Rent Black Widow (1954)

Ginger - and a Dash of Chilli - Black Widow review by CH

“People like that don't commit suicide – they're far too busy.” The title Black Widow might lead one to expect a square screen framing black-and-white scenes most of which take place after dark. This 1954 film is in Cinemascope, the camera panning from side to side of large swanky Manhattan apartments whose furnishings are offset by copious sunlight. From one of Hugh Wheeler's mysteries (written as Patrick Quentin), this is a well-upholstered whodunit with no sign of a holster, just the shadow of a body hanging from a bathroom ceiling.

Van Heflin, a Broadway producer, is married to Gene Tierney who leaves town for a while to look after her ailing mother. Reluctantly, he goes to a party given by a neighbour in the block, none other than a Ginger Rogers who is currently in one of his productions and given to greeting many with an insult while her bag-carrier of a husband (Reginald Gardiner) looks on despairingly. Seeking fresher air, van Heflin goes on the balcony (some of the backdrops do not travel that well to Hollywood), and there encounters Peggy Ann Garner, a leopardess who, at twenty, hides her spots while going in for the kill while climbing the ladder of ambition with her typewriter (a sentence which could need editing but that might risk giving too much away).

And so he takes her out for some food more fortifying than Ginger Rogers's things on toothpicks, and, before long, suggests she can use his apartment by day as a writing retreat while his wife is away.

An innocent mid-life crisis?

Detective George Raft has his doubts. Some might call all this stagey, though it might not work on stage. Whichever, it is entertaining, not least with the brief turn of a cleaning lady played – almost Monty Python-fashion - by Cathleen Nesbitt who, some four decades earlier, had been in love with Rupert Brooke.

Manhattan Murder Mystery. - Black Widow review by Steve

Serviceable if implausible murder mystery whose big selling point on release was its early use of CinemaScope which, allied to the resplendent Deluxe Color process, gives this a dazzling ’50s look, especially the occasional location footage shot around Manhattan. Though unfortunately it was mostly filmed in the studio…

It was based on a bestseller (by Patrick Quentin) but feels like a stage play. Van Heflin plays a Broadway impresario married to a big star of the theatre (Gene Tierney). When she’s out of town he spends some time with a screwball female writer (Peggy Ann Garner) who turns up pregnant and dead in his bedroom. Whodunit?

Heflin carries the action as he tries to clear his name. Ginger Rogers is top billed but misfires as the power couple’s bitchy neighbour, also an actor. There’s a lot of back stabbing and venomous dialogue and a faint impression of New York theatreland. The twists are not astonishing, but at least effective.

The moral? Don’t ask strange young women to dinner when your wife is away! Tierney- who looks unwell- brings back memories of ’40s noirs, like Laura. The ’50s technology is appealing, but maybe it would have been better if they hadn’t bothered. Viewed from the present day, this would work really well in b&w.