This Gun For Hire (Frank Tuttle, 1942)

“Murder didn't mean much to Raven. It was just a new job”. These lines open Graham Greene's novel about an assassin with a cleft lip who is hired to kill a government minister, only to find himself double-crossed by his contractor. Enraged, he seeks revenge while the police are on his tail. Proving adept at translating many of the book's details to the screen, Tuttle was also chiefly responsible for inventing cinema's angelic killer, in the way he reshaped the image of the disfigured Raven into a shiningly handsome yet darkly destructive messenger of death. (The action was also transferred from pre-war England to wartime California). Given unprecedented freedom, Tuttle wrote a treatment based on the book, which Paramount obtained upon publication in 1936 but had abandoned as unfilmable. 

The Glass Key (Frank Tuttle, 1935)

The Glass Key (1935)

Written in spring 2020 for the catalogue of Il Cinema Ritrovato. EK

Based on a celebrated novel by Dashiell Hammett, The Glass Key focuses on the relationship between a crooked businessman and his loyal associate, whose plans for the upcoming election are blown apart by a murder. The story first appeared in “Black Mask” magazine in 1930. Paramount bought the movie rights for $25,000 before the hardcover edition was even published in 1931. Though Gary Cooper was announced as the leading actor, the film was not made until 1935, possibly due to a fear of failure (the crime cycle of the early 1930s was quickly falling out of fashion). 

However, Tuttle’s take was very different, shaping the characters in a more psychologically nuanced way. Ed Beaumont (played by George Raft in one of the better roles of his career) is a rye-drinking, sharp-dressed gambler who protects businessman Paul Madvig (Edward Arnold) against rival gangs and is smart enough to tell him what to wear too. Madvig is backing a local senator in his electoral campaign, and also plans to marry his daughter; meanwhile Madvig’s own daughter, Opal, is in a relationship with the senator’s troubled son. Ed stays cool-headed, balancing these conflicting interests, which are increasingly open to exploitation by a rival gang. When the senator’s son (Ray Milland) is killed, the rival gang mobilise their newspapers to accuse Madvig of the crime. 

Hostages (Frank Tuttle, 1943)

Hostages

Hostages (1943) which I screened from a brand new 35mm print in Bologna in August 2020 remains one of my favourite WWII resistance films. Below, programme notes written for the Cinema Ritrovato screening. — EK

One of the most sobering wartime films made in Hollywood about the atrocities in Europe, this is also one of Tuttle’s greatest. Written by Lester Cole, soon to be blacklisted, the film’s historical perspective and visionary nature matches that of Cole’s other great achievement from the following year, None Shall Escape. William Bendix, in one of his finest screen roles, plays a restaurant waiter in 1943 Prague; considered an idiot, he is in fact a resistance leader. His workplace is frequented by Nazi officers and when a homesick officer kills himself, the Gestapo calls it a murder and vows retaliation. Random citizens are picked for execution, including the resistance leader and a collaborator. While the initial death is considered a murder, the film ends with a Nazi passing off the murder of another officer as suicide. 

Roman Scandals (Frank Tuttle, 1933)

Directed by Frank Tuttle

Written by William Anthony McGuire, George Oppenheimer, Arthur Sheekman, Nat Perrin
based on the original story by George Kaufman & Robert E. Sherwood
Music by Alfred Newman
Cinematography: Gregg Toland, Ray June
Edited by Stuart Heisler
Eddie Cantor (Eddie/Oedipus), Gloria Stuart (Princess Sylvia), Edward Arnold (Emperor Valerius), David Manners (Josephus), Ruth Etting (Olga), Verree Teasdale (Empress Agrippa), Alan Mowbray (Majordomo), John Rutherford (Manius).
Produced by Samuel Goldwyn. Distributed by United Artists 

December 25, 1933
93 minutes


West Rome, Colorado. Eddie, a good-natured but clumsy delivery boy with a passion for Roman history, is tired of the deceit of the local authorities. Humiliated and banned from town, he daydreams and is transported to his idealised ancient Rome, where he becomes entangled in even more treacherous plots. As with the opening scene of the film, in which the Roman statues of the local museum are dressed in Eddie’s clothes, for Tuttle the story serves as a means of reconciling the old world and the new through popular entertainment.

 

Notes (and Images) on Frank Tuttle

"Tuttle’s importance as a communist comes from the fact, first, that he is recognized as a very capable motion picture director and, moreover, he is considered to be an excellent teacher of motion picture methods." The first serious appraisal of Frank Tuttle (1892-1963) in writing was not penned by a critic but an admiring FBI agent, who had the ‘red’ director under surveillance, adding these notes to his secret dossier.

With Bebe Daniels on location

Film Composer David Raksin Testifies Against Frank Tuttle

David Raksin

It happened more than once: the HUAC interrogators pushing the interviewee to a corner, encouraging him to name director Frank Tuttle. Why so much sensitivity towards Tuttle? His name popped up on FBI's list very early on. He was successful and his name known and respected since the 1920s; he was highly educated (a Yale graduate) and sophisticated (amateur painter and sportsman); furthermore, his luxurious Beverly Hills mansion was in fact a meeting place of the members of the Communist Party. To HUAC, Tuttle was the epitome of the corrupting Red element in movie industry.

So unlike the common notion that Tuttle was a "stool pigeon", there were others who named him first. I've read at least three different movie people mentioning his name at the HUAC hearings between 1947 and 1951, including the Esquire magazine film critic Jack Moffitt.

Here's one example from September 1951 when film composer David Raksin testifies again Tuttle.

Albert Maltz on This Gun for Hire

This Gun for Hire (Frank Tuttle, 1942) [Photo: LIFE Magazine]

Interviewed by Joel Gardner between 1975 and 1979 for an oral history series by the University of California. As a part of Guns for Hire: Frank Tuttle vs. Stuart Heisler retrospective, This Gun for Hire will be playing at Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, August 26, 9:15 AM, Cine Jolly.

***

The financial squeeze that I [was in] became too great in the spring of 1941. My friends Michael Blankfort and George Sklar had gotten work in Hollywood, and we made the decision that I would try also. And as soon as teaching was over, I went out to Las Vegas, New Mexico, because my mother-in-law was ill and my wife had taken our son out there earlier. And then after a few days I went overnight by bus to Los Angeles. And I, for about ten days, slept on a couch in the tiny cottage that the Sklars had. Although he was working, they had not yet accumulated enough money to move into anything better than the very simple little quarters that they had. 

By luck I got a job very quickly. The film director Frank Tuttle had a piece of material--had a novel, actually, by Graham Greene called This Gun for Hire which had been owned by Paramount, and he had worked out a way in which the story might be done which was acceptable. He wanted a  writer just at the time that I came into town and heard about me and knew my work, and I got the job at $300 a week.