Double Takes: ‘The Louisiana Hussy’ (1959) ★★ / ‘Desire in the Dust’ (1960) ★★★ 1/2

Great title, so-so movie.

I love a good, sweaty Southern melodrama, and I can love a bad one even more. Books and movies about horny Southern belles, hunky rednecks, conniving good ol’ boys and scheming trailer tramps always pique my interest, so I was immediately drawn to these two movies from the Eisenhower era that promise all sorts of sordid shenanigans in the Deep South.

I knew I had to see The Louisiana Hussy the moment I discovered it streaming on Tubi. Its title made it all but mandatory. Nan Peterson, who sort of resembles a pre-plastic surgery Melanie Griffith, plays the titular hussy, and she causes plenty of trouble when she arrives in the bayou shanty town known as the Pit. Well, she doesn’t so much arrive as she’s brought there by brothers Jacques and Pierre (Peter Coe and Robert Richards, respectively) after they find her in the woods, unconscious after having been thrown from a horse. She comes to long enough to give her name as Minette Lanier and accuse Jacques of stealing her jewelry, before returning to a state of semi-consciousness.

The plot synopsis on Tubi says that Minette “sows discord” between the two brothers, which is only partially true (Tubi also describes New Orleans as “a small bayou town,” so maybe don’t put too much stock in their synopses.) Jacques was already pissed at Pierre for marrying Lili (Betty Lynn, before she joined the cast of The Andy Griffith Show as Thelma Lou), whom he had the hots for, but Minette just makes things worse. First, she seduces Pierre—on his wedding night no less—then, when he starts getting too suspicious about her past, she runs to Jacques, claiming Pierre forced himself on her, only to belie that accusation by promptly fucking Jacques. Jacques, the big lunk smiling for the first time in the movie, is now firmly on Team Minette, and is none too happy when Pierre relays Doc Opie’s (Tyler McVey) discovery that the real Minette Lanier committed suicide in nearby Grange Hill. Jacques’ refusal to believe him spurs Pierre and Lili (who never learns of her husband’s cheating with the hussy) to take their pontoon boat across the bayou to Grange Hill to find out just who the fuck is this woman claiming to be Minette Lanier. 

Pierre and Lili not only find out the backstory of the Pit’s visiting vixen, but they also uncover why The Louisiana Hussy isn’t quite working as a movie: the interesting part—a sexy young woman ingratiating herself into the lives of a wealthy couple, seducing the husband and driving his wife to suicide—is a mere subplot, told in flashback. The hussy of Grange Hill doesn’t sound like a woman who would be content to hang out among the poor folk of the Pit, even if she is screwing its two most attractive men (pickings are slim in the Pit, OK?), but this inconsistency is of no concern to screenwriters Charles Lang and William Rowland. Their movie is about Jacques and Pierre; the hussy is just a device to titillate audiences.

Director Lee “Roll’em” Sholem, as befitting his nickname, keeps things moving along at brisk pace, continuity be damned (Peterson is wearing flats when leaving one location, but arrives at her destination wearing high heels), delivering a few grindhouse thrills along the way, including a daring-for-its-time skinny dipping scene. But for all the movie’s efforts to appeal to audiences’ prurient interests, The Louisiana Hussy never lives up to the awesomeness of its title.

20th Century Fox transformed Harry
Whittington’s 1956 pulp novel into
a very sweaty Southern melodrama.

1960’s Desire in the Dust, also set in Louisiana, is not only better, but sweatier, too. Seriously, almost every shirt actor Ken Scott wears in this movie is sopping wet. Scott plays Lonnie Wilson, the hunky son of sharecropper Zuba (Douglas Fowley, who’s sweaty and dirty). At the movie’s opening, Lonnie is returning home after doing time for killing the youngest son of town big wig Col. Marquand (Raymond Burr, wearing dry suits but frequently wiping perspiration from his scowling face) when driving drunk. Newspaperman Luke Connett (Edward Binns) has his suspicions Lonnie was wrongly convicted, but Lonnie has more pressing issues than confirming Luke’s hunches, specifically the issue pressing up against the zipper of his pants. “After six years of goin’ without it ain’t likely he’s gonna like to be sittin’ around chatting with us,” Zuba tells his oldest daughter Maude (Margaret Field, Sally’s mom) after Lonnie drives away in the family Jeep on his first night home.

