Slightly Scarlet (1956)

Film: Slightly Scarlet (1956)
Stars: John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, Arlene Dahl, Kent Taylor, Ted de Corsia
Director: Allan Dwan
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Rhonda Fleming-click here to learn more about Ms. Fleming (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

In the 1950's, there were essentially three women who could claim the title of "Queen of Technicolor" as the brief romance with that particular color motion process hit its heyday during that decade (despite being a part of cinema for some twenty years prior).  These three women claimed that by virtue of their red hair, and despite being major stars, none of them were nominated for Academy Awards.  Maureen O'Hara was one, but as I've seen most of O'Hara's chief work (thanks to having a mother and grandfather who were both fans of hers), so she wasn't part of this series.  Rhonda Fleming, one of the holders of this title, was another, but there was a third I toyed with adding to this series, potentially as a replacement for Fleming: Arlene Dahl.  Like Fleming, Dahl was a spellbinding redhead who was briefly a leading woman in the 1950's, noted more for her beauty and dazzling hair color than for her acting ability.  Both women were tabloid fixtures, going through husbands at a speed that Zsa Zsa Gabor would envy (Dahl is also from my home state of Minnesota), and both are still alive as of this publication.  This film, where the two sometime rivals teamed up, felt like a way to acknowledge Dahl in this series, while also of course continuing our look at the woman I chose to be our star of the month, Rhonda Fleming.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on two sisters June (Fleming) and Dorothy (Dahl), the former a good girl who works as a secretary for a mayoral candidate (Taylor) who is hopelessly in love with her (though the movie makes a concerted point to show that they haven't had sex yet) while the latter is a horny kleptomaniac.  The two both become involved with Ben Grace (Payne) a seemingly honorable man who makes his money on the wrong side of the law, working for a crime boss named Caspar (de Corsia) whom he runs out of town after the reforming candidate gets elected.  The problem is both that he continues to profit from Caspar's syndicate, and that both June & Dorothy are falling for him.  Dorothy gets herself into trouble with the law again, stealing a pearl necklace, but June uses the new mayor's connections to get her out, causing a friction in their relationship.  The movie ends with a shootout, as Dorothy has sex with Caspar, who then threatens to kill her sister (they've had a fight where they admitted their jealousies and frustrations with each other), and weirdly it's Ben, not Dorothy, who tries to save June, and in the process he's shot.  The film ends with us not knowing Ben's fate, and with June abandoning the mayor and her sister to be with him.

Slightly Scarlet is an unusual film right out the gate because it is clearly intended to be a film noir, but it's the rare one that's shot not just in color, but a really sophisticated Technicolor.  Legendary cinematographer John Alton (who won an Oscar for An American in Paris) plays with not only the beauty of his two leading ladies, but also with shadow, costume, and the elaborate set designs to create a really remarkable picture.  The oranges and pinks pop in your face, and I don't know that I've seen Fleming ever look so ravishing, with the shadow work highlighting her expressive face.  This is almost entirely the reason that this movie is remembered today, as otherwise it's a bit of a silly affair.  Jean-Luc Godard was a fan of the picture, proclaiming it one of the best films of 1956, but I feel like this is him indulging more in Alton's cinematography than trying to rescue a genre picture.  John Payne is a bit underwhelming in the lead, and the script is disjointed & usually more fun if you take the film as camp rather than a more grounded melodrama.

The two leading ladies achieve differing results.  The main reason that I picked Fleming as one of the 12 Stars of the Month this year (rather than someone like Dahl), was that she showed such promise in supporting parts, but largely dismissed her work as a leading woman, and critics did too.  There are no major scholarly articles about either of these women, but Fleming was more famous and worked with better directors so I figured she'd be the more interesting of the two to investigate.  I was right.  While she doesn't get as juicy of a part, she finds things to say about June that the script doesn't.  There's a pain in her eyes when she looks at the sister she has versus the one she knows she deserves, and you understand the betrayal of her sister better as the movie wears on.  Fleming was so good in short performances like Spellbound and Out of the Past, but she's also the best part of Slightly Scarlet, bringing a restrained glamour to June, someone who clearly never had to work for much in her life (men are going to hand it to her), but also grounded her decisions in a morality that feels innate, and not just a plot device.

Dahl, on the other hand, is kind of terrible, and only frequently in a fun way.  She plays Dorothy as an over-the-top vixen, unable to really contain herself, and her only really good acting opposite of Fleming in their big fight scene.  Dahl's career petered out almost completely after this, as she'd soon be suing Columbia for how she was depicted in 1956's Wicked as They Come (she'd have a second career act as a beauty guru years later), and I realized I'd only seen her in one other movie, 1964's Kisses for My President, where she was also laughably awful.  Dahl later bemoaned her career, but it's hard to blame Slightly Scarlet on a bad script alone-she's not adding anything of value to this movie other than glamour, and since she gets the most interesting character, it's hard to not fault her a bit for where the movie fails.  We'll continue on with Fleming next week, but I do want to acknowledge in the comments-if you have a favorite performance of Arlene Dahl's that could save my opinion of her, I'm all ears.