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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 5, No. 47 |
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BOOK & FILM |
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"MISCHIEF" and the 1952 movie version "Don't Bother to Knock"
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One of Armstrong's best
became a classic film
of TheColumnists.com
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If you have not read "Mischief" nor seen either of the two movie versions, this column may spoil them for you by disclosing crucial plot developments. |
By 1950, Charlotte Armstrong was 45 years old and at
the peak of her powers as one of America's most popular authors
of suspense novels. She certainly demonstrated that with her
1950 book "Mischief," a thriller with a psychotic woman
as the central character.
The premise put major shivers up the spines of most parents who
read about it because it was something they all feared could
really happen: What if you left your child with a new babysitter
you didn't really know--and she turned out to be a nutcase?
Though the book contained a plot element that was officially frowned upon by Hollywood censors--it placed a small child in jeopardy--that didn't stop the studios from quickly going after it as an ideal screen property. 20th Century-Fox won the race and put it into development as a "B" picture, to be filmed in black and white on studio sets, using second-tier actors and a little known director.
The resulting film, with the new title "Don't Bother To Knock," exceeded everyone's expectations. It was a taut thriller that proved a turning point in the careers of its two leading players, Richard Widmark and Marilyn Monroe, who were cast against type by British director Roy Ward Baker in a film that's been growing in stature year by year.
Today "Don't Bother to Knock" is best remembered as the first movie to star Monroe in a dramatic role. She already was well on her way to becoming the sex icon of the 1950s, but the film is much more than a showcase for Marilyn's dramatic skills. It's also a highly entertaining suspense film based on one of Armstrong's most enduring novels.
In the book, suburban newspaper editor-publisher Peter O. Jones and his wife, Ruth, check into a New York City hotel and hurriedly dress for the dinner that night where he's supposed to make an important speech. They have brought their 9-year-old daughter, Bunny, with them, but can't take her to the newspaper affair at a cross town hotel because it's supposed to run late into the night. Peter's sister was supposed to stay with Bunny, but she pulled out at the last minute. Fortunately, Eddie, the hotel elevator operator, was able to find a substitute for the babysitter--his niece, Nell.
What Eddie doesn't tell the Jones' is that Nell has been in a mental hospital and has only recently been allowed to come home to stay with her aunt and uncle. Her parents were killed in a fire that sounds suspiciously as if it might have been set by the disturbed Nell.
Nell is a quiet, introverted young woman who lives in a kind of dream world. As soon as the Jones' leave and she puts Bunny to bed, she begins to poke through all Mrs. Jones' things, trying on her clothing, applying her makeup, dousing herself with Mrs. Jones' perfume. As she slowly dances in front of the hotel window, she's spotted by a man in the room across the courtyard.
He's a bachelor type named Jed, who's going to leave the following morning to take a new job out west. He was anxious to have a high time on his last night in New York, but he and Lyn, his girl-friend, quarreled, so he's come back to his hotel room to drink alone and feel sorry for himself. Then he sees Nell dancing alone across the way--and he calls her room, inviting himself over to share his bottle of rye with her.
Nell lets Jed into the Jones' room and soon they're seriously flirting and taking turns hleping to drain his whiskey bottle. When they wake Bunny up, things start to go downhill fast. Nell resents the little girl for interrupting her "fun" with Jed and nearly pushes her out the eighth-story window. When Jed realizes he's making time with a nutcase, he decides to leave, which makes Nell even madder. She threatens to report him for assaulting her if he leaves. While they're arguing about this, Eddie shows up to check on his loony niece and finds Jed hiding in the bathroom. Before he can do anything, Nell brains Eddie with a heavy ashtray and he collapses in the bathroom, unconscious and bleeding from the head.
With all the crying, shouting and thumping, other hotel guests begin to complain and the fat's in the fire for Nell. She binds and gags Bunny. Jed slips out while Nell answers the pounding on the door by an angry hotel guest who wants to know why the child has been crying. Someone asks the hotel detective to check on the room everyone's complaining about.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Jones calls to see how Bunny is doing and is perplexed by the strange way Nell answers her questions. She decides to grab a cab and rush across town to the hotel. Will she be in time before Nell really loses it and starts pushing Bunny out the window again?
This roller coaster plot keeps the pages turning rapidly in the book, rapidly enough that you don't notice the plot holes you otherwise might break a leg by stepping in if you were going a little more slowly through Armstrong's manipulative storyline.
Screenwriter Daniel Taradash made some worthwhile changes in Armstrong's plot to enhance character development. For one thing, he beefed up the character of Jed (Richard Widmark), making him a thoroughly unpleasant guy who snarls at virtually everybody, including girl friend Lyn (Anne Bancroft), who's changed into a singer in the hotel's lounge. She breaks up with him because of his sour outlook on life, his unwillingness to really care for anybody but himself. Taradash also makes Jed an airline pilot on layover between flights, rather than the man with no real skills or ambition in Armstrong's novel. The result is a rather nasty character that we watch morph into a reluctant hero.