Marquand’s blonde bombshell daughter, Melinda (Martha Hyer, giving a performance that should appeal to Morgan Fairchild fans), is the woman who relieves Lonnie’s six-year case of blue balls (I can’t believe he served his entire sentence without once messing around with a cellmate, but such things weren’t acknowledged in 1960). Lonnie’s post-nut bliss is quickly dashed when he learns Melinda has married Dr. Ned Thomas (Brett Halsey). “I waited six years for you!” Lonnie rages. “You had no choice,” Melinda smirks. Melinda is content to keep Lonnie as a side piece, but Lonnie doesn’t want to share. But can he get his revenge before Marquand—with the help of Sheriff Wheaton (Kelly Thordson, also very sweaty)—silences him for good?

At the movie’s periphery are Marquand’s mentally unbalanced wife (Joan Bennett), who refuses to believe her youngest son is dead and goes ballistic whenever her nurse (Irene Ryan, better known as Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies) tells her the truth; Paul Marquand (Jack Ging), who is basically the Eric Trump of his family; and Cass (Anne Helm), Lonnie’s little sister, who’s having an affair with Paul but getting impatient for him to stand up to his domineering dad and marry her.

Desire in the Dust benefits from a strong cast (Burr, Scott, Hyer and Fowley are all great in their roles) and William F. Claxton’s direction is solid if not exactly distinctive. The movie’s greatest strength, though, is respecting Harry Whittington’s 1956 novel on which it’s based. It’s not 100% faithful, but it’s close enough to where I’d say the movie is just as good as the novel. Some aspects of the movie are a bit icky, however, and by icky, I mean incestuous. Marquand and Melinda’s interactions often suggest they are lovers rather than father and daughter, and upon seeing his little sister Cass for the first time in six years Lonnie leers, all but saying he’d like to tap that. Not sure if the suggestion of incest is meant to play into Deep South tropes or not, but it’s definitely there. It should also be pointed out that each movie features exactly one (1) Black person and they are servants to their movie’s respective wealthy characters, which just doesn’t reflect the population of either movie’s setting, though this very much reflects the time in which these movies were made.

Its uncomfortable familial interactions and unrealistic racial representation aside, I love Desire in the Dust and credit it with introducing me to the work of Harry Whittington. The only thing that would make it even better is if it had been made in the mid-1960s by Russ Meyer. Unfortunately, Desire in the Dust is not available for streaming or on Blu-ray. However, if you’re not too picky about video quality, you can get a perfectly watchable DVD-R here.

God Damn the Poor

Edge of Doom’s less-than-captivating
poster is probably not the sole reason
the movie failed at the box office, but
I’m sure it didn’t help.

“I find it impossible to serve these people,” complains a priest at the opening of the noirish 1950 drama EDGE OF DOOM.

“Poor people are difficult to serve, George,” reminds Father Roth (Dana Andrews), the senior priest of Los Angeles’ St. Stephens’ Church.

Yes, ministry would be so much easier if it weren’t for all these fucking poors, who jeopardize their dead-end jobs by carrying illegal weapons and who refuse to call the police on their abusive husbands (that the church insists they remain wedded to). But, as long as they keep those tithes coming, the priests might as well try to save their wretched souls.

But Father Roth isn’t that cynical. Sometimes it’s the poors who bring the priests closer to God. He tells of one former parishioner who, after the church denied his alcoholic father a Christian burial because he committed suicide, was determined to keep his tithe money and wretched soul to himself.

