What will a guy do for a girl when he’s in love? Plenty, according to Hollywood. The crime drama Flaxy Martin stars Virginia Mayo as the title character, with Zachary Scott, Douglas Kennedy, and Dorothy Malone in support. Scott plays a mobbed up lawyer who decides he wants out of the rackets, setting into motion a chain of unfortunate events in which he takes a murder rap for Mayo. It’s done out of love, but his feelings may be one-sided. Mayo has been recruited by the mob boss to use her wiles to keep Scott in line. When Scott confesses, he’s confident he’ll beat the charge defending himself in court. But the boss springs a phony witness on him and instead it looks like his goose might be cooked extra crispy.
Mayo is one of those period actresses we’ll watch in anything. Flaxy Martin is a departure from her usual fare. She’s a femme fatale of the most fatal type, playing two men to advantage, slapping around another woman, and generally smirking and sneering her way nastily through life. The question, in such a case of atypical casting, is whether she produces a believable performance. We’d say yes, but she’s the only part we believed. Little else makes sense. Absent anything resembling sexual heat between Scott and Mayo, his confession feels unlikely. Later, Dorothy Malone, as a trusting soul who picks up stray criminals, comes across as vapidly reckless rather than sweet.
Even so, there are worse ways to spend an evening than watching Mayo walk on the wild side. We imagine most actresses wanted to try on the femme fatale role back then at least once, but film noir being a relatively small slice of the cinematic pie, and studios being so controlling of actresses’ public images, most never got the chance. Mayo, a comic actress with a Vaudeville background, must have reveled in the opportunity. Obviously crime can’t pay in vintage cinema, so don’t get your hopes up that she might slide on her evil deeds. Just enjoy watching her break hearts. Also, as a side note, the movie might be worth a watch just to see mob thug Elisha Wood, Jr. pull the old gag of running out of bullets then throwing his gun. Frickin’ hilarious. Flaxy Martin premiered in the U.S. today in 1949.
