The ways music has been categorized over the years often amuses me. Today, we have such niches as dream pop, vaporwave and whatever Pitchfork decides will be a thing for usually only the next month of so. I feel a particular bemusement concerning the category of “yacht rock”, a term so loosely defined and so long after the fact as to feel like a joke I’m not really in on. Then there’s something I noticed in a brief scene in a record store in 1956 noir The Scarlet Hour and that is “mood music”, which makes me wonder, “which mood?” I have the nagging suspicion it means gooey orchestral schmaltz ala Lawrence Welk, but I like to think it is music for moods bad, anxious or even homicidal.
Tom Tyron is definitely feeling anxious when meeting the homicidal Carol Ohmart there at her insistence. Really, she didn’t mean to kill abusive husband James Gregory, but these secret lovers had the misfortune of this happening while Tyron was stealing a wealth of jewels from thieves who had only just taken the loot from a house safe themselves.
OK, so I realize that’s a bit to unpack. Let’s start back to the beginning, where Tyron and Ohmart are having one of their secret dalliances at a lover’s lane with a view of the LA skyline. They hear another car approaching and assume it is others looking to do the same, only to overhear a conversation between David Lewis and two low-rent thugs (Jacques Aubuchon and Scott Marlowe). The men are scoping out the mansion across the road, discussing how to break in and steal that $350,000 of jewels while the owners are away for an upcoming vacation.
Tyron wants to alert the authorities, but Ohmart reminds him they would have to reveal to them how they came to get this information. That would be very dangerous for her, in particular. When she finally gets home from that date, she tells Gregory she had been at the movies. “Until 2 a.m.?” he asks, and she says she liked it so much she saw it twice. It isn’t surprising he starts hitting her, but it is startling how long we see this happen through shadows cast on the garage ceiling.
But Tyron is in danger as well, as he is second-in-command to Gregory at the man’s real estate firm. I’m not sure why Tyron isn’t instead more interested in secretary Jody Lawrance, as this attractive woman doesn’t just throw herself at him but even brings him doughnuts and coffee. When it comes to expressing love, saying it with baked goods instead of flowers is roughly 1000 times more effective.
Still, Ohmart has her hooks thoroughly into Tyron and she is obsessed with the freedom that 350 grand could buy them. Thus the plan is set in motion for him to rob the robbers and her to drive the getaway car. That is, until Gregory, who has followed the lovers to that house while the crime is in progress…and this is where we came in.
There is a great deal of tension even before the robbery and murder, with Tyron and Ohmart not doing a great job of keeping their extended fling on the down-low. One moment has them trying to time her leaving a house by the only exit from a house at the exact time Gregory is turned away from it, only for him to catch a furtive glance of her reflection in a car window as she sprints around the corner.
A great deal of that suspense is courtesy of a charm bracelet that is almost another character in itself. It is described as having been bought for Ohmart by Gregory for the same reason one puts a bell on a cat, as this thing has a distinctive chime when the charms jangle. At one point, it will betray she is with Tyron when he calls Gregory at the office. Naturally, this piece of jewelry will accidentally be left at the crime scene and become blackmail fodder.
There are many meaty roles in this noir, and the solid cast makes the most of their parts. In addition to the leads, there’s detectives played by long-established character actors E.G. Marshall and Edward Binns. This dialogue between Binns and Marshall had me wondering if these two are secretly Pinky and The Brain: “What are you thinking?” “Exactly what you’re thinking.” Broadway and TV legend Elaine Stritch makes a surprise extended cameo as Ohmart’s best friend and confidant. You probably know her best as Alec Baldwin’s mother on 30 Rock. Billy Gray is underused as her affable husband, but these two make an awfully cute couple in the few scenes they have together. They’re the kind of minor characters where I want to watch I movie starring only them. If there is one underwhelming performance here, it is Tyron, but I think that is chiefly because of the nature of his role. There is only so much one can do when you’re the straight man surrounded by over-excited people.
Typical of the genre, everybody gets some solid dialogue to spout. Marshall, in particular, gets this beauty: “This is the kind of case you dream about after Thanksgiving dinner.” Then there’s Ohmart, who is definitely not going anywhere with Gregory: “You’re not taking me anywhere. If I was dead, you couldn’t take me to the morgue.”
The film also looks good throughout, without any excessively showy camera work. But the money from Paramount definitely makes this a more visually impactful picture than similar output from most other studios, especially as this is a VistaVision presentation.
The Scarlet Hour doesn’t seem to have that good of a reputation among noir fans, but I would place it in the top third of such films. Its one major misstep will be failure to stick the landing in the final few minutes, but this would be far from the first picture to do so. Before then, you get a decent and eclectic cast saying interesting things in a fairly complicated plot that is still easy to follow. Oh, and you get Nat “King” Cole performing at the Beverly Hills Hotel. By any chance, is that the mysterious “mood music” has me so intrigued?
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Starring Carol Ohmart, Tom Tryon, Jody Lawrance
Watched as part of the Kino Lorber blu-ray box set Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XXII Blu-ray