Flashing back to what appears to be the previous week, we meet Martin Lynn (Farley Granger), working as a delivery driver for a flower shop, barely making enough to scrape by, let alone pay for his ailing mother’s medical care — or, at the very least, move her out to Arizona, which is healthier, somehow. And marrying his girlfriend Julie (Marla Powers) is out of the question, which, in 1950, means Martin is also suffering from a serious case of blue balls on top of crushing poverty. He asks his boss, Mr. Swanson (Houseley Stevenson) for a raise, reminding the old man he was promised one the previous year and, besides, Martin’s worked at the shop for four years. Mr. Swanson kicks the can down the road, telling Martin that the shop has had a lot of expenses and can’t afford any pay increases. Martin is then assured that he’ll always have a job as long as Mr. Swanson is alive. Translation: Be grateful you have a job. Now shut the fuck up.

Like a prayer.

“Who’s your daddy?”

Martin’s mother is still very devout, much to her son’s chagrin (“You’ve prayed enough, Mother.”) Her prayers don’t spare her the inevitable, however, leaving Martin is saddled with the expense of burying her. His skeevy neighbor, Mr. Craig (Paul Stewart), rants about how “it’s a rich world, but it hates to give.” Someone, somewhere, owes Martin money, Mr. Craig continues; all he has to do is have the nerve to collect. Martin takes the older man’s words to heart. His mother deserves a big funeral, and St. Stephens is going to pay for it.

The late Mrs. Lynn was usually counseled by St. Stephens’ beloved junior priest Father Roth, but it’s the grumpy Father Kirkman (Harold Vermilyea)—the same priest who refused Martin’s father a church funeral—who is available when Martin shows up at the rectory. We know the church isn’t going to pay for shit, no matter who Martin asks, but at least Father Roth would be more diplomatic in rejecting Martin’s demands. Father Kirkman’s first response, upon hearing that Martin’s mother has died, is to chastise the young man for not calling him sooner to administer her last rites (priorities). Furthermore, he can’t understand why Martin wants his mother to have such a lavish funeral (“Your mother was a simple woman.”)

Martin confronts Father Don’t-Give-a-Shit

Father Kirkman isn’t a total bastard, though, giving Martin cab fare to the funeral home. Martin, in turn, smashes Father Kirkman’s skull with a brass crucifix, killing him instantly. Oops.

Most tragic of all, no one said Father Kirkman’s last rites.

Martin barely avoids discovery by Father Roth and Father Kirkman’s misbehaving niece Rita (Joan Evans, who gets third billing even though she’s barely in the film), only to have police cars come speeding up beside him as he’s walking down the street. The cops aren’t coming for Martin but, rather, responding to a robbery — committed by Mr. Craig — at the nearby Galaxy Theatre. A mob of onlookers swarm the theater (Los Angelenos just loved gawking at robbery victims back in the day, apparently), practically carrying Martin to this other crime scene. A panicked Martin fights his way through the crowd, running to a nearby greasy spoon where he is the sole customer.

Martin’s been seen fleeing the Galaxy, which leads to two detectives flanking him in the diner and treating Martin like he’s been Driving While Black, though they keep their guns holstered (#WhitePrivilege). The cops ultimately take Martin to the station, suspecting him of committing the Galaxy Theatre robbery. He’s questioned by Det. Lt. Mandel (Robert Keith), who’s just as pleasant as the arresting officers. Martin not only fails to convince Det. Lt. Asshole that he’s innocent of the Galaxy hold-up, but he also inadvertently gets himself added to a list of potential suspects in Father Kirkman’s murder as well.

Martin is questioned by Det. Lt. Asshole.

Father Roth happens to stop by the station to vouch for one of his parishioners (“Lock him up for a week. Throw a good scare into him.”) Roth is a little more compassionate when he learns Martin is also in jail. “Martin is not a thief,” the priest tells Mandel, “and he wouldn’t go robbing theaters on the night his mother died.” (Hold on to your wallet on any other night, though!) Mandel releases Martin, but he stresses to Roth that it’s against his better judgment: “He bothers me.”

“Frankly, I’m glad the old bastard’s dead.”

Roth plans to take Martin to the rectory, but Martin insists on going home. But after Roth drops him off, Martin goes to Julie’s apartment. Though she means well, she offers little comfort (“It’s not the end of the world tonight, Martin.”) Martin returns to his apartment, just in time to see Mr. Craig being hauled away by police (“Every time something happens around here, they pull him in,” gripes Craig’s girlfriend Irene). Craig tells the cops he was nowhere near the Galaxy when it was robbed, but he’s actually been taken in as a suspect in the Father Kirkman murder.

