The conflict in the film revolves around Fu Manchu’s attempt to bring his daughter, Princess Ling Moy, into his evil grasp. Wong plays the character as a woman attracted to the dark side of control (there are several scenes of torture in the film which Ming Loy obviously enjoys), but also drawn to the light side of love and giving, exemplified by her relationship with the agent bent on destroying Fu Manchu: Ah Kee (played by the only other Asian actor in the early American cinema who could be considered a star: Sessue Hayakawa).
Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express (1933) plays very much like an erotic, dreamlike paean to European beauty in the person of Marlene Dietrich and Asian beauty in the person of Wong as mediated through the perverse lens of director von Sternberg. The film takes place on a train from Peking to Shanghai, but almost all the scenes are shot in a studio with heavy use of fog and shadows, making it seem more like a hallucinatory opium dream than any real trek. Dietrich and Wong, friends and possibly lovers in real life, play their scenes with a cynical worldliness and easy sensuality that strikes the viewers as the only authentic element in this dreamscape. As two famous courtesans—Shanghai Lily and Hui Fei—they keep all the judgmental passengers, including the revolutionary General Chang (played again by Warner Oland), on the train off their game by their sarcasm and forbidding personas,. Even the General himself, who sexually molests Hui Fei and tries the same with Shanghai Lily, finds he is no match for these lethal ladies. He is stabbed to death by Hui Fei, thereby paying a “debt” he owes her.
These two women are in fact the heroines of the piece. Shanghai Lily saves her bitter ex-lover—Captain Harvey (Clive Brook)—from being tortured and Hui Fei eliminates Chang, who is presented as a threat not only to the passengers on the train, which he has hijacked, but to the government of China. The film thus allows them their reward. Shanghai Lily refuses to tell Harvey why she consented to go with Chang (it was to save his life), demanding instead that he have faith in her and capitulate no matter his doubts. He does so in the final shot. Hui Fei is greeted at the train station by reporters who hail her as a hero. She, of course, waves them away dismissively and heads for the police station to collect her bounty.
Chu-Chin-Chow (1934) was an incredibly popular British Arabian Nights-style fantasy. Wong reprised her role from The Thief of Bagdad as the revolutionary double agent who attempts to bring down her enemies. The last femme fatale role Wong played was in 1938 before her career fell into almost total eclipse. The film was called Dangerous to Know. The movie was based on a play by pulp writer Edgar Wallace. Wong had starred in the play so she was a natural choice for the part of Lan Ying, the spurned gangster’s moll who takes revenge on her lover for trying to desert her and cozy up to old money and White society dames in the person of Margaret Van Case (Gail Patrick). Robert Florey (Mad Love) directed the movie, prestigious cinematographer Karl Struss shot it, and it was co-written by hardboiled novelist Horace McCoy (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?). Florey brought his European sensibilities to the film, particularly in the scenes with Wong. The use of costuming, shadows, and art deco design enhanced the aura around Wong as she planned and executed her revenge.
Jean Harlow
—The Proletarian Femme Fatale
Jean Harlow was a perfect femme fatale for the 1930s Great Depression. Even when she played middle- or upper-class characters, she exuded the street. Her heavy drinking and chain-smoking, her lack of underwear, her working-class argot, her witty repartee, and her sometimes bawdy humor all made her a favorite of the first half of a decade tired of the rarefied, European-influenced atmosphere of the 1920s cinema and yearning for a realism which reflected the realities—with a touch of escapism—of their own hard lives.
Harlow burst on the scene with her boiling performance as the sexually liberated Helen in Howard Hughes’s flying epic Hell’s Angels (1930). In the film Harlow is a very modern young Englishwoman who is the female version of the film’s male roué—Monte (Ben Lyon). Although she is dating his morally rigid and somewhat naive brother Roy (James Hall), she tells the baffled Monte that this should not stand in the way of their affair. After all, it is her business: “I want to be free. I want to be gay and have fun.” We first see Helen in action when she rushes into the room to meet the timid Roy. She tells him that she is “boiling” and he runs his hand tentatively over her skin, his hand trembling from the heat she emits.
Jean Harlow’s lack of undergarments was a sign of sexual liberation for early 1930s screen sirens.
