Maybe for the final touch I'll add a wisp of mustache, just so she isn't as pretty as me.
Artists are often adept at more than one art, so it’s never a surprise when a Hollywood performer shows talent in another area. This photo features Linda Darnell, star of such notable films as No Way Out, Unfaithfully Yours, My Darling Clementine, and the excellent Hangover Square, finishing a pastel portrait of fellow screen star Lana Turner.
Darnell was a serious and capable painter. There are photos floating around online of her working on portraits of Clark Gable and her husband Peverell Marley. She also painted landscapes and still lifes, working in both pastels and oils, and was the subject of at least one painting herself—a Justin McCarthy portrait that resides in the Smithsonian Institute.
We don’t have a date on this shot, but Darnell looks very young, so that makes it no later than the 1940s. According to Hollywood rumor, she and Turner became friends after Turner learned about being the subject of a portrait, possibly this one. Since they’re known to have become friends in 1942, the photo could be from that year.
It's not that there's no way out. It's that not enough people want to leave.
Movies that take on the subject of race generally aren’t popular. No Way Out, for which you see a promo poster above, was a prestige production but was only the 87th highest grossing film of its year (both Twelve Years a Slave and Green Book were in the same range for their years). Somewhere in the eighties isn’t terrible, but No Way Out still lagged behind such immortal efforts as Yellow Cab Man, Wabash Avenue, and Bright Leaf.
The plot sets up almost immediately: a pair of robbers are shot, captured by police, and conducted in handcuffs to a hospital for medical attention. Sidney Poitier is the doctor they draw. One of the robbers, Richard Widmark, is a virulent racist. He’s so hateful that he keeps trying to convince his suffering brother not to cooperate with Poitier. The problem is his brother has more than just a gunshot wound, though only Poitier can see it.
When baby bro dies due to complications from a previously undiagnosed longterm illness, Widmark is devastated, but always the opportunist, he turns the tables at that point. Poitier can’t prove he didn’t kill the brother through malpractice unless there’s an autopsy, and Widmark won’t agree to one. What develops is a battle of wills—Poitier’s quiet dignity, polite exterior, and superhuman patience that normal people simply don’t have (he’d play this role over and over) against Widmark’s frothing and irrational hatred.
There’s a lot to unpack here. No Way Out goes after racism with a power jab and a flying spin kick. It’s unsubtle. That makes sense because racism is unsubtle, you might say. No—there are blatant strains, but largely, it is subtle. For example, after decades of backward movement U.S. schools are as segregated right now as they were in 1968, and U.S. neighborhoods are highly segregated too. How did that happen? Easy. The processes of racism have been folded inside the mechanisms of the market and the dynamics of individual choice. Gentrification is just one example of a subsequent result.
After No Way Out was released today in 1950 it took another fourteen years—an entire generation as most people measure them—before the U.S. passed the Civil Rights Act. But the legislation has been constantly chipped at or even had sections outright struck down, contributing to the aforementioned segregation, and all sorts of other damage. The laws stood just long enough for the belief that things were better to become culturally entrenched, then they were decimated. Now people hold obsolete beliefs about equality, and have a hard time seeing that many things are getting worse.
This is why movies about race usually don’t age well. Yes, it’s partly due to outdated sentiments, language, characterizations, and story arcs, but it’s also because they presume improvement in problems that, as it turned out, never went away, but were merely reconstituted in ways that can be invisible to people today, and which vintage movies were never designed to elucidate. No Way Out is to racism as Romeo and Juliet is to love. It’s big and bold and scores some points, but it mostly comes across as obvious. Don’t get us wrong—it’s a damn good movie. But it’s also no longer relevant to the issue it examines.
Mexican actress Lupe Velez, who was considered one of the great beauties of her day, commits suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. In her note, Velez says she did it to avoid bringing shame on her unborn child by giving birth to him out of wedlock, but many Hollywood historians believe bipolar disorder was the actual cause. The event inspired a 1965 Andy Warhol film entitled Lupe.
1958—Gordo the Monkey Lost After Space Flight
After a fifteen minute flight into space on a Jupiter AM-13 rocket, a monkey named Gordo splashes down in the South Pacific but is lost after his capsule sinks. The incident sparks angry protests from the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but NASA says animals are needed for such tests.
1968—Tallulah Bankhead Dies
American actress, talk show host, and party girl Tallulah Bankhead, who was fond of turning cartwheels in a dress without underwear and once made an entrance to a party without a stitch of clothing on, dies in St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City of double pneumonia complicated by emphysema.
1962—Canada Has Last Execution
The last executions in Canada occur when Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin, both of whom are Americans who had been extradited north after committing separate murders in Canada, are hanged at Don Jail in Toronto. When Turpin is told that he and Lucas will probably be the last people hanged in Canada, he replies, “Some consolation.â€
1964—Guevara Speaks at U.N.
Ernesto “Che” Guevara, representing the nation of Cuba, speaks at the 19th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City. His speech calls for wholesale changes in policies between rich nations and poor ones, as well as five demands of the United States, none of which are met.
2008—Legendary Pin-Up Bettie Page Dies
After suffering a heart attack several days before, erotic model Bettie Page, who in the 1950s became known as the Queen of Pin-ups, dies when she is removed from life support machinery. Thanks to the unique style she displayed in thousands of photos and film loops, Page is considered one of the most influential beauties who ever lived.
1935—Downtown Athletic Club Awards First Trophy
The Downtown Athletic Club in New York City awards its first trophy for athletic achievement to University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger. The prize is later renamed the Heisman Trophy, and becomes the most prestigious award in college athletics.
Italian artist Benedetto Caroselli illustrated this set of predominantly yellow covers for Editrice Romana Periodici's crime series I Narratori Americani del Brivido.
