Vintage Pulp

December 20 2024

AN IMPERFECT DAY

Do you want to hide the truth? Locket away in the past.

This bright poster was made for The Locket, a noir adjacent psychological mystery that premiered today in 1946. Laraine Day and Gene Raymond play a couple about to be married. Raymond thinks himself to be the luckiest man alive, but just before the wedding a stranger arrives to tell Raymond that the perfect Day has a dark past involving not only secrets, but an uncontrollable obsession. The stranger says that in this past he and Day met and fell in love, then he was visited by a man who told him that—here it comes—Day had a dark past. That stranger, played by Robert Mitchum, then tells a story related to Day’s childhood.

The Locket is famed for its flashback within a flashback within a flashback structure, and though that sounds complex there’s no trouble keeping four layers of narrative straight. Layer two and three are the bulk of the movie, and those are the ones with Mitchum, one of Hollywood’s great golden stars, easily watchable in all contexts. With Mitchum doing his thing, the solid Day in the lead as the woman with, not a past, but pasts, and a structure that draws viewers in, The Locket is a winner. Its only flaw is that the audience expectations of the time (and/or the requirements of the Hays Code censorship regime) prevented an ending about four minutes earlier. Watch it and you’ll see what we mean.

The Locket, Laraine Day, Robert Mitchum, Brian Aherne, Gene Raymond, poster art, cinema, film noir, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

January 17

1950—The Great Brinks Robbery Occurs

In the U.S., eleven thieves steal more than $2 million from an armored car company’s offices in Boston, Massachusetts. The skillful execution of the crime, with only a bare minimum of clues left at the scene, results in the robbery being billed as “the crime of the century.” Despite this, all the members of the gang are later arrested.

January 17

1977—Gary Gilmore Is Executed

Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore is executed by a firing squad in Utah, ending a ten-year moratorium on Capital punishment in the United States. Gilmore’s story is later turned into a 1979 novel entitled The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer, and the book wins the Pulitzer Prize for literature.

January 16

1942—Carole Lombard Dies in Plane Crash

American actress Carole Lombard, who was the highest paid star in Hollywood during the late 1930s, dies in the crash of TWA Flight 3, on which she was flying from Las Vegas to Los Angeles after headlining a war bond rally in support of America’s military efforts. She was thirty-three years old.

January 15

1919—Luxemburg and Liebknecht Are Killed

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two of the most prominent socialists in Germany, are tortured and murdered by the Freikorps. Freikorps was a term applied to various paramilitary organizations that sprang up around Germany as soldiers returned in defeat from World War I. Members of these groups would later become prominent members of the SS.

January 14

1967—Summer of Love Begins

The Human Be-In takes place in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park with between 20,000 to 30,000 people in attendance, their purpose being to promote their ideals of personal empowerment, cultural and political decentralization, communal living, ecological preservation, and higher consciousness. The event is considered the beginning of the famed counterculture Summer of Love.