Helen (Jean Harlow), most contented when she is between two admirers, from Hell’s Angels.
Later, Roy promises to meet her at a party and bring his brother. As he scans the lavish garden for her, we see her run out of the bushes, a soldier in tow, looking very disheveled. Dressed in a backless gown that reveals expanses of white flesh, the obviously sexually excited Helen runs over to Roy and Monte and proceeds to flirt with both of them, unconcerned that they may have seen her with the young soldier. This insouciance continues as she invites Monte to her apartment and seduces him there, emerging from her bedroom, obviously naked under a thin robe.
Harlow as Vantine takes command of Clark Gable’s (Carson) phallic symbol—a cigarette—to show him she is his equal, from Red Dust.
Harlow and Gable radiate raw sexuality in Red Dust, a prime example of liberated pre-Code cinema.
As both brothers enlist in the Royal Air Force (the film is set around World War I) and are sent to France, Helen does her duty by joining the “canteen,” where she aids in their war effort while continuing her flirtatious ways. When the righteous Roy tries to reprimand her when he finds her making love to an officer in a bar, she chews him out for his futile attempt to restrict her.
In the year after Hell’s Angels, Harlow made a brief but memorable appearance in Warner Bros.’ watershed crime film: The Public Enemy. Harlow’s real-life associations with gangsters gave an authenticity to her performance as Gwen, a lady of leisure, who the protagonist—gangster Tom Powers (James Cagney)—spies on the street and then offers a ride to, thinking he has made another easy score. However, Gwen turns the tables on this criminal player by withholding her favors until she has established her dominance over him and driven him a little “screwy,” as he tells her. When she is sure that he does not consider her just another easy woman, she mounts his lap and toys with his hair, pressing his head to her breast and calling him her “bashful boy.”
Harlow performs several numbers in Reckless. Her singing voice was dubbed.
In 1932 MGM, which had bought out her contract from Howard Hughes, cast her opposite her male equivalent Clark Gable in Red Dust. The sexual chemistry on screen between the two stars was obvious as these equally rough and tough predators circled each other physically and verbally, mated, and then fought like wild animals, enhanced by the setting: the jungles of Asia. Harlow plays Vantine, a prostitute who hides out at a plantation run by the Carson (Gable), a cynical, embittered loner. Their relationship is purely sexual, with Carson at first paying her for their trysts. But when the upper-class Barbara Willis (Mary Astor) arrives at the plantation with her ailing surveyor husband and Carson falls for her brand of refinement, Vantine draws from her femme fatale arsenal to break up the affair. She bathes nude in a tub while Barbara watches as Vantine mercilessly teases the uncharacteristically embarrassed Carson. Later she engages him in a bit of rough sex as the jealous Barbara enters and then shoots Carson, thereby assuring Vantine’s psychological hold on Carson.
Red-Headed Woman (also 1932) was written by Anita Loos, one of a squadron of female writers who helped develop the American cinema in its first four decades. This film is among the most sexually direct of the pre-Code films of the early 1930s. The movie opens with a montage which pays homage to Loos’s phenomenally successful book and screenplay, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, while capitalizing on Harlow’s now finely formed iconic image as she changes her hair from its famous platinum color to red; asks advice about whether her dress is transparent enough
and then reveals fishnets and a garter (which features a photo of her boss) as she discusses with her gal pal Sally (Una Merkel) how she is going to “upgrade” her life from shop girl to society dame.
Lillian, a.k.a. “Red” (Harlow), is one of a series of movie Depression shop girls who saw bewildered (around them at least) and testosterone-driven rich white males as their ticket out of poverty and misery. Lillian sets her laser sights on William Legendre (Chester Morris). Her opening salvo is to burst into his house, even though he is married, and seduce him with a glimpse of silk-stockinged thighs and baby talk. Whenever the guilt-ridden Legendre starts to bolt, she brings him back through her raw sex appeal. She traps him in a phone booth, pressing her body against his and slamming the door shut with her fleshy rear whenever someone tries to enter. Ultimately, of course, she gets her way and Legendre divorces his wife and marries her.
