I have a special affection for the Fox comedies of the early ’40s. At a time when the other major studios were going for toney production values to make “prestige” comedies or marrying lurid technicolor to tepid stories playing to Midwestern sensibilities, Fox somehow remained loyal to the gritty escapism of the early and mid ’30s comic aesthetic, closer to the great Paramount and RKO comedies of the mid-30s than to their big budget contemporaries. While the most popular high-value films were increasingly turning into propaganda for conformism or high-minded moralism, Fox somehow insisted on edge. There were sentimental moments, but sardonic gaiety dominated. The black and whites flirted with noir aesthetic undertones, the color musicals were joyous camp — and the music was almost always excellent. The demarcation line between A and B production values was smeared — comedies that looked like B-movies had A-level scripts and wit. Big production musicals were just zany. (Consider that Carmen Miranda was one of their biggest stars.) They weren’t just meant to be fun, they were about committed fun, proud fun, commentaries on pleasure that often seemed more pre-code than post.
Fox made two fine Runyonesque comedies in ‘the early 40s, Tall, Dark and Handsome in 1941 and A Gentleman at Heart in ’42. Neither one is usually mentioned in the period canon, so both should be treated as neglected gems. A third snappy streewise comedy, Dance Hall in ’41, figures among them. All of them starred Cesar Romero — and he made them work.
In 1940 and ’41, Romero was a busy guy at the Fox studios. He had been one of their leading supporting actors for several years, appearing regularly in Sonja Henie and Shirley Temple movies, and others’ as well. His good looks, easy charm, physical grace, and his evident pleasure playing any part in any ensemble, made Fox’s emperor Darryl Zanuck aspire to keep him onscreen as much as possible, in any comic genre available. In the first two years of the ’40s, Romero became the Cisco Kid, danced as a Latin Lover with Alice Faye in Weekend in Havana, and played the lead Runyanesque dandy street kingpins in Dance Hall and Tall, Dark and Handsome. I have special affection for Dance Hall, but it was Tall, Dark and Handsome that made the biggest impression on audiences.
Evidently, there was once a plan at Fox to elevate Romero to star status just below that of Tyrone Power, but there was something about Romero’s joyfully self-mocking irony that made it impossible. He simply wasn’t capable of taking himself seriously enough to be an A-list romantic star. It was, however, an essential ingredient for making him a foolproof comic leading man — a plan that was smoked when Romero joined the Coast Guard in 1943, saw combat in the Pacific in World War II, and didn’t return to acting until ’47.
The plot: Shep Morrisson (Romero) is a feared gang boss at the top of his game. He’s elegant, cheerful, suave, with an eye for the ladies — who usually look back. Suspected of a recent mob killing, he’s accosted by the cops in a department store, buying lingerie in bulk as Christmas presents. The cops can’t touch him, but a gorgeous young dish, Judy Miller (Virginia Gilmore), whose job as a store nanny is to entertain shoppers’ children, makes an impression.
Shep is so struck by wholesome Judy that he has to devise an out-of-the-ordinary plan (for him): he hires her to be the nanny for his kids — kids he doesn’t have. This sort of “accidental father” joke lends itself to sentimental claptrap, the kind that affirms good conformist family values. But the script is full of surprises. Judy’s eager for some action in her life and the tall, dark, and handsome “Mr. Morrisson,” who she thinks is a “banker,” looks like the break she’s been looking for.
So, following the archetypal pattern of Dave the Dude in Lady for a Day, Shep sends his trusty Sancho Panza, Frosty (Milton Berle), out to procure some children. Frosty manages only one, the feisty son of deceased “Detroit Harry,” whose family Shep has been supporting in secret since his demise. Enter “Detroit Harry, Jr.” — played by Stanley Clements, who just about steals the show. I love this scene. Shep’s borrowed boy is a fast-talking little tough who resists taking all the “Santa Clause slush.” This was the age of the precocious child actor. Adult actors had to learn to act with them as if they were peers. (It must have been taxing. Think about Adolphe Menjou hearing that five-year old Shirley Temple thought he should be replaced in Little Miss Marker.) The dialogue between Romero and Clements is wonderfully natural. Harry doesn’t know that Shep is a gangster yet, but Shep’s parenting style should be a giveaway.
During the “family” Christmas get-together, Shep’s main gangland rival, Pretty Willie (Sheldon Leonard), arrives unannounced with an armed entourage. (We already know that two of Pretty Willie’s henchmen were killed in an abortive shakedown of a store owner, and that Frosty mysteriously entered the murder scene to plant DaVinci cigars in the mouths of said henchmen, to make it seem — we find out later — that said henchmen were offed by Shep.) Pretty Willie, an old-school mobster, is out for revenge, but Shep coolly persuades him to divide Chicago between the two of them. The truth is out — Harry and Judy process the revelation that Shep is a crime boss in their different ways.
The inevitable reconciliation with Judy unfolds as Shep professes that he’s always been a reluctant gangster, he was just an honest merchant who got pushed by mobsters. He got so good at “shoving back” that he found himself in charge. Judy is placated and is thrilled with his attentions after all — culminating in his invitation to the classy nightclub he owns, The Gold Coast. To top it off, Shep basically adopts Harry — a potentially sentimental move that’s completely, and unsentimentally, motivated by the backstory: Shep has been supporting the kid all along from a distance out of loyalty to his dead father, and now that Harry knows Shep is the illustrious kingpin the kid manifests the appropriate filial devotion. The script as a whole is quite brilliant — screenwriters Harry Tugend and Darrell Ware received an Oscar nomination for it — but the dialogue between Shep and Harry stands out.
