The other night I
watched The Fat Man, a 1951 mystery film that's sometimes billed as
film noir, which is what got me interested. It's not a noir at all, not that I'm one of those authoritarian purists who insists on a strict definition of classic noir;
it's more like a series B movie of the 30s or 40s, a Falcon or Boston
Blackie kind of thing, a frantic mystery with a bit of comedy and a
bit of action. The gimmick is that the detective is indeed a fat man.
He's a gourmand, makes no bones about it, but as played by J. Scott
Smart, he's comfortable in his role—at least until, as he squeezes out of a drugstore phone booth (no one under what, 50?, will understand what that is!) a mother warns
her young son about growing up to look like him! Think William Conrad
as Cannon, without the fat everyman action hero car chase bits. He's
not as pretentious as Nero Wolfe, and unlike Wolfe, he does move.
The Fat Man was a
popular radio show which ran for ten years from 1946, sponsored by
Pepto-Bismol, an antacid. The opening has him stepping on a drugstore
scale: “weight, 237 pounds; fortune: danger”. The show was
ostensibly created by Dashiell Hammett, as a counter-point to the
Thin Man, but it's most likely Hammett merely licensed his name.
Originally billed without a character name, but then called Brad
Runyan, he was given life by Smart's deep tones (Smart was also
appearing on the immensely popular Fred Allen show).
Smart carries the
character into cinema well. There's some foolery with his size, and
his appetite, though his first scene is doing the gourmet thing with
some French chefs who are very much
impressed. There's also a scene where he dances with Julie London—who
needs persuasion, in the sense that it never occurred to her that the
Fat Man might actually be able to dance—and he struts his stuff as
the whole dance floor stops, Hollywood style, to watch and applaud.
If the fat-shaming might seem pretty offensive in today's PC world,
don't worry, because Runyon calls all the frails 'sweetheart' too.
And there's a scene that takes place with a blackface comic
performing in the background; it is a 1951 B movie.
I said Julie London,
and the singer has a straight dramatic part here. One of the two
reasons people might think there is something 'noirish' about the
film is that much of it is told in flashback—and part of that is
London telling of her romance with Rock Hudson, who's just got out of
prison and has come to collect his cut of the money from a race-track
robbery for which he took the fall. London is very good; you have to
think this was the kind of part for which she was better-suited than
most, playing some scenes herself rather than as the love object.
Watching the retelling of the robbery itself later, I couldn't help
but think Stanley Kubrick must have kept it in mind when he wrote The
Killing.
London and Hudson's
scenes together work; the weakness underneath Rock's star appeal
works. In general, the cast is actually better than the material.
You'll see a number of familiar faces in small parts: Jerome Cowan
(Miles Archer in The Maltese Falcon) as a police lieutenant; Parley
Baer as a New York detective; Peter Brocco as the racetrack
bookkeper; Tristam Coffin (TV's 26 Men), among others. And one not so familiar face, Teddy Hart, playing a thief called Shifty as if he were Joe Pesci's father. Hart had a small part in Mickey One, and also seems to have played a character called Crowbar in three Ma and Pa Kettle movies.
Jayne Meadows is the
dentist's secretary who comes to Runyon when her boss falls (is
pushed) out the window of a New York hotel where he's attending a
dental convention. The story takes the Fat Man, and his thin
assistant Bill (Clinton Sundberg) to California, where two of the
other robbers (one is John Russell, later TV's Lawman) have made it
big. Russell's wife, played by Lucille Barkley, is also having an
affair with the chaffeur, a sub-plot which, like Barkley's career,
undeservedly never goes anywhere. But the other real star is Emmett
Kelly, the famous clown, in his first dramatic role. He plays a clown
who did time in prison, and if anything the film doesn't do enough
with the contrast between his own face and the clown's face, not that
it hasn't been done before. But Kelly carries a great deal of straight, not clownly, pathos, and the scenes shot in the circus wagons
and under the tent are the most atmospheric of the film, and at times
use shadow and darkness well enough to invoke noir.
The plot
creaks—there is a moment when Meadows announces she can name the
killer, while the killer is conveniently in position to overhear the
call—but try as I might, I cannot figure out how she possibly could
have encountered, much less recognised, him. And crimes themselves
are probably a form of overkill (sorry) that keeps the plot moving
before you have a chance to think about where it's going or where
it's been.
The Fat Man was
directed by William Castle, best known for theatrical gimmicks when
his B horror or sf movies were shown (he's the character John Goodman
plays in Matinee, and was supposedly the inspiration for Hitchcock to
make Psycho, in that he'd shown Hitch these things made money. It was
written by Leonard Lee and Harry Essex. The first time I heard of
Essex was when I got Mickey Spillane's opinion of the film version of
I, The Jury which Essex wrote and directed (“he rooned it,” said
the Mick). It's not noir, it's not classic, but it is fun. And kudos
to J.Scott Smart, who, like William Conrad, keeps his dignity while
being laughed at for his size.
