Naked Alibi (US 1954)

I bought this boxset of ‘Universal Noirs’ from Powerhouse/Indicator as part of my ongoing investigation into classic (i.e. 1940s/50s) films noirs now available on Blu-ray. I first noticed this title in a review by José Arroyo and I was immediately attracted to Naked Alibi, a film I didn’t know about that featured Gloria Grahame. When Indicator announced a sale of these boxsets,  a ‘limited edition’ of 6,000 from 2022, I coughed up £38.99 for six titles. They arrived a few days later (my boxset was numbered ‘5718’) and I opened Naked Alibi first.

Gloria Grahame does not disappoint but the film itself is something of a mixed bag. The title is odd, I can only think it is meant to be a riff on ‘Naked Truth’. The script by a relatively young writer, Lawrence Roman, is based on a story by J Robert Bren and Gladys Atwater with the original title ‘Cry Copper’. That title isn’t great either. It appears that Universal recognised that with Gloria Grahame in a ‘sexpot’ role, she offered the best chance of selling the picture. Oddly, however, they didn’t use her in personal appearances but sent out her ‘stand-in’ Peggy Burke instead. Ms Grahame made three pix in 1954 and may not have been available for the Universal release date. Her role in the film did generate publicity though, mainly because of her appearance in a dance routine wearing one of the sexiest dresses I’ve ever seen in a studio picture, but more of that later.

This is designated a ‘Universal-International Picture’ continuing the brand since the merger of Universal and International Pictures in 1947. The Blu-ray presents the picture in 1.85:1 using the simple method of masking the 35mm frame to crop the standard 1.37:1. This was a plan adopted by studios in the early period of ‘widescreen’ when switching to CinemaScope was still being discussed/implemented. IMDb suggests that there was also a plan to present prints in 2.00:1. Cinematographer Russell Metty doesn’t seem to have had any problems in keeping within the defined limits and apart from an increased grain, the images seemed fine to me. Metty is a link to Douglas Sirk who was working at this time at Universal for the same producer Ross Hunter. I have a copy of Sirk’s All that Heaven Allows (1954) in 2.00:1, also shot by Metty. The Sirk is in Technicolor, however, and Naked Alibi is in Black & White. It’s also a trim 86 mins. On the commentary by Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson, the suggestion is that this is not a B Movie but an ‘A-minus’ as distinct from what might be called an ‘ambitious B’.

The film’s plotting is fairly straightforward, although aspects of it do seem unlikely. Joe Conroy (Sterling Hayden) is the Chief of Detectives in an unnamed Californian city. One night he comes across three of his officers restraining a man in an interview room who was booked as drunk and disorderly but is volatile enough to raise their suspicions. This is Al Willis (Gene Barry, just before he devoted himself to what turned out to be an illustrious TV career). Willis appears to be ‘clean’ without a record of any kind, but is clearly hotheaded and liable to lash out. He threatens the cops with revenge for the arrest. They are forced to let him go when his lawyer arrives. Later one of the cops is gunned down and two others are also killed. Conroy is convinced that Willis is the killer but after political ‘interference’ and sensationalist news coverage, Conroy is dismissed from the force for ‘brutality’ against Willis as a suspect. Willis decides to leave his bakery business for a few weeks and heads south for ‘Border City’. Conroy decides to follow him and after a series of incidents finds himself caught up with Willis and a bar-room singer, Marianna (Gloria Grahame). Gloria doesn’t make her appearance until 30 minutes into the film, but what an appearance it is. She is sat at the bar with her back to the punters, her back and shoulders bare. When she turns we see she is wearing a slinky dress of some kind of stretchy material. It’s ankle length but slit to above the knee and held up by spaghetti straps. The material is so thin it moulds to her body and only the lace cupping each breast keeps her decent. In a way she beats Madonna to the punch, seemingly wearing her underwear as outerwear – there certainly isn’t room for underwear underneath. In this costume she attempts to ‘shimmy’ and to croon ‘Ace in the Hole’, a Cole Porter song (dubbed by Jo Ann Greer). It’s a remarkable performance and she manages to suggest all sorts of emotions as she performs. This is a downmarket bar and Marianna has danced this number many times before. Several customers ignore her but most of the men standing at the back are riveted. Despite this I was reminded of Rita Hayworth’s celebrated song and dance, performing ‘Put the Blame on Mame’ in Gilda (1946).

