on 11/26/2025, 6:18 pm
I re-watched Edgar G. Ulmer’s famous B noir Detour (1945) last week, for the first time in many years. I think it is a reasonably good film, but I am not cultish about it. I have inspected Martin M. Goldsmith’s source novel, and the movie is all there; not surprising, since Goldsmith did the screenplay. So the question is, how much does the direction / filming add?
Less than in the case of The Magnificent Ambersons, where the movie also sticks closely to the book. Ulmer was proud of Detour, and had a right to be given the low budget. But I don’t see any manifestations of directorial genius. Detour is moderately inventive, but so were a number of other B noirs of that period.
And I don’t find the film a pleasant watch. Ann Savage’s performance grates on my nerves – undoubtedly as intended, but that doesn’t make me want to spend time with her. I like Tom Neal (whose real life was just as bizarre as that of the character he plays). The fate theme is handled kind of crudely. And the story ends abruptly, as if the money had run out, or (in the case of the novel) the writer had loss interest.
Last night I was reading Jon Lewis’s Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles – I’m nearing the end – and came across a section about the actress / starlet Barbara Payton. She had a messed-up life, eventually drifted into prostitution after her Hollywood career ended, and died of alcoholism / drug addiction / general bodily abuse at age 39.
Payton had five husbands, none lasted long, but one of her most prolonged relationships was with Tom Neal, whom she never married. A former boxer, Neal decked Husband #3, actor Franchot Tone, and put him in a brief coma. Neal later served six years for manslaughter in the shooting death of his own Wife #3. A violent guy to say the least. Payton made it abundantly clear that he was totally hot in bed.
I happened to recently watch Payton’s last credited film role in Murder Is My Beat (1955), directed by (to tie this all up) Edgar G. Ulmer! She seems zonked out; the substances were already having their effect. A decent film, nonetheless, largely because Paul Langton, who seldom got a lead role, is very believable. (One IMDB reviewer notices his “Jean Gabin quality”, which I think is right on the nose.) He plays yet another cop led astray by a hot woman. It was a Fifties epidemic!
In 1963, Payton published an autobiography, I Am Not Ashamed. Unsurprisingly, this is one of John Waters’ favorite books. Payton has a lot in common with the star of Waters’ Desperate Living, Liz Renay, just one year Payton’s senior, who also published a tawdry tell-all memoir, My Face for the World to See. Renay bested Payton with seven husbands. Both had underworld ties and gangster boyfriends, and were called on to testify at trials. Renay got into trouble over that and served a prison sentence for perjury. But she did manage to survive to age 80, so she must have been made of a little tougher stuff than Barbara.
This has been your sleaze interlude for the day!
Responses