“I’ve seen better bodies hanging in a butcher shop.”
Picture a bored, sexy young wife married to a much older husband, and then add a hunky young stud to the picture. These are the elements of the anguished love triangle, but in noir, it’s a recipe for murder. Gorgeous Cora Smith (Lana Turner) is tucked away in a roadside diner when she spies drifter Frank Chambers (John Garfield) in the classic noir The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), and luscious Virginia Madsen is saddled with a boring yokel of a husband in the neo-noir The Hot Spot (1990) when slick salesman, Harry Madox (Don Johnson) strolls into town. In the world of noir, bored, sexually frustrated women who make incongruous housewives restlessly pace the kitchens of Middle America, dreaming of ways to rid themselves of their husbands, when fate suddenly hands them what appears to be a means of escape through a deadly relationship with a muscular hunk.
It’s exactly this scenario in the British noir Bad Blonde (AKA The Flanagan Boy, The Woman is Trouble) starring bombshell Barbara Payton. This beautiful blonde actress, perhaps best remembered for her role as Holiday Carleton in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, was born for noir. Early studio publicity shots show a young, wholesome blonde, but no one can hide the Payton ‘look’--there’s an intelligent calculation there, an air of discontent, a restlessness that lingers just beneath the surface of those perfect, even features.
biographer John O’Dowd thoroughly details the scandal, the actress’s firing from Warner Brothers Studio in 1951 and Jack Warner’s personal efforts to ensure that other studio heads would not hire this troubled star.
In a turbulent, violent, off-and-on again relationship with Neal, Payton fled with him to England--a sanctuary of sorts--in 1952. At the time, the offer to work in England probably looked like a lifeline to this troubled actress, but the two films (The Flanagan Boy & The Four Sided Triangle) she made for Hammer Films were a significant step down for Payton who had banked $12,000 a week at the peak of her career. The films, co-productions of Astor and Lippert pictures, coupled American stars with British casts, and these films were designed to play as a lesser second feature on a double-bill.
Directed by Reginald Le Borg, and based on the novel by crime author Max Catto, Bad Blonde throws Barbara Payton into Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, she hadn’t expected
believable circumstances but in such an alien environment, she seems wildly out-of-place. She’s the best thing in the picture: sensual, cruel, unprincipled and viciously trampy, she pulses with passion and lust amidst a motley assortment of males who don’t know how to handle her.
The film begins at a carnival with small-time trainer Sharkey (Sid James) staging a fixed fight on a tiny ring inside a tatty tent. But instead of the pre-arranged audience plant picking up the challenge to fight Sharkey’s boxer, a young, blond strapping former merchant seaman steps up to the ring and fights for the prize. As the young stranger strips off his shirt and reveals his muscles, Sharkey sizes him up with a long, hard look. The stranger, Johnny Flanagan (Tony Wright) wins the fight, and soon signs on as a professional boxer with Sharkey as his trainer. Fans of much-loved comedian, craggy-faced Sid James will appreciate his performance--even though he was ultimately under-utilized in the film. And while it seems a bit odd to see Sid playing a straight role, the fame of Sid’s lasting contribution to the immensely popular British comedy Carry-On films was still in Sid’s future at this point. Also, he played the role of Sharkey in the 1948 British television version of the novel.
Flanagan doesn’t appear to have a “weak point” as a fighter, but just as this comment is made, the camera pans to Flanagan flirting with a barmaid in the local pub. Sharkey doesn’t miss the interaction--he’s quite aware of Flanagan’s weakness--even at this early stage of the film.
Since Sharkey is just a small-time player, he needs someone to bankroll his new fighter, and this leads him to take Flanagan to meet fighting promoter Giuseppe Vecchi (Frederick Valk). Portly, gregarious Giuseppe thinks everyone on the planet is his friend, but then again perhaps he’s in such a good mood because he’s newly married to bombshell Lorna (Barbara Payton), a former taxi dancer from New York. Giuseppe is about to leave on vacation with Lorna, and with none-too-subtle sexual implications, he brags that he’ll need a rest after his holiday.
Barbara Payton makes a memorable splash with her first scene in the film, and certainly livens things up when she adjusts her stockings in the open doorway of a hotel bathroom. As Giuseppe and Sharkey talk business, Flanagan eyeballs Lorna’s long stocking-clad legs and her bare thighs while his jaw drops open. Slamming the door to reinforce her ‘outrage’ and her inaccessibility when she supposedly notices that she’s part of a peep show, Lorna sets the tone of the relationship with Flanagan. To reinforce her sexual dominance, Lorna belittles Flanagan, humiliating him with her indifference, sarcasm and complete boredom. Sharkey is the only person wily enough to sniff that a game is afoot and that Lorna has thrown down the gauntlet to challenge Flanagan ‘s sexuality. Giuseppe, meanwhile, as the about-to-be cuckolded husband is oblivious to the tension.
