The Tarnished Angels
Set during the depression, The Tarnished Angels tells the story of journalist Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson), in search of a story more substantial than just a sensational headline. While at a local carnival, he rescues a boy being taunted about the uncertain identity of his father.
Devlin buys the boy an ice cream and restores him to his parents: ex-serviceman and pilot Roger Shumann (Robert Stack), and his alluring wife, LaVerne (Dorothy Malone), who are accompanied and assisted by their mechanic and friend, Jiggs (Jack Carson). While Devlin is immediately drawn to LaVerne, he realises that Shumann’s travelling stunt aeroplane act would make a great story.
Shumann and his family live like gypsies, taking their act from town to town, air show to air show. These are hard times, and work is hard to find. For a decorated ex-fighter pilot, the humiliation of not being able to find a regular job makes Shumann even more obsessive about his racing act, at the expense of his relationship with his family. His work as a racing pilot represents a vestige of his former glory and more honourable self. To make matters worse, a major drawcard of his travelling show is a stunt performed by his wife LaVerne. She parachutes from a plane, wearing a white dress that, during her descent, billows upwards and shows off her leggy form.
Not only does he not seem bothered by this exploitation, but he also has no trouble degrading her further, by expecting her to persuade business magnate Matt Ord (Middleton) to allow them the use of his plane, after Shumann’s plane becomes inoperable. In a tragic and uncomfortable scene, it is clear that he expects his wife to offer herself sexually to Ord, despite the protestations of Devlin and Jiggs, who both try unsuccessfully to dissuade Shumann and preserve LaVerne’s honour.
It doesn’t take long for the emotionally starved LaVerne to divulge secrets of her past and her relationship with her husband that both reflect and reinforce a growing emotional intimacy between herself and Devlin. This is immediately apparent to Shumann, who tries to assert his dominance and ownership over his wife who, having been infatuated by him since she was a teenager, is unable to shrug off her girlish devotion towards him.
This is a most worthy adaptation of “Pylon”: a novel by one of America’s finest authors, William Faulkner. The black and white photography works well (it was an unrealised ambition of Sirk’s to make a modern film based on the German Expressionist style), and there are shades of Tennessee Williams in the seething storyline and its treatment at the hands of director Douglas Sirk who cleverly manages to tie up the melodrama with the requisite happy ending while still leaving some issues, if you’ll excuse the pun, “in the air”.
Hudson is rather good as the journalist torn between the inability to suppress his desire for LaVerne, and his nobler stance of wanting to help her. Jack Carson portrays an earthy, dependable Jiggs, and Dorothy Malone does well to convey LaVerne’s sense of restlessness and yearning. But it is Robert Stack who excels in this film. His performance as the self-destructively proud man who risks losing everything if he fails to attain insight and redeem himself, suggests that he is an actor who became largely overlooked in subsequent years.