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Cause for Alarm!

by Glenn Erickson Feb 27, 2024

It’s a micro-scaled domestic noir: Loretta Young’s frantic housewife is tormented by a deranged husband, an invalid gone paranoid and determined to frame her for murder. Tay Garnett directs to spotlight Young’s increasing distress, with Barry Sullivan providing the psychotic menace. As a ‘woman alone’ picture it’s not bad — in Young’s frenzied state, even the neighborhood mailman seems to be against her. All she wanted was babies and a little garden!


Cause for Alarm!
Blu-ray
ClassicFlix
1951 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 74 min. / Street Date January 16, 2024 / Available from ClassicFlix / 19.99
Starring: Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan, Bruce Cowling, Margalo Gillmore, Irving Bacon, Richard Anderson, Don Haggerty, Art Baker, Brad Morrow, Georgia Backus, Robert Easton, Kathleen Freeman, Carl Switzer.
Cinematography: Joseph Ruttenberg
Art Directors: Cedric Gibbons, Arthur Lonergan
Film Editor: James E. Newcom
Original Music: André Previn
Written Screenplay by Mel Dinelli, Tom Lewis story by Lawrence B. Marcus
Produced by Tom Lewis
Directed by
Tay Garnett

We’re surprised to learn that several films produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer near the half-century mark lost their copyright, and fell into the pit of substandard presentation known as The Public Domain. The most prominent was the big musical Royal Wedding. Another odd one that fell through the cracks is a small-scale suspense thriller from 1951, Cause for Alarm!

What did MGM consider small-scale?  By 1950 the new medium of television was already eroding America’s movie-a-week habit, killing off the need for modest ‘B’ pictures. At RKO the eccentric Howard Hughes experimented with tiny productions with no stars, like the interesting The Tattooed Stranger, but even mid-range productions from Columbia and Universal were no longer special — a big star or an ‘important’ property or a novel subject was required to create box-office buzz. There were other MGM pictures that tried to earn points by being ‘modestly artistic,’ like David Bradley’s small-scale noir Talk about a Stranger. Plenty of filmmaking units were expected to fill theaters, with resources at the level of TV work. Directed by the respected Tay Garnett and led by the name star Loretta Young, Cause for Alarm! was a gamble, a roll of the dice hoping to score a surprise sleeper hit.

 

The story focuses on a woman under pressure, in a performance showcase similar to Barbara Stanwyck’s superb suspense noir Sorry, Wrong Number. The key screenwriter is Mel Dinelli, who scored with his adapted screenplay for The Spiral Staircase and proceeded to contribute to suspense items with woman (or a child) in danger: The Window,  The Reckless Moment,  Beware, My Lovely,  Jeopardy. The credited producer is Loretta Young’s husband Tom Lewis. Perhaps realizing that they’d made something more suitable for TV, Young and Lewis’ next stop was six successful years of The Loretta Young Show.

The handsomely directed Cause for Alarm! is one of those movies that could almost be a radio play — when the dialogue stops explaining what’s happening, Loretta Young’s voiceover narration takes over. Ellen Jones is nursing her husband George (Barry Sullivan), an invalid with a heart condition. The problem is that George is suffering from a delirium that convinces him that Ellen is carrying on an affair with his doctor (and old friend) Ranny Graham (Bruce Cowling). George insinuates Ellen’s infidelity while bullying her with increasingly irrational statements. He spies on her from his window, and then denies that he’s left the bed.

 

The real conflict comes when George tells Ellen that the letter she has just mailed for him is addressed to the District Attorney. In it he accuses her and Dr. Graham of plotting to murder him — he has arranged for the circumstantial evidence to make Ellen look guilty when he dies. He even threatens Ellen with a gun, to keep her from retrieving the letter from the mailman.

After a violent shock, Ellen finds herself in a horrible position — not having committed a crime yet continuing to leave evidence that makes her look guilty. In an increasing wave of panic, she tries to get back the letter she’s sent, first from the mailman (Irving Bacon) and then from another postal official.

The movie is practically a one-woman show. We stick with Ellen’s ordeal at all times. Early on she recalls how she met her husband during the war. Then a Navy doctor, Ranney Graham was pursuing Ellen but inadvertently introduced her to George, a dashing Air Corps pilot who swept her off her feet. George already had a dominating, take-charge personality. We have to guess the reasons why George is now mentally unbalanced, and intent on making Ellen and Ranney suffer. There is no indication that the medications he takes are responsible.

 

George accuses the innocent Ellen of being a scheming adulterer, when she’s clearly innocent, and emotionally defenseless. She’s passive, accommodating and disinclined to think bad of others. She gets along well with a little neighbor kid (Brad Morrow), even offering him cookies. But others abuse Ellen in small ways. The mailman Mr. Carston (Irving Bacon) uses her as a verbal punching bag for his petty complaints. A nosy neighbor (Georgia Backus) takes it upon herself to allow a visitor into Ellen’s house. The visitor, George’s Aunt Edwards (Margalo Gillmore), is an annoying busybody who browbeats Ellen further, and leaves in a huff. Even worse, the panicked Ellen does things that make her look exceedingly guilty — raising the suspcions of both a druggist and a notary public (Don Haggerty) who shows up unnanounced on the doorstep. Her talk with the postmaster is a disaster — she’s so flustered, anybody would know she’s hiding something.

