BLOOD ALLEY (1955)

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: William A. Wellman

SCREENWRITER: A.S. Fleischman

FILM STARS: John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Paul Fix, Joy Kim, Berry Kroeger, Mike Mazurki, Anita Ekberg, Henry Nakamura, James Hong, Lowell Gilmore

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: A.S. Fleischman

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Gold Medal Books

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1955

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1955

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Adventure

WORDS: This film is a guilty pleasure. I think it a much underrated film. It’s not panned but it’s not held high. But, like many colour adventure films of the 1950s it’s not made to make you think but entertain. And, that it does, and you don’t’ have to suspend disbelief that much, and, better still, there are enough novelties in it to make it sit above the pack.
Of course any film made in 1955 about a ship’s captain being “busted out” of a communist jail, so that he can skipper a old stolen paddle steamer with all the inhabitants of a small fishing village from communist China to western free British Hong Kong, will have a “anti-red” message but, it’s not as strident as some of the other cold war movies which means it is , ultimately, more entertaining.

Spoilers ahead …

The book’s central (novel) premise (whether it is bases on a real incident or not I don’t know, though I doubt it) details the boat’s flight from Communist China with enough interest to make it readable. Now I’m far from a sea faring man but I do know that flat bottom bats are not ideal on the open sea and that gives the book, if not the film, much of its drama. It reads easily and is quite short, but ultimately, it’s a pulp novel (or just above a pulp), which is odd as author Sid Fleischman was substantial and wrote many (evocative and smart) children’s books, screenplays, novels for adults, and nonfiction books about stage magic. Perhaps he was trying to be immediate or writing with an eye to selling a screenplay (which he wrote for this film). The story is a dressed-up adventure story for contemporary (1950s) times. It doesn’t have the detail that Ernest K. Gann would put into his adventures, or the thrills that Alistair MacLean or Hammond Innes put into theirs, or the pulp realism of Donald Hamilton or Victor Canning, or the there is something deeper going on of Graham Greene, but it has novelty.

The book has, not surprisingly, more narrative and build up to events, the film, inevitably, more colour, more asides, more humour. The book has more obstacles to the success of the escape though the film has more incidental subplots. The film, also, throws in some other spills – the food being poisoned, people giving birth on the boat etc.

The books subplots like Cathy’s concern about whether her Doctor father will return, the decoy boat, the hiding in the fog and marchese, the burring of the village, the Chinese communist family (the elder leader using communism to advance his corrupt latent money greed) taken along to stop them talking, the Chinese reverence for their ancestors are all covered in the film though never enough to get in the way of the escape narrative. The obligatory love story in both is rushed and condensed, though in film that is always the case.

In the film John Wayne’s American boat captain (Captain Wilder in the book, no name mentioned in the film) talk often, in asides, to a imaginary female friend named “Baby’ who, presumably, kept him sane whilst he was locked u the Chinese communists jail after China fell to communism post war. The imaginary “baby”,  though at first odd coming from a John Wayne character, actually works , and helps as short hand to explain the narrative.

The film is big budget – odd for “anti-red” films. The studios satisfied their anti-communist credentials normally by pushing cheap red scare films (cheap doesn’t always mean bad of course). John Wayne was big box office at the time so gets a bigger budget, for his film, with a admiral supporting cast and a A- list director in William Wellman
Wellman excelled in action and adventure films with more brains than – Wings (1927), The Public Enemy (1931), Call of the Wild (1935), Beau Geste (1939), The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), The Iron Curtain (1948), Yellow Sky (1948), Battleground (1949), the magnificent Across the Wide Missouri (1951), Westward the Women (1951) Track of the Cat (1954), Lafayette Escadrille(1958). He was no slacker in the drama and comedy departments either – Night Nurse (1931), Heroes for Sale (1933), Wild Boys of the Road (1933), A Star Is Born (1937), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943).

Wayne clearly got on with Wellman. He had had small roles in two of his 30s films – Central Airport (1933) and College Coach (1933) and in the 50s Wayne’s production company produced three films with Wellman as director and Wayne as star – Island in the Shy (1953), The High and the Mighty (1954) and this in 1955. Batjac also produced another two Wellman non-Wayne films. Wellman’s story usually includes his colourful pre directing past, but his films are always solid entertainments with, as here, more going on than meets the eye. The philosophising will never get in the way of the story, nor should it, but it’s there. Wayne is perfect in the role of the stubborn self (a typical middle age Wayne role but also nature of the character in the book) though, as usual, his character is much younger in the book (a usual problem with books becoming Hollywood features for box office leading men who were usually in their 40s and 50s at their peak). But here it works as one wonders where the younger Captain Wilder of the book got all his experience and knowledge of the Formosa Straits. John Wayne has the obligatory 1950s anti-communist speech and done in the usual John Wayne style (which means his friend, screenwriter, James Edward Grant, might have had a hand in it …Wayne would use him to put dialogue into “Waynespeak”) … it’s very matter of fact, plain speaking an Abe Lincolesque, at least the Abe Lincoln of mythology) but ultimately, despite being anti-communist, it is also quite pro Chinese.

