Nightmare Alley - Film Noir And The American Dream by Mark Osteen

Author:Mark Osteen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Film & Video, Performing Arts, History & Criticism, General, United States, Americas (North, Central, West Indies), South, History
ISBN: 9781421408323
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 2012-11-26T05:00:00+00:00

To Build a Dream On

Two 1950s noirs perpetuate the stereotype of musicians as overgrown children. Yet these films also present—implicitly, at least—the potential for new American identities founded on jazz’s optimism and tolerance, while sharing with Blues in the Night a belief that the racial divide is not impervious. One of these films even presents jazz as the foundation for a remodeled American Dream.

The earliest noir with a jazz score, The Strip features Mickey Rooney as Stan Maxton, a talented but callow drummer (at thirty years old, Rooney looks sixteen) who becomes a suspect in the shooting of gangster Sonny Johnson (James Craig) and his girlfriend Jane Tafford (Sally Forrest). After the shootings, Stan narrates much of the story in flashback to a police lieutenant. A Korean war vet suffering from PTSD, Stan left the hospital and headed to Los Angeles, where he immediately took a job with the oily Johnson and found his way to Fluff’s nightclub, where he was treated to delightful performances of “Shadrack” and “Basin Street Blues” by Louis Armstrong and his seasoned interracial band (Jack Tea-garden, Barney Bigard, Earl Hines; Fluff [William Demarest] often joined them on piano).20 After closing time one night, Stan sat in with Fluff and was offered the gig on the spot. But he was more interested in pursuing Jane, a dancer at the club, and besides, he was already earning “good dough” with Sonny. The fatherly Fluff asked Jane to persuade Stan to join.21

The conflict is an ancient one: money versus artistic fulfillment. Indeed, the lyrics to “Shadrack” describe Stan’s dilemma. In the song (as in the book of Daniel), King Nebuchadnezzar attempts to use the music of horn, flute, and clarinet to entice Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to worship his golden idol; when they resist, they are cast into a fiery furnace (God saves them). Similarly, despite Sonny’s disdainful remarks about jazz (“you came out here to beat your brains out with a lot of slap-happy jive men and maybe in ten or twenty years you’d end up with your own club”), Jane’s kisses persuade Stan to abandon Sonny. Stan even tells Fluff that “money isn’t everything when you’re doing what you want to do.” His motives, however, are less pure than Shadrach’s: he wants to woo Jane, even though she is merely using him to get close to Sonny, who she believes will advance her movie career. Recognizing Stan’s predicament, Fluff tells him of a girl he lost and sings the song he allegedly wrote for her, which is actually the 1935 Kalmar/Ruby/Hammerstein standard “A Kiss to Build a Dream On”: “Give me a kiss to build a dream on / And my imagination / Will thrive upon that kiss.” It’s a corny moment (as the two croon in harmony, we seem suddenly to be watching an outtake from an Andy Hardy picture), but the song is appropriate, for Stan is indeed seeking his American dream. Alas, his version—upward mobility culminating in a steady job, kids, and a home—doesn’t jibe with Jane’s vision of a glamorous career in show business.

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