Whenever there is a newspaper or magazine article or headline shown in a movie, pause for a moment to check out the other elements around it on the page.  After all, somebody had to come up with some sort of filler and, often, these bits that would normally evade notice can be curious items.  They are often humorous or, at least, appear to be inside jokes. Consider this bizarre piece in 1949’s Caught, which is beneath the blurb we are supposed to be reading:

The Bob Layton hour drew considerable comment from the radio fans when they discovered that his stooge was none other than a former circus clown.  “Jebbo” as he has become known to radio listeners, was with big-time circus circuits for over were treated to the strangest race in history of the event, followed by several volleys of bullets.  No one was hurt, police records market.

The curiously poor grammar makes that news piece was the more intriguing.  What I can glean from it sounds like something more interesting than this melodrama directed by Max Ophüls.

When we first see Barbara Bel Geddes, she is a struggling young woman in Los Angeles, dreaming of a better life.  She pays to attend a charm school ran by Natalie Schafer, who everybody knows as “Lovey” from Gilligan’s Island.  Basically, the school seems to provide women to, through a series of events, attend wealthy parties.  Given the school is very insistent on payment of weekly tuition in advance each week, I felt this was like a prostitution racket where the employees pay for the privilege of working for them.  Curiously, one of the skills Schafer teaches is fencing, so I guess she’s teaching the girls how to defend themselves, should they happen to have a rapier nearby when fending off a potential rapist.

Despite wanting a better life, Bel Geddes doesn’t want to use her body to do so: “I don’t want to go to a party where I have to worry about taking care of myself.  I resent the whole setup.”  She repeatedly turns down an offer to go to a yacht party being thrown by Smith Ohlrig (Robert Ryan), a famous and very wealthy industrialist of some sort.  As Bel Geddes puts it, he’s “some sort of international something.”  She eventually acquiesces, but refuses to go into his house with him afterwards.  He’s impressed enough by her refusal to put out that he breaks his cardinal rule and marries her.

So it’s off to Long Island, where Bel Geddes is just another possession Ryan keeps at this vast estate, ala Charles Foster Kane.  Ryan, always good at playing horrible people, is a different type of monster than usual here.  Instead of being violent and/or a racist, he’s a deeply insecure man who is so determined she only wants him for her money that he hates her for not meeting that expectation.

To her credit, she’s leaves Ryan, going to work as a receptionist in a pediatrician’s (James Mason) office in a slum.  That office shares a reception area with another used by an obstetrician (Frank Ferguson).  As Mason puts it, Ferguson brings the kids into the world, and he tries to keep them there.

Mason hires Bel Geddes even if she’s not very good at the job.  She’s also overdressed: “Look at that hairdo.  You’re so fancy, you’re scaring patients away.”  But she strives to improve, never mind how there were doubtlessly a great many others with no other financial means who might have desperately needed this job.  She also gets a cheap apartment, which is where Ryan tracks her down.  In fact, he has had her tailed since she left him.

The movie had my interest up until this point, when it becomes straight soap opera, getting more bombastically with each new development.  It is almost hard to call the plots points “developments”, as Bel Geddes ping-pongs back and forth between Ryan in Long Island, and Mason in some slum in NYC.  Eventually, she finds herself pregnant with Ryan’s child, and the man gives her a horrible ultimatum.

The performances are strong despite what I felt to be a soppy script.  Bel Geddes is especially good at first when her character is more headstrong.  Her rather unglamorous looks make her more believable and relatable than if a great many actresses of conventional beauty had been used.  Mason is dependable as always.  But Ryan delivers the most believable performance, playing a deeply horrible person.  I find it interesting everything I have read about him says what a gentle and generous guy he was in real life.

I am tempted to spoil the ending of Caught, so it is perhaps for the best that I wrap this up now.  The final act is appalling in its lack of taste, not so much for what happens, but how it is portrayed.  And it there’s one thing I hate, it is tearjerkers, because it means jerks are trying to pull those tears, and I despise being jerked around.  Recalling that bogus article in the paper, couldn’t I see Bel Geddes, Ryan and Mason dressed as clowns as chasing each other around a radio studio with guns, instead?

Dir: Max Ophüls

Starring Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Ryan, James Mason

Watched on Olive Films blu-ray