Slightly Scarlet (1956 film)

The ruthless and uncouth Solly Caspar, Bay City's crime boss, is seeking to fend off an annoying “reform” campaign by multi - millionaire mayoral hopeful, Frank Jansen (Kent Taylor). Caspar tasks a bright “college boy” in his ring he thoroughly resents, crooked cop Ben Grace, to dig up some dirt on Jansen and torpedo his threatening race.

Ben follows the candidate's brilliant scarlet-tressed and wildly curvaceous secretary/girlfriend, June Lyons (Rhonda Fleming), to a women’s prison to photograph her picking up her equally redheaded, sporty, and sex-starved kleptomaniac sister Dorothy (Arlene Dahl), a multiple ex-con. Ben immediately becomes attracted to June, and withholds his incriminating evidence from Caspar.

Flipping sides, Ben instead gives June a tape he made proving Caspar killed a crusading newspaperman supporting the honest Jansen. Caspar, who had slapped Ben around and humiliated him in front of the rest of his gang for appearing to fail to gather any dirt on Jansen, is forced to flee to nearby Mexico. Ben then seduces June, steals her from Jansen, and, unbeknownst to her or the new mayor, takes over Caspar’s rackets.

Rather than the smooth sailing he had planned, Ben faces blowback from Caspar’s gang and stiffened resistance from city hall and the police.

Meanwhile, June’s nymphomaniac sister, who had been attracted to Ben on sight, continues her play for him. She accompanies him to a beach house he has claimed along with the rest the spoils of Caspar’s empire, where Ben is headed to rifle its safe for $160,000 to leave town with. She determinedly tries to seduce a disinterested Ben, and becomes huffy when rejected, wounding him, perhaps by accident, with a spear gun. He is forced to leave without finding the money.

To get even for Ben’s rejections, she later plays up their trip to June into an escapade. June confronts Ben, who responds that it is she he really wants. Given the suspicions surrounding the seeming tryst, June wonders if it's really both of them he's after.

Dorothy is subsequently arrested for stealing a necklace, and June pleas with Ben to intervene on her behalf. He leans on his ex-boss, a once-stalled lieutenant whom Ben had managed to reward with an elevation to chief of police, to release Dorothy and purge her record.

Jansen, who still loves June, discovers the duplicity and insists that her sister must go back to jail.

Caspar returns from Mexico seeking revenge on Ben. Appearing at the beach house, he finds a drunken and slutty Dorothy alone there. An alcoholic and evident nymphomaniac, she throws herself at the despicable Caspar, and later the stacks of money from the safe he boastfully scatters the floor with. Caspar invites her to flee back to Mexico with him, and she accepts. June shows up to rescue her, only to end up at the point of Caspar’s gun. Facing execution, she shoots him with the spear gun, then several times with his own revolver.

Ben arrives, and, with the heat on him from Caspar’s gang, and the police sure to be on his heels, entreats June to go away with him and the money. She refuses. Caspar, not yet dead, wounds Ben. Ben, June, and an increasingly deranged Dorothy end up trapped in a bedroom.

Caspar’s gang arrives, and he decides to finish the job. Ben calls the police and tells them to rush a full squad to the beach house to round up Caspar and his hoods. Meanwhile, he offers to give himself up to Caspar on condition June and Dorothy are spared, or, it is clearly implied, worse than death alone from the men.

Ben is shot several times by Caspar before the police arrive. Direly wounded, he is put on a stretcher. After ministrations from June he is hauled off. June then proclaims that Dorothy will get all the care she needs, but theretofore has rejected.

The movie ends ambiguously, leaving it unclear whether Ben will survive, June will continue to care about him if he does, or the nightmare will lift and she will return to the still loving but dull Jansen either way.

• John Payne as Ben Grace
• Rhonda Fleming as June Lyons
• Arlene Dahl as Dorothy Lyons
• Kent Taylor as Frank Jansen
• Ted de Corsia as Solly Caspar
• Lance Fuller as Gauss
• Buddy Baer as Lenhardt
• Ellen Corby as June Lyons' Maid (uncredited)
• Frank Gerstle as Detective Lt. Dave Dietz (uncredited)
• Myron Healey as Wilson - Caspar Thug (uncredited)

The film was made when prolific director Allan Dwan was seventy years old. Dwan directed 386 films in his long career and his first work was the silent short Strategy, produced in 1911.

Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, was caustic about the casting and the adaptation of Cain's novel, and wrote: "Rhonda Fleming and a laughably kittenish Arlene Dahl, are a couple of on-the-make sisters, and the fellow, played by John Payne, is an on-the-make big-time gangster. In the end all their faces are red. So, we say, should be the faces of the people responsible for this film, which is said to have been taken from a novel (unrecognizable) of James M. Cain. For it is an exhausting lot of twaddle about crime and city politics, an honest mayor, his secretary-mistress, her kleptomaniacal sister and the fellow who wants to get control of the gang.[3]

Critic and filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard was kinder to the film, placing it fifth in his list of the best films of 1956 in Cahiers du Cinema.[4]

• List of American films of 1956

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Slightly Scarlet (1956 film).

• Slightly Scarlet at IMDb
• Slightly Scarlet at AllMovie
• Slightly Scarlet at the TCM Movie Database
• Slightly Scarlet film trailer on YouTube