HELL ON FRISCO BAY (1955)

Hell on Frisco Bay is one of those semi-forgotten films that doesn’t live up to its promise, but still reveals a huge amount about the times in which it was made. This late-period Noir stars Alan Ladd and Edward G. Robinson, the latter of whom (despite some career problems, which I’ll come to later) steals the film from its nominal star in an act of cinematic grand larceny.

The Ladd Himself
It’s often forgotten just what a huge star Alan Ladd was at the peak of his career. These days he’s mainly remembered for the enormous success of George Stevens’ monumental Western Shane, released in 1953, and for being sensitive about his lack of height. After he rocketed to stardom as the angel-faced, emotionally-damaged hired killer in 1942’s This Gun for Hire, Paramount Studios eventually discovered that they could basically put their new star in any old rubbish and audiences would turn out to see it.

This was a real shame, as there are some absolute gems in Ladd’s initial period of stardom such as the Noir thrillers The Glass Key (1942) and The Blue Dahlia (1946). As with This Gun for Hire, in these films he formed a particularly effective screen pairing with Veronica Lake. It helped that Lake, whose height is quoted at anything between 5ft 2 and 4ft 11, was considerably shorter than the 5ft 6 Ladd. There was more to it than that, though: the sassy, funny Lake provided an effective contrast to Ladd, who was all icy calm and internalised anger.
By the 1950’s Ladd’s career had begun to decline, but the success of Shane, which almost immediately ascended to classic status, gave his career a huge boost. Somehow, he was never able to replicate Shane’s success, partly because its prolonged post-production meant that there were even more lacklustre Alan Ladd movies waiting to be released by the time it finally came out, almost two years after filming wrapped. Just before Shane finally reached cinemas Ladd featured in one of his very worst films, Desert Legion, a French Foreign legion picture made with that particular, tatty b-movie sheen of Universal-International’s productions of the era.

On the surface, Ladd did everything right in the post-Shane era. He set up his own production company, Jaguar Productions, as did many big stars when the major studios began to divest themselves of their contract stars. Taking control of your own career like this didn’t always work out, however: Humphrey Bogart’s Santana Productions might have gotten him out of the clutches of Jack Warner, but proved to be a money pit and Bogie had by this point closed the company down.
Ladd also tried getting into television, making a pilot for his successful syndicated radio series Box 13 – he was a wonderful radio actor with a mellifluous speaking voice – but the networks didn’t bite so he persevered with his big screen career.

Red Menaces
With that in mind, Hell on Frisco Bay can be seen as an attempt to recapture former glories. Here was Ladd in a thriller with Noir-overtones, reunited with Frank Tuttle, who had directed his breakthrough film This Gun for Hire, and Lucky Jordan, one of the features Paramount rushed into production when they found they suddenly had a hot new star.
The story had a good pedigree, too, being based on The Darkest Hour, a novel by William P McGivern, whose novels had been the source material for the recent Noirs The Big Heat (1953), the lesser-known but well worth catching Shield for Murder and Rogue Cop (both from 1954). Hell on Frisco Bay is, to be honest, probably the least of this group of films. McGivern took the hint at the end of the 1950’s and took up scriptwriting with great success.

McGivern’s novel was adapted by Martin Rackin, who had previously written the terrific 1951 Humphrey Bogart Noir The Enforcer, and Sydney Boehm, who had provided the scripts for the previous McGivern movies The Big Heat and Rogue Cop.
As with almost all Hollywood films of the 1950s, the shadow of the anti-communist witch-hunts falls heavily on Hell on Frisco Bay. Frank Tuttle was a hugely experienced director whose career began in silent days and effortlessly took on the challenge of sound. It was Tuttle who directed the original 1935 film version of Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key as a vehicle for George Raft, which was subsequently remade by Stuart Heisler in 1942 when Paramount needed a property in a hurry for their new star Alan Ladd. By 1955 however the talented and well-established Tuttle hadn’t directed a feature film in four years. He had been a member of the Communist Party, even holding party meeting at his home. As a result, Tuttle was one of the very first targets of the House Unamerican Activities Committee. He was named under oath as a Communist by witnesses to the committee and eventually had to name others in order to save his career.

As it happened, it was Alan Ladd who rescued Frank Tuttle’s directing career, employing him multiple times for his Jaguar Productions, starting with the 1954 Box 13 TV pilot. His final picture as a director was 1959’s Island of Lost Women, another Jaguar movie, though one in which Ladd didn’t appear, that was eventually released on the bottom of a double bill with the Steve Reeves film Hercules.
Edward G. Robinson, who had never been a member of the Communist Party, had his own share of problems with HUAC. Few people really thought that Eddie Robinson was a communist; he just gave his time and money to liberal causes. To the leaders of HUAC, which included members of the Klu Klux Klan, his targeting sent a powerful message to liberal-minded Hollywood types: keep quiet and don’t get involved in politics. The likes of John Wayne, meanwhile, could shout their right wing political views from the rooftops.