Lillian revels in her new wealth, driving a sporty roadster with an Airedale on the seat next to her. The fly in the ointment is however the prejudice of Legendre’s upper-class friends, who refuse to invite her to any of their swank soirees. Never one to be denied, Lillian seduces the most influential and intolerant of the group, Charles Gaerste (Henry Stephenson), and even persuades him to set her up in New York when she senses her husband’s affections are waning. Although the aging man tries to resist her, all it takes is a flash of flesh and a playful twist of his few locks of hair for him to capitulate totally.
Lillian, like most of Harlow’s characters, cannot live without sexual satisfaction. So she cuckolds Gaerste and her husband with the virile young chauffeur Albert (Charles Boyer). When both Gaerste and Legendre find out, Legendre goes back to his forgiving wife and Gaerste separates himself from the conniving Lillian. In a post-Code film (and even in many pre-Code films), Lillian would have to be punished in some way—but Anita Loos, always sympathetic to girls on the make, allows Lillian to find another aging sugar daddy in France and continue to live in style. In the final scene, she receives a trophy for her racehorse, and rides in a limousine which is driven by none other than Albert.
Red-Headed Woman writer Anita Loos and star Harlow mug it up for a publicity shot featuring a joke title for Loos’s famous novel.
In a move typical of callous Hollywood, producer David Selznick and MGM chief Louis B. Mayer decided to exploit Harlow’s personal tragedy, the suicide of her second husband Paul Bern, and cast her in a musical based at least partially on the scandalous marriage of femme fatale and torch singer Libby Holman (incidentally a friend of Harlow’s). Harlow resented Mayer’s insistence that she take the part and only agreed when her fiance, actor William Powell, was cast opposite her. The film, Reckless (1935), opens on the antics of the free-spirited Mona Leslie as she is jailed for reckless driving and then bailed out by lawyer and silent admirer Ned Riley (Powell). Mona then returns to the theater to star in a musical benefit for an audience of one, the alcoholic playboy Bob Harrison (Franchot Tone).
Tycoon Legendre (Chester Morris) is a goner once he cradles Red’s (Harlow) delectable stockinged leg in his lap, from Red-Headed Woman.
Attracted to his society status, Mona finally consents to marry Bob. But the bias of his upper-crust family creates problems for the weak-willed heir. He begins to drink more heavily and become depressed, particularly after the engagement of his childhood sweetheart Jo. He even becomes abusive toward Mona and declares his marriage a “trap.” Mona seeks solace in the hotel suite of ever-devoted Ned. Bob breaks into the suite, drunk and belligerent. The couple put him to bed but when they leave the room, a gunshot goes off; Bob has committed suicide.
The event becomes fodder for the scandal sheets and the pregnant Mona is crucified in the press. Even though she is exonerated by a jury, she is blacklisted on Broadway. Eventually she finds a producer who is willing to exploit her notoriety, and he organizes a stage show for her. At the show, members of the audience heckle and throw objects at her as she sings, “Somewhere a happy ending for me.” Unable to continue she delivers a heartfelt monologue, berating them for their lack of decency, as Ted watches tearfully from backstage. She turns the tide and continues her song to the applause of a majority of the audience. The femme fatale is victorious as well as vindicated.
Unfortunately, Harlow only lived a few more years, dying in 1937 of uremic poisoning. However, by then, the Code Office had done its work on Harlow’s post-1934 films and stripped them of any overt sexuality and daring content in the script stage. So, like West’s and Dietrich’s films, they became pale shadows of their pre-Code forerunners.
Chapter Two Film Noir’s Deadly Female: Subversion and Transgression
THE PRODUCTION CODE OFFICE’S FREEZE on creativity from 1934 until the end of the decade began to thaw by the beginning of World War II. The inevitable disruptions in the role of women caused by the war left audiences, particularly women who were holding down the home front, with a taste for more realistic and stimulating portrayals of life. Out of this disruption film noir was born and with it a slew of lethal ladies who were even more aggressive than their older sisters.
Gene Tierney
—Exotic Princess
Gene Tierney was a “princess” in real life as well as on the screen. Raised in wealth, educated in European finishing schools, and outed in a debutante ball, Tierney was discovered by Hollywood at the tender age of nineteen. Protégé of both Howard Hughes and 20th Century-Fox chief Darryl Zanuck, she was groomed by both for stardom. Her high cheekbones, adorable overbite, and Eurasian-looking eyes made her ideal for exotic femme fatale roles.
