Last night I was watching the Movies Channel sporadically—turning away during lengthy commercial breaks promoting reverse mortgages, extended warranties, and whatever substance extracted from cantaloupes that has been keeping Cindy Crawford alive. In spite of such interruptions, the plot lines were easy to follow, once my eyes readjusted to the darkness of the screen.
The first film featured a young boy named Tommy, played by Bobby Driscoll, who has witnessed a murder whilst window peeping from a fire escape landing. He immediately informs his parents, who admonish him to stop making things up and send him to his room, from which he escapes via the same fire escape and makes his way to the police station, where, once again, he is advised to stop making things up.
At this point the network broke for an extended Plexaderm commercial, during which time I excused myself to repaint the living room. I returned to find Tommy has once again been sent to his room and told to stay there until morning, as his father will be working night shift and his mother will be away visiting an ailing relative. To make sure Tommy stays put, Tommy’s father locks the bedroom door and nails the windows shut.
Tommy Woodry’s abusive parents are played by Arthur Kennedy and Barbara Hale, whose tenement apartment is pretty much identical to the one occupied by Ralph and Alice Kramden. But instead of Ed and Trixie Norton, the upstairs neighbors are a homicidal couple, determined to kill their son, but having no more success than Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern had in trying to bump off Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone.
Came another commercial break; I decided to run to the store for groceries. When I returned, Tommy Woodry is miraculously still alive, thanks in part to an indifferent beat cop who suggests that what the boy needs a good whooping, and a taxi cab driver who advises the same.
“I know what you’re going through,” the cabbie tells the killer couple as they maintain a choke hold on the struggling Tommy. “I’ve got a fussy kid at home alone, too.” Or words to that effect.
Came another prolonged commercial break for the Wounded Warriors Project, during which I fell asleep. When I awoke, the second feature, starring Robert Mitchum, was underway. Now, when it comes to film noir actors, Mitchum had no peers. No one could talk while smoking like the sleepy-eyed Mitchum could, a cigarette dangling precariously from one corner of his mouth while he belches forth cynically and oh, so cryptically. He’s in the woods when his girlfriend offers a light, then tosses the still burning match over her shoulder. In the next scene, said cigarette is still burning, along with the Owyhee National Forest, when Mitchum confronts a former fellow gangster at a filling station. There, Mitchum casually flicks the lit ciggie in the direction of the gas pumps. Instinctively, I stuck my fingers in my ears and hit the floor.
In the Nineteen Forties, smoking wasn’t considered dangerous, not compared to, say–dames, in particular, a dame with a thirty-eight, and I’m not referencing bullet bra cup size but rather ammunition. An armed dame could pump you full of lead at any time; that is, unless you quickly swat the pistol away, grab her firmly by the shoulders and shake her like a rag doll. And when you’re a movie star, they let you do it.