San Francisco socialite Helen Brent has established residence in Reno, Nevada to obtain a divorce decree and is lodging in a boarding house owned by the feisty Mrs. Kraft. Helen meets Laury Palmer, a next-door neighbor, and Mrs. Kraft's best friend, who confides that she has accepted a date with a man named Danny to incite jealousy in her new beau, Sam Wilde.
Sam sees them together that evening. Later, he enters Laury's house and confronts Danny. He bludgeons Danny to death and then kills Laury.
Helen discovers the bodies and flees to San Francisco, but does not contact the police. She meets Sam and is attracted to his self-assurance. Neither knows the other's part in the events. Back in Reno, Mrs. Kraft hires private detective Albert Arnett to find Laury's killer.
Several days later, Sam arrives unexpectedly at the mansion where Helen is living. It is owned by Georgia Staples, Helen's wealthy foster sister and the heir to her father's newspaper. Georgia finds Sam attractive, and Sam tells his friend Marty Waterman that he will marry Georgia for her money and the opportunity for higher social standing. Helen is distraught at their wedding.
Helen tells Sam that she loves her sister but hates her for her money, and then Sam kisses her. Marty has travelled to San Francisco for the wedding, and detective Arnett has tailed him there. After he interrogates the staff, Helen reveals information about Sam's activities.
Georgia and Sam fight over his demand to run the newspaper, as she knows that he has no relevant experience. However, he wants the job so that he can manipulate people. He says that Helen understands this because "your roots are down here where mine are" and that they are soulmates. After admitting to Helen that he has not married Georgia for love and, claiming that she has a similar relationship with her fiancé Fred Grover, Sam passionately kisses Helen.
After overhearing a call to Helen from Reno, Sam believes that she is plotting against him, but Helen secretly bribes Arnett to ignore Sam's role in the murders. After Mrs. Kraft travels to San Francisco to meet with Arnett, Marty visits her. He then visits and chats with Helen, but Sam becomes jealous after seeing him leaving her room. Marty leads Mrs Kraft to the dunes on the outskirts of town, but just before he can stab her, Sam appears and grabs hold of Marty while Mrs Kraft runs to safety. Sam has a knife and threatens Marty, ignoring the fact that Marty was there to kill Mrs Kraft only in order to protect Sam. Marty also assures Sam that he had been talking to Helen for the same reason, but Dan stabs him anyway. As he dies, Marty tells him "You're crazy Sam."
The police interrogate the household about Marty's murder, and Helen reluctantly provides an alibi for Sam. Helen meets with Mrs. Kraft, who now knows that Sam killed Laury, and threatens her life if she informs the police. A terrified Mrs. Kraft realizes that she must abandon the search for Laury's killer but spits on Helen as she departs.
Helen meets Sam and informs him that she will extract the money to pay Arnett from Fred. However, Fred cancels their engagement, accusing Helen of having lost her heart, and she panics. When Helen cannot pay Arnett, he tells her that the police will soon arrive for Sam. She reveals Sam's murders to Georgia, who refuses to believe her and realizes that Helen did not tell the truth about Sam until she had lost Fred. Georgia angrily accuses Helen of only loving her for her money. To demonstrate that Sam does not love Georgia, Helen kisses him as he enters the room, and he enthusiastically responds. Helen exclaims to Sam that Georgia must be eliminated for them to be happy. The police arrive, and Georgia reveals that it was Helen who called them. Sam shoots Helen just before he is shot and killed by the police.
The next day, Arnett reads a newspaper headline announcing that Helen was killed by Sam.
Preproduction for the film began in early February 1945, more than two years before its release. RKO hired author Steve Fisher to write a screenplay based on James Gunn's 1943 novel Deadlier Than the Male.[2][3] By April the studio had replaced Fisher and enlisted screenwriters Eve Greene and Richard Macaulay to compose the script as a team and to manage it through production.[4][5]
Casting began in August 1945 and Lawrence Tierney was RKO's first choice following his powerful performance in Dillinger, released four months earlier.[6] Although RKO wanted Tallulah Bankhead for the role of Helen Brent, she was unavailable. In January 1946, the part went to Claire Trevor, whose work in the previous year's Murder, My Sweet had impressed studio executives.[7] The working title of the project was still Deadlier Than the Male, which appeared in a series of official release charts.[8] RKO did not officially change the title to Born to Kill for domestic release until December 1946.