Cause for Alarm! plays out like one of Cornell Woolrich’s trick scenarios, where a desperate hero is in some kind of death trap and can’t figure a way out. Ellen can’t accept help even when it’s offered by the concerned, sincere Dr. Grahame. Ellen is so rattled there’s no telling what she might do. In one scene she almost runs over a small boy on a tricycle. Actually, that scene is kind of scary — how did they film that near miss without putting the boy in potential danger?

 

But what about the ‘incriminating’ letter?  To us, the clever twist ending seems a variation on the famous unused finale to Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion, which also involves mailing a letter.    The annoying mailman and the careful postmaster guard that letter like it carried Atom secrets … which is how it should be. The U.S. Mail is sacred, you know. We’re big fans of the USPS here at CineSavant.

The show is a pretty impressive acting showcase. Ms. Young’s range isn’t unlimited but she rides a rising wave of anxiety and panic in fine form. We could believe that the movie would easily attract sponsors for her planned TV show. A lot of heavy breathing and chest-heaving accompanies Ellen’s rushing to and fro, fretting over her psycho hubby and trying to recoup that damn letter. We read that bigger stars were sought for the movie, but the competent players are well-scaled to what we see … more big names would completely unbalance this tiny tale.

Barely longer than a B-movie program filler, the show has an odd structure that again suggests that it might have begun as a radio show concept, like Sorry, Wrong Number. Visually the show is quite straightforward. An exception is the flashback to WW2. The transitions are bracketed not with wavy dissolves, but with cross-dissolves to bright reflections off water. An identical visual transition was riveting in Powell & Pressburger’s powerful Black Narcissus. Perhaps Tay Garnett or Loretta Young saw the effect and liked it.

 

The most unusual scene shows the pulp paperback influence. George smirks as he insinuates that Ellen and Ranney are carrying on an affair right under his nose. Then he torments her with a story from his past, in which he took a cruel revenge on a kid who displeased him. George’s sadistic mania tells us that he’ll make good on his threats to falsely incriminate Ellen.

Ellen is written and performed as wholesome and virtuous, perhaps too much so. She prays for George’s health. Her dream is having children and growing a garden. The unstated message could be, “I want to be a good 1950s TV housewife, but first I have to put this psychotic nighmare residue from the War behind me.” When she’s in an emotional state, Ellen becomes a blubbering fool. If Dr. Grahame indeed restarts the romance that George interrupted six years before, he’d better be aware that Ellen will be high-maintenance, emotionally.

Cause for Alarm’s exteriors were filmed in Beverly Hills, but not the more affluent area North of Santa Monica Blvd.. In one scene we see Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer and Robert Easton working on a hot rod, right at the curb.    I guess that’s still possible, but the medium-upscale homes we see are now big apartments or multi-million dollar dream houses. The film’s other notable actor sighting is Richard Anderson. He’s only in one tiny scene up front, but he gets the screen billing denied Switzer and Easton.

Much mention is made of the special permission for the kid actor Brad Morrow (The Vampire) to talk about TV star ‘Hopalong Cassidy.’ A TV-toy is shown as well — is it a form of product placement?  Ellen’s coddling of the little kid isn’t some screenwriter’s affectation. The women in 1950s working class (and military) neighborhoods were mostly housewives who stayed home. Some of them looked out for kids on the block. I remember being invited in for milk and cookies more than once, and nobody suspected anyone of anything weird.

 


 

ClassicFlix’s Blu-ray of Cause for Alarm! is a fine HD encoding. It comes complete with an MGM logo. The studio’s credits billboard composer André Previn, who apparently got started very young on studio work. The show is very small-scale, yet never looks like a rushed B-Movie.

An elaborate text card up front says that the film was sourced from a 35mm English dupe negative. It then scares us with the news that some shots were replacement footage, and that four missing minutes had to be replaced from 16mm. Watching the film, we weren’t bothered by the problem … I think I noticed some softness and a light scratch, and that’s it. The missing footage may align with earlier DVD disc releases, described as incomplete.

Keep your remote handy — on loading, ClassicFlix discs default to playing a trailer for another release. Five noir / noir-adjacent trailers are included. The actual trailer from 1951 plays like a radio show as well.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson


Cause for Alarm!
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Good ++
Video: Very Good – Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplement:
Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed:
February 25, 2024
(7084alar)
CINESAVANT

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Text © Copyright 2024 Glenn Erickson

About Glenn Erickson

Screen Shot 2015-08-24 at 6.51.08 PM

Glenn Erickson left a small town for UCLA film school, where his spooky student movie about a haunted window landed him a job on the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS effects crew. He’s a writer and a film editor experienced in features, TV commercials, Cannon movie trailers, special montages and disc docus. But he’s most proud of finding the lost ending for a famous film noir, that few people knew was missing. Glenn is grateful for Trailers From Hell’s generous offer of a guest reviewing haven for CineSavant.

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Walter Peterson

Sounds cool. Ordered.

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