Things continue to worsen for Martin. He loses his job, and the mortuary won’t extend him any credit (“Obviously, Mr. Lynn, you can’t afford your desires.”) He’s again picked up by the cops, this time as a suspect in the crime he actually committed. In an uncharacteristic bit of luck, the eyewitness who saw him leaving the rectory doesn’t pick him out of a lineup, instead identifying Mr. Craig as the man she saw.

It looks like Martin is going to get away with murder. Alas, you can take the boy out of the Catholic church, but you can’t take the Catholic church out of the boy. (Maybe I should re-phrase that...)

“Goddammit.”

More Secular than Faith-Based

Edge of Doom is based on a novel by Leo Brady, who, though a devout Roman Catholic, didn’t shy away from criticizing the church, and while liberties were taken with the film adaption (the prologue and epilogue scenes, as well as some narration, were added to give the story a more inspirational spin), it’s far from Catholic propaganda. Part of the reason so many current faith-based movies fail as films, aside from the fact that they are uniformly terrible, is they have no nuance, with all their stories boiling down to “secularism (and non-Christian religions) bad; evangelical Christianity good.” Faith isn’t examined, it’s presented. Edge of Doom’s approach is far more palatable. Religion is a part of the story, but it’s not THE story.

Edge of Doom is more secular than faith-based — you’ll hear more about Catholic church protocols than the Lord — and ultimately, it’s Martin’s story that makes the movie compelling viewing. Martin’s mother finds comfort in the church, the promise of a rewarding afterlife validating her mortal struggles. For Martin, the church is just one more institution that’s let him down. What he wants is a way out of the misery of poverty, not justifications for why he should suffer through it.

Farley Granger made Edge of Doom between starring in the film noir classics They Live by Night (1948) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951), and while Doom isn’t as good as either of those movies, it’s still worth seeking out (it’s streaming on Prime as of this writing). Though the inspirational bits are hokey, and several supporting characters are a bit too stock (Mr. Craig, Mr. Swanson, Mandel), Granger, who, I’m obligated as a gay man to inform readers came out as bi in his 2007 memoirs Include Me Out, keeps Martin — and the movie — grounded in reality, resulting in a movie that’s just as relatable today as when it was first released.

Irene (Adele Jergens) crashes a scene to calm audiences
worried Edge of Doom was becoming a total sausage fest.

No Matter How You Spell It

If a movie released today had the title No Man’s Woman, I’d assume it was about female empowerment. It might be set in the 1950s, and it could be the story of a housewife’s awakening of her own agency, realizing the inequities of her station and standing up to the patriarchy as she pursues her dreams of starting the first female-run septic tank cleaning service. It would likely star Jennifer Lawrence or Michelle Williams, and it would bomb at the box office.

But make that movie in the 1950s (1955, specifically) and NO MAN’S WOMAN has a different connotation. It’s a brand of shame, signifying a faithless wife, a two-timing girlfriend, a back-stabbing bitch. No man’s woman? No man would have her!

Plenty of men have had Carolyn Grant—well, really only two, with a third resisting her advances, but because 1950s, she’s a shameless ’ho. This B-grade noir opens with Carolyn (wonderfully played Marie Windsor, to whom Allison Janney bears more than a passing resemblance), tooling down the highway in a convertible full of paintings (she runs an art gallery, more than 20 years ahead of that being the default career for women-who-aren’t-hookers in 1980s movies). When one of the paintings becomes unwrapped she pulls over, asking her male companion, arts columnist Wayne Vincent (Patric Knowles), to take care of the problem. He does so by tearing off the wrapping and tossing it out onto the side of the highway (this movie predates “Native American” PSAs discouraging littering, but I still judged this character for it). Problem solved, Wayne decides to take advantage of pause in their travels to make out with Carolyn, but she resists. She has an appointment with Harlow. “I have to show him some consideration, don’t I darling?” she tells her blue-balled paramour. “After all, he is my husband.”

