When Dan Milner (Robert Mitchum) comes home to find a trio of strangers playing cards in his room, filling his ashtrays and leaving empty bottles around, he handles the situation with charm and wit: “You guys need a fourth? And do you mind cleaning up before you leave?” They are gangsters, come to collect on a nonsense debt. Really, they are there to let their boss know when Dan’s back so he can call, make a pitch. Turns out a mystery man wants Dan to take a powder, head south of the border to an exclusive Mexican resort for a year, earn $50k in 1950s money—a small fortune, in other words—but he won’t cop to why. Dan has just gotten back from a little stretch working roads for the state—nabbed for a misdemeanor—and he’s looking to keep his head down, has no ties, can make this work in his favor.
On the trip, he runs into an heiress, Lenore Brent (Jane Russell), who is heading to the same destination. She’s got a pretty voice and a stellar look, but when Dan makes his charming pitch she shoots him down with ease. It’s a meetcute, of course. Their relationship will grow as it passes through a few curveballs and twists over the rest of the picture. You see, she’s heading down to meet up with a lover, famed ham actor and game hunter Mark Cardigan (Vincent Price), who is still married though separated (sort of) to Helen Cardigan (Marjorie Reynolds).
What’s the scoop with Dan’s windfall? Well, it’s got something to do with gangster Nick Ferraro (Raymond Burr), who has been exiled to Italy but wants back in to the richest and most powerful country in the world. It’s got something to do with a chess player who might be a writer who might actually be a surgeon in disguise, Martin Krafft (John Mylong). It might have something to do with a pilot, Thompson (Charles McGraw), who is either too drunk, too stupid, or too desperate to know not to fly in a hurricane. It probably doesn’t have much to do with card sharp Myron Winton (Jim Backus) or the plucky newlyweds Milton (Richard Bergren) and Jennie Stone (Leslye Banning), who are here to enjoy life but might be getting into gambling debts over their heads. It’s certainly shady.
A troubled production that started out under the direction of John Farrow, which was then almost completely reshot by Richard Fleischer when Howard Hughes wanted to make a great picture instead of just a good one, His Kind of Woman (1951) is a strange duck of a movie, a blend of gritty crime, whirlwind romance, sassy dialogue, and some truly inspired comedy.
One of the fascinating aspects of the movie is how it hands its attention over from the protagonist we meet at the beginning to a different man for the finale and then right back to the initial protagonist. For most of the first half of the movie, we’re with Dan Milner. However, when the gangsters show up in a boat off the shore, Dan gets captured, beaten around, and left for dead in a ship’s steam room. While that is happening, Vincent Price’s Mark Cardigan steps up to become both buffoon and natural leader, and he pretty much steals the show for his own. Gone are the points on the high stakes, replaced with a kind of derring-do that would feel more at home in a swashbuckling picture. Eventually, we get back to the stuff of classic crime, but by then, the movie is galloping along to its own drum, and banging it with so much volume and authority that it’s impossible to ignore the fact that it is jumping around genres with gay abandon.
This is not the pared down stuff of good guys caught up in crime fiction plots. This is a movie that marches to its own drum. It’s showy, it’s perhaps gaudy, but it’s never predictable, and that actually lends some real suspense to the thing. If Mitchum’s Milner is no longer a protagonist, then he can die at any time. If Mitchum’s Milner is still the protagonist, then Cardigan can die at any time. And what about Russell’s Lenore Brent?
Whenever Robert Mitchum appears in a crime film, he always delivers a memorable role. Here, he gets to banter a bit, walk around a room slower than everyone else (and therefore attract our attention), and offer those bedroom eyes to good folks and bad ones alike. He’s got a natural charm that comes not from a red hot place but a cool one.
Jane Russell is gorgeous, of course. However, she also excels at delivering a kind of snide, snarky line that shuts down conversations immediately. Her natural face is not warm and welcoming, but standoffish. She’s one of those women who surveys a room and gets approached by eager love interests, but who can turn them away with a word, a sweep of the hand, or a glare. Here, she gets to play the wounded dove, showing some of her range. Of course, her legacy is forever connected to Howard Hughes who built her into a star, but she stayed that way not because of his efforts but because of her own talents. Sure, he might have quipped she possessed two talents that guys came to see. However, she can deliver a line with aplomb and glare like no one’s business.
Vincent Price pretty much steals the show. Apparently, Hughes had the ending of the film changed to beef up Price’s part. It’s important to recall that this film showed up while Price was most often known for the nice boy, more or less straight man parts. He would not appear in House of Wax and therefore change his career into horror superstar for another two years. His turn in noir films is often as a jilted lover, as he played in both Laura (1944) and Leave Her To Heaven (1945). Oh, he gets to scheme a bit, as the titular shyster of Sam Fuller’s The Baron of Arizona (1950), but he’s not yet the campy horror star he would eventually blossom into. Here, he gets to demonstrate his talent for comedy, which was apparently a surprise to Jane Russell, as well as his culinary skills—there’s a bit where he acts opposite a uncooked goose, which is charming as all hell. The finale of the film sees him go from playing a hammy actor to a little General Eisenhower, leading the Mexican police and some conscripted gentlemen into battle against a boatload of thugs. He wields Shakespeare like a foil. Such a wonderful, cheeky turn for his 34th appearance.
Raymond Burr is pretty much out of his depth here. He does a good job as the heavy, but he is absent most of the time, and when he shows up he gets some godawful dialogue about fighting square or fighting dirty. He brandishes a gun believably, he snarls like a thug believably, and he’s pretty good as the gangster boss, but he feels like a relic by the time he enters the piece. The movie has moved on to becomes something different than the plot his character kicked into motion, and Nick Ferraro is still playing to those old expectations. Kind of peculiar, but Burr does a good job with the material he has.
His Kind of Woman is perhaps less gloomy than many other noir pictures, but it remains an entertaining feature nevertheless, if only for its impish glee. What kind of movie is it? Well, it draws from several genre pools but really belongs to none of them exclusively, and that is part of its charm.
#
His Kind of Woman is available in DVD and streaming editions. I caught it over on the Criterion Channel a couple of times, once in a Jane Russell trio and then again as part of a Robert Mitchum retrospective. If they do a curated Vincent Price program, I’m sure it’ll appear there, as well.
Next week, we continue our monthlong look at some of Robert Mitchum’s overlooked flicks with his turn as a destroyer captain in The Enemy Below. That film is available in DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming editions.
Writing for “No Such Thing As Easy Money: His Kind of Woman” is copyright © 2021 by Daniel R. Robichaud.
Disclosure: Considering Stories is a member of the Amazon Associates. Under this program, qualifying purchases made using the Amazon.com product links above can result in the Considering Stories site receiving a percentage of the purchase price. This payment is made at no additional cost to the customer.
consideringstories 