Filming began on May 6, 1946, with exterior scenes shot first on location at El Segundo Beach[9] and later in San Francisco. As early as July, it was reported that the film was ready to be scheduled for release.[10] These notices proved premature because the studio experienced delays in arriving at a satisfactory final cut. In October 1946, RKO announced that scheduled November 7 previews at a national trade show and at exchange centers were being postponed.[11] A general release date of November 10, 1946 was postponed as well.[12]
Postproduction problems persisted until the final weeks before the film's distribution to theaters.[13]
Themes
Born to Kill is a rare film noir in that it is shown through a woman's eyes. This female subjectivity enables a more nuanced view of the femme fatale, a central motif in film noir, rather than that which is typical of the genre. Although the archetypical film noir femme fatale's sexuality is often merely a tool to manipulate men for material gain, Helen is a more complicated figure. She is drawn to Sam's brutality although she is also interested in Fred's money. Instead of leading the male protagonist into darkness and ruin, she is compromised by Sam.[14]
On the day before the film's official release, Tierney made headlines for his involvement in a drunken brawl and for violating probation related to an earlier conviction for public drunkenness.[15][16] Tierney's frequent off-screen troubles also attracted greater scrutiny of his films by state review boards and local censors, some of which sought to ban Born to Kill in their communities.
Censors in places such as Ohio, Chicago and Memphis rejected the film.[17][18][19] The National Legion of Decency considered the film objectionable for its acceptance of divorce but did not condemn the film outright.[20]
Although some industry publications predicted box-office success for the film,[21][22] RKO production head Dore Schary publicly distanced the studio from the film just days after its release. Schary vowed to lessen the "arbitrary use of violence" in RKO films[23] and pledged that the studio would no longer produce "gangster pictures" such as Born to Kill.[24][25] RKO reported a net loss of $243,000 after the film's initial run.[21][22]
The furor regarding Born to Kill and the same year's Shoot to Kill prompted the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to revise its Production Code to strengthen restrictions relating to crime films.[26][27] At a meeting of its board of directors on December 3, 1947, the MPAA voted to bar 14 "'objectionable and unsuitable'" films released between 1928 and 1947 from theatrical reissue, including Born to Kill.[26][28] The MPAA also approved the immediate deletion from its official title registry of more than two dozen films with titles deemed "salacious or indecent."[26]
In 1948, 12-year-old Howard Lang was convicted for using a switchblade and a piece of concrete to kill a seven-year-old boy outside Chicago the previous year.[29] Lang's lawyers argued that he had watched Born to Kill less than three weeks prior to the homicide[30] and that the film's violence triggered a form of temporary insanity.[31] The Illinois Supreme Court overturned Lang's conviction, finding that he was too young to understand his actions.[32] He was then acquitted following a retrial, but the judge recommended laws to censor violent films and hold theater managers liable for exhibiting them.[33]
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther called the film "a smeary tabloid fable" and "an hour and a half of ostentatious vice," concluding: "Surely, discriminating people are not likely to be attracted to this film. But it is precisely because it is designed to pander to the lower levels of taste that it is reprehensible."[34]
As unsavory and untalented an exhibition of deliberate sensation-pandering as ever sullied a movie screen. RKO made it, the Johnson office [in Hollywood] sanctioned it, the Palace is now playing it. It muddles them all with dishonor...Were Born to Kill merely a third rate picture hoping nevertheless to entertain, it could be passed by with a sigh. But it is third rate aiming—and with a blunderbuss—to shock, and so it provokes shudders, and not of fear.[35]
Irving Kaplan of Motion Picture Daily found "weaknesses in several departments" of "the heavy-handed melodrama"[21] although he focused his attention on the performances of the "tough and ruthless" Tierney and the "captivating and calculating" Trevor:
The picture itself is one of those affairs which winds up with five corpses ... Portrayals generally betray a tendency toward over-acting and grotesque emphasis, perhaps to achieve over-all melodrama, while the dialogue, in spots, appears forced and weighted with flourishes.[21]
The Film Daily cautioned theater owners about the "homicidal drama," describing it as "a sexy, suggestive yarn of crime with punishment, strictly for the adult trade."[36] William R. Weaver of the Motion Picture Herald[37] found the film's overall look "painstaking and polished" and Robert Wise's direction successful in maintaining "a steady pace"[37] but concluded: "Produced for melodrama fans, [the film] contains enough killing for anybody, but furnishes less than adequate reasons for it."[37]
Some modern-day film critics view Born to Kill in a positive light. Author Michael Keaney describes the film as compelling despite its "hard-to-swallow plot,"[38] stating: "This one is all Tierney. He's outstanding as one of the most violently disturbed psychos in all of film noir, giving even Robert Ryan in Crossfire a run for his money."[38]
Reviewing the film in 2006 for Slant Magazine, critic Fernando F. Croce focused on Wise:
The usually meek Robert Wise trades his chameleonic tastefulness for full-on, jazzy misanthropy in this nasty melodrama ... Wise swims in the genre's amorality, scoring a kitchen brawl to big-band radio tunes, terrorizing a soused matron at a nocturnal beach skirmish, and leaving the last word to Walter Slezak's jovially corrupt detective.[39]
Writing for Film Monthly in 2009, Robert Weston also praised Wise's direction:
This was the first and the nastiest of the noirs directed by Robert Wise ... Wise came to the genre with a background in the Val Lewton horror team and the expressionistic films of Orson Welles, so he was the right tool for the job when it came to film noir ... As the title suggests, Born to Kill is a film about the grimmest corners of the human condition, the wicked place where sex, corruption and violence join hands and rumba round in darkness.[40]
Director Guillermo del Toro has credited Born to Kill as a primary influence on his 2021 film Nightmare Alley, noting that "a couple of the murders in the movie are shocking, even in 2022."[41]
Crossfire is a 1947 American film noir drama film starring Robert Young, Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan which deals with the theme of antisemitism, as did that year's Academy Award for Best Picture winner, Gentleman's Agreement. The film was directed by Edward Dmytryk and the screenplay was written by John Paxton, based on the 1945 novel The Brick Foxhole by screenwriter and director Richard Brooks. The film's supporting cast features Gloria Grahame and Sam Levene. The picture received five Oscar nominations, including Ryan for Best Supporting Actor and Gloria Grahame for Best Supporting Actress. It was the first B movie to receive a Best Picture nomination.
The Lost Weekend is a 1945 American drama film noir directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman. It was based on Charles R. Jackson's 1944 novel about an alcoholic writer. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It also shared the Grand Prix at the first Cannes Film Festival, making it one of only three films—the other two being Marty (1955) and Parasite (2019)—to win both the Academy Award for Best Picture and the highest award at Cannes.
Robert Earl Wise was an American filmmaker. He won the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for his musical films West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). He was also nominated for Best Film Editing for Citizen Kane (1941) and directed and produced The Sand Pebbles (1966), which was nominated for Best Picture.
Gene Eliza Tierney was an American film and stage actress. Acclaimed for her great beauty, she became established as a leading lady. She was best known for her portrayal of the title character in the film Laura (1944), and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Ellen Berent Harland in Leave Her to Heaven (1945).
Duel in the Sun is a 1946 American epic psychological Western film directed by King Vidor, produced and written by David O. Selznick, and starring Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Gregory Peck, Lillian Gish, Walter Huston, and Lionel Barrymore. Based on the 1944 novel of the same name by Niven Busch, it follows a young orphaned Mestiza woman who experiences prejudice and forbidden love, while residing with her white relatives on a large Texas ranch.
Claire Trevor was an American actress. She appeared in 65 feature films from 1933 to 1982, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Key Largo (1948), and received nominations for her roles in The High and the Mighty (1954) and Dead End (1937). Trevor received top billing, ahead of John Wayne, for Stagecoach (1939).
Murder, My Sweet is a 1944 American film noir, directed by Edward Dmytryk and starring Dick Powell, Claire Trevor and Anne Shirley. The film is based on Raymond Chandler's 1940 novel Farewell, My Lovely. It was the first film to feature Chandler's primary character, the hard-boiled private detective Philip Marlowe.
Ann Blyth is an American retired actress and singer. She began her career in radio as a child before transitioning to Broadway, where she appeared in Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine (1941–42). Blyth signed with Universal Studios in the 1940s and made her film debut in Chip Off the Old Block (1944), followed by a series of musical comedies. Her breakout role came in Mildred Pierce (1945), where she played the scheming Veda Pierce, earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Lawrence James Tierney was an American film and television actor who is best known for his many screen portrayals of mobsters and "tough-guys" in a career that spanned over fifty years. His roles mirrored his own frequent brushes with the law. In 2005, film critic David Kehr of The New York Times described "the hulking Tierney" as "not so much an actor as a frightening force of nature".
The Spiral Staircase is a 1946 American psychological horror film directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Dorothy McGuire, George Brent, and Ethel Barrymore. Set over the course of one evening, the film follows a mute young woman in an early-20th century Vermont town who is stalked and terrorized in a rural mansion by a serial killer targeting women with disabilities. Kent Smith, Rhonda Fleming, Gordon Oliver and Elsa Lanchester appear in supporting roles. It was adapted for the screen by Mel Dinelli from the novel Some Must Watch (1933) by Ethel Lina White.
The Narrow Margin is a 1952 American film noir starring Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor. Directed by Richard Fleischer, the RKO picture was written by Earl Felton, based on an unpublished story written by Martin Goldsmith and Jack Leonard. The screenplay by Earl Felton was nominated for an Academy Award.
Deadline at Dawn is a 1946 American film noir, the only film directed by stage director Harold Clurman. It was written by Clifford Odets and based on a novel of the same name by Cornell Woolrich. The RKO Pictures film release was the only cinematic collaboration between Clurman and his former Group Theatre associate, screenwriter Odets. The director of photography was RKO regular Nicholas Musuraca. The musical score was by German refugee composer Hanns Eisler.
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is a 1946 American noir tragedy film directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin and Lizabeth Scott. Kirk Douglas appears in his film debut. It follows a man who is reunited with his childhood friend and her husband; both the childhood friend and her husband believe that the man knows the truth about the mysterious death of the woman's wealthy aunt years prior. The screenplay was written by Robert Rossen, adapted from the short story "Love Lies Bleeding" by playwright John Patrick.
The Window is a 1949 American black-and-white film noir, based on the short story "The Boy Cried Murder" by Cornell Woolrich, about a lying boy who witnesses a killing but is not believed. The film, a critical success that was shot on location in New York City, was produced by Frederic Ullman Jr. for $210,000 but earned much more, making it a box-office hit for RKO Pictures. The film was directed by Ted Tetzlaff, who worked as a cinematographer on over 100 films, including another successful suspense film, Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (1946). For his performances in this film and in So Dear to My Heart, Bobby Driscoll was presented with a miniature Oscar statuette as the outstanding juvenile actor of 1949 at the 1950 Academy Awards ceremony.
Undercurrent is a 1946 American film noir drama directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Katharine Hepburn, Robert Taylor, and Robert Mitchum. The screenplay was written by Edward Chodorov, based on the story "You Were There'" by Thelma Strabel, and allegedly contained uncredited contributions from Marguerite Roberts.
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands is a 1948 American noir-thriller film directed by Norman Foster. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Gerald Butler, it stars Joan Fontaine, Burt Lancaster, and Robert Newton. The film faced minor opposition from fundamentalist groups in the United States and the Commonwealth, with regard to its gory title. In some markets, the film was released under the alternate titles The Unafraid or Blood on My Hands.
Katherine Lester DeMille was a Canadian-born American actress who played 25 credited film roles from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s.
Myrna Dell was an American actress, model, and writer who appeared in numerous motion pictures and television programs over four decades. A Hollywood glamour girl in the early part of her career, she is best known today for her work in B-pictures, particularly film noir thrillers and Westerns.
William F. Rose was an American illustrator and film poster artist active in the 1930s and 1940s. He is recognized as one of the most distinctive poster artists of the Classical Hollywood era, a time when most film posters featured painted illustrations rather than photography. Rose painted dozens of poster illustrations for RKO Radio Pictures and other studios. As one of the leading designers in RKO's art department, he helped to define the studio's bold visual aesthetic. Although he was prolific, only a fraction of his poster designs have been individually attributed to him. Most of his output remains unidentified. His artwork is prized by collectors, and original prints of his posters have fetched high prices at auction.
Deadlier Than the Male is a 1942 crime novel by the American writer James Gunn. It was the only published novel of Gunn, better known as a screenwriter. While in Reno to gain her divorce Helen Brent discovers the bodies of two people murdered by Sam Wild. A few days later Wild meets and swiftly marries her wealthy sister Georgia.
↑ "Deadlier Than the Male", Boxoffice Barometer (a supplement published by Boxoffice), November 1946, p. 196. Internet Archive. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
↑ "Riding Herd on the Studio News Range", The Film Daily, August 29, 1945, p. 8. Internet Archive. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
↑ "RKO-RADIO", The Film Bulletin, October 15, 1945, p. 26. I.A. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
↑ "Tierney Fights Brother; Gets 90 Days In Jail", Los Angeles Times, May 2, 1947, p. 2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers, Ann Arbor, Michigan; subscription access through the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library.
↑ "'Dillinger' Tierney In Trouble Again", The Atlanta Constitution, May 2, 1947, p. 1. ProQuest.
↑ "'Born to Kill' Joins Memphis Banned Pix", The Film Daily, April 25, 1947, pp. 1, 3. Internet Archive; "Memphis Bans Another Film", The New York Times, April 25, 1947, p. 29. ProQuest.
1 2 Jewell, Richard B. (2016) Slow Fade to Black: The Decline of RKO Radio Pictures, Berkeley, California: University of California Press. ISBN9780520289673
↑ "Good Story Material Scarce", Motion Picture Herald, May 10, 1947, p. 19. Internet Archive. Retrieved September 13, 2020.
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