The love story between Wayne and the Anglo doctor’s innocent daughter, Cathy played by Lauren Bacall is a major subplot, though not one dwelt on. Interestingly, the book has him resisting her whereas in the film she resists him more, albeit marginally. Lauren Bacall and Wayne have chemistry (maybe that’s why Bacall’s husband Humphrey Bogart turned up on set for a visit). She, also, is perfect, though, a little old – the character Cathy in the book was 20, Lauren was 31. No matter. She would later play the older love interest for Wayne in The Shootist (1976) and she was perfect there as well. She is sassy and undeniably sexy, at least in 1955.

The film has the usual “Anglos” done up as Chinese Asians are present though Paul Fix (surprisingly) and Mike Mazurka (less surprisingly) and Berry Kroeger also pass. Swedish bombshell Anita Ekberg (with few lines, if any) less so, but who cares, she is enchanting on the screen. The extras are all Asians of some type which helps.

The only fault is the last scene of the boat staggering into Hong Kong harbour is all done with models which look incredibly fake, and which makes you wonder if John Wayne’s aside to “Baby” are part of a delusion, and everything is a dream . surely not in a John Wayne film … Jean Cocteau did not direct this.

Much of the film was filmed at China Camp State Park, a state park at Marin County, California, and it’s surrounding a historic Chinese American shrimp-fishing village and salt marsh (founded by Chinese Americans in the 1880s).

The propaganda in the film is obvious but not in your face. The communist excesses are never shown they are just assumed to have been committed. Ultimately the film is an adventure with a political backdrop (like Soldier of Fortune (1955), The Shanghai Story (1954), Night People (1954), The Journey (1959)) rather than a red scare film and it is also, pleasantly, more of an adult adventure than a kid’s adventure film.

It is often said, for some reason, that the film didn’t do well because it was blatant anti-red propaganda, wasn’t a John Wayne western, or was rushed because a less than committed Wayne was in it (see blow – Robert Mitchum dropped out). I’m not sure if any of that is correct. Lazy armschair assumptions usually aren’t. Sure it wasn’t a big hit but it made more than it cost, and Wayne seems committed enough, and Wayne was a big (very big) box office star in the 1950s and very few of his films were westerns (four of the nineteen films he made in the decade were westerns). Perhaps the audience had enough … his earlier film that year, The Sea Chase (1955), (where he played a German sea captain during World War 2) was the third highest grossing film of the year.

It is well worth watching with a beer (or two), the book if handy is readable.

The big question is, is this film banned in China? Is it even known?

BITS

• Robert Mitchum was supposed to play Captain Tom Wilder in Blood Alley before he was fired from the movie at the request of director William A. Wellman. Allegedly, after an altercation he shoved the film’s transportation manager into San Francisco Bay(which Mitchum disagrees with). Who knows what went down but, also allegedly, or perhaps apparently, before Mitchum’s firing, he had a fallout with Wellman. Wayne’s daughter, Aissa Wayne, says in her book, John Wayne: My Father (1991) that Wellman and Mitchum’s feud started with the TV show This Is Your Life. According to her, when the show’s producers asked Wellman for a list of people to interview [about his career], Wellman included Mitchum (who he had worked with him twice before, in the role that made Mitchum a star, The Story of G.I. Joe (1945) and in the excellent Track of the Cat (1954)). However, Mitchum apparently said that he “didn’t have time to talk about […] Wellman”. When they worked on Blood Alley, Wellman retaliated by “badgering Mitchum around the clock.” till they could not work with each other. Knowing what I know about Mitchum and Wellman that sounds likely. Because Mitchum was released from the production, Wayne (as the producer) was rushed / forced to take on the role (after first considering Gregory Peck and Humphrey Bogart apparently). There was no ill will I know of between Wayne and Mitchum as they later worked together in El Dorado (1966).

LINKS

TRAILER

A promo by John Wayne for Christmas Seals (Christmas seals are adhesive labels that are similar in appearance to postage stamps that are sold then affixed to mail during the Christmas season to raise funds and awareness for charitable programs …here tuberculosis)