(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Movie Review: Written on the Wind (1956) [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-09-23

…

…

…

…

SPOILER ALERT!

When Written on the Wind begins, we see a yellow roadster racing down a highway in the middle of an oil field replete with derricks, pumpjacks, and storage tanks. Then we see a skyscraper with the words “Hadley Oil Co.” on it in lights, with a big “H” hovering over that. The roadster passes a sign that tells us we are in the fictional town of Hadley, Texas, presumably somewhere in the Permian Basin, with a population just under 25,000.

The man driving the roadster is played by Robert Stack. We see him pull the cork out of a quart-sized bottle of whiskey with his teeth, and by the time he arrives at the mansion that is his destination, he has polished that off, throwing the bottle into the brick wall out of anger. At that point, the Four Aces begin singing the title song, in which metaphors about the wind are used to characterize a lost love, the dreams of which are like leaves that have blown away. Indeed, as Stack goes into the house, the wind blows so many leaves into the entrance hall that we cannot help but envisage some guy, in front of the open door, but just out of sight of the camera, emptying a big bag of leaves in front of a giant fan.

We see a concerned Rock Hudson looking out of a bedroom window, with a weak Lauren Bacall lying in bed behind him. A heavy-breathing Dorothy Malone is also in the house, running through all those leaves and into a room just entered by Stack. From outside the house, we hear the sound of a gunshot. A man staggers out of the door, drops a handgun, and collapses. Looking out of the bedroom window, Lauren Bacall collapses too. And now the wind does its work on a daily desk calendar, blowing the leaves of that calendar backwards to just over a year ago, announcing the beginning of a flashback. And boy, do we need one.

It turns out that Robert Stack plays Kyle, scion of the enormously wealthy Hadley family. Dorothy Malone is his sister Marylee. Rock Hudson is Mitch Wayne, who has been friends of Kyle and Marylee since they were children. Mitch is now a geologist working for Hadley Oil Co. Lauren Bacall is Lucy Moore, executive secretary in the advertising department of the Manhattan branch of Hadley Industrial when the flashback begins.

Apparently, Mitch even lived with the Hadley’s from the time he was in the first grade, since we later find out that he had a room of his own in their house. Mitch’s father, Hoak Wayne, was hoping Mitch would benefit from a close association with the Hadley’s, and Kyle’s father, Jasper Hadley, was hoping that Mitch’s qualities would rub off on Kyle, qualities he no doubt could discern when the children were in kindergarten. It’s all very strange.

Oddly enough, both fathers are played by actors that don’t seem to fit Kyle’s characterization of them. He describes Mitch’s father as “a small rancher, kind of a legend in our county. Great hunter, sort of a throwback to Daniel Boone.” So, we might expect to see Hoak Wayne played by someone like Charles Bickford. But no, he is played by Harry Shannon, who played the weak father of Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane (1941), dominated by his wife, played by Agnes Moorehead. Kyle goes on to say of his own father, “Dad’s a big man, so big that he and I know I can’t fit his shoes, or even come close.” So, we might expect to see Jasper Hadley played by Burl Ives. But no, he is played by Robert Keith, who played the weak sheriff in The Wild One (1953). And yet, Kyle feels inferior to these two fathers.

Kyle and Mitch have flown all the way from Texas to New York City so that Kyle can have a steak sandwich at the 21 Club, since he says it serves the best steak sandwiches in the world. Mitch is contemptuous such extravagance, calling it simpleminded. Mitch invites Lucy to join them to make it appear to Kyle’s father that the reason for the trip was a business conference. She recognizes Mitch from the tabloids, although it is usually only as the friend of Kyle that he is featured in the photographs.

Already at the 21 Club is Kyle, sitting at a table with two beautiful women, bedecked with jewels and furs, women he barely knows, but who somehow are there for his company while waiting for Mitch. He tells them Mitch is just a poor country boy, but one who has assets you can’t buy with money. Back in those days, Rock Hudson was a hunk, often the leading man in a romantic part. Now that we know he was a homosexual, we experience a bit of a disconnect when watching these movies today, even affecting our interpretation of them. Were Kyle and Mitch more than just friends? Throughout the movie, Mitch spurns the advances of Marylee, saying that since they grew up together, they are like brother and sister as far as he is concerned. But was that the real reason he was immune to her charms? Forget about it! Such questions were not asked in 1956, at least not about characters played by Rock Hudson. When this movie was made, the roles he played were unquestionably heterosexual.

