When Quentin Tarantino's debut RESERVOIR DOGS (1992) was released, moviegoers and critics were blown away by the eclectic group of actors that he had assembled for his low budget crime thriller. Tarantino had veteran actor Harvey Keitel joined with new faces like Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Steve Buscemi. But there was one bullet-headed older actor who plays crime boss Joe Cabot, the man who bankrolls the robbery that no one seemed to know who he was except Tarantino. The actor's name was Lawrence Tierney. Tierney was best known for playing tough guys in film noirs back in the late 1940s, making him the perfect bridge from classic film noir to Tarantino's modern LA noir. Casting Lawrence Tierney in RESERVOIR DOGS would be an introduction to Tarantino's incredible cinematic memory as he would resurrect forgotten actors in future films including John Travolta (PULP FICTION), David Carradine (KILL BILL, VOL 1 & 2), Pam Grier (JACKIE BROWN), Rod Taylor (INGLORIOUS BASTERDS), and Dennis Christopher (DJANGO UNCHAINED).
BORN TO KILL (1947) with a young Lawrence Tierney in the lead role sounds like a Tarantino film. Tierney apparently carried his tough guy persona off-screen as much as on-screen (more about that later). BORN TO KILL was directed by of all people a young Robert Wise who began his career as an editor on Orson Welles CITIZEN KANE (1941) before advancing to directing with a couple of Val Lewton horror films including THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944) and THE BODY SNATCHER (1945) starring Boris Karloff. Before Wise went on to direct classic films like WEST SIDE STORY (1961), THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965), and THE SAND PEBBLES (1966), Wise cut his teeth directing film noirs like CRIMINAL COURT (1946), THE SET-UP (1949), and BORN TO KILL.
With a screenplay full of poisonous dialogue by Eve Greene and Richard MaCaulay based on the novel Deadlier Than the Male by James Gunn and directed at a fast clip by Robert Wise, BORN TO KILL open in Reno, Nevada where Helen Brent (Claire Trevor) has just been granted a divorce. Helen returns to the boardinghouse she's staying at where the alcoholic owner Mrs. Kraft (Esther Howard) and young pretty boarder Laury Palmer (Isabell Jewell) offer her a beer to celebrate Helen's new found freedom. Helen declines. She's ready to return to her hometown of San Francisco. She settles her bill with Mrs. Kraft. Laury brags about dating two men at one time. She's going to see the younger one Danny Jaden (Tony Barrett) tonight to make the more handsome, stronger beau jealous. Helen goes to the casino one last time hoping to win a few bucks. She encounters Sam Wild (Lawrence Tierney) playing craps. They make eye contact as Sam rolls her a few winning bets before losing. Helen runs into Laury and Danny. Sam sees Laury from afar. It turns out Sam is Laury's other boyfriend and he's the jealous type. When Laury and Danny return to the boardinghouse, Sam's waiting for them. Sam tells Danny to scram. Danny won't and pulls a knife on Sam. Sam kills Danny in anger and then murders Laury who stumbles across Danny's body. As Sam flees the murder scene, Helen returns to find the two dead bodies in the kitchen. Surprisingly, instead of calling the police, Helen calls the train station for the next train to San Francisco.
Sam chills at his flat. His roommate and associate Marty Whiteman (Elisha Cook) returns. Sam confesses to Marty he murdered Laury and Danny. Marty tells Sam to get out of town. Marty will check to make sure there aren't any loose ends and join him later. At the train station, Sam recognizes Helen from the casino. He helps her with her luggage and they both head to San Francisco on the train, chatting in the club car. Sam flirts with Helen and asks for her phone number when they arrive in San Francisco. Back in Reno, Mrs. Kraft hires the sleazy private investigator Albert Arnett (Walter Slezak) to find Laury's killer. Helen visits her new fiance Fred Grover (Phillip Terry) who's waiting for her at Helen's wealthy half-sister Georgia Staples (Audrey Long) home. The reunion is short lived when Sam unexpectedly shows up. Sam is surprised to learn Helen's engaged so soon after her divorce. Georgia sees the newspaper headline about the two murders in Reno. Helen confides to Georgia she discovered the two bodies at the boardinghouse she was staying at. She didn't call the police so as not to get Fred involved. The four of them go out dancing. Helen is not happy Sam followed her. Sam switches dance partners. Georgia becomes smitten with the good looking but rough Sam. After a few dates, Sam and Georgia become engaged.
