Showing posts with label John Archer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Archer. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

No Matter How You Spell It

1955 poster for No Man's Woman starring Marie Windsor
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.

Marie Windsor in No Man's Woman
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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.