Robinson appeared before HUAC four times in all, finally giving the committee what it wanted in 1952. In his testimony he actually named Frank Tuttle as being one of the ‘sinister forces’ who had ‘duped and used him’, while never actually using the word Communist. As a part of the deal to ‘clear his name’ and get his career back, Robinson wrote an article for the American Legion Magazine entitled ‘How the Reds Made a Sucker out of Me’.

Hell on the Waterfront
Former detective Steve Rollins (Alan Ladd) has just been released from San Quentin after serving five years for manslaughter. Rollins was framed and he’s angry, bitter and out for revenge. He refused to see is wife (Joanne Dru) while he was in prison and, desperately lonely, she strayed once. Now Rollins rejects her completely. Word reached Rollins in prison that a fisherman, Lou Rogani, has proof that he was innocent. Rollins soon finds out that the docks are being taken over by a vicious mobster, Vic Amato (Edward G. Robinson) and his lieutenant Joe Lye (Paul Stewart). When Rogani and ageing former boss of the docks Louis Fiaschetti wind up dead and Rollins turns down a place in Amato’s organisation it’s clear that Rollins is next on Amato’s hit list…
It has to be said that McGivern’s story is, in a lot of respects, quite similar to that of Budd Schulberg’s script for On the Waterfront, which had been released in July 1954. Hell on Frisco Bay, however, plays like a film from a totally different era; Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront might be the smaller scale film with black and white photography, but its naturalistic acting style points to the future of film. Hell on Frisco Bay, for all its gleaming Warnercolor and CinemaScope widescreen photography, is in a line of succession starting with Warner’s gangster thrillers of the thirties and the post war Film Noir genre.

Hell on Frisco Bay has much more location photography that was common in the thirties and forties, which is great up to a point, but it does make the occasional use of back-projection very obvious. The use of CinemaScope anamorphic widescreen photography also works against the film in a lot of ways. This is a very early Scope feature film, going into production only two years after the very first one, Henry Koster’s biblical epic The Robe. It took directors and film editors time to figure out how to work in this new medium, while the technicalities of the anamorphic lens technology meant that close-ups were not yet possible. In practical terms this meant that epic spectacles such as those offered by the Biblical movie genre were best able to use the wide CinemaScope frame, whereas crime thrillers such as this one suffered.
The few moments of visual splendour Hell on Frisco Bay offers, especially during location photography on Fisherman's Wharf and San Francisco Bay, look great but the lack of close-ups really hurts Alan Ladd’s performance. As ever, Ladd’s acting is very controlled and internalised, only occasionally bursting into real anger. He’s burning from the inside, Ladd’s hair even dyed red to reflect his mental state. Rollins’ anger and thirst for revenge is a constant theme of the film. When finally pushed too far he almost kills flabby ex-boxer Hammy, one of Amato’s goons (played by Stanley Adams, who was eventually to achieve immortality as Cyrano Jones in the Star Trek episode The Trouble with Tribbles). Director Tuttle pulls the film’s punches in what should be a key scene, though. The constant use of long and medium shots distances us, both literally and figuratively, from what’s happening.

The same thing happens in a later scene when a crooked cop working for Amato pushes Rollins about the state of his marriage. Ladd’s voice (that radio training coming in handy) is so chilling that the cop practically runs out of the door in fear. But once again Ladd is denied his chance to really shine on screen; not only is the scene shot from too great a distance, but Ladd isn’t even facing the camera. A mixture of poor directorial choices and the technical limitations of early CinemaScope really harms the film.
Edward G. Robinson, on the other hand, is such a big performer that he pretty much grabs the viewer by the collar and forces them to take notice him, while at the same time not seeming to try too hard. He also benefits from having a much more interesting character to play. Pretty much all there is to Ladd’s character is that he’s angry and vengeful, and that he likes children (I guess after Shane it seemed like a good idea to shoehorn in a scene where Ladd gets to interact with a small boy). His most memorable line is “I want to kill you so much I can taste it”, the rest of his dialogue being either similar macho posturing along the same general lines, or functional dialogue to gussy the plot along.

Robinson could probably have read pages from the phone directory out loud and still given a decent performance, but Vic Amato is a fascinating character. At some point before the film’s narrative begins he has got his chief lieutenant Joe Lye out of prison, where he was in the death cell, and boy, Vic never lets Joe forget it. This is despite the fact that Joe has clearly been badly affected by the experience, with a scarred face and a nervous twitch. Vic and Joe’s relationship is even more central to the script than Steve Rollins’ vengeful anger, and, it has to be said, rather more interesting. Vic also constantly needles Joe because he has a classy girlfriend, ageing former movie star Kay Stanley (a later-career role for the great Fay Wray). His attacks on Joe and Kay’s relationship are constant, with him either describing her to Joe as an old has-been or, when he’s finally in a room alone with Kay, trying to pull her himself.
As this set of relationships is the single most interesting part of Hell on Frisco Bay, it’s worthy of a little more attention. We never get to the bottom of what the hell is wrong with Vic and is making him sabotage his most important professional and personal relationship. The script gives us a few clues to fuel a bit of healthy speculation: one possibility is that the writers are, in their coy, mid-1950’s way, queercoding Vic, dropping as many hints as the fading but still-stultifying Hayes Code allowed that Vic is as jealous as hell that his number-one boy has got a girl of his own. Vic’s own marriage appears to be childless, his wife Anna ladling attention on their nephew Mario and (much to Vic’s disgust) on her Roman Catholic religion. Outside of Vic’s refuge of the kitchen, Anna has filled their house with Catholic iconography that constantly looks down on him disapprovingly.