Helen's upset about the marriage. Helen's secretly in love with the volatile Sam. Marty arrives in San Francisco for the wedding, trailed by Arnett. At the wedding, Arnett lies his way into working in Helen's kitchen. Arnett asks a lot of questions about Sam to the staff. Helen gets word of it and throws Arnett out. Sam and Georgia go on their honeymoon but return sooner than expected due to an argument. Sam wants to run the newspaper Georgia inherited from her father. Georgia doesn't believe Sam has the experience. Sam overhears Helen taking a phone call from Reno and thinks Helen's setting him up. Helen secretly meets with Arnett. Arnett's close to pinning Sam for the murders. Helen wants to protect Sam. Helen tries to bribe Arnett to drop the case. Helen offers $5,000. Arnett wants $15,000 to disappear. Sam confronts Helen when she returns. Helen tells Sam about the detective Arnett who has been hired to catch Laury's killer.
Marty follows Arnett to the Felton Hotel where Arnett meets Mrs. Kraft to update her. After Arnett leaves the meeting, Marty appears and promises Mrs. Kraft some information about the murder. But she has to meet Marty later that night at a predetermined street corner. Back at the house, Sam catches Marty coming out of Helen's room. Sam becomes jealous again. Marty updates Sam on his plan to deal with Mrs. Kraft. Marty meets Mrs. Kraft that night. Marty attempts to kill her but Mrs. Kraft struggles free. Sam shows up out of nowhere and stabs Marty. The police show up at Georgia's to tell them Marty has been murdered. Helen grows tired of cleaning up Sam's messes. Helen visits Mrs. Kraft and threatens her if she doesn't drop her investigation. Fred breaks off the engagement with Helen. Arnett calls Helen, upset that Mrs. Kraft has ended the investigation. BORN TO KILL speeds toward its finale as the greedy Sam and Helen plot to murder Georgia and take her money before they turn on each other as the police close in on them.
BORN TO KILL is hard-boiled film noir with a fascinating group of flawed, morally corrupt characters. What's interesting with BORN TO KILL is a film noir trope is flipped. Usually, it's the femme fatale who turns the sap into a killer for her. With BORN TO KILL, it's bad boy Sam who warps Helen. When we first meet Helen, she's freshly divorced and already engaged to the wealthy and kind Fred Grover. But deep down in Helen, there's a bad seed waiting to sprout. She just doesn't know it until she encounters Sam. Helen discovers the two bodies but doesn't call the police. Helen doesn't know Sam's the killer yet. She wants to protect Paul from any bad publicity. She's protecting her asset, marrying into money she was denied when her deceased father gave the newspaper company to her half sister Georgia. First attracted by Sam's rugged good looks at the Reno casino, Helen becomes enamored by Sam's ruthlessness as she gets to know him. Both Sam and Helen's actions are driven by class. They're from the lower side. They feel like life has cheated them, given them the short straw. They're trying to scratch their way to the top by marrying into wealth.
But Sam and Helen are destined to be bad together. They may be engaged to nice, good-hearted people but they desire each other. If BORN TO KILL was made today, Sam and Helen would be sneaking away to have sex in seedy hotels. In 1947, it's clandestine kisses in the hallway or kitchen. Helen finds "goodness and safety" with Fred. Fred can keep her from turning bad with his "peace and security." In Sam, she finds "strength and excitement and depravity." Helen doesn't kill anyone but she begins to run interference for Sam and his actions, partly to protect her sister, partly because she's attracted to Sam. She tries to bribe the shady detective Arnett to drop the investigation. "Obstructing the wheels of justice is a costly affair," Arnett reminds her. Later Helen threatens Mrs. Kraft if she goes to the police about Sam killing Marty. "Perhaps you don't realize it's painful being killed. A piece of metal sliding into your body, finding its way into your heart." Only when Fred calls off their engagement, does Helen turn to a disastrous, last ditch plot for her and Sam to kill Georgia for her money.