When Mitch and Lucy show up, Kyle excuses himself from the two women. As soon as he sees Lucy, he knows she must be his next conquest. She rejects his offer to go jet-setting with him, saying she is more interested in her career in advertising, which she learned at one of the finest advertising agencies around, the Sheraton Agency. He offers to buy her the agency.

That’s pretty disgusting, and Lucy is not amused, turning down the offer. But soon she is in Kyle’s private airplane heading to Miami for a swim, with Mitch tagging along. From Kyle’s conversation with Lucy, we gather that Kyle’s father wishes Kyle were more like Mitch, and Kyle wishes he were more like Mitch too. You see, Mitch is a real man, and Kyle feels a little inadequate that respect.

When they arrive in Miami, Mitch and Lucy have a cup of coffee while Kyle makes arrangements. Mitch says, “Kyle’s probably arranging to buy you the hotel, a stretch of the beach, and a slice of the Gulf stream.” He says he underestimated Kyle’s charm. She says he may have overestimated her, admitting that the whole thing is exciting, an adventure.

It turns out that Mitch’s sarcasm was not far from the truth. They go to a luxury hotel, where Kyle has rented Lucy a private suite, with opulence that defies description. There are gorgeous flowers all around, champagne on ice, a variety of handbags, expensive perfumes, and a huge walk-in closet containing a complete wardrobe of expensive gowns and hats just for her, which Kyle arranged for by telephone. There is also a drawer full of lingerie. Kyle has apparently done this sort of thing so often that he can tell a woman’s size at a glance.

Lucy decides it’s all too much and tries to take the next plane back to New York. But Kyle catches up with her and talks her into staying just a little longer. Over a cup of coffee, they discover they are in love with each other. The next morning, the get married.

All this in less than twenty-four hours. That would be unthinkable now. Does anyone still believe in true love at first sight, the kind where you know upon meeting someone that this is the person you should marry and spend the rest of your life with? If so, they don’t believe in it for long. But this movie was made before the sexual revolution of the late 1960s. We don’t know whether Lucy is supposed to be a virgin, but she could be, notwithstanding that she is presumably around thirty years old, the age Lauren Bacall was when she made this movie. We assume a limited amount of sexual experience for Mitch, just enough so that we don’t think the less of him, but not anything like that of Kyle. In a world where sexual passions often went unsatisfied, people could believe that they had found true love and be willing to marry someone they hardly knew, so desperate were they to have sex. And so, we can believe that Lucy has fallen in love with Kyle, and we can also believe that Mitch has fallen in love with Lucy, and all in the span of a single day and night.

As for Kyle, who has presumably had sex with dozens of women before he met Lucy, we might wonder how he could be suffering from the same delusion. But the audiences of 1956 could believe it because they had not had the benefit of Kyle’s vast sexual experience. They could believe that even he could fall in love with a woman he had just met and want to marry her right away.

But that is only half of it. The belief in true love at first sight not only consisted of the notion that you could know as soon as you met someone that this was the person you should marry, but also that such love was permanent, even if unrequited. Marylee has been in love with Mitch since they were children. She has had sex with lots of men, but throughout it all, her love for Mitch has endured. If the audience of 1956 could believe something like that, it was only because they were not promiscuous like Marylee. Otherwise, they would have known better.

On their wedding night, Lucy wakes up before Kyle and accidentally discovers that he sleeps with a pistol under his pillow. His having the gun in bed with him represents compensation for feelings of sexual inadequacy on his part. But it is not just any pistol. It is a .32 caliber, gold-plated, pearl-handled, semi-automatic. In any movie set in Texas back in the 1950s or 1960s, real men owned revolvers. An example is The Chase (1965). In fact, there are two other pistols in this movie: one owned by Dan Willis (Robert J. Wilke), who runs a seedy bar with a private room in the back for couples who want to knock off a quick piece; and the other by Kyle’s father, which he keeps in a desk drawer. Both are revolvers, at least .38 caliber, if not .45. And both are black. We also see some shotguns and a rifle when Mitch visits his father on his ranch to do some hunting. This allows us to see that Mitch is comfortable around firearms without feeling the need to own a pistol of any sort, and certainly without the need to have one in bed with him.