Bad Blonde makes no coy attempts to inflate the attraction between Flanagan and Lorna. It’s sex, pure and simple. When Lorna and Giuseppe attend Flanagan’s first fight, she focuses on his body, and when the fight begins, her lips part with excitement and sexual arousal. Flanagan and Lorna lock eyes, and the moment is frozen for a few seconds. When their affair begins, it’s coated with the obligatory words of love, but several times during the film, the camera emphasizes Lorna’s predatory gaze absorbing the details of Flanagan’s muscular physique.
Lorna, Giuseppe, Flanagan and Sharkey retreat to the secluded splendor of the Vecchi country home--a place that Giuseppe insists is private because there are no servants. The lack of servants should keep Lorna safely chained to the kitchen sink, but we see all the characters at play in the mansion, which comes complete with its own lake. It’s obvious that with marriage to Giuseppe, Lorna has hit the big time, but she’s not exactly celebrating. Bored and petulant, the sultry Lorna barely tolerates her dumpling of a spouse’s larger-than-life personality that’s matched by his expanded waistline.
While Giuseppe is a buffoon, Flanagan is also a poor mate for Lorna, and there’s little heat between this ill-matched couple. Oddly enough, there’s much more screen tension between Sharkey and Lorna, and as antagonists, they fight over possession of Flanagan. Flanagan is just a tool for Lorna’s devious plans, and while there are plenty of shots displaying him as pure beefcake as he strides across the set in a variety of bathing and boxing trunks, somehow he never really picks up the pace as Lorna’s lover and partner-in-crime. His lines are delivered with a definite lack of feeling and enthusiasm. Perhaps Wright’s heart wasn’t in the role, but even so, Flanagan is no foil for Lorna, and he’s little more than a victim who periodically whines for the man he’s cuckolding. Wright, who mainly went on to star in television productions, seems as out-of-his depth as the character he plays, and when Lorna suggests murder, Flanagan is too weak to refuse.
While the elements of noir abound in Bad Blonde, there’s no tension in this tepid drama and that’s surprising considering the sexual undertones of the film. At one point, Sharkey excuses Flanagan’s poor performance in the ring to “over-training”--with a significant,
disapproving look cast towards Lorna. She, of course, doesn’t even have the decency to look guilty, and instead a look of nonchalant disinterest crosses her face. In another scene, Lorna uses the less-than-pleasant details of her sex life with Giuseppe to manipulate Flanagan into murdering her rotund spouse: “it’s sweat and slobber. He never leaves me alone…when he touches me, I have to close my eyes so I don’t see him.” That impassioned statement conjures up a vision that’s enough to make your skin crawl, but the details only succeed in making Flanagan look squeamish rather than murderous. Payton tries to beat some life into the picture, allowing her fur to slip from her shoulder while she purrs that she’s “too hot to sleep,” for example, but in spite of Payton’s pulsing sexuality, unfortunately she can’t breathe life into the picture on her own. The fact that a handful of Giuseppe’s Italian relatives make an appearance, twittering, clutched together like a bunch of moth-eaten crows, and resembling some sort of misplaced Greek chorus doesn’t help matters.
Barbara Payton fans (and count me in) will appreciate the film for what it is--a B movie that stars an actress too seldom seen--chewed up and spat out by Hollywood. What’s so tragic to note is Payton’s deterioration--already quite apparent in Bad Blonde. Just compare her in Bad Blonde to Bride of the Gorilla (1951) a film in which she starred with Raymond Burr. In Bad Blonde, Payton is noticeably heavier, and she’s losing her fine-featured profile to alcohol and dissipation.
Payton’s off-screen life was far more tragic than any film role she ever played. Hounded by personal problems, and lousy relationships with a succession of men, Payton soon fell into obscurity, drug abuse, alcohol addiction, and prostitution and was dead before the age of 40. For those interested in reading more about Payton’s life, there’s no better source than O’Dowd’s wonderful biography: Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, The Barbara Payton Story,
which details Payton’s tragic life with clarity and insight. We only have a handful of Payton films to enjoy, and fans will view Bad Blonde with a realization of all that we missed by the loss of this gorgeous, tragic, fast-burning star.Written by GuySavage
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