One Man’s Strange Fascination with Hugo Haas: Part 2

In case you found this page by accident, this is number two of a four-part article on the American films of director Hugo Haas. To go to the next chapter, click on the link at the very bottom of this page.

The Cleo Moore Films

Strange Fascination (1952) marks the first collaboration between Haas and actress Cleo Moore, who was another of the 1950s Hollywood “blonde bombshell” trend, whom studios would groom as another Marilyn Monroe (coincidentally, Moore’s idol).  Although her film career only spanned that decade, there is no reason to think that she couldn’t have been the next Marilyn. One could say that each is equally underrated. (For instance, Monroe is rarely lauded for her fine dramatic work in River of No Return or Niagara.) In her work with Haas and others, it is evident that Cleo Moore is a very good actress, simply more than just a glamour girl (her striking cheekbones and sharp eyes actually remind me of a much later, also very good femme fatale, Sherilyn Fenn).

In Strange Fascination, Hugo Haas plays Austrian concert pianist Paul Marvan, who after playing a show at the Salzburg Music Festival, meets wealthy socialite Diana Fowler (Mona Barrie), who offers to sponsor him for an American tour. Marvan accepts the proposition, although soon becomes disappointed with the lacklustre dates. (Marvan seems on the verge of financial ruin throughout the film.) After yet another disappointing show, Marvan ends up at a cocktail lounge, and his rude behaviour upsets dancer Margo (Cleo Moore) during a routine with her musician partner Carlo. Margo conspires to humiliate Marvan at his own show,  however upon hearing his performance, she is so moved by his work that she befriends him instead. 

Soon, Margo shows up at his door seeking refuge from Carlo, as she fears violence from the man after breaking up the act. Marvan agrees to take her in, and in short order, Marvan and Margo are married. Although many of Haas’ characters wed younger women, usually out of convenience, this is one of his few women who don’t view the marriage as opportunistic. Even though she admittedly marries him for comfort, Margo is however supportive of his career. Interestingly, it is Marvan’s own pride that destroys the marriage: he decides to play at an engagement despite Margo’s protests. (If she doesn’t love Marvan physically, she clearly loves him for his talent and is very protective of his wasting of it at events unworthy of him.) Further, Marvan forbids Margo from any future performances, which subsequently drives her back into the arms of Carlo. Jealously spirals this narrative into tragedy, as Marvan subsequently loses his concert tour, and then goes to horrifying lengths to gain money, and thereby prestige. 

Strange Fascination is one of Hugo Haas’ strongest efforts- it is a thoroughly engaging, well-made, and very literate melodrama. Despite that Diana and Margo are polar opposites on the social scale, they equally love the man for his music, and are equally disappointed in his hurtfulness towards them over his drive to success. This film is bookended by gripping scenes in which the washed-up Marvan plays to an empty theatre now peopled by hoboes. It is a moment oddly reminiscent of the finale of Sullivan’s Travels, in which Joel McCrea and fellow inmates laugh loudly at a cartoon- art makes equals of us all. This film is the first of many of Haas’ works to show how his characters are redeemed in unexpected ways. 

One Girl’s Confession (1953) also surprises with its benevolence, especially for a film with such a drugstore magazine title. This is the only Hugo Haas movie that is easily available on DVD, and it is a fine entry point into his work. It is a solid second-feature programmer, featuring Cleo Moore as waitress Mary Adams, who lives and works at a waterfront diner, owned by her father’s former business partner, Stark. Mary resents how he uses her looks to bring in customers, and his part in her father’s ruin, so she robs him of the $25,000.00 he just received from ill-gotten means. Incredibly, she confesses to the crime immediately once the police arrive, and willfully goes to prison. Although she never reveals the whereabouts of the stolen money, Mary becomes a model prisoner, helping out other inmates, and working in the prison garden. In a couple of years, she is given an early parole with probation for good behaviour. She returns to the same waterfront location to find that her former place of employment is long gone, as Stark has disappeared to get away from the law. Mary gets another job as a waitress in the restaurant-tavern of Mr. Damitrof (Haas).

The pattern repeats as Mary is once again hired as a waitress for her looks, however she refuses Damitrof’s advances. In fact the man is so impressed with her headstrong behaviour that he respects and eventually befriends her. Amusingly, the restaurant seldom seems to have more than a few customers- one assumes the business is kept afloat by Damitrof’s constant gambling in the back room. 

One night, Damitrof incurs a huge debt after being cleaned out in a poker game, and Mary offers to help him out by revealing that she has a huge sum of money hidden under a tree. The man instantly makes the connection that she was the woman who robbed Stark all those years ago, making him even more impressed with her, and goes to find the loot, based upon her directions. However, Damitrof returns in the morning, all dirty and disheveled, claiming he did not find the money. Thinking that she lied to him, he fires her, and Mary spends the next few days in her room, sick over the missing loot. When she returns to the waterfront, she discovers that Damitrof has closed the business, and is now living the high life at a swanky apartment. Believing that he really did find the money after all, she goes to his posh suite out of revenge.

