Noir Film Review: No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948 film)

UPDATE: The reviewer at Twenty Four Frames describes Jack La Rue's Slim as a violent second tier Rick Blaine straight out of "Casablanca" and the ending as an over dramatic combination of poignancy and cold human behavior. Describing Slim as a second tier Rick Blaine is pretty spot on and while I mostly agree about the ending, I still love the Casablanca-esque parting of Miss Blandish and Slim. The review also brings up Miss Blandish as a victim of Stockholm Syndrome but I think that is a stretch. Miss Blandish is obviously drawn to Slim from first meeting. The review points out how the accents are all over the place. The reviewer describes the accents as a mixed bag of crumpets and hot dogs. This is true and can be jarring if you let it bu but I decided to enjoy the accents as an artifact of the time and production.

 On the DVD Talk website, DVD Savant relegates No Orchids to camp. The reviewer writes:

No Orchids for Miss Blandish may take the prize for a well-made picture that seemingly gets everything "wrong", yet is a delight to watch. Time has transformed the once-shocking subject matter into an Airplane!–like parody of gangster and noir clichés. 

...the film bounces from absurd violence to mawkish melodrama to lengthy musical performances. Clowes' script and direction are wildly uneven, and together with the buzarre accents and goofy characterizations, the entire showcomes off as preposterous. Just the same, No Orchids for Miss Blandish is both exciting and funy. Something outrageous is happening every minute.

I have no arguement with this assessment although I don't think it fair to use the phrase noir clichés. The film came out in 1948, in the clasic film noir period, and they hadn't yet become clichés

St. John Legh Clowes wrote and directed this excellent film adaptation of James Hadley Chase's 1939 gangster novel of the same name. It is also a very nice film noir and actually more noir than the novel. There are substantial differences from the book but Clowes balanced the story and film requirements in a way that should satisfy both camps. I reviewed the book here.

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The setting is shifted from the American Midwest to New York. As the credits roll, we see hands gift wrapping an orchid which is then delivered by a uniformed delivery person to the Blandish mansion. Along the way we see newspaper headlines announcing Blandish Heiress to Marry, Lucre Links Lucre. When Miss Blandish looks at the card that came with the orchid we see a pair of dice and the words "Don't Do It".  Miss Blandish directs her maid to respond "No orchids for Miss Blandish".

We see Miss Blandish as cold, haughty, and disinterested. Her fiancé, Foster Harvey, urges her to go to a road house where "The music will get in your blood and the ice will melt in your veins".

She is kidnapped during a robbery that leaves Foster and two of the robbers dead. Bailey is taking the unconscious Miss Blandish to Barney's, a gang neutral hidout when they are spotted by a rival gang, the Grisson's. The Grisson's show up at the hideout and take Miss Blandish for themselves, who intend to fence her heirloom diamond necklace, hold her for ransom, then dispose of her. But Slim, the son of Ma Grisson, has been in love with her from afar —he sent the orchids and notes seen in the opening— and Miss Blandish finds herself equally in love with him.

This results in a schism within the gang. At the same time, to police are closing in aided by reporter Dave Fenner who has figured out that the first gang, the Riley gang, had fallen to the Grisson gang and that Miss Blandish was being held in the club run by Ma Grisson.

With the police noose tightening and plotting within the gang putting Slim at odd with his mother, the tragic ending in inevitable.

The two major differences between the book and the film are the characters of Slim Grisson and Miss Blandish.

Instead of the yellow-eyed, impotent, psychopath, Slim becomes a strong-jawed Bogart style gangster who kills without remorse but is also tormented with his love for Miss Blandish. It is this love above greed that will ultimately lead to his end. Jack La Rue, one of the few US actors in the film and who lost roles to both Bogart and George Raft, is well cast as Slim. There is a beautifully noir scene when the Grisson gang has arrived at Barney's hideout to take Miss Blandish from Baley, the remaining member of the Riley gang. While the other characters are moving into place in the background, La Rue's Slim sits on the edge of a table in the forground, repeatedly tossing dice on a plate. The rattle of dice on the plate is unnerving, ratchets up the tension, and establishes Slim as a cold and merciless gangster.

With Miss Blandish back in Ma Grisson's club, The Black Dice, the tormented side of Slim comes out. Despite Miss Blandish's obvious attraction to him, he gives her back her jewels and tells her to leave which she reluctantly does. A he broods, off camera we hear the door open and hear him say that he's glad she came back.

It is perhaps an odd comparison, but No Orchids reminded me of Casablanca. If you remember, in Casablanca we see scenes of a smiling Rick and Ilsa in happier times in Paris. In No Orchids, Slim and Miss Blandish are shown living happily in the club, going to a rustic cabin in the woods and making plans to run away to Cuba. And the final scene before Slims goes to meet his doom has got to be an homage to Casablanca. Slim says to Miss Blandish,

I know you'll always remember I love you but forget you ever loved me.

And before he steps out of the cabin and dies in a hail of bullets from a Tommy gun, he tells Miss Blandish,

Be seeing you kid. 

For her part, Miss Blandish has a much more active role than in the book where she only had a few short scenes. As I wrote above, she starts out as cold, aloof, and without passion. When she is "saved" from being ravished by Bailey by the arrival of the Grisson gang at Barney's, we see the beginning of her interest in Slim. Later, black in the club, she professes that she feels alive for the first time in her life. She tells Slim that she knows what he is but doesn't care. Rather than being a victim of Stockholm Syndrome, she willingly embraces Slim despite knowing what he does. If anything, it is Slim that tries to do right by her. I wondered, had they escaped their fate in the film, to what lengths Miss Blandish would have stood by her man. Would she have become his partner in crime? I think that is possible.

The police and reporter Dave Fenner think they have rescued Miss Blