George Sherman | The Tulsa Kid | Mystery Broadcast | A Scream in the Dark | The Crime Doctor's Courage | The Secret of the Whistler | Black Bart | Reprisal!

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George Sherman

George Sherman is mainly a director of B movies, and largely forgotten today, like most directors of such films. There is an interesting discussion of some of his work in Don Miller's history B Movies (1973). Sherman also has contemporary admirers, including Dave Kehr, Blake Lucas and Jaime Christley.

Some common subjects in the films of George Sherman:

Settings:

Characters: Minorities: Imagery: Story Telling: These do not occur in all George Sherman films.

The Tulsa Kid

The Tulsa Kid (1940) is a Western starring Don "Red" Barry. It has a theme of non-violence, with the hero being an ex-gunslinger, who tries to persuade others also to give up their guns.

The ranch the Tulsa Kid aids, is multi-racial, while everyone else in the film seems to be all-white. A sympathetic Hispanic is one of the ranch hands: Sherman's films are full of non-stereotyped Hispanic characters.

There is a nice musical performance of O Dem Golden Slippers. After the song, Sherman includes some camera movements, following characters into and out of the room.

Rectilinear Environments: The Sidewalks

The final shoot-out is unusual, in being staged on the town sidewalks, rather than in the street. There seems to be a California law that says all such suspenseful duels have to be mid-street. Sherman opts for more photogenic sidewalks, instead. The sidewalks are perhaps one of Sherman's rectilinear areas. They include over-hanging porticos, curbs, and other features that make them rich in visual design.

Mystery Broadcast

Mystery Broadcast (1943) is a non-series whodunit, about a radio broadcast that stirs up an old murder case. It is one of 8 B-movies Sherman made at Republic. The film shows Sherman's gift for atmosphere. It is simultaneously fun and spooky. There is plenty of comedy. But the story is eerie, as well, and it is too suspenseful to called light hearted, or a pure comedy.

Settings

The settings of the film show some of Sherman's favorite locales. The radio broadcast studio is a high tech performance venue, dedicated to the performing arts, like the night club that houses the ballet in The Crime Doctor's Courage. Both locations are very elaborate, with many technological facilities to enhance the performances. Both emphasize the importance of sound in the performance, with the music of the ballet, and the sound effects of the radio drama.

Both films contain behind the scenes, working areas as well: the newspaper morgue here, the catwalks in Courage. Both of these areas are non-glamorous, in the sense of containing anything elegant. But they are filled with visually fascinating rectangular furniture or objects, which make for complex rectilinear paths through the room.

A spooky cellar briefly shows up here. This locale will be developed more fully in Courage.

Characters

There are also some character types in common. Both films are full of intelligent, creative types. Both movies have show biz columnists, sophisticated, affable men who write newspaper articles, and who are perhaps hiding something under their smooth facades. Both have Hispanic artists in the musical arts, perhaps an artifact of the Good Neighbor policy that led to so many Latin American musicals during World War II. Here, however, they are in a mystery tale, not a Hollywood musical. Neither type is at all caricatured. The columnists are not treated with the satire Roy Del Ruth displayed in such thirties spoofs of Walter Winchell as Blessed Event (1932). And the Hispanic artists are dignified and intellectual acting. Most of Sherman's characters tend to be highly intelligent. Occasionally they can be eerie, but they are rarely silly or ill-natured.

The Heroine: A Woman Detective

The heroine of this film is a genuine sleuth. She gets a boyfriend, and he winds up tagging along on her case, but he is there mainly to provide comedy relief and romance. It is interesting to see a film with a woman detective. Hollywood made quite a few series about woman sleuths in the 1930's and 1940's. The heroine is also the writer in charge of the radio broadcasts, and an authority figure in the world of radio. Her leadership role is underscored by the costume designer, who puts her into dark suits while everyone else is wearing light ones. Ruth Terry acts aggressively, and sticks up for her ideas and her sleuthing throughout the movie. It is certainly an interesting portrayal. The detective is mildly scared of the dead bodies she encounters, and always screams a little and winds up in her boyfriend's arms in these scenes. However, this is mainly treated as a romantic interruption, and soon the heroine is right back on track sleuthing. The heroine is quite similar in many ways to the determined feminist heroines of modern film. The film also emphasizes her intelligence, and her use of her mind, in a way that is perhaps more typical of 1940's Great Detectives, of both genders.

Visual Style: Staging against vertical lines and regions

Sherman follows a technique widely used by Hollywood directors. He frames each actor along a different part of the background. One actor will be in front of a door, another will be in the vertical "well" between two windows. This approach tends to highlight both the actors, and the different background regions behind them. The actors and the set underline each other, and make each more noticeable and distinct. There is nothing unusual about this approach. But Sherman pursues it vigorously, and quite effectively.

Sherman likes his actors to be in corner areas. The place where the side wall and the back wall meet forms a vertical line; Sherman often has his chief actor directly along that line. A striking shot of this sort occurs right in the beginning, when the heroine is standing up on stage at the radio broadcast. To her left we see the back wall. with radio actors seated on chairs on raised platforms, and on the right is the side wall, with the sound effects woman's desk. The two regions are utterly dissimilar in their visual appearance. The heroine seems to be the boundary between the two regions, someone who links the two up, and who is at the center of the radio broadcast. There is a similar approach at Stanley's home, where he is seated at his desk. The vertical line of his body is right along the corner of the set.

Both Sherman's direction and Russell Kimball's sets emphasize vigorous, long horizontal and vertical lines. The first long shot of the radio studio is a classic piece of composition. We see both the broad horizontal lines of the platforms on the stage, and the repeated vertical lines above them of the curtains, and what look like some sort of acoustic panels.

It is hard to evaluate Sherman's artistic responsibilities for these films. Both this film and Courage have well done sets, photography and atmosphere. Is Sherman personally responsible for this? Did he merely have the good taste to hire talented people to work on the films? Or is the truth a combination of both?

Lighting

Cinematographer William Bradford often does interesting things with lighting patterns on walls. These sometimes recall film noir, including one night scene at the heroine's apartment, where the light patterns fall on a barricaded door. Most striking is daylight coming through a window in Stanley's study, and shining on a glass brick wall on the other side. The bright, criss cross grid effect is unique, something I've never seen in another movie. Film noir rarely included this sort of effect involving bright daylight.

A Scream in the Dark

A Scream in the Dark (1943) is a non-series B-movie whodunit. Our hero is a newspaper man who has just quite his job to open a private detective agency.

The film shows much of Sherman's liveliness. There is his mixture of suspense, comedy and beautiful sets and costumes. However, this movie is a lot more cornball than Sherman's more polished works. The dialogue creaks, and the characters seem a lot less three dimensional than in other Sherman films. The film is cheery and good natured throughout, and will probably be enjoyed by lovers of old film mysteries who can ignore its technical imperfections.

The world of this tale is less artistic than some of Sherman's films: there are no characters in the arts, except the journalistic hero and his sidekick, a newspaper photographer. There are also no Hispanic characters. In fact, the sheer workaday ordinariness of some of the suspects in the film is stressed, an ordinariness that humorously contrasts with the zany surrealism of the situations they are in.

Detection

The film is an odd mix of the private eye and amateur detective traditions. Our hero, who is completely fresh to the investigator business, often seems a lot more like one of the amateur detectives in a traditional movie whodunit than a tough private eye. He is completely non-hard-boiled. Instead, he is a leading man type, always dressed in sharp 1940's suits, or his tuxedo. In one sequence, he is interrupted while dancing at a night club by a would-be client, and he returns to his office in his tux. For the next ten minutes, he is sleuthing around in his tuxedo. This is pleasant wish fulfillment fantasy for an audience. It has little to do with the hard-boiled world of most 1940's private eyes.

The heroine is secretary to the local Chief of Police, as well as assisting the hero getting his new business started. She seems at least as intelligent and professional as the hero. This is typical of Sherman's respect for women and their capabilities, and recalls the female writer-sleuth of Mystery Broadcast (1943).

The movie is based on Jerome Odlum's mystery novel The Morgue Is Always Open.

The film recalls the zany world of Craig Rice. As in Rice, there is a comic look at hard-boiled material. There is a partnership between men and women to solve crimes. The hero and heroine are humorous, knowledgeable city types, good natured, sophisticated and kind hearted. The black comedy with the corpses recalls such Rice works as Having Wonderful Crime (1943). There is a surrealist tone to both. In both Rice's novels and this film, each new crime echoes the last, in a surrealist manner. The plot eventually builds up into a big tangle, one that is humorous to contemplate, and hard to sort out. This is a typical Rice approach.

Costumes

The costumes are by Republic's long time designer, Adele Palmer. She has the heroine, the hero's girl friend, in a series of spectacular 1940's suits.

One scene in the film sets the tone. The hero is shown in his office, dressed to the nines, and setting in a black leather armchair. He looks like the last word in sophistication.

The Crime Doctor's Courage

The Crime Doctor's Courage (1945) is one of a series of B detective stories made at Columbia. Warner Baxter stars as the Crime Doctor, a psychiatrist sleuth, although there is little psychoanalytic material in the film. The titles of the films tend to have the words "Crime Doctor" in them, but are otherwise fairly meaningless: the Crime Doctor does not do anything especially courageous in this one! There are ten movies in the series, but this is the only one directed by Sherman.

Design and Photography

This film has some key virtues. Mainly, the production design (John Dala) and the photography (L. William O'Connell) are staggeringly beautiful. An early scene shows a society dinner party. The glassware and dishes on the table glow and gleam. The whole elaborate effect shows exquisite good taste. It is a very complex still life.

Later scenes show a nightclub. First, we see a dance floor, filled with beautiful murals and ceiling decorations. Later, we see the rafters above the stage. Catwalks stretch on all sides, in rectilinear patterns. It is an irresistibly photogenic area.

The dance number is continuously interrupted by blinding flashes of light. O'Connell does a good job with these, making a striking visual effect. O'Connell worked on many of Howard Hawks' silent films, and Scarface (1932). He then drifted into B movies, including the 1940 Boston Blackie films, such as Budd Boetticher's debut film, One Mysterious Night (1944). The dance number here is related to ballet. It has original music by the classical composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. This is an index of the care that was taken on this obscure B-movie.

This is the only film I can find credited to art director John Dala. He probably did other Hollywood films, but credits at this B-movie level are often obscure.

This film was made at the height of the film noir era, yet it shows only a little influence of noir. Like many B detective stories of the period, it faithfully follows a separate tradition of filmmaking. It does show the enthusiastic visual polish of many noir films, however. The beautiful clothes also recall the noir fashions of the 1940's. However, the evening clothes worn by all the characters are a bit more upper crust than the suits typically worn by urban noir players. The men are in double-breasted black tuxedos, the women in spectacular evening gowns.

Detection: Impossible Crimes

The scriptwriter, Eric Taylor, worked on most of the Ellery Queen movies (the Ralph Bellamy series) and many of the Crime Doctor films, as well as some Dick Tracy epics. He is clearly in sync with Intuitionist school writers, such as Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr. This film shows Carr-like features. There is a locked room mystery, and an attempt to suggest that two of the characters might really be vampires. This recalls Carr's mystery novel The Three Coffins (1935), and its uncanny suggestions of vampirism. As in Carr, everything at the end is explained naturally. Taylor's mystery plot ideas are crude compared to print authors. His solution to the locked room involves simple mechanical devices. Still, he conveys something of the feel of a nice impossible crime story. It makes for a pleasant movie watching experience.