Until this moment, One Girl’s Confession is a rather humourous affair. Especially interesting are the scenes between Mary and the police. Law enforcers are always speaking to her with a sideways smirk and smart aleck demeanour, impressed with her calculated plan, and aware of their powerlessness in making her surrender the loot. It is also fascinating to see how all of the male characters are somewhat dependent on Mary. Throughout the narrative, she had been courting fisherman Johnny (Glenn Langan), who also needs money to start his fishing boat business.

However, the tone changes as Mary confronts Damitrof about the stolen money- the brassy music score punctuates the narrative as her thirst for revenge escalates, and the viewer rightly assumes that Mary Adams will continue on the path to ruin. However, in Haas, the denouement is seldom so obvious, as the central characters are instead redeemed in unexpected ways. Interestingly, although the money was obtained from an illegal transaction, Mary intends to use it for benevolent purposes. She had planned to give Johnny the money for his business before learning of Damitrof’s plight. Ultimately, the money does get used for good purposes. 

While often Haas the writer uses irony heavy-handedly, this film instead has more of a light touch. Interestingly enough it fits well with the other Moore films (not made by Haas) offered on the same DVD set. Women’s Prison and Over-Exposed are also very entertaining, light programmers, certainly not as dour as Hugo Haas’ work can be.

If One Girl’s Confession ends with a piece of Heaven, Bait (1954) begins in Hell. This tawdry melodrama has the novelty of a prologue, given by the Devil! Alas, there are no horns, embers or pitchforks in sight. (“That’s an old-fashioned theory.”) Instead we see Sir Cedric Hardwicke with glasses, hat and a walking stick, sauntering through a projection room calling up to Lucifer (!) to start the film we are about to see in which he plies his trade.

In this tale of treachery, Ray Brighton (John Agar) agrees to go prospecting with the mysterious Marko (Haas) despite the latter’s evil reputation. When the two strike gold out at their wintry shack, Marko conspires to get rid of Brighton, however not in obvious ways. He begins his cryptic plan by marrying the waitress Peggy (Cleo Moore). This coupling is obviously a marriage of convenience- for both parties yet in different ways. At first we think Marko is being noble so that her child, born out wedlock, will grow into a decent family unit, and Peggy no doubt sees this wedding as an opportunity to escape her stifling existence at the restaurant where she lives and works. (In fact, she dodges the lusty advances of people at the restaurant so often, that I can’t help but wonder if this film somehow inspired Terry Moore’s similar dilemma in the 1955 classic Shack Out on 101!) But it becomes apparent that Marko’s marriage to Peggy was a ploy to get Brighton to fall in love with her, since they are of the same age group.

While this very poor man’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre may be a fascinating morality play on paper, the movie is very tedious, and the least essential of all those discussed here. Although intended as a study of people who drive each other mad in a stifling environment, it becomes stifling for the wrong reasons. It is further hurt by the tawdry production values: even though actors are outdoors in the winter, their dialogue has obvious studio echo, and one cannot see their breath in the cold air. When Brighton finally discovers gold in a cave right by the shack, one wonders why they don’t find it sooner, because the prospectors’ set is so small.

The Other Woman (1954) opens with Hugo Haas, shaking some flimsy jail doors while hammily yelling: “Let me out!”, and we instantly think that he has once again been assigned a paltry budget with which he must somehow realize his grand ambitions. Alas, the camera pans, and we find that we are on a movie set. The jail door was a prop, and Haas is playing the film’s director, Walter Darman. 

On a surface level, this tale is about a blackmail plot gone awry. Model Sherry Steward (Cleo Moore) is called upon by director Darman to fill in a small speaking role. She jumps at the chance to play the part, which would hopefully lead to the stardom she craves. But her acting is so terrible that Darman replaces her. (The talented Moore expertly does the scene with the wooden delivery that Sherry would play—she obviously worked hard to act as an amateur!). As film noir conventions would have it, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and so the humiliated Sherry conspires to likewise humiliate Darman. 

During the wrap party, Sherry warms up to Darman, and has him drive her home, where she drugs his nightcap drink. When he awakens next morning, Sherry implies that they slept together, and soon attempts to blackmail him in order to keep her (however fabricated) story quiet. Haas’ tales of deceit always have a third party to round out the love triangle. Sherry involves her boyfriend Ronnie (Lance Fuller) in the blackmail plot, but he soon realizes her obsession is too much even for him, and at that time, the viewer is shown via close-ups that she is truly mentally imbalanced.