Another explanation, which is certainly apposite as I write this on the final day of Donald Trump’s presidency, is that Vic is a malignant narcissist. Amato is steamed that Joe prayed to God while in the prison death cell, telling Joe that Vic should have been praying to him instead. Vic simply has to be central to everything in the lives of those around him, demanding total loyalty while offering little in return. Joe is kept on a short leash, as Vic keeps reminding him that he has the evidence to put Joe back on death row. Hammy the henchman is rejected with a $500 payoff when he is no longer useful – to be fair, Hammy was a terrible henchman, while Vic has his own nephew Mario killed by Joe when he suspects that he’s spilled rather too many beans to Rollins.
Remember in the James Bond film License to Kill, where Bond gets inside baddie Franz Sanchez’s organisation and hollows it out by making him distrust his most faithful lieutenants? Here Rollins doesn’t need to bother, he just has to walk around telling other characters how angry he is while Vic pushes everyone away from him. Even Joe turns on Vic eventually for his own self-preservation, an act which is suicidal for Joe and which finally means that there is nobody to insulate Amato from Rollins.

The ending to Hell on Frisco Bay is spectacular, but thematically disappointing. Vic tries to escape in a motor boat, at which point Rollins dives from a high pier and boards the boat in order to engage in a round of fisticuffs. Here we see the technological determinism of the CinemaScope format letting the film down. The entire narrative of the film has been leading inexorably to a one-on-one confrontation between Amato and Rollins, which we almost get: Rollins, grim of face and set of jaw, advances towards Amato, who has Mrs Rollins hostage (Joanne Dru has an absolutely thankless role here as a total doormat of a character). The sight of Rollins, as the film has tried to establish a couple of times earlier, is so terrifying that Vic wastes his final bullet. This could have been a scintillating ending as the two men, absorbed in their seething anger, finally confront each other in sweaty, shadowy close-quarters. Instead, as this is the fifties and audiences demanded spectacle if they were going to nip to the cinema instead of watching TV, Vic clears off in a speedboat.
Unfortunately, both Ladd and the 62 year-old Robinson were simply too old to pull the sequence off believably. At this point Alan Ladd was not only short and slight of build, but also a 42 year-old with a drink problem which was starting to eat away at his previously angelic features. It was difficult to suspend disbelief earlier in the film when he beats up on a young and stockily muscular Rod Taylor, but seeing Ladd dive from a great height into the sea and swim to a speeding motor boat really is pushing it too far.
A few other names from the supporting cast should be mentioned: William Demarest gives the film some old-school Warner Brothers heft as Rollins’ cop buddy Dan Bianco, the aforementioned Rod Taylor shows immediate star quality as an out-of-town hoodlum, while Tina Carver has a couple of good scenes as Taylor’s boozy older girlfriend. Perry Lopez is also memorable as the doomed Mario, Vic’s nephew who just wants to use the family name as a way to date women. Some welcome comic relief is provided in a scene where Rollins tails Mario to a swinging nightclub where he is on a date with an unbilled Jayne Mansfield. Rollins has a wonderful scene in which he talks to an Asian-American hepcat gal. As ever, Ladd plays the scene deadpan while the jazz-loving hipster lady gets lines like “What’s the message Daddy-O? Good for what ails ya!”.  The actress playing the part sadly went uncredited, but it’s really refreshing in a movie of this vintage to see an Asian-American turn up in a non-stereotypical role.

Rollins duly breaks up Mario’s date in order to stick his face in a bathroom sink, at which point Mansfield gets to show off her comedic chops: As soon as Mario leaves another guy immediately tries to pick her up with probably the best dialogue exchange in the film:
“Can I drive you home?”
“You have a car?”
“No, a whip!”
Mansfield gives a giggle, then realises what the guy has said and gives a perfect comedic double-take. The following year Mansfield would graduate to leading lady status in The Girl Can’t Help It.
 
Hell on Frisco Bay actually took a respectable two million dollars at the box office, but has not lingered in the collective memory – it’s an obscurity even to most movie buffs. The direction of Alan Ladd’s career was clear: by 1957 he was dismayed at having to play second fiddle to Sophia Loren in Boy on a Dolphin, and by the end of the decade he was finished as a Hollywood leading man. He was forced to find work in Italy, looking baffled as to what on Earth is going on around him in the film he made out there, the Sword and Sandal picture Duel of Champions, available prints of which are so poor that it’s impossible to judge the actual quality of the film.
Ladd got his best reviews in years when he finally made the jump to character actor status in the 1964 release The Carpetbaggers. By the time the film was released in October 1964 Ladd had been dead for nine months, the death of the often depressed actor popularly thought to be suicide.