Harry: Whadda mean, after what you said, I thought I was gonna be one of the gang.
Shep: Well, you’re not big enough yet. If you go to bed and grow a little more, maybe then I’ll take you in.
Harry: Thanks, Shep. I’ll grow as fast as I can. I’ll cut out smoking.
Shep: Well, don’t quit all at once. Maybe you better taper off easy.
Harry: Okay.
Maybe the Decency Board was taking it easy that day. It’s all pre-code stuff.
The biggest surprise follows: it turns out that the feared killer-boss Shep is no such thing. All the mugs he’s reputed to have rubbed out are not only actually alive in his basement jail, they’re living the good life, playing cards and getting healthcare. For a mobster, Shep is a pussycat.
Frosty: You know those two guys Pretty Willie sent over last night?
Shep: You mean the ones we killed?
Frosty: Yeah, one of them has a sore throat. Think we ought to have it sprayed?
Shep: Let’s go down and take a look at him.
Shep not only takes Judy dancing at his swanky club (which the dialogue — and only the dialogue — reveals is a risque joint like the Folies Bergeres), on the spot he hands her the longed-for singing gig that she originally came to Chicago to land. Her song, the Rainger-Robin tune made famous that same year by Ella Fitzgerald and the band she inherited from Chick Webb, “Hello Ma, I Done it Again,” the classic precursor of Britney Spears’s “Oops, I did it again,” is a fine example of what I call “debutante hokum.”
Shep and Julie are subsequently engaged, but reckless Pretty Willie has taken a shine to Judy, and is allowing his private lusts to get in the way of his business interests. He and his crew arrive at Shep’s engagement-celebration party — not entirely uninvited — and proceeds to put heavy moves on Judy — which are definitely uninvited. Judy has become a somewhat interesting character. Her hidden worldly savvy is emerging, but she still insists on trying to mediate between the two Alphas. It’s not going to work. Pretty Willie — in a fine noir performance by Leonard — has overstepped the demarcation line, and provokes Shep’s gangster macho, too. The situation is classic — ostensibly. Two Alpha crime bosses entering a Chicago-style duel over a dame. For the moment, Pretty Willie backs down. After all, Shep is a fearsome rival with lots of notches on his belt — so he thinks.
The boys in Shep’s cellar-jail manage to escape and emerge straight into the party, scaring their buddies and wives, who thought they were dead. They reveal the truth to Pretty Willie: Shep never killed anyone, he just wanted the world to think so. Pretty Willie draws his conclusions: Shep is really a creampuff. The deal is off, he’s taking over the whole gig. In a great, sly re-enactment of a classic gangster noir scene, he has Shep driven out to the woods to be removed. But in the end, Pretty Willie’s henchmen spare Shep’s life in return for his saving theirs.
The film’s shift from a cute romance to a semi-thriller crime duel underscores how Tall, Dark and Handsome simultaneously repeats the gangster comedy’s form and punctures its themes. In the critical scenes, Judy vanishes as a factor. The play is between two supermales. They’re not entirely dissimilar. We’ve seen Shep go dark, and we see Pretty Willie with slick patter. They’re both in tuxes and know how to wear them. But in the battle of machismos, it’s clear that Shep’s non-violent, and ultimately comic, smarts have greater survival value than Pretty Willie’s thuggery. Still, what will Shep do now that he’s on the lam?
With truly impressive comic unity, the script returns to what has been the core plot device all along: killed guys turn out not to have been killed and come back to life to turn tables. Just as Pretty Willie’s boys emerge from Shep’s basement-underworld eventually to save Shep, Shep reappears in disguise to get their help in exacting revenge on Pretty Willie for the violence he really is responsible for.
Comes the punchline: Pretty Willie is arrested for Shep’s murder, and Shep appears to make sure Willie knows that he’s alive. Tied up with a bow. Pretty Willie will get 99 years for a killing he didn’t actually do, the smooth inversion of Shep escaping — both death and his gangster life — for the same reason, killings he was thought to have ordered but never actually did. Shep and Judy fly off to Brazil, with Harry and Frosty following.
The existing prints of Tall, Dark and Handsome aren’t very good, but even those hint at the subtle, conservative camera of Ernest Palmer. At the moment when deep-focus cinematography and lush definition were becoming the rage, the film’s visuals hark back to the previous decade. The director, H. Bruce “Lucky” Humberstone, was at the time a contract B-serials director at Fox, valued mainly for his speed. Occasionally, though, he made fine films on small budgets. Tall, Dark and Handsome may be his finest, most careful comedy. The film is unpretentious, which makes the brilliance of the script and dialogue and the easy skill of the ensemble performances all the more impressive. There’s a whiff of early Capra, a whiff of The Thin Man‘s insouciance, and a whiff of the Edward G. Robinson gang-boss comedies, but I think the film — along with the other Romero kingpin-comedies — should be considered an original gem in its own right. The similarity to a Damon Runyon script is often remarked on but for my taste, the script is better than the master’s. As sometimes happens, the best work by some artists is not by the artists themselves.
Bonus: here’s Ella’s more famous rendition of “Hello, Ma! I done it again.”