Here Tierney transforms herself into the outlaw of legend and history, Belle Starr.
Zanuck first cast her as the white-trash vixen Ellie May Lester in Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road (1941), a pitiless and vulgar dissection of poor Southern whites eking out a living during the Depression (a comic reversal of Zanuck’s reverent The Grapes of Wrath). Her sexual pursuit of her brother-in-law is unrelenting and animalistic as she runs after him through the dirt fields, attacks him physically, and calls to him like a mud siren while dressed in a tattered dress. Even though he resists initially, as he is married to her sister, he ultimately submits to her sensual persuasion.
In the same year she starred as the title character in Belle Starr, a tale of the legendary Confederate bandit. Highly fictionalized, Tierney begins the film as a Southern belle à la Scarlett O’Hara. She is a spoiled plantation debutante who cannot abide the Yankees’ destruction of her luxurious lifestyle. Her petulance and diva attitude attracts not only the Confederate outlaw Sam Starr (Randolph Scott), but also the Northern officer Thomas Grail (Dana Andrews). However, midway through the film, Starr reinvents herself and straps on a gun to fight what she considers the depredations of the Northern carpetbaggers. As co-leader of Starr’s gang, she participates in their acts of violence. She marries Starr, but Grail still remains obsessed with this fiery beauty. When she is finally killed, both Grail and Starr mourn over her body.
In Sundown (1941), Tierney plays Zia, a half-Arab trader who assists the British in fighting the Axis powers in Africa. When she first enters the film, surveying her native land from an airplane, she is dressed as a conventional young European woman. But after she lands and is met by a tribe of natives who bow before her and place bejeweled slippers on her feet, the transformation begins. Within a few scenes, she has exchanged her European clothes for native outfits and jewels befitting a queen. She walks silently before them, her skin darkening from the sun, and her look more imperious. When she finally meets the Englishmen at the outpost, they are in awe of her statuesque beauty and stately manner. Unfortunately, this film—like so many film in Hollywood in the classic period—did not have the courage of its convictions, and so has a tacked on ending set back in England where it is revealed that she was really not half-Arab (racism rears its head once again), which then guaranteed that she could marry the European hero. Although the Production Code Office had diminished in influence, its censorious hand was still fea
red.
Gene Tierney as the Southern belle at the beginning of Belle Starr.
In Shanghai Gesture (1941), Dietrich’s former director and collaborator Josef von Sternberg used Tierney’s exotic beauty to utmost effect. Set in the decadent Shanghai of imagination, Tierney plays Victoria, a.k.a. Poppy (a name she gives herself and which hints at her later drug addiction), the spoiled, emotionally complex daughter of Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston), an official determined to bring down the gambling casino/brothel of Mother Gin Sling (Ona Munson)—who, it turns out, was his lover years ago. Von Sternberg gives Tierney the same treatment he gave Dietrich, wrapping her beauty in designer gowns (by Oleg Cassini, Tierney’s husband at the time), furs, and jewels, thereby allowing them to act as signifiers of her wealth and pampered lifestyle. When she first sets foot in Mother Gin Sling’s establishment, which is constructed in concentric circles to represent Dante’s circles of hell, she tells her servile companion that she is attracted to the “evil” here, an evil she had only imagined before.
The obsessed Detective McPherson (Dana Andrews) tries to crack the cool façade of Laura (Gene Tierney) with little success in Laura.
McPherson awakes to find his pictorial goddess in black (portrait on the wall) has become a live goddess in white (Tierney), from Laura.
Soon Victoria has changed her name to Poppy and is indulging her taste for gambling, drugs, and Arab men—all with the aid of Mother Gin Sling, who is using her as a way to get at her nemesis Sir Guy. She takes Omar (Victor Mature), a mysterious hunk who recites poetry and obviously satisfies her sexually. She treats him like a love slave, throwing drinks in his face, playing with his fez, and ordering him about. When she thinks he is cheating on her, she stands outside his locked door and stamps her foot like a child and fakes tears to draw his sympathy.
Femme Fatale: Cinema's Most Unforgettable Lethal Ladies Page 6