Station West (1948)

Posted by Markham

I think its too easy to forget that Jane Greer had many other fine roles besides her signature character Kathie Moffat in “Out of the Past”. TCM, thank god for it, in recent months has been playing a slew of Jane Greer movies, and, in almost every one she gives an impeccable performance (the two exceptions- You For Me and Sinbad the Sailor, stay clear of ‘em). Jane, an actress only associated for a single noir role, also visited pulp territory a considerable amount of time, appearing in four classic noirs and three neo-noirs. Next to the untouchable “Out of the Past”, one of the highlights of her career has to be the tragic femme fatale Charlie in “Station West”, a film that’s underrated as both a noir and a western.

Sidney Lanfield wanted Marlene Dietrich in the role of Charlie. Greer got the part, but to him she wasn’t good enough for the role. He would spend most of the time on the set being enormously abusive to Greer (to the point in which she would take a long hiatus, beginning a string of events that ended her chances at superstardom). This guy must have been a first rate idiot to thinking she was inferior to Dietrich. Marlene would have given a very good performance, but the tone of the film would have completely changed. Greer brought to Charlie a sense of sadness and vulnerability, while Dietrich would have probably played up the sexuality and the inner-strength of the character (Jane, though, had no trouble bringing those two qualities to her performance, if only by her mere presence). (I think Dietrich was a terrific actress, especially under the direction of Josef von Sternberg, Billy Wilder, and Orson Welles (her supporting role in Touch of Evil is my personal favorite), but when it came to Westerns she always fell into “the self-sacrificing vamp” formula.)

Charlie is also a feminist role, an extreme rarity in the male dominated genre. She’s tough and powerful, but is able to separate her work life (her shady business and control over the town) and her sex life (her relationship with Haven, Dick Powell). Unlike most femme fatales, however, she’s not a b!tch who backstabs the hero, in fact she puts a lot of trust in him towards the end of the film, putting aside her doubts that he is the enemy, even granting him a fair chance to retrieve the money he “stole” from her (of course, he is working against her and can’t play by her rules).

The rest of the cast fares well. Dick Powell does another tough guy role, although I must say I never really bought into any of his “tough guy” roles, including this one, definitely his most “hard-boiled”. The supporting cast, however, is first rate, some great noir character actors in this one. Agnes Moorehead is up to her usual excellence. Sidney Lanfield also gave her an incredibly hard time on the set (notably calling her “hatchet face”), to the point in which she begged Dore Schary to have her own director to work exclusively for her scenes, and got one. Raymond Burr is a real treat here, cast against type playing a real wimp of a lawyer. Tom Powers and Regis Toomey both have a significant parts too (Toomey for once playing something other than a cop, here, a detective), and look out for bit roles for both Steve Brodie and John “Lou Baylord (from Out of the Past)” Kellogg. Best of all is an early role for folk singer/actor Burl ‘Big Daddy’ Ives, who strums out the beautiful theme song and plays a colorful world- wide Hotel Clerk.

Sidney Lanfield was, for the most part, a competent director, usually making generic lighthearted fare that were star vehicles (mostly Bob Hope movies), but he got lucky in this one with having two of THE best noir crew members to work with. Frank Fenton, known as the man who contributed all of that snappy dialogue uncredited in “Out of the Past”, in addition to writing noir comedy “His Kind of Woman” and noir “Nocturne”, came up with the incredibly razor-sharp dialogue of this film (he co-wrote it with Winston Miller, who penned John Ford’s “My Darling Clementine”). Then you have the great noir cinematographer Harry J. Wild (“Murder, My Sweet”, among other classics) on board. For an oater, its shot like a noir, the nights scenes in the movie look incredibly expressionistic and adds to the seediness lurking beneath the boom town’s exterior (even the scenes in the daytime have a “dark” look).

While it’s never clear whether or not a genuine ‘noir western’ exists, I think this comes the closest to being one then the rest of them. “Pursued” for the most part is simply a melodrama covering years of problems within a very dysfunctional family, and, while it’s a great film, the weak ending really scars it from being a pure noir. “Blood on the Moon” is a run-of-the-mill oater lit beautifully. “Ramrod” has plenty of noir elements, but in the end I felt like I went through a top-notch B-Western, not a noir.

This movie has it all: the boomtown is covered with seedy characters (and all of the extras look like they’re either playing thieves or whores) and for the most part is ruled by corruption (most authority figures other than Powell rarely show up in the film). There is a femme fatale, and the hero’s story plays out like a standard semi-documentary noir (Government official goes undercover) . And most importantly, the ending is extremely downbeat, as Powell finishes his task but is left with nothing (and Jane Greer handles her final scene beautifully, making clichéd dialogue sound fresh, as if she’s appearing in a Greek Tragedy).

There is one thing that would make a good argument for this not being a noir: about midway through the film, about 20 minutes are spent in which Powell rides across the frontier and then deals with the average western henchmen. It breaks up the dark tone of the film, as does the score provided by the hit-and-miss composer Heinz Roemheld (which sounds like generic oater music, I wasn’t surprised that I found out that he was the man who provided the disastrous score to the otherwise masterpiece “The Lady From Shanghai”).

Despite this, it’s a solid piece of 80 minutes that is never boring and has fully fleshed out characters. It also is the only film (at least worthwhile to track down) in which we get to here Jane Greer sing, and what a lovely voice she has. Her work aside from “Out of the Past” is in desperate need of rediscovery, and this is just one of her fine smaller films. Check out The Clown, the noir They Won't Believe Me, neo-noir The Outfit, and Man of a Thousand Faces to see that, believe it or not, she played ‘good’ just as excellent as she played ‘bad’ (and if you can’t get enough of her bad-girl roles, also check out “The Company She Keeps”, in which she’s cast with Lizabeth Scott and Dennis O’Keefe). And I’m sure most of you have seen The Big Steal, a movie that showcases Robert Mitchum’s and Jane Greer’s vastly underused comedic abilities. This being my first noir of the week, I had plenty to pick from, but I felt a film that is just at least is almost as good as those that overshadow it (‘noir western’ is associated with Pursued, Out of the Past with Jane Greer), should deserve its spot in the limelight.