Murder is My Beat (1955)
Edward G. Ulmer is apparently a cult filmmaker, and this film had a strange and powerful effect on me. It’s low budget, ala Plan Nine From Outer Space. Well, if you get caught in the spell of a film like this, there’s no turning back. It’s naive camp — so unintentionally bad it’s good, and it’s the little things that take hold of you and won’t let go. Near the end Paul Langton chats with Robert Shayne, his police chief boss. They’re trying to establish the innocence of Barbara Payton — a beautiful dame with a knockout frame. They’re just talking, but Shayne is also shaving. And he’s shaving endlessly. I know they were scrupulous in the 50s about hygiene -- but, come on. And it’s one of those old fashioned shavers (I had one as a teenager — with the rolling heads) and he’s rubbing his very, very beardless face, over and over again, and chatting on and on. And then he applies after shave. But this is endless too; patting here, patting there. In other words the actors carry on with what is intended to be convincing, naturalistic detail in an unreasonable, almost surrealistic way. In this kind of film, such moments are so rich. Nowhere but in a cheap, easy feature film by Allied Artists -- a 77 minute special — do you get to see two cops following a good looking broad, walking down the street — and shot by shot — they are in front of — yet another, and another — piece of stock film footage. It is a challenge for viewers to suspend their disbelief — and a comment on the magnificence of the human imagination. Alright, Shakespeare — who also worked under economic constraints — does better, certainly, with the same materials (words and images). But artists construct towers of the flimsiest materials for us to build our dreams on -- and we hang on -- praying we won't end up in in the abyss with those who don't believe. During Murder is My Beat Barbara Payton's beauty was clearly waning; she looks pudgy and bloated (despite starring with Cagney in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye five years earlier) nevertheless an old woman says: “she wore tight clothes — indecent the way the showed her shape.” (In real life, Payton died after a suicidal slide into into drug and alcohol abuse 12 years after.) But Tracy Roberts, Payton’s girlfriend (in real life a serious actress who foundedd the Stella Adler theatre school in L.A.) is described in even more classic film noir lingo: “A hard little package, with a sharp little brain, hardened by constant grinding against the world.” Everything here is not only hard-boiled, but boiled down, and expressed in the kind of metaphor that was only completely meaningful in a 1955-middle-class-suburban-context. Roy Gordon (the murdered man who turns out not to be) is described as one who “could talk to headwaiters and they’d listen to him, that type…” (Of course, we understand.) The ending of the film made me ecstatic — Langton is supposed to take Payton to prison but instead jumps off a train with her, facilitating her escape; yet they live happily ever after. How? Shayne clears up all the loose ends, turning first to Langton: “They’ve agreed not to prosecute you— willing to consider it a temporary blackout,” and then to Payton: “It took a little influence to expedite matters, but the warden’s a great guy.” Exculpatory temporary blackouts, and nice-guy wardens — certainly what the world is made of, right? Well I just can’t get enough of this candy floss spun from the stars, and it took me further away from my own real life than any well-crafted film might; it's much better than a perfect work of art, because I can see in excruciating, lacerating detail each and very point at which it’s badly stitched together. And it’s dogged earnestness at believing it is — well, something — bewitches me. Two years after Murder is My Beat, Barbara Payton married, and quickly divorced "'Tony’ Provas, a 23-year-old furniture store executive in Nogales, Arizona.” Her autobiography chronicles her subsequent slide to ignominy: ‘forced to sleep on bus benches, suffering regular beatings as a prostitute.’ Believe me, I am not reveling in this woman’s pain, but instead thinking of my own dwindling twilight kingdom. Tonight I watched Toronto's Dora Mavor Moore Awards (live! online!). I am the much forgotten guy who founded Buddies in Bad Times Theatre — Toronto’s first —and now obviously last — gay and lesbian theatre, more than 40 years ago. I don’t ask to be remembered, it’s simply the death of the cause that has me feeling more than a little tragic, not unlike Barbara Payton (but where’s by 23 year old furniture store executive named Tony?). There was only one gay moment at the Dora Awards tonight. It was when Michael Healey told what I found to be a rather offensive gay joke. I don’t blame him (or anybody) I blame the times; the joke wouldn’t have been offensive if there had been lots of out gay men (like perhaps some of the many gay men who work in theatre?) volunteering to prance about and talk dirty and be very gay, but those fags were nowhere to be seen. So when Michael Healey joked that he brought a condom to the virtual online awards so he could have sex with Thom Allison (one of the few self-admitted out gay actors) it just kinda stuck in my craw. Back in the 80s, I presented an award at the Doras. I changed from a man to a woman — or a woman to a man, onstage (I can never remember which) — and it was actually live — not ‘digital live.’ Afterwards I got a couple of threatening phone calls from gay men who said that I was ruining things for them; that it was best to keep such things ‘quiet.’ No problem; they now have their way, this year the only appearance by an out gay man at the Doras was in a tasteless joke made by a straight guy. To quote Paul Langton in Murder is My Beat: "When a man begins to doubt what he represents as right — must be right— he’s coming apart at the seams” but me, I’m coming apart at the ‘seems’ (‘seems, madam, nay, it is’). The only thing that can save me is that which is blatantly untrue. But to be as frank with you as a liar can be — I wouldn’t have it any other way. What is blatantly untrue is saving me from the untruth that cannot possibly be my present life; or worse yet, the lie that is the world.
