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. The audience is led to believe Harlow (John Archer) is content to putter about his mansion between conjugal visits with his no-good wife, because the reason he wants to talk to Carolyn is to ask 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, she 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.