After Gloria’s ‘sex bomb’ moment the narrative moves through the genre conventions quite smoothly and ends with a chase. I certainly agree with a couple of reviews I’ve read that suggest that the film proper takes off with Gloria Grahame’s entry into the narrative. The biggest flaw for me is that Willis appears to have an almost separate existence in Border City. What does his wife think he is up to? The narrative doesn’t build up his marriage ‘at home’ and the actress playing Mrs Willis (Marcia Henderson) doesn’t have much to go on. Somehow, Willis has built up a bakery business and fathered a child while also heading for Border City on several occasions over the past few years. The scripting problem is that none of the principals has a back story so we don’t know how to place them. That’s normal for this kind of pic and the script does give us a few lines of exposition but not much. We would usually look to the actor’s performances and their star personae. We can do that with Grahame but it’s more difficult with Hayden and Barry.

‘Border City’ appears to have been at least partially shot in Tijuana. The Tijuana sequences have a different feel to the studio work for Conroy’s home city, but neither create the excitement generated by Touch of Evil (1958) in which Orson Welles used Los Angeles locations to stand in for the border. I also felt that Naked Alibi used ideas that had been effective in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (US 1953) which also featured Gloria Grahame (and Glenn Ford as a police officer suspended from duty who keeps up his investigation). Conroy as a character is also not dissimilar to the police officer played by Robert Ryan in Nick Ray’s On Dangerous Ground (US 1951). These comparisons are perhaps unfair but they do suggest that the weakness here is the casting or perhaps the direction of Sterling Hayden. He has the physical presence but he seems to lack the intensity of a Robert Ryan or the brooding seriousness of a Glenn Ford. By contrast Gene Barry is seen by several commentators as ‘overacting’, although I think he is fine. In his case it is the script that possibly lets him down. Overall the problem might lie with director Jerry Hopper, who like Barry would move towards mainly TV work from the mid-1950s. I’m intrigued as to what a Ray or a Lang type of director might have made of the trio of central characters. Grahame was once married to Ray (and later controversially to his son) and she appeared in two movies for Lang  – Human Desire in 1954 and The Big Heat. Hayden is ‘Johnny’ in Ray’s Johnny Guitar (also 1954).

Naked Alibi was welcomed as a ‘lost film noir‘ when it finally emerged on a US DVD/Blu-ray after being ‘found’ in Universal’s archives (I don’t think it appeared on VHS). I’m not sure how useful it is to think of it as a noir. There is such market interest, especially in the US, that any crime thriller can be described in these terms and the ‘naming’ is beginning to risk seeming meaningless. On the other hand I think it can be argued that once the narrative reaches Border City, it does enter noir territory in visual terms (and there are some noir visual moments in the first half hour). All three lead characters might be seen as familiar noir figures doomed to some form of personal disaster. Gloria Grahame can be argued as the leading actress identified as a femme fatale in noirs, but several of her roles don’t actually conform to the type. Nevertheless, I can see the logic of using her performance to promote this Blu-ray presentation. On the disc, Grahame is the subject of a 42 minute presentation by Lucy Bolton which traces her film career and her star persona. Bolton is a film scholar who is worth following and this is a well thought out and informative presentation filmed in what I presume is the bar of the Garden Cinema in Covent Garden, a cinema I must visit. The disc also contains a short 9 minute film about the cinematographer as a creative force. It was shot by Jerry Hopper for AMPAS and features Karl Struss as the cinematographer. It appears to be a Paramount title from 1951 (Universal acquired the Paramount Library from this period) and it might be useful for teachers introducing the Hollywood studio system to students. The boxset also includes a booklet with essays on each film. There are two for this film, one of which discusses the dance and the censors and another by Walter Chaw on Grahame and Hayden. This is interesting and makes points about Hayden I hadn’t considered. I need to see him in more ‘ambiguous’ roles as a police officer as I do like his more prominent roles in films like Johnny Guitar and Altman’s The Long Goodbye (US 1973).

I did actually enjoy watching Naked Alibi but mostly that is down to Gloria Grahame. In my view she is one of the most under-rated stars of the studio period. I hope to find more of her films and to re-visit the ones I know well. I did cover the very good biopic Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (UK 20017). Here’s the introduction to a screening of Naked Alibi by Eddie Muller, the host of TCM’s Noir Alley from 2012 before the Blu-ray release. (I’m not showing the film trailer here as it gives away too many plot moments.) Expect more reports on pix labelled films noirs, including from both the Universal and Columbia collections from Indicator.