It's not only Sam and Helen who are rotten in BORN TO KILL. In a clever twist, private detective Albert Arnett (Walter Slezak) is not a straight, honest gumshoe. Arnett's down on his luck and as morally compromised as Sam or Helen. He's chased by creditors and owes money to the coffee shop woman for using her phone but he has a lead that could change his fortunes. Mrs. Kraft hires him to find her friend Laury's killer for $500. In San Francisco, Arnett receives a counter offer from Helen to quit investigating Sam. "I'm a man of integrity, "Arnett tells her, "but I'm always willing to listen to an interesting offer." Now, Arnett holds some blackmail power over Helen as he has Sam in his crosshairs. In true film noir fashion, Arnett's advantage will crumble. He never will get paid by either Mrs. Kraft or Helen. At least he manages not to get killed.
Sam's bunkmate and associate Marty Waterman (Elisha Cook) is another character operating in the gray areas of morals and ethics in BORN TO KILL. Why Marty hangs around with a guy like Sam with his volcanic rage is never explained. Marty might idolize Sam. He's definitely intimidated by Sam. He's wormed his way into Sam's favor by cleaning up his messes (soon Helen will fall into the same trap). Marty talks a good game but we know he's no Sam when he clumsily fails to kill Mrs. Kraft to silence her investigation into Sam. Marty was a dead man the moment he began hanging around with Sam.
BORN TO KILL is lucky to have three leads who should be in the Film Noir Hall of Fame (if there was such a thing). Lawrence Tierney broke onto the film noir scene with his breakthrough performance as bank robber John Dillinger in Max Nosseck's 1945 DILLINGER (Tierney would also play western bank robber Jesse James in 1946's BADMAN'S TERRITORY). Tierney apparently hated the role as Dillinger yet it paved the way for more leading man roles for him. Tierney's fantastic in BORN TO KILL, charming one moment, a paranoid, raging sociopath the next. Tierney's Sam Wild (prophetic last name) has an inferiority complex. He's lower class, born on the wrong side of the tracks. He covets wealth, power, and respect. Marrying newspaper heir Georgia Staples almost brings him to his goal but Sam can't get out of his own way, his ego and hair trigger temper his downfall. The way Tierney switches from charmer to jealousy in half a second is impressive.
Other film noirs that Tierney appeared in include Gordon Douglas's SAN QUENTIN (1946), Felix E. Feists's THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE (1947), Richard Fleischer's BODYGUARD (1948), and Nosseck's THE HOODLUM (1951). Right before BORN TO KILL was to be released, Tierney was involved in a drunken brawl that brought him more notoriety. Several arrests in the 1950s for fighting at bars and Hollywood parties would derail Tierney's promising film career. Tierney would bounce back (although his off-screen issues like being stabbed in 1973 never quite left him) appearing in small parts on television and film with Tarantino's RESERVOIR DOGS shining a spotlight once again on a true film noir legend.
If Tierney was the king of tough guy roles for a brief period, Claire Trevor cornered the market on the fallen woman for over a decade. It all began for Trevor (with blonde hair no less) in John Ford's STAGECOACH (1939) where she had top billing over the young, unknown John Wayne as prostitute Dallas run out of town by a women's "Law and Order League." As newly divorced Helen Brent in BORN TO KILL, Trevor's Helen is best described toward the film's end by Mrs. Kraft as "the coldest iceberg of a woman I ever saw, and the rottenest inside. And I've seen plenty, too." Helen wants a second chance at married life, to marry the kind and wealthy Fred and have a safe, secure life. She becomes compromised by the brutal but handsome Sam Wild who touches her inner dangerous side. It's a juicy role that Trevor plays perfectly. Trevor would have a good run of film noir roles in the 1940s including Jack Hively's STREET OF CHANCE (1942), Edward Dmytryk's MURDER, MY SWEET (1944) with Dick Powell based on the Raymond Chandler novel, and her Academy Award Best Supporting Actress performance as the washed up, drunk former nightclub singer Gaye Dawn in John Huston's KEY LARGO (1948) with Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and Lauren Bacall.
