Robert Young is the definition of failure to commit in 1947’s They Won’t Believe Me. He juggles wife Rita Johnson, her friend Jane Greer and co-worker Susan Hayward. I’m not exactly sure what any of them see in him. I don’t think any of the three have made good life decisions, as evidenced by at least one of them being dead by the end of the runtime and possibly by his hand.
In a typical noir setup, this movie is told entirely in flashback, only occasionally returning to the present, where Young is on trial for murder. Whose murder it is will have yet to be discovered, and I won’t spoil that here.
Robert Young has been married to Johnson for five years. Still, every Saturday he has lunch with Jane Greer. Apparently, they are going to buy a boat together. I wish they’d stop talking about anything else and tell us what the hell are the drinks placed before them. These weird concoctions look like root beer mugs covered with cake frosting all over the outside and filled with the same stuff on the inside.
Greer is friends with Johnson and is determined not to break up her marriage to Young. She requests the newspaper which employs her transfer her elsewhere, and so she’s off to another town. Young says he will be there on the train with her, that he and Johnson have supposedly long since known their relationship had run its course.
Johnson finds him packing and, in one of the film’s first of several surprises, casually helps him with that. She is very blasé about losing Young, saying, “That’s the problem with being a good sport—you have to lose.” But she does mention the things she was going to do, should he stay with her: a big new house in another city and a partnership in a firm. I guess she thought their relationship was on more solid footing, given her memories of such cherished events as the time they were on vacation and he bought a shrunken head. It is those kinds of shared experiences that are…wait, what?!
Still, we cut to a train compartment and Young is waking up alone. Just when one thinks he took off after Greer, the door to the toilet opens and out steps Johnson. It is like a scene out of a horror movie. I also like to think she inexplicably spent the night asleep either standing up or on the can in the lavatory. Frankly, she’s a bit off just enough that I wouldn’t put it past her.
At the new office, Young makes a massive flub at his new plum office job, and co-worker Hayward saves his bacon when called on the carpet by Tom Powers. Afterwards, she strongly suggests how Young can repay her. Young is clearly tempted but apparently had not approached previously because he thought Hayward was taken: “I thought [Powers] had the franchise.” That is a unique way of putting it.
Something I find interesting about Hayward’s character is she is a truly unrepentant, and fully self-aware, gold digger: “The only thing I’m interested in is what people spend.” This is within minutes of Young setting foot in her apartment for the first time. He asks her how much the martini she’s prepared is going to cost him, and it turns out that is gratis. I think I have a new definition for the term “loss leader”.
These two will be on again and off again. Young calls it quits at one point, only to run into her during the intermission of a concert and finds his passions stirred once more. I doubt his libido was increased by the music played in that solo piano performance, as the quality of it is so bad as to make me wonder if it was a dig at modern, abstract works. It is so rudimentary that I wondered if “Chopsticks” was on the program.
Young starts getting home later each night to the extent it is more accurate to say he is returning later each morning. Johnson is more irritated by this affair than she was with the one he had with Greer, that at least her former friend had class. Go figure, Greer is also back in the picture after Young bumps into her at a restaurant where he’s with Hayward.
Johnson relocates them again. Tellingly it is to a very remote ranch this time. One would think all temptation might be removed, but I’m not sure I’d trust him with the livestock, if I was her. Part of the vast property includes a waterfall with a steep and narrow path down to its base where, as described by Johnson, there is a “hidden valley”. So, this is where they make ranch dressing? Also, I like to think the girl is a bit a weird in bed and also describes her most intimate area as the hidden valley.
Young finds himself even more desperate to reconnect with Hayward and she makes it clear the only way that is going to happen is if he if gets her a large amount of money. He proposes a plan I didn’t fully understand and which I suspect could never work in real life. Still, I was willing to accept for the sake of the film this plan to have her cash a check from the joint account he holds with Johnson, and to do this at her employer, under the pretense it is buy stocks for his wife. Then Hayward is to come by bus to the town nearest the ranch, and they will run away together with the proceeds.
There is a good moment of suspense where Young is waiting for that bus, only to discover Hayward isn’t on it. Thinking she has betrayed him, he is startled to find her very soon after this. I love the reason for this and how she relays this information: “They ran two busses today. Did you expect me to be on both of them?” That got a long laugh from me.
And that is as much as I will say about They Won’t Believe Me, except something happens in the very last couple of minutes which is deeply preposterous and which I did not believe it. For more of the time up until then, I kept in mind everything we know about the past events are being told to us by Young as he testifies in court, and so I suspected deviation from pure truth, or at least elements of subjectivity. The best part of the courtroom interludes are cuts to the faces of the jurors. It is obvious they don’t believe him, either.
Dir: Irving Pichel
Starring Robert Young, Susan Hayward, Rita Johnson, Jane Greer
Watched on Warner Archive blu-ray