The Secret of the Whistler

Sherman also worked on Columbia's other 1940's thriller series, the Whistler. The Whistler films tend to be more suspense films than whodunits. Sherman's entry, The Secret of the Whistler (1946), falls into this category. I found this inoffensive little film disappointing. The plot is thin and uninteresting. Sherman does show some of his good taste in the fine sets of the opening scenes. A party at an artist's studio shows some pizzazz.

Black Bart

A Western Comedy

Black Bart (1948) is a Western, about the notorious stage coach robber, and his (fictional) encounter with real-life exotic dancer Lola Montez. There is a good article about the film at Jaime Christley's website

The cheerful film is loaded with humorous dialogue. Much of the dialogue is exceptionally funny.

Making a movie about a crook is full of pitfalls. It's bad to glamorize crime, but its also dull to preach for two hours. Black Bart avoids these extremes, in part by casting everyone's favorite Bad Boy, Dan Duryea. He is always fascinating as a sly, sneaky and refreshingly comic villain, one whose brashness and insidious schemes are interesting to watch, but never suggested as any sort of role model.

Black Bart bears some similarity in approach with A Scream in the Dark:

Hispanics

Lola Montez is treated mainly as a Spanish Dancer in Black Bart, whirling around to lively Mexican-style music, and dressed in Spanish-looking clothes. Her dance numbers are terrific. They show Sherman's enthusiasm for all things Hispanic. They recall a bit the lively dancers in The Crime Doctor's Courage.

New Roles

The three outlaws (one hesitates to call them "villains") each take on Black Bart, a favorite Sherman subject. The protagonist has established a new life as a rancher; the other two outlaws get new jobs as Wells Fargo men and new social roles as (apparent) champions of justice.

In addition, the protagonist has a new secret identity as robber Black Bart.

Capitalism

Black Bart emphasizes that Wells Fargo is bringing the infrastructure necessary for business and capitalism to this part of California. And that Black Bart is threatening this.

Rectilinear Environments: The Theatre

The boxes at the theater are another of Sherman's complex rectilinear environments.

Reprisal!

Reprisal! (1956) is one the most trenchant looks at race relations in the American Cinema. The film resembles both Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947) and Devil's Doorway (Anthony Mann, 1950). Like both of these previous works, it gives a thorough look at the sinister system of racial discrimination. And it puts its fragile protagonist at a key pressure point, where the system causes the hero to be torn between racial categories and polarization.

Links to The Tulsa Kid

Reprisal! shares imagery with Sherman's earlier Western The Tulsa Kid. Both have heroes who have changed their lives, and who are keeping their pasts hidden.

Both have multi-racial ranch households, in areas that are otherwise all-white.

Both have trial scenes, in courts where justice is being subverted by pressure from evil societies outside the courtroom.

Both have scenes where men get lassoed. In Reprisal!, this is done by the bad guys to the Sheriff. In The Tulsa Kid, the hero does this to villains.

Both have scenes in which two cowboys dance to festive music at a party. They dance individually, with rhythmic body movements, not in unison - but at the same time. No women are dancing. In both films, O Dem Golden Slippers is being played. In The Tulsa Kid, these are good guys, at a wholesome celebration; in Reprisal!, these are bad guys at a drunken celebration of sinister values.

Rectilinear Environments: The Jail, The Town Square

None of the environments in Reprisal! are as complex as in some Sherman films. Still, the jail is a fairly elaborate rectilinear set.

Much of the action is in the town square, near the General Store. This store has a complex angled porch. This looks like a standard part of Columbia Studio's Western town, which shows up in numerous movies.

Camera Movement

The hero is followed by the camera as he walks rapidly down the town sidewalk. This is a striking shot.

Color

The big confrontation in the town square over the barbed wire, is designed in shades of blue and orange. The "orange" includes wood tones, as well as some brownish clothes. This is a fairly common color scheme in movies.

Other scenes use different schemes. The Native Americans sometimes have bright colors, such as the old man's purple shirt.