The Prowler **** (1951, Van Heflin, Evelyn Keyes, John Maxwell, Katherine Warren, Emerson Treacy) – Classic Movie Review 1,311

Joseph Losey delivers a tense, grippingly performed, dark-toned thriller in the 1951 film noir The Prowler, starring Van Heflin and Evelyn Keyes.

Director Joseph Losey delivers a tense, grippingly performed, dark-toned thriller with plenty of seedy film noir atmosphere and an effective mood of desperation and despair in the 1951 crime film The Prowler. He has a very solid basis to rely on with Dalton Trumbo and Hugo Butler’s clever, fresh-seeming film noir screenplay that successfully rings the changes on an age-old, familiar plotline.

Dark-toned film noir thriller it may be, yet it was advertised as a ‘daring love story’.

Evelyn Keyes plays the quintessentially bored housewife Susan Gilvray, who summons the police when she sees a peeping tom prowler standing outside her window of her home at night while she is alone. Two car-patrol policemen soon turn up: world-weary Webb Garwood (Van Heflin) and his kindly, chatty older cop friend/ partner Bud Crocker (John Maxwell).

Garwood flirts with Susan and later turns up again, ostensibly to check on her. Soon, however, sparks light between them, and it seems that they are desperately in love, and planning a life together. But Susan’s older husband William Gilvray (Emerson Treacy), a late-middle-aged, late-night radio show host, is in their way. Susan is bad, but Garwood is much, much worse. Next he is scheming to kill the husband, having found out he is both impotent and well off.

Both underestimated star players fill their roles with full emotional and psychological commitment, all the character actors add a lot of value, and Losey directs with great tension in one of his most interesting American outings before his exile in England enforced by the vile 1950s Hollywood Un-American Committee anti-Communist witch-hunts in the US.

It is a good job that the screenplay is packed with rich dialogue, as the film is rather word heavy, running more like an adaptation of stage play or TV drama, rather than having a screenplay based an original screen story, Another slight drawback is the cheap-looking studio production, with cramped interiors, and painted backdrops. But these are minor complaints. This is an excellent film noir. Losey’s direction is briskly professional, rather than artily imaginative, getting on intensely with the job, which is fine. He’s very good with actors, as always, and he really does bring out the best in Heflin and Keyes, both of them busy, detailed actors, graded in their levels of badness. Even if some of the plot gets a shade overheated, you can readily believe both of them.

The film is produced by Sam Spiegel (as S P Eagle), who co-produced along with an un-credited John Huston, under their Horizon Pictures banner. Huston was at the time married to Keyes and the film was conceived as a star vehicle for her.

The radio DJ announcer heard throughout the film is the voice of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, a member of the Hollywood 10, who co-wrote the film, originally uncredited, with his friend Hugo Butler. The original story is by Robert Thoeren and Hans Wilhelm.

Hugo Butler was soon blacklisted too, writing in exile from Mexico for 12 years and using pseudonyms (‘fronts’). Losey cast Trumbo as a dig at the censors but he too was blacklisted shortly after directing the film.

Novelist James Ellroy (L A Confidential, The Black Dahlia) named this his favourite film and described it as ‘a masterpiece of sexual creepiness, institutional corruption and suffocating, ugly passion.’

The Prowler was released in the US by United Artists on 25 May 1951.

It was produced independently, and not looked after, and eventually only one deteriorating print survived, but the Film Noir Foundation and the UCLA Film and Television Archive restored the film.

It was released on DVD in 2011 and on Blu-ray in 2015.

Keyes said this was the best role and performance of her career, though Mrs Mike was her best film.

While Keyes and Huston were married (23 July 1946 – February 1950), they adopted a 12-year-old Mexican child, Pablo, whom Huston discovered while filming The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in Mexico. Keyes alleged that later her adoptive son sexually molested her and that they lost contact.

Keyes said of her many lovers, including Mike Todd, Glenn Ford, Sterling Hayden, Dick Powell, Anthony Quinn, David Niven and Kirk Douglas: ‘I always took up with the man of the moment and there were many such moments.’

The cast

The cast are Van Heflin as Webb Garwood, Evelyn Keyes as Susan Gilvray, John Maxwell as Bud Crocker, Katherine Warren as Grace Crocker, Emerson Treacy as William Gilvray, Madge Blake as Martha Gilvray, Wheaton Chambers as Dr William James, Robert Osterloh as Coroner, Louise Lorimer as Motel Manager, Sherry Hall as John Gilvray, Herbert Anderson as Reporter, and Dalton Trumbo as radio voice of John Gilvray.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1,311

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/