Nobody played a born loser better than character actor Elisha Cook, Jr. who is noted for having appeared in 21 film noir movies (more than any other actor) according to one film book. Ever since audiences and directors took notice of the diminutive actor in his breakthrough performance as Kasper Gutman's stooge Wilmer Cook in John Huston's THE MALTESE FALCON (1942), Cook, Jr was the go-to-supporting actor to playing roles from a doomed petty criminal to a drug addicted jazz drummer. In BORN TO KILL, Cook plays Marty Waterman, Sam Wild's only friend and conscience. Whether Marty idolizes Sam or he's intimidated by him (probably both), Marty cleans up the messes of his bigger, volatile pal. Unfortunately for Marty, as he becomes more confident of his influence with Sam, he forgets that Sam's the jealous type. Like murder jealous. When Sam catches Marty innocently coming out of Helen's room, Sam snaps. He kills Marty on a lonely beach after Marty fails to murder Mrs. Kraft. Some of Cook, Jr's best film noir performances include Robert Siodmak's THE PHANTOM LADY (1944), DILLINGER with Tierney, Howard Hawks THE BIG SLEEP (1946), and Stanley Kubrick's THE KILLING (1957). Later in his career, Cook, Jr appeared in small roles in Roman Polanski's ROSEMARY'S BABY (1969), Sam Peckinpah's PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (1973), and Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979). Not bad for a pipsqueak.
Austrian actor Walter Slezak should have been in more film noir films like BORN TO KILL. Instead, Slezak bounced around playing numerous ethnic roles including the German U-boat captain in Alfred Hitchcock's LIFEBOAT (1944) to Latin American politicians and pirates in Frank Borzage's THE SPANISH MAIN (1945) and Vincent Minnelli's THE PIRATE (1948). Slezak's crooked private investigator Albert Arnett has the perfect name. Arnett would be at the front of the phone book under A for clients to look up like Mrs. Kraft. Arnett is anything but A class. He's a good detective, tracking Sam to San Francisco, convinced he's most likely the killer in Reno. But Arnett's greed and financial issues will cloud his moral judgment. Slezak's interesting voice and Sydney Greenstreet like stature make him a good candidate as a film noir player. Slezak would appear in a few other film noir films like Richard Wallace's THE FALLEN SPARROW (1943), Edward Dmytryk's CORNERED (1945) with Dick Powell; and Ted Tetzlaff's comedy noir RIFFRAFF (1947).
Actors Phillip Terry as Fred Grover and Audrey Long as Georgia Staples have the unenviable task of playing the dull, honest significant others to the morally questionable Helen and Sam. Their roles sound boring yet in BORN TO KILL, Fred and Audrey are important supporting characters who are the key to Helen and Sam trying to better their standing in society. Fred will the first to realize Helen's moral compass has done a 180 and he drops Helen sooner than Georgia discovers Sam's true intentions. Actor Terry appeared in more than 80 films (mostly uninteresting except for Billy Wilder's 1945 THE LOST WEEKEND). His better claim to fame was as actress Joan Crawford's husband for four years in the 1940s. The pretty Long mostly appeared in low budget films in the 40s and early 50s like George Blair's DUKE OF CHICAGO (1949) and Ray Nazarro's INDIAN UPRISING (1952) before retiring after an uncredited cameo in Billy Wilder's LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON (1957). Special mention to actress Esther Howard who plays the good-hearted, alcoholic Mrs. Kraft who uses her life savings to find the killer of possibly her only friend in life Laury. Howard was part of director Preston Sturges stock company appearing in THE PALM BEACH STORY (1942) among others. Howard had parts in two well known film noirs MURDER, MY SWEET and Edgar G. Ulmer's DETOUR (1945).
Some final BORN TO KILL trivia tidbits. The reason Helen goes to Reno, Nevada to get a divorce was that Reno was the only place at the time in the U.S. where a person could get a no-fault divorce. They just had to establish residency for six weeks in Reno which is why Helen was staying at Mrs. Kraft's boardinghouse at the start of the film. Actor Lawrence Tierney was the older brother to actor Scott Brady who appeared in more westerns than film noirs in the 50s including Allan Dwan's MONTANA BELLE (1952) with Jane Russell and Nicholas Ray's JOHNNY GUITAR (1954) with Joan Crawford. Put two photos of the men together in their handsome heyday and you can see the resemblance. Look for actress Ellen Corby, better known as Grandma Walton in the TV Series THE WALTONS (1972-1980) as one of Helen's maids at the wedding.
BORN TO KILL is a unique film in the annals of film noir. It's a brutal, dark film filled with not famous Hollywood stars but hardcore film noir actors and actresses who play their parts perfectly in this lurid tale of murder and sexual attraction. Like young Quentin Tarantino making his mark in the film world with his first film RESERVOIR DOGS, young Robert Wise staked out his presence as an up and coming director who would springboard from film noir films to other genres including science fiction and musicals that would become classics. BORN TO KILL is a film noir classic.
