They Won't Believe Me (1947)

Film: They Won't Believe Me (1947)

Stars: Susan Hayward, Robert Young, Jane Greer, Rita Johnson

Director: Irving Pichel

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Robert Young: click here to learn more about Mr. Young (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we've mentioned a couple of times this month, Robert Young never became an iconic star despite decades of leading roles in the movies.  However, in the late 1940's he become something of a more interesting actor.  After his contract with MGM expired, Young turned into a freelance artist, and during this time frame he made arguably his best run of movies, including The Enchanted Cottage and Crossfire, both of which are movies that standup to modern scrutiny (you'll see if you click over to the reviews that I was a fan).  One of the movies during this period that he made was They Won't Believe Me, a gritty noir film from the era which had Young, atypical from his MGM days, playing a louse who regularly cheats on his wife.  Young would later say on The Dick Cavett Show that this was the one film where he got to play a "nasty character" and it resulted in a box office flop.  However, I'm a sucker for film noir (if you've read this blog a while you know it's my favorite genre), and was curious to see if Young, a rather limited actor, was better-suited for playing closer to the devil.

(Spoilers Ahead) Despite Hayward getting top-billing, this movie is very much Young's movie, with him playing Larry Ballentine, a mid-level employee at a brokerage firm who is able to enjoy a swanky lifestyle through his marriage to his wealthy wife Greta (Johnson).  Larry has regular affairs with Janice (Greer), whom he's been lying to about the state of his marriage in order to sleep with her.  When he tries to break things off with Greta (and run away with Janice), Greta essentially bribes him with a share in a high-scale brokerage firm, and he dumps Janice.  Once at the brokerage, he starts up an affair with a self-admitted gold-digger named Verna (Hayward), who is initially interested in him for his wife's money, but eventually falls in love with him.  Even after Greta once again tries to bribe Larry, it doesn't work, and he runs off with Verna, but before they can be married, they get into a car accident, killing Verna...whom the authorities assume is Greta.  Larry thinks he can take advantage of this situation by killing Greta when he gets home & disposing of her body, but when he gets there he finds that she's committed suicide.  As a result, he's gotten away with it-the money, and now he can pursue Janice once again, but it doesn't work.  When Greta's body is found, they assume he killed her, and while the jury gives a plea of "Not Guilty" (this entire story is told through flashback from the defense attorney's closing argument), Larry jumps out the window to his death before he can hear the verdict, already guilty of unforgivable crimes in his mind.

This, as I stated above, is a very atypical role for Young, who regularly played lighthearted romantic comedy roles during his MGM years, and even in movies like Crossfire and The Enchanted Cottage (both of which are heavier than his MGM fare) he's still a hero.  Young, though, given the opportunity to stretch his acting muscles, works really well here & this is easily the best I've seen him in a part.  His Larry is a cruel, callous man, and it juxtaposes well with Young's upstanding, upper-crust appearance & his longtime history as the good guy (even when he doesn't get the girl).  His rakish work here is admirable, and honestly I wish he'd been afforded more time to play parts like this.

Normally I'd be more gravitated toward his costars (film noirs are measured largely by how well the femme fatales show up, and here we have three of them), but somehow Young is best in show, even if Hayward comes close.  Hayward, another actor I don't always love, gives one of her best performances in this, her money-hungry beauty keeping the audience guessing as to her true motives (and true feelings about Larry) throughout the film's entire first half.  Greer & Johnson aren't quite as good as they could've been, a pity in particular for Greer, who was giving the greatest performance of her career in a different 1947 noir, Out of the Past.  But overall, this is excellent, and thankfully gave us a Young performance for me to finally champion.  Next week, we're going to conclude our month devoted to the actor with his final film role, in a movie that would serve as a blueprint for a picture that would later change the entire industry of Hollywood.