not a bit. As a result, she was thrown away on trivial, cookie-cutter female leads any ingenue could have handled. Around this time, dissatisfied, she bitterly remarked, “If I don’t get a part I can get my teeth into, I’m going back home.”

  Portrait of Ida Lupino, 1940.

  Ida defiantly refused a bit in Cleopatra (1934) and was suspended, then turned around and surprised Paramount by accepting a small but rich part in Peter Ibbetson (1935). She was loaned-out to UA, RKO and Columbia in roles mirroring her Paramount output. Variety saw the problem when they reviewed Smart Girl: “In addition to being a personable girl, Miss Lupino does an elegant job of trouping; far ahead of the material offered.” Artists and Models, with Jack Benny, her last Paramount release, was a pleasant musical comedy, but unsuited to the misplaced Lupino.

  The only memorable event from this period was rediscovering actor Louis Hayward; they had met briefly years before in England and took, as Ida recalls, an “instant dislike” to each other. Now in late 1936, they had met again and “fell madly in love.” Ida and Hayward, a fine, thoughtful actor, “were
a fine match,” said author William Donati, “both were sensitive, emotional, and inclined to melodrama.” They wed on November 17, 1938, in Los Angeles.

  Meanwhile, Ida, who once stated, “I cannot tolerate fools, won’t have anything to do with them,” decided Paramount was the fool—and she wanted out. They never reckoned that the sweet, demure actress they initially fancied an ideal Alice in Wonderland would rebel. Ida had her own mind, always would have, and she was disgusted with playing what she thought was “pretty-pretty on the screen.” Simply, she was using up precious time and energy on mere ingenue roles. Paramount released the lioness from her cage.

  Her first freelance, Fight for Your Lady (1937) depressed her; it was the same routine nonsense. She decided it was time to take stock of herself. Her career was going nowhere fast.

  It took 16 months, in which time she composed (her concert piece “Aladdin’s Lamp” was performed by the L.A. Philharmonic in 1937; she would continue to write music through the years), did a little radio and, as mentioned earlier, got married. Ida, once tagged “The English Jean Harlow,” let her hair grow out from blonde to its natural brown and grew in those awful pencil-thin eyebrows; she became herself. She was more determined than ever to show her acting skill in productions worthy of her.