Framed ***½ (1947, Glenn Ford, Janis Carter, Barry Sullivan, Edgar Buchanan, Karen Morley) – Classic Movie Review 4,492

The effective 1947 film noir crime thriller stars Janis Carter as a sultry femme fatale who schemes with a married man (Barry Sullivan) to commit the perfect robbery from his bank and set up a fall guy (Glenn Ford) for the crime.

Director Richard Wallace’s intriguing and effective 1947 low-budget B-movie film noir crime thriller Framed stars a sexy Janis Carter as sultry femme fatale Paula Craig, who schemes with married man Steve Price (Barry Sullivan) to commit the perfect robbery from the bank that he manages.

Glenn Ford is top billed as naïve mining engineer Mike Lambert, the man they set up as the fall guy for the robbery. Mike has a temporary job driving a truck but ends up with brake failure in a small town, and enters the local La Paloma bar, where he instantly has eyes for the barmaid Paula.

Steve, who got his job from his wife Beth (Karen Morley)’s father, has embezzled $250,000 from the bank and secured it in Paula’s safety deposit box. They plan a fatal, fiery car crash, with Paula killing Mike with a wrench, setting the car off down the road, the wreck to be found with Mike’s incinerated body mistaken for Steve’s.

Mike has fallen for Paula, sure, but then Paula inconveniently falls for Mike…

This enjoyable movie may be downgrade Double Indemnity-style noir stuff, lacking in a full deck of real style and finesse, but it is tautly, briskly and very competently done. The three main stars give excellent performances, with the seductive Carter outstanding, and it is decently played throughout by a strong and solid second-level cast, who are ideal for noir.

A young, and slightly goofy looking Ford does the naïve good guy role rather well, inhabiting the space, and Barry Sullivan is good and shifty as the sleazy opportunist Steve. They are both very substantial roles but neither offer great opportunities to actors, who are nevertheless fully committed. The script’s attention, and the viewer’s, is all on Paula. Janis Carter is near enough sensational as the heartless heroine. In a better world Janis Carter would have top billing, but there she is after the title, along with four other names: Sullivan, Edgar Buchanan, Karen Morley and Jim Bannon. 

Edgar Buchanan is good, entertaining value as Jeff Cunningham, a silver mine old-timer, who befriends Mike, and lives to regret it, getting mixed up in the murder plot. Jeff is the one undoubted good guy in a bad noir world, which is going to make life very difficult for him. Barbara Woodell makes something of a smallish role as Steve’s earnest secretary Jane Woodworth. But Karen Morley (as Steve’s pathetic, downtrodden wife) and Jim Bannon (as Jane Woodworth’s boorish husband) have little to do in weakly written roles and are side issues.

Framed is written by Ben Maddow in his first credited screenplay from a story by John Patrick, and there is plenty of intricate plot and noir world packed in. It is a strong and solid screenplay, like the performances. Talking noir, it is shot nicely in black and white by Burnett Guffrey, with some imaginative touches and set-ups, working hard to try to disguise the low budget. Though, with Ford an established star by then, why was it low budget?

It is produced by Jules Schermer for Columbia studios, scored by Marlin Skiles and designed by Stephen Goosson. Too much score, maybe, but it’s good. Too little to work on with the sets, but they are good enough too.

Also in the cast are Edgar Buchanan, Karen Morley, Jim Bannon, Sid Tomack, Barbara Woodell, Paul E Burns, Stanley Andrews, Eugene Borden, Snub Pollard, Harry Strang, Art Smith, Fred Graff, Gene Roth, Kenneth MacDonald, Al Bridge, Walter Baldwin, Mel Wixon, Martin Garralaga, Robert Kellard, and Nacho Galindo.

Interestingly, producer Jules Schermer crucially interfered with Roy Huggins’s script for his 1954 film noir suspense thriller Pushover. Schermer recalled: ‘He did not give me exactly what I wanted and I didn’t like the ending. So I took some things from a previous film that I had done (1947’s Framed) and borrowed from that. Much of it is the same, even to the ending, with the same dialogue. When Huggins eventually saw a rough cut of Pushover, he said “You’ve ruined my picture” because of what I had borrowed from Framed. Fortunately, nobody else thought so.’ Shame. But then the films end quite differently and the dialogue isn’t the same. It’s a mystery,

Ben Maddow earned his first feature screenplay credit here with Framed. His other screenplays include God’s Little Acre (1958), an adaptation of Erskine Caldwell’s novel, originally credited to Philip Yordan as a HUAC-era front for Maddow. The title card was restored to Maddow only during the film’s UCLA Film and Television Archive restoration.

Release date: May 25, 1947.

Glenn Ford had recently made another classic film noir Gilda (1946). His Framed character is similar to his one in Gilda, vulnerable and entangled with a seductive, cunning femme fatale.

Janis Carter appeared in over 30 films, beginning in 1941, but retired from acting in early 1955, after meeting and later marrying New York lumber and shipping tycoon Julius Stulman. She died in 1994, aged 80.

The cast

The cast are Glenn Ford as Mike Lambert, Janis Carter as Paula Craig, Barry Sullivan as Steve Price, Edgar Buchanan as Jeff Cunningham, Karen Morley as Beth Price, Jim Bannon as Jack Woodworth, Barbara Woodell as Jane Woodworth, Sid Tomack, Paul E Burns, Stanley Andrews, Eugene Borden, Snub Pollard, Harry Strang, Art Smith, Fred Graff, Gene Roth, Kenneth MacDonald, Al Bridge, Walter Baldwin, Mel Wixon, Martin Garralaga, Robert Kellard, and Nacho Galindo.

Framed [Paula] is directed by Richard Wallace, runs 82 minutes, is made and released by Columbia Pictures, is written by Ben Maddow, is shot in black and white by Burnett Guffrey, is produced by Jules Schermer, is scored by Marlin Skiles, and is designed by Stephen Goosson.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4,492

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