In addition to being a womanizer, Kyle is an alcoholic. But after five weeks of marriage, thanks to the transformative power of true love, he has been sober ever since the nuptials. Upon meeting her father-in-law, Jasper, Lucy says that now that Kyle is free of what she calls his “anxieties and fears,” he threw his pistol into the ocean. Meanwhile, Mitch and Kyle are in the next office when Mitch receives a call from bartender Dan Willis, telling him that Marylee, whom he refers to as the “Hadley gal,” is about to have sex in the back room with some lowlife named Roy Carter (John Larch).

In introducing this movie for Turner Classic Movies, Ben Mankiewicz says that Marylee’s promiscuity was something new in the movies at that time. We were used to seeing a woman in a movie having premarital sex or committing adultery, but usually it was limited to one man for a few months at least. Marylee, however, picks up men on a regular basis and has one-night stands with them. Interestingly enough, Mankiewicz does not characterize Kyle’s behavior in the same way, notwithstanding the fact that Kyle has probably had sex with far more women than Marylee has had with men. This, of course, was in keeping with the double standard at the time. The word “promiscuous” was an adjective primarily applied to women. Probably still is.

Also in keeping with that double standard, it was usual in the movies for fathers and brothers to make sure that their daughters and sisters didn’t have sex at all until they got married. And so, Mitch and Kyle naturally go over to the bar and beat the crap out of Roy Carter. Well, Kyle does the best he can, but when Roy gets the better of him, Mitch steps in. Willis pulls out his revolver, and Roy seems to give up. But then he grabs for the revolver, and Mitch has to finish beating him up. As Roy lies there on the floor, knocked out, Kyle tells Willis to give him the gun so he can kill Roy, but Mitch tells him to forget it.

I’ll never forget the time I was watching Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) with a friend of mine. Judge Reinhold gives his sister Jennifer Jason Leigh a ride into town. When he looks in his rearview mirror, he sees her going into an abortion clinic. He turns around, parks his car, and goes into the waiting room so he can give her a ride back home when it is over. While in the car, she says, “You’re not going to tell Mom and Dad, are you?”

“Are you kidding?” he says affectionately.

“God!” my friend said with amazement. “Her brother supports her!”

That was a first in the movies.

As the weeks go by, Kyle begins to worry. He figures Lucy should have become pregnant by now. Since she has not, the fault must be hers. He approaches Dr. Cochrane (Edward Platt) at a party, asking him to have Lucy checked out. That’s when he finds out that Lucy has already been to see him several times, and there is nothing wrong with her. We see the fear in Kyle’s eyes. Could it be that he’s not a real man?

He makes an appointment to see Dr. Cochrane, who runs some tests. Later, Kyle meets him to get the results. Cochrane is hesitant, struggling to find the right words. Finally, using his bedside manner to put things as delicately as possible, he says, “Well, let’s call it a weakness.” He then goes on to say that in time they may be able to correct this weakness. This takes the prize as the worst euphemism ever. Maybe it was needed to satisfy the Production Code. Today, the doctor would simply say, “You have a low sperm count.” But I don’t think the word “sperm” had ever been used in a movie before. Of course, Cochrane goes on to assure Kyle that he is not sterile, and I don’t believe the word “sterile” had ever been used in a movie in a sexual sense either. In any event, Kyle starts drinking again.

Sometime later, Marylee pulls into a filling station in her red roadster and picks up Biff Miley, who used to be the local high school football star. She takes him to El Paraiso Motel. Since the name is in Spanish, that is coded for low class. And since the name translates into The Paradise Motel, it clearly advertises that it caters to those seeking sexual pleasure, probably renting rooms by the hour. The owners of the motel are perfectly happy to have Marylee as a regular customer. For that reason, unlike Dan Willis, they do not call Mitch and Kyle to come over beat up Biff. However, they don’t need to. The local police know to break things up whenever they see Marylee’s red roadster parked out front.

But they don’t just break things up. They bring both Biff and Marylee to her home. Once in the house, she goes to her room with a smug look of postcoital serenity. She clearly likes flaunting her promiscuity. Biff, on the other hand, is brought before Jasper, who accuses him of taking advantage of Marylee. Biff reluctantly tells him that men don’t pick up Marylee. She picks them up. “You’re daughter’s a tramp, mister.” Jasper goes for the revolver in his drawer, but Mitch stops him. Then Mitch tells the police to let Biff go.

