Jigsaw (1949)
Director - Fletcher Markle
The Plot
The owner of a print is shop found dead. It looks like a suicide to the police. Suicide. But that's not the way Assistant D.A. Howard Malloy (Franchot Tone) sees it. And when a journalist friend who has been investigating an extreme right wing group called the Crusaders is also found dead, he goes on the hunt himself. He gets a bit sidetracked by a hot night club singer, but whose side is she really on? High society's dark house of cards is about to come down.
Film Notes
A Mirror Image of the Red Menace Films
Jigsaw was a low budget, independent film financed mainly by its star Franchot Tone. As an attempted exposé of racism among the upper classes, it stands as something of an answer to the paranoid anti-Communist films of the Red Menace of the same period. It was perhaps something of a labor of love for the star and his supporters, left leaning New York actors.
Style-wise, however, though not much above TV crime dramas of the time, it has an exciting climax in a museum and the on-location street scenes lend some realism to the effort.
A Special Tone
The year 2005 marks the centennial of the birth of Franchot Tone, an actor who had the talent and looks, but not whatever else it took, to become a major Hollywood star.
It didn't seem that way early in his career: he was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor in 1935 for Mutiny of the Bounty. His fellow shipmates Clark Cable and Charles Laughton also received Best Actor nominations.
But movie stardom was not what interested Tone: the stage was his true vocation. He began his career there and returned there in 1939, leaving Hollywood for the most part behind other than taking a project here and there to finance his theater work.
Among his significant dramatic accomplishments was his role as a founding member of the legendary Group Theatre, which later evolved into the influential Actors Studio. In 1957 he originated the role of James Tyrone Jr. in the first production of Eugene O'Neill's Moon for the Misbegotten.
His New York stage work also provided Tone with the opportunity to work in live dramatic television in series such as Studio One. Late in his career he had a regular role on TV's Ben Casey.
And the Rest is Trivia
- Franchot Tone was married early in his career to Joan Crawford (1935 to 1939). Speaking of marriages, Tone was also married to Jean Wallace, his co-star in Jigsaw.
- Watch closely and you'll see uncredited cameo appearances by Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, Burgess Meredith and John Garfield.
- The trio of nominees from Mutiny of the Bounty lost the 1935 Best Actor Award to Victor McLaglen (The Informer.)
-- Ed Schneider - Alameda TV
Forgotten Child
If Detourand Shadow of a Doubt had a child that they gave up for adoption, and then forgot, it may have grown up to be Inner Sanctum. This obscure little movie once again proves that a small budget film with a good script, decent cast and a temporarily ambitious director could provide some first rate atmospheric entertainment.
Playing like a little William Inge nightmare that he mentioned in passing to Alfred Hitchcock, Inner Sanctum portrays a small town built alongside a newly swollen, polluted river of forbidden hetero- and homo- sexual subtext. A dirty big city unconscious is about to flood the morals of mid-American values.
Inner Sanctum is a truly must visit spot on your walk down Crime Street.
Ask Lew Landers
One of the most prolific directors in Hollywood history, Lew Landers began as a director of serials (Red Rider and Tailspin Tommy). His early effort – the 1935 The Raven – is probably his best and most famous film, but he worked in viritually every "B" movie and TV genre until his death in 1963. Among the many, his 1943 Return of the Vampire set during the London Blitz, sends Bela Lugosi spnning right out of his grave and into an interesting WWII twist on the legendary neck man.
Mary, Mary Quite Contrary
Mainly a "B" movie actress, Mary Beth Hughes never achieved stardom during her prime time, however, she has become quite the minor cult figure in the days since. If you've never seen her, one would wonder how and why her starlight is on the increase. But one glimpse of her in Inner Sanctum and it's obvious; her image flies off the screen leaving the other actors in her Milky Wake. Post-viewing, you'll instead wonder how Hollywood missed its chance to take better advantage her extraordiinary bad girl lips and eyes, to say nothing of true acting talent.
And I Quote...
"When you tell a woman over 40 she's beautiful, you're not a liar, you're a philanthopist."
"Mike and I got pretty friendly last night."
"You're pretty when your lips aren't moving."
"Some women get what they're looking for, but you can't kill a kid. You're pretty awful. You're even too bad for me."
Inner Trivia
- Fritz Leiber, Sr. a noted Shakespearean actor of the early 1900s, made his film debut in 1916 in Romeo and Juliet. He was the father of Fritz Leiber, Jr., a prolific fantasy/science ficiton writer whose career stretched from the 30s unitl the early 90s.
- Was there ever an uglier cinematic juvenile than Dale Belding (Mike) in this film?
- Mary Beth Hughes had a starring role in Last of the Wild Horses, the lone directorial effort of Alameda film legend - Robert L. Lippert.
-- Ed Schneider
Cast & Production Credits
| Franchot Tone | Howard Malloy |
| Jean Wallace | Barbara Whitfield |
| Myron McCormick | Charles Riggs |
| Marc Lawrence | Angelo Agostini |
| Winifrid Lenihan | Mrs. Hartley |
| Betty Harper | Caroline Riggs |
| Robert Gist | Tommy Quigley |
| Hester Sondergaard | Mrs. Borg |
| Luella Gear | Pet shop owner |
| Alexander Campbell | Pemberton |
| Fletcher Markle | Nightclub Patron |
| Burgess Meredith | Bartender |
| John Garfield | Street Loiterer |
| Marsha Hunt | Secretary-Receptionist |
| Leonard Lyons | Newspaper Columnist |
| Alexander Lockwood | Nichols |
| Brainerd Duffield | Butler |
| Henry Fonda | Nightclub Waiter |
| Produced by United Artists | |
| Fletcher Markle | Director / Screenwriter |
| Edward J. Danziger | Producer |
| Harry Lee Danziger | Producer |
| Vincent McConnor | Screenwriter |
| John Roeburt | Story Author |
| Don Malkames | Cinematographer |
| Robert W. Stinger | Composer (Music Score) |
| Robert Matthews | Editor |
| Fred C. Ryle | Makeup |
| William L. Nemeth | Special Effects |
