Plot Summary
A successful American opera singer, John Howard Sharp, is down-and-out in Tupinamba, Mexico. Formerly a fine baritone well-known in Europe, he inexplicably loses his formerly powerful voice. At a café he encounters the attractive Indio prostitute, Juana Montes. Sharp is attracted to her and wins her from a local bullfighter, Triesca. She takes Sharp to a brothel. When he sings excerpts from Bizet's Carmen , Juana's interest in him cools: she detects something unmanly in his performance. Sharp and Juana part ways, and he continues his penurious existence.
Months later Juana wins 500 pesos and a new Ford roadster in a lottery. She plans to open a cafe-bordello in Acapulco catering to American tourists under the auspices of a local politico-military kingpin. She enlists Sharp to be bartender, bouncer and bookkeeper for the establishment, in part because she suspects that he is sexually ambivalent and will not molest the female employees.
En route to Acapulco in the roadster, they make a detour over remote country roads to pick up food supplies from Juana's parents. As night falls, a storm breaks over the couple and the vehicle becomes trapped by flood waters. They discover a remote, unoccupied Catholic church, and Sharp crashes the vehicle through its locked double doors to find shelter from the rain. He parks the car in front of the altar. Soaking wet, Sharp exchanges his clothing for a priest's cassock and pilfers candles from the Sacristy for utility lighting. Juana is appalled and paralyzed at the sacrilege. Sharp makes a charcoal fire on the floor tiles of the vestry and prepares a meal from their provisions. Juana joins him and they become intoxicated on sacramental wine. Superstitious, she becomes hysterical at hearing peals of thunder. Sharp attempts to calm her by playing the organ and singing the Nona Nobis as the storm rages. Juana disparages his performance as that of a celibate monk. Juana disrobes and makes an "Aztec" offering before the altar. Sharp rapes her on the altar.
Unable to depart due to the flooding, they spend a second day at the church. Juana catches an iguana and ritualistically, they prepare it for a meal. The iguana meat acts as an aphrodisiac and they make love. Sharp sings and Juana assures him that he has been restored to his former vocal prowess. Sharp falls in love with Juana.
They arrive in Acapulco and register at a seedy hotel. Sharp is determined to return to the United States to resume his operatic career. He arranges passage for himself and Juana on the steamer Port of Cobh, operated by the irascible Irishman Captain Conners. At the hotel, the Mexican kingpin, surrounded by his federal goons, demands sexual favors from Juana. Sharp intercedes and knocks the politico unconscious. The couple flee for their lives in the roadster. Conners intercepts the fugitives and clandestinely escorts them to the Port of Cobh and they embark for San Pedro, California. An aficionado of 19th Century symphonic forms, the captain welcomes Sharp's demonstration of his operatic skills. During the voyage, they hotly dispute the relative merits of the great classical composers. Upon arrival in San Pedro, Conners cunningly secrets the undocumented Juana past immigration officials. He pledges to assist the couple in the event of a crisis.
Sharp begins to explore the market for opera singers in Hollywood. Known primarily in European operatic circles, agents show little interest in him. He resorts to singing and playing guitar in nightclubs at $7.50 a night and at various venues for tips. Desperately low on money, Sharp and Juana attend an evening performance of Carmen at the Hollywood Bowl. During the first act, a singer is suddenly pulled from the stage. Though undetected by the audience, Sharp instantly recognizes that the baritone has become incapacitated. Familiar with the part, Sharp offers to fill in. The conductor, though skeptical, allows him to sing. Sharp's performance is a grand success.
A film studio executive immediately signs him to a lucrative contract to sing in motion pictures. His debut film, a B-Western, is a critical and box office success. The studio is outraged when Sharp insists on $50,000 for his next feature, but they accept the terms on a three-picture contract.
His movie career ascendant, Sharp introduces Juana to Hollywood society at co-star Elsa Chadwick's celebrity party. Juana, dressed in florid Indio garments, is deemed gauche by the hostess and shunned by the female guests. Furious, Sharp declines to sing and prepares to leave with Juana. Chadwick warns him to never again to bring his "cheap Mexican tart." Sharp slaps the actress in the face and leaves. Juana is perplexed, but unfazed by her rejection.
Deeply disillusioned with Hollywood. Sharp is cheered when his New York agent sends a telegram: the Metropolitan Opera wishes to put him under contract. After a protracted struggle with his agent and the studio executive Rex Gold, both of whom disparage opera, Sharp is emphatically denied a temporary release to perform with the Metropolitan. Defying them, he bolts from Hollywood and travels to New York to sing. Sharp performs in all the standard repertoire that season, to great acclaim.