However, in order to save his reputation by avoiding the possible scandal from this allegation, Darman hatches an ingenious plot to get rid of her. Interestingly, movies are so much a part of Darman’s life that he uses the movie world as a tool to carry out his deed. Like many movies about the movies, The Other Woman (1954) cleverly blurs the line between real life and reel life, as seen in its trick opening. Ultimately, Darman learns that real life isn’t like the movies after all.

It is tempting to compare Hugo Haas with his onscreen character. In that opening scene, Sherry and another girl discuss how Darman was a once great filmmaker, but was now a bum, who married into power- his wife is the daughter of studio head Charles Lester (Jack Macy). Did Haas view his own career at this point as a fall from grace, in comparison with the prestigious films he made in his homeland? If Haas intended this film to be a reflection of his career, he is further ruthless on himself. Like Paul Marvan in Strange Fascination, Darman is a stranger in a strange land- his European artistic background clashes with the western world’s profit over substance. 

The Other Woman is more interesting for these notions than its by-the-numbers blackmail plot. The film would be even more compelling with a few more scenes of the Darman’s complicated life. Even without the blackmail plight, one senses that Darman is on the path to ruin, anyway. His own father-in-law is editing his latest epic behind his back, cutting out the arty, ponderous bits, and instead beefing up the sex and violence that his work-in-progress so dearly needs to in order make a buck. 

Interestingly, Haas seemed to balance art and commerce. Despite their small budgets, or any obstacles he faced in making them, Haas’ films as a whole manage to communicate his idiosyncratic ideas, while working within a commercially formula appealing to ticket buyers. In his next film, Hold Back Tomorrow (1955), a bizarre premise gives way to a fascinating character study, with enough fatalism to please fans of film noir.

Romance doesn’t get more doomed than this. Hold Back Tomorrow is another film to open with a girl attempting suicide by jumping from a bridge. Dora Garbin (Cleo Moore) is however rescued from the drink, much to her chagrin. Because she is so destitute, she accepts a job offer from the police to spend time with convicted murderer Joe Cardos (John Agar), on the night before his execution. The law insists that the last request of a man on death row must be honoured- many women refuse the offer because of Cardos’ reputation as a strangler, but Dora accepts the invitation since she has nothing to lose.

Once the two meet, this film is mostly a two-person character story, and an addicting one. (There are smaller supporting roles, however- Hugo Haas is absent from the cast, but it wouldn’t be hard to see him playing the prison guard role assumed by Mel Welles.) Initially, Cardos has refused contact with anyone, even his own family, but his sudden decision to be with a woman on his final night suggests that beneath his bravado, he wants to feel what it’s like to be human again, for the last time. Dora “can see right through you Joe- you want to laugh in the hangman’s face. It won’t work.”

This film is excessively hardboiled at first, as Dora utters such fatalistic prose as: “You want to live, they won’t let you. You want to die they won’t let you.” The tone gradually changes to a sentimental piece, with interesting spiritual overtones, as the two fall in love. Once one accepts the absurd premise, this film is full of delightful surprises.

Hit and Run (1957) is a return to more conventional fare, as Hugo Haas once again revisits the formula of a film noir love triangle. This would also be Cleo Moore’s final feature. In the 1950s, she had also done good work in other noir programmers than those with Hugo Haas, and sadly her small legacy ends with a whimper instead of a bang, as this tired affair emphasizes that Haas and Moore have revisited this formula once too often.

She plays a traveling showgirl, Julie, who is wined and dined by Gus Hilmer (Hugo Haas), the owner of a gas station and junkyard. Thinking that the old man is loaded, Julie accepts his proposal to marry. Hilmer’s younger employee Frank (Vince Edwards) is displeased with the arrangement, as he rightfully considers her as a gold digger. However, Frank’s repulsion leads to attraction, and becomes smitten by Julie. Hilmer senses Frank’s attraction to her and asks him to leave. He agrees, but offers to stay on until Hilmer finds a replacement, buying Julie enough time to convince Frank into plotting to kill Hilmer so she can inherit his money. Thus, they plot to run Hilmer over with a car, make it look like a hit and run, and dissemble the car in the junkyard to hide any evidence.

Until this moment, Hit and Run is standard fare, save for an amusing bit where Hilmer and his visiting undertaker friend joke about marriage. (Undertaker, marriage- there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.) However, there is a twist after they commit the murder. Hilmer’s estranged brother (who is briefly mentioned earlier in the film) is released from prison, and inherits Gus’ business. Further, he is Gus’ twin! Or is he? Haas’ dual role causes much disorientation between the murderous young lovers. This hilarious, out of nowhere twist livens up the last half, but still, Hit and Run is a middling effort. The movie largely unfolds on a single location, to communicate the stifling environment (with really garish wallpaper) from which the two want to escape. However, the viewer becomes as oppressed as Julie and Frank, wishing for this tedious effort to gather some steam.