Of course, she’s cheating on her husband, but here’s the thing: the couple appear to have an open relationship, a shocker for 1955, though the movie tries to appeal to 1950s mores by implying that while the couple lives apart, only Carolyn does any extramarital fucking. Harlow (John Archer) has been content to putter about his mansion between conjugal visits with his no-good wife, but now he is asking Carolyn for a divorce so he can marry Louise (Nancy Gates). He wants to marry Louise so hard that he’s even willing to keep paying Carolyn a monthly percentage of his earnings. Knowing she’s got Harlow over a barrel, Carolyn refuses his offer, demanding $300,000 up front, on top of the monthly percentage. Well, Harlow may be rich, but he’s not that rich. The only way he could pay that is to sell off his father’s share of his company, and Harlow refuses to do that.

C U Next Tuesday!

With her husband sufficiently cock-blocked, Carolyn then decides to seduce the fiancée of her assistant, Betty (Jil Jarmyn). First, of course, is the matter of getting Betty out of the way, so Carolyn tells her she needs to work on a day Betty was originally scheduled to be off — a day Betty was planning on spending with her fiancée — expertly manipulating her into believing she got her dates confused. (Mitigating factor: Betty is as pliable as Silly Putty.) With Betty out of the way, Carolyn is now free to seduce Betty’s fiancée, Dick.

Let’s talk about Dick. Thanks to the sledge-hammer subtlety of John K. Butler’s screenplay, we know Carolyn only wanted Harlow for his money and Wayne because he hypes her gallery in his newspaper column, so presumably she only wants Dick, a man of modest means, for, well, his dick. I realize standards of beauty change—Marilyn Monroe would be body-shamed today—but Dick is played by Richard Crane, an actor who’s more father-of-my-children attractive, yet Carolyn acts as if he’s panty-soaking hot. MST3K was right, 1931-1959 truly was the golden age of the doughy guy.

Carolyn doesn’t make much progress with Dick, a fact that stings all the more when she returns from her “date” to discover Betty, having found out about Carolyn’s deceit, has quit and Wayne has been fired for conflict of interest (remember when that could cost you a job?). Worse, Wayne was blacklisted from the newspaper industry, and he is consequently blacklisted from Carolyn’s cooch. No sooner has Carolyn kicked Wayne to the curb than she has Louise stopping by to appeal to the better angels of her nature and divorce Harlow. Silly bitch, Carolyn doesn’t have any better angels. Carolyn, unsurprisingly, tells Louise to fuck off (I’m paraphrasing).

Could Carolyn’s day get any worse? No, but her night sure can. She’s awakened by an intruder and, after lighting a cigarette (priorities), Carolyn goes downstairs to investigate, whereupon she’s shot and killed.

Given that so much of this movie’s runtime is spent emphasizing how horrible she is — a witch, observes Louise; “No matter how you spell it,” says Harlow — I half expected the cops’ motivation for finding the killer was to give the perpetrator a medal. No such medal is forthcoming when they zero in on Harlow as the prime suspect, however. Instead, they hold him for questioning. Turns out the victim being a cunt doesn’t make the homicide justifiable. Harlow didn’t do it, of course, and he’s ultimately the one to solve the case.

Directed by Franklin Adreon, No Man’s Woman is like a lesser Joan Crawford vehicle crossed with a by-the-numbers police procedural. The first 40 minutes of this movie’s 70-minute runtime are its best, with B-movie staple Windsor stealing the show as the happily remorseless Carolyn. As much as you want Carolyn to die, you kind of wish she got to stick around a while longer. Once she’s gone, the last 30 minutes of No Man’s Woman devolve into the lamest episode of Perry Mason ever. This sub-noir isn’t exactly a must-see, but if you spot it on a streaming service and enjoy watching the vicious deeds of well-dressed women, be they Harriet Craig, Alexis Carrington or Cersei Lannister, No Man’s Woman is worth checking out.

You hardly can tell they aren’t actually on the water.