The movie studio initiates litigation against Sharp for breach of contract. The Metropolitan's own attorney declines to defend Sharp for fear of exposing the company to lawsuits. Sharp is urged to comply with his Hollywood obligations, or cease singing with the company. The crisis is at an impasse when Sharp receives a phone call, a call which Juana, preternaturally, urges him not to answer; the caller is Winston Hawes.
Hawes is both a conductor of tremendous talent and a superb music teacher who had mentored the young Sharp in Paris. He is also an entrepreneur who regards music as a commodity to be exploited: "he made a whore out of it." Sharp had fallen under Hawes' spell as the price of developing his operatic skills long dash a spell that tempted Sharp to satisfy Hawes' desire for a sexual relationship. When Sharp realized that his dependency on Hawes had become a humiliating addiction, the quality of his voice deteriorated and he ceased to be a topnotch baritone. He escaped to Mexico, where opera companies were deemed less discriminating artistically. There he encountered Juana Montez and recovered his singing prowess under her influence.
Hawes is conducting opera in New York and informs Sharp that he has already booked him for a performance. When Sharp demurs due to his Hollywood obligations, Hawes insists he come immediately to his hotel suite to resolve the matter. Sharp is loath to comply with the domineering "Papa" Hawes, but Juana encourages him to go.
Hawes is a scion of a powerful banking family with large financial investments in Hollywood. Sharp suddenly suspects, and Hawes confesses, that he has been monitoring Sharp's activities in Mexico and personally engineered Sharp's movie career. Studio executive Rex Gold is Hawes' tool, used in an elaborate "sham" to maneuver Sharp into performing opera in New York – under Hawe's auspices. Sharp participates in a number of radio nationwide broadcasts that are heard by Captain Conners. He sends Sharp a radiogram to congratulate him and he sails to New York.
During an elaborately organized production of Damrosch's Mandalay conducted by Hawes, Sharp performs beautifully until a moment in an encore, in which he momentarily reverts to his "priest"-like voice. Juana, who is in the audience, detects the lapse. After the show she confronts Sharp on the nature of his relationship with Hawes, accusing them of being lovers. Shamed, Sharp confesses to Juana his former homosexual desires, and begs Juana to not abandon him. They make passionate love for two days, exorcising Hawes.
Hawes continues to pursue Sharp, taking a suite down the hall from the couple's hotel room. When introduced, Juana and Hawes preserve good manners, concealing their venomous hostility for one another. Hawes' persistent and unannounced visits to their apartment unnerves Sharp. Nevertheless, the couple accepts an invitation to his housewarming party. Juana arrives sporting an authentic bullfighter's cape. Most of the guests are cross-dressed for the jazz-themed gathering. Juana and Hawes engage in an elaborate and comic pantomime of a bullfight, Juana playing the toreador and Hawes playing the bull.
During the entertainment, Sharp is alerted by a bellboy that an immigration agent is on the premises to arrest Juana Montez. The bellboy offers to secretly get her out of the hotel. Sharp realizes that Hawes had tipped off the agent, and urges Juana to escape. She leaves the suite only to return with a genuine espada. Juana, Hawes and some drunken guests enact a mock bullfight and Juana impales Hawes with her sword, killing him and spitting on his bleeding body. Though horrified, Sharp secretly rejoices. The guests flee in panic and Juana disappears.
The police interrogate Sharp and consider framing him with violating the Mann Act. He pleads ignorance and is held briefly as a material witness, submits a bond and is released on bail. The police place Sharp under heavy surveillance hoping he will lead them to Juana. Captain Conners phones Sharp and they communicate on an untapped phone: Juana has located Conners and is safely in port aboard the Port of Cobh. Sharp cleverly evades the numerous agents who are tailing him. Reunited with Juana, she tells Sharp she must flee alone, but he insists on joining her. Conners cautions him that in his company she is "doomed." Sharp and Juana begin a life as fugitives from the law and they settle in Guatemala to live in exile. His image, widely seen on movie lobby cards, compels Sharp to make cosmetic changes to conceal his appearance. He studies Spanish so as not to speak English with Juana in public. Juana recognizes that she and Sharp are deteriorating together in isolation. Juana urges him emphatically to leave her. They draw apart and cease sleeping together.
