BETRAYED WOMEN

Esther Dale and Beverly Michaels

BETRAYED WOMEN (1955). Director: Edward L. Cahn.

"He'd whack me and I'd belt 'im back. I ain't complainin' -- he was the only guy I ever loved."

Honey Blake (Beverly Michaels) is arrested after her gangster boyfriend, the unseen "Baby Face," is shot down by cops. Honey winds up in a woman's prison which the producers of this film admit is more like Devil's Island than reality. Head Matron Ballard (Esther Dale) is a tough cookie for an old dame, but the real sadist in the bunch is the head guard, Darcy, played by -- of all people -- Sara Haden, or Andy Hardy's sweet old aunt Milly. Other inmates include Nora Collins (Peggy Knudsen) whose boyfriend, Jeff Darrell (Tom Drake), was also her lawyer, only he wouldn't commit perjury to get her off; and Kate Morrison (Carole Mathews), who hid $50,000 for her boyfriend only to learn that he's gone and married another woman. Kate is determined to break out of jail with Honey and grab the loot, but Honey has also sets her sights on all that moolah. There's a prison break, hostages, a run for the swamps, betrayal, and lots of shooting. Betrayed Women is a snappy "B" movie that moves swiftly, isn't completely predictable, and is quite well-acted by the entire cast. Dale is terrific, Drake [The Cyclops] appealing and sympathetic, Haden makes her mark as the nasty Darcy, Knudsen [Hilda Crane]  and Mathews [The Man with My Face] are more than competent, and Beverly Michaels, always vivid and watchable, is especially outstanding in this. This gal should have had a much bigger career, but she left behind some vital and entertaining portrayals. Part of her problem was that she was generally taller than her leading men.

Verdict: Nifty and suspenseful B with some excellent performances. ***.

PICKUP

Beverly Michaels

PICKUP (1951). Director: Hugo Haas.

"Is that where you're living? In that shack? Oh boy -- when does the floor show start?" -- Betty

"Never fails. Young. Handsome ... Broke." -- ditto

Lonely train station master Jan Horak (Hugo Haas) meets an attractive if immoral woman named Betty (Beverly Michaels) at a carnival, and she manipulates him into marriage when she's about to be thrown out on the street. Complicating matters is the presence of an assistant, Steve (Allan Nixon), who arrives at the station after Jan loses his hearing. But as he and Betty become increasingly attracted to each other -- and Betty begins plotting -- is it possible that her husband hears a lot more than she thinks ...? Obviously influenced by The Postman Always Rings Twice, this low-rent version is nevertheless entertaining, even if the vivid Michaels overacts on occasion. Haas, who appeared to advantage in such films as Summer Storm -- he was quite a good actor, actually -- directed a number of B film noirs such as One Girl's Confession and also helmed Lizzie with Eleanor Parker. Michaels is best-known for her saucy adept playing in the memorable Wicked Woman, made two years later. Allan Nixon was a sexy leading man and credible actor who might have developed leading man status if he had gotten a few good breaks and hadn't gotten in a few too many drunken brawls; cave women fought over him in Prehistoric Women. Pickup isn't entirely predictable, and there are some interesting deviations from the usual formula.

Verdict: Entertaining melodrama with some good performances. **1/2 out of 4.

WICKED WOMAN

WICKED WOMAN (1953). Director/co-writer: Russell Rouse.

"Mexico City. A-Ca-pul-co!"

Statuesque, vivid actress Beverly Michaels was first seen by movie-goers in East Side, West Side as a tough blonde carrying a torch, but wound up in cheap melodramas like this instead of "A" pictures. Billie Nash comes to town [probably from jail], gets a job as a cocktail waitress, and sets her sights on the bartender, Matt (Richard Egan of View from Pompey's Head), who co-owns the bar along with his dipsomaniac wife, Dora (Evelyn Scott). Billie not only has a yen for Matt but craves a trip to Mexico, and convinces Matt to sell the bar behind his wife's back to bankroll the getaway; she impersonates Dora in a lawyer's office. This leads to a extremely tense scene when the buyer comes to the bar when both Billie and the real Dora are on hand -- will one of the customers give it away? Say what you will about Wicked Woman, the picture is suspenseful as hell at times, quite entertaining, and boasts some very good performances, especially from a saucy and superlative Michaels, who snaps out her lines with both sexy authority and a blase callousness. Percy Helton, who has one of his all-time best roles in this [he even gets to have sex with Michaels, albeit mercifully unseen], plays a boarding house neighbor of Billie's who resorts to blackmail to get a date and more. "You're nothing but a repulsive little runt," she tells him, "and if you don't get out of my hair I'm gonna step on you like a bug!" Now, now. Director Rouse was Michaels' husband and co-wrote the screenplay with Clarence Green, The pair also did the screenplay for the far superior classic D.O.A. Scott also played a bar owner on the TV series Peyton Place.

Verdict: Zesty melodrama with good dialogue and some very good performances. ***. 

EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE

Nancy Davis [Reagan] and Barbara Stanwyck

EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE (1949). Director: Mervyn LeRoy.

"Just because a man has one perfect rose at home, doesn't mean he can't appreciate the flowers of the field."

"I waited so long for you to come back to me. I never dreamed that when you did, I wouldn't care."

Jesssie Bourne (Barbara Stanwyck) is convinced that her husband Brandon (James Mason) is over his infatuation with former lover Isabel Lorrison (Ava Gardner), now that she's out of town, but when Isabel comes back wanting more, Jessie worries that she might lose him. In the meantime Jessie finds herself drawn to a sympathetic admirer in former cop Mark Dwyer (Van Heflin) who is being courted by newspaper publishers. Lovely Cyd Charisse [The Unfinished Dance] is Rosa, who befriends the Bournes and had a childhood crush on Mark. Nancy Davis -- later the first lady when husband Ronald Reagan became president -- plays Jessie's friend Helen and isn't bad. Douglas Kennedy of Flaxy Martin is a wealthy suitor of Isabel's and Beverly Michaels of Wicked Woman and Blonde Bait is both saucy and sexy as the "big girl" [Michaels was five foot nine] who's carrying a torch for Kennedy. Presumably Gale Sondergaard [The Spider Woman Strikes Back] wasn't thrilled to be cast as Stanwyck's mother when she was only eight years older [and has to say she's fifty-five when she was actually only fifty] but she's as adept as usual. William Conrad of TV's Jake and the Fat Man and Cry Danger plays a cop. William Frawley has a bit part as a bartender, but in two years he would become as famous as the stars when he was cast as Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy. East Side, West Side had real possibilities as a serious drama -- and the script is full of good dialogue -- but ultimately it's too superficial and frankly dull. Stanwyck, Mason, Heflin, and even Gardner are better than the material.

Verdict: There's certainly more to Manhattan than this. **1/2.

BLONDE BAIT

BLONDE BAIT (1956). Directors: Elmo Williams; Herbert Glazer.

British women's prison drama Women Without Men with added American-shot scenes filmed with star Beverly Michaels and new players Richard Travis and Jim Davis (both of whom were former leading men of Bette Davis, Travis in The Man Who Came to Dinner and Davis in Winter Meeting). Michaels is a vivid performer with an overbite and a statuesque body. Wrongly imprisoned, she has to break out to keep a New Years' Eve date with the man she loves, and she goes to much trouble and effort to get there, with interesting results. In the new sequences the break-out is engineered by authorities who want to trap Michael's lover, a criminal played by Jim Davis. Good performances help put this one over, but the original was probably better and more ironic.

Verdict: Not bad time waster. **1/2.