In her room, Marylee gets undressed and starts dancing to a mambo version of “Temptation,” while Jasper struggles to climb the stairs, finally having a heart attack and collapsing, just as Marylee flops into a chair, kicking her legs in the air. The implication is clear. She has killed her father with her wanton ways.

A week later, Lucy learns from Dr. Cochrane about Kyle’s weakness, but at the same time, she learns she is pregnant. That evening, she tells Kyle they are going to have a baby. He thinks she means that they are going to adopt one, which would only be a constant reminder of his failure as a man. Earlier that day, Marylee started working on Kyle, Iago style, filling his head with suggestions bordering on assertions that Mitch and Lucy are having an affair. So, when Lucy makes it clear that she is pregnant, Kyle naturally assumes that it will be Mitch’s baby. He becomes so furious that he knocks her to the floor. Hearing her scream, Mitch comes to her rescue, punching Kyle and telling him to get out before he kills him, a threat heard by everyone in the house, including the servants.

Kyle goes to the bar run by Willis, asking for a quart of whiskey. He also tries to buy the revolver, but Willis won’t give it to him. And now we have reached the point at which the movie began. After Jasper died, Mitch hid his revolver behind some books on a shelf, but Kyle finds it anyway and threatens to kill Mitch. Marylee struggles with him, the gun goes off, and Kyle turns out to be the one that staggered out of the house and collapsed.

There is an inquest to find out what happened. That is, there is a movie inquest, not the kind that would happen in real life. We are expected to believe that the police did not interview any of the witnesses the night Kyle died, so that when people testify, this is the first time they are telling what happened that night.

For example, between the time of the shooting and the inquest, Marylee threatens to testify at the inquest that Mitch shot Kyle, unless Mitch agrees to marry her. (Only in a melodrama!) So, what would she have told the police the night of the shooting? If she told the truth, that Kyle accidentally shot himself, then changing her story on the witness stand would not only be called into question, but might get her in trouble as well. If she lied while being questioned by the police, saying Mitch shot Kyle, she would already have incriminated him, making it too late to blackmail him into marrying her.

Furthermore, one of the servants saw Kyle stagger out of the house with the gun in his hand. Had he told the police what he saw, that would have corroborated what would have been Mitch’s claim, had the police questioned him, that Kyle accidentally shot himself during his struggle with Marylee. But not only did the servant not tell that to the police, neither does he mention it on the witness stand.

And Mitch never gets to tell his side of the story at all, being the only one who was there that night not put on the witness stand. He just sits there in the courtroom like a helpless victim of what others are saying about him.

Aside from the police not interviewing anyone the night of the shooting, we today know that there would have been powder burns on Kyle’s hand, supporting Mitch’s story, if he ever got to tell it, that is. But movies didn’t know anything about powder burns in 1956.

In the end, Marylee tells the truth, and Mitch is exonerated. Days later, we see Mitch and Lucy driving away from the house, presumably meaning that they will get married eventually. We know this because Mitch told her he was in love with her just before he found out she was pregnant, and when Rock Hudson told a woman in a movie that he was in love with her, that settled it. And, of course, Lucy had a miscarriage when Kyle knocked her down. Mitch would not have objected to raising Kyle’s child, but the audience would. People watching the movie needed to see Mitch and Lucy get a fresh start, unencumbered by any reminder of her marriage to Kyle.

Although Marylee didn’t get Mitch in the end, at least she is now free to have as much sex with as many different men as she feels like, without Kyle and Mitch beating up her lovers, or her father threatening to shoot them. And, as she has now inherited the bulk of the Hadley estate, the cops will no longer be interfering in her affairs either. She’ll probably be screwing them now. And instead of doing it in the private room in the bar run by Dan Willis, or in a room of El Paraiso Motel, she can just bring the men she picks up right into her own bedroom.

But no, that is not what we see at the end. Attired in a business suit, she sits down at what used to be her father’s desk. Behind her is a picture of Jasper holding a model of an oil derrick, and we see her pick up that model and hold it in a similar fashion. The model oil derrick has phallic significance as her hand wraps around it and slides down. Henceforth, her sexual appetite will be sublimated by her new role as oil magnate. She has been cured of her promiscuity.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/23/2178589/-Movie-Review-Written-on-the-Wind-1956

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/