Armstrong didn't waste lots of time building sympathy for Nell (Marilyn Monroe), using her rather as the demented deus ex machina who shows up to imperil everyone. Taradash fills in her story, suggesting she was a very young woman who fell in love with a World War II pilot, then went to pieces when he was killed in combat. That permits him to have Nell mentally confuse Jed with her lost lover, the man she obviously gave herself to because he had promised to marry her. When she learns Jed is a pilot, the connection clicks into place for her. In her twisted mind, he's the dead lover reincarnated.
In the novel, Jed makes a very last minute decision to rush back to the hotel room because he fears Nell will kill the little girl once people start closing in on her. He arrives just after Bunny's mother shows up and breaks up a vicious battle between the mother and the babysitter. Armstrong's ironic twist is that Jed then is shot by the hotel detective because Nell has told everybody Jed broke into her room, assaulted her and caused all the commotion that disturbed other hotel guests.
Taradash comes up with a much more satisfying conclusion, having Jed experience a real change of heart when he risks his own life to save the little girl. That gives the audience a comfortable feeling as Jed learns to care for another person at last--and it gives a motive for him to walk off, arm in arm, with reconciled girl-friend Lyn as the cops take Nell away to the psycho ward.
"Don't Bother to Knock" was a gigantic boost for Marilyn Monroe, who finally proved she was capable of carrying a picture without turning every which way to show off her tight sweater. Her little girl voice and pouty expression were perfectly utilized by her director to convey the mental fragility of Nell. It's a very solid performance that holds up well these 50-plus years since we first saw it.
Monroe followed it up with
an "A" budget thriller, "Niagara," which
was shot in gorgeous color and gave her yet another vivid opportunity
to show she had some dramatic acting chops. By the end of her
career and John Huston's "The Misfits," Monroe had
improved to the point where she was an extremely effective dramatic
actress, given the right role and quality surroundings.
Richard Widmark also moved closer to full leading man status
in Hollywood with his bad-guy-turned-hero performance as Jed.
He had a sensational debut in 1947 as the giggling, psychopathic
hood Tommy Udo in "Kiss of Death," but was stuck for
the next several years with roles that called for him to giggle
or snarl while beating somebody up. This was a chance to play
a man changed by being forced to look deep within himself.
The rest of the cast is also exceptional. Anne Bancroft, who
was only 21 at the time, played Jed's girl-friend, Lyn. Making
her a torch singer in the hotel lounge gave Bancroft the rare
opportunity to sing several standards, including "How About
You?," "Manhattan" and "There's A Lull in
My Life."
Bancroft was in the first
year of a Fox contract, trying to find her proper place in Hollywood
through a variety of roles in low-rent "B" pictures
like "Gorilla at Large." Though she had a respectable
part in "Don't Bother to Knock," she finally decided
to stop being a Fox "star of tomorrow" and left for
Broadway, where she became a sensation in "The Miracle Worker,"
then returned to star in the movie version and won the Best Actress
Academy Award.
Screenwriter Taradash was on the cusp of greatness when he adapted
"Mischief" for the screen. His very next project was
adapting James Jones' notoriously sexy and profane "From
Here to Eternity" for the screen. It was a sensation, winning
an Oscar for Taradash, along with Oscars for Best Picture, Best
Director and for two supporting players, Donna Reed and Frank
Sinatra.
The same year he directed "Don't Bother to Knock," Roy Ward Baker did another film for Fox which is now regarded as one of the best 3-D movies ever made--"Inferno," a desert suspense drama starring Robert Ryan. Baker didn't get a big career bounce from these two successful thrillers, but he did wind up back in England, where he directed the acclaimed film about the Titanic--"A Night to Remember" (1958), then became one of the busiest directors in the New Wave of Horror at England's Hammer Films. Later, he also directed the marvelous TV miniseries "The Flame Trees of Thika," shown here on PBS' "Masterpiece Theatre."
The great character actor Elisha Cook, Jr. played Eddie, the elevator operator, and Bunny's parents were played by another character veteran, Lurene Tuttle, and Jim Backus, best known as the voice of near-sighted "Mr. Magoo" in the cartoons. Donna Corcoran, who played Bunny, was the first of several Corcoran children to become movie players, She made a few more pictures, then retired from show business.
"Don't Bother to Knock" was remade as a Fox network TV movie called "The Sitter" more than 30 years later.
Though there were significant changes made to Armstrong's story, they aren't silly changes and, in fact, improve the impact of the story. "Don't Bother to Knock" is a very well-made film and is well worth looking at today. As for Armstrong's original novel, "Mischief" is hard to find these days, but is well worth the effort to track a copy down. It's one of her very best novels and it still seems fresh and exciting more than half a century after it first was published.
©2004 by Ron Miller.
The video cover is courtesy of Fox Video, Inc. and is ©1992.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about TV mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
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