Insuring Fascination

Want to see the film that made Billy Wilder an important director, that made Hollywood regard Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in a different light, that turned Edward G. Robinson into a character actor, that “shortened” Raymond Chandler’s life, that made James M. Cain admit it was better than his original novel?

You can see it free at 7 tonight as Chapman University’s film noir series continues with one of the genre’s true classics, “Double Indemnity.”

The grim story--an utterly ruthless femme fatale seduces an insurance salesman into insuring, then murdering, her husband--riveted and shocked audiences in 1944 when it was released.

These were the days when the Hayes Office was censoring movies to protect audiences’ morality. These audiences had never seen a woman depicted so thoroughly, seductively evil, and the insurance salesman was hardly better. Yet these were the romantic leads of the film.

Wilder had to cajole both Stanwyck and MacMurray to take the roles. Stanwyck said she was “a little afraid after all these years of playing heroines to go into an out-and-out killer.” MacMurray, who’d based his career on romantic and comic leads, complained, “My God, this requires acting!,” according to Wilder.

It was a big step for Edward G. Robinson, too. After more than a decade of top billing, Robinson was being asked to play a supporting role, the righteous insurance claims agent to whom the crime is confessed. Wilder won Robinson over, too. “At my age,” Robinson said, “it was time to begin thinking of character roles.”

The novella upon which the film is based first appeared as a serial in Liberty magazine in 1935 and was quickly offered to MGM.

The Hayes Office, however, objected to the scenario’s “general low tone and sordid flavor.” When Paramount was offered the story eight years later, the Hayes Office lodged the same objection almost word for word.

But Wilder, then at Paramount, liked the plot and hired Raymond Chandler, author of the Philip Marlowe detective novels, to help him write a script.

The two men’s personalities grated so severely that Chandler walked out on one occasion, but later the two conceded each other’s contributions.

Chandler’s dialogue was brilliant, Wilder said. “He was as helpful as he was grouchy, which was all the time.”

Chandler conceded Wilder was a brilliant teacher of screenwriting, but it was “an agonizing experience and has probably shortened my life,” he wrote.

Once able to view a partial script, the Hayes Office dropped its objections.

What resulted was a classic example of dark, gritty, hard-boiled film noir, revealed in flashbacks as the insurance salesman dictates his confession into a dictaphone.

The film received seven Oscar nominations, including best picture, director, actress and screenplay. But it received no Oscars. “Going My Way” was the big film that year.

Wilder received a rarer award, however--a concession by the novelist, James M. Cain, that the director had improved upon Cain’s work. “It’s the only picture I ever saw made from one of my books that had things in it I wished I’d thought of,” Cain said.

Little-known fact: The closing of “Double Indemnity” was not intended to be its final scene, but Wilder liked it so much he ended the film at that point, cutting an elaborately shot gas-chamber sequence that reportedly cost the studio $150,000 to shoot.

* 7 p.m. today, Chapman University, Argyros Forum, room 208, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange, admission free.

That 1950s ‘Thing’

Another bit of movie history plays at Chapman at 7 p.m. Monday: “The Thing (From Another World),” generally thought to be the best of the 1950s’ science-fiction/horror movies.

This is undoubtedly because this B movie was produced (and some say directed) by Howard Hawks, whose resume includes directing A-list movies like “To Have and Have Not,” “A Star Is Born” and “Red River.”

The 1951 film, often referred to merely as “The Thing,” laid the groundwork for virtually every successful thriller to follow. Those seeing it for the first time will recognize in it virtually every dramatic element of “Alien,” made 28 years later.

As every movie trivia buff knows, James Arness plays the killer vegetable, a role he took long before be became Marshal Dillon in “Gunsmoke.” Because he’s the best known of the cast nowadays, he often gets top billing when this film is shown, even though he is unrecognizable and has maybe two minutes of screen time.

Christian Nyby is credited as director, but leading man Kenneth Tobey has said Hawks looked over Nyby’s shoulder and called all the shots.