Sharp struggles with his sexual identity and visits a brothel to reaffirm his heterosexuality. He is tormented by nightmares. Juana begins to work as a prostitute at the same brothel that Sharp frequents and taunts him with the fact. Sharp assaults her and she flees from their home. Hopelessly dependent upon Juana, Sharp pursues her in desperation. He finally discovers she has taken an airplane to Mexico City. Sharp follows, and spots her at a cafe in the company of Triesca, the bullfighter. Triesca mocks Sharp by imitating an opera singer in falsetto. Sharp retaliates with a powerful and moving rendition of "Cielito Lindo" directed toward Juana. The cafe patrons react with wild applause.
Unwittingly, Sharp's impressive performance instantly reveals his identity to the authorities. The Acapulco political-military kingpin appears, and vengefully guns down Juana. Sharp escapes punishment due to his celebrity status, but realizes he has been instrumental in the death of the woman he loves.
Sharp transports Juana's coffin to the rural church where he had fallen in love with her. Racked by guilt, Sharp declines the priest's request that he sing at the sacrament: "Never again" he declares. [5]
Mildred Pierce is a psychological drama by James M. Cain published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1941.
James Mallahan Cain was an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter. He is widely regarded as a progenitor of the hardboiled school of American crime fiction.
The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1934 crime novel by American writer James M. Cain. The novel was successful and notorious upon publication. It is considered one of the most outstanding crime novels of the 20th century. The novel's mix of sexuality and violence was startling in its time and caused it to be banned in Boston.
Serenade is a 1956 American musical drama film directed by Anthony Mann and starring tenor Mario Lanza, Joan Fontaine, Sara Montiel, and Vincent Price. Based on the 1937 novel Serenade by James M. Cain, the film was a Warner Bros. release, Lanza's fifth film, and his first on-screen appearance in four years.
Double Indemnity is a 1943 crime novel by American journalist-turned-novelist James M. Cain. It was first published in serial form in Liberty magazine in 1936 and later republished as one of "three long short tales" in the collection Three of a Kind.
“Pastorale” is a short story written by James M. Cain and published in 1927 by editor H. L. Mencken in The American Mercury. Written in the Ring Lardner style, the tale is told in a first-person narrative, delivered in the dialect of a resident of rural America. Both the point-of-view and the use of colloquial dialect for his protagonists, fully established in “Pastorale”, would be applied in many of Cain’s novels.
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Three of a Kind is a collection of three novellas by James M. Cain, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1943. Each originally appeared as serials in magazines during the 1930s. The collection includes Double Indemnity, first published in 1935 as a serial for Liberty magazine; Career in C Major, originally entitled "Two Can Sing" when it appeared in The American Magazine in 1938; and The Embezzler, appearing in Liberty as "Money and the Woman", also in 1938.
The Embezzler is a 1938 short novel by James M. Cain. The work first appeared as a serial in Liberty magazine in 1940 under the title Money and the Woman. In 1943, Alfred A. Knopf published the work as The Embezzler in a collection of novellas by Cain entitled Three of a Kind.
Love's Lovely Counterfeit is a hard-boiled short novel by James M. Cain published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1942. The story is set in a Midwestern town where rival gangsters struggle to maintain control of their criminal enterprises. The work is one of only three of Cain's novels told from the third-person point-of-view.
Past All Dishonor is a historical novel by James M. Cain published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1946. The story is set during the American Civil War concerning a tragic love affair between a Confederate spy and a mining-camp prostitute in California and Nevada. The novel, praised by many critics, was one of Cain's most profitable literary successes.
The Butterfly is a hard-boiled novel by author James M. Cain published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1947. The story is set in rural West Virginia in the late 1930s and concerns a mystery surrounding an apparent case of father and daughter incest.
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Sinful Woman is a detective novel by James M. Cain that appeared originally as a paperback in 1947 by Avon publishers. Sinful Woman was the most commercially successful of three paperbacks Cain wrote for Avon in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Galatea is a romance novel by James M. Cain published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1953. The story alludes to the mythological Galatea in which the sculptor Pygmalion falls in love with the ivory figure of a woman he has crafted. In Cain’s modernized version of the Greek legend, an overweight woman is transfigured through a program of weight reduction into a goddess-like beauty.
The Root of His Evil is a novel by James M. Cain published in paperback by Avon in 1951.
The Moth is a novel by James M. Cain published in 1948 by Alfred A. Knopf. The work is the last of Cain’s four novels to feature opera as a central element of the story; the others are Serenade (1937), Mildred Pierce (1941) and Career in C Major (1943) At over three-hundred pages, The Moth is Cain’s “most personal, most ambitious and longest book” in his oeuvre, attempting to convey a “broad, social landscape” of America in the 1930s.
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Jealous Woman is a mystery novel by James M. Cain published in 1950 by Avon.
