From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Three’s A Crowd- Ida Lupino’s Road House-A Film Review

 

 

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film noir Road House.

DVD Review

Road House, starring Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Richard Widmark, 20^th Century Fox, 1948

It’s always about a dame, a noir dame, in the end. Or dough. But here it is strictly about the dame. A dame who has the boys running their laps even though she plays it straight, well, as straight as a noir woman can, and as far as a noir guy will let her, okay. Really though it is about three being a crowd if you want to know. The dame in this case being a very versatile, saucy and salty Lily (played by Ida Lupino, last seen here as hard-bitten serving them off the sleeve Marie making tough old gangster old Roy Earle rest easy in High Sierra) .That’s one. The two and three being two bosom buddies, well almost, Jefty (played by Richard Widmark) the owner of the road house of the title and Pete (played by Cornel Wilde) who manages the place while rich boy (daddy left him the place) Jefty plays the girl field. This pair get twisted up by number one, that nifty dame, whom Jefty found playing for quarters at the piano in some dump, some Chicago dump, and convinced her to go west for real dough and some fresh air. And that little financial decision, wink, wink, love affair proposal is what crowds up the field.        

See, Chicago-home grown Lily has all the answers, or is close, so when Jefty offers her dough and a contract she is westward bound. Under her own terms though. Or so she thinks. There at the old road house she tangles first to keep Jefty out of her bed and then to get Pete in there. So the pitter-patter between Lily and Pete before they catch the downy billows is pure film noir and pretty snappy. Along the way Lily displays talent for singing like a purebred (if low-key) torch singer bringing in the customers, as a swimmer, and, ah, as one who can bowl a string or two if she is pressed (a little quirky aside to the road house is the bowling alley but it figures out in Podunk if not in the big city).        

Oh, I forgot to tell you. Jefty has a little problem too.  As a spoiled rich boy he doesn’t know how to take no for an answer, especially when he finds out the girl he intends to marry, Lily, is, well, smitten, smitten bad, by Pete and they are going to be married. Jefty thereafter turns into just another garden variety American Psycho (and Widmark’s patented facial contours shot up-close add to the effect of his rage as they did in his Oscar-winning performance as gunsel Tommy Udo in Kiss Of Death) as he plots to frame his old buddy Pete. Frame him big time, and hang him high as they say.  But in the end no way can things go Jefty’s way, not when love is a-blooming  and so he has to take the big fall leaving just two, and no crowd, to walk away from the carnage to a new life in that little white picket fence, white house included, the pair yearns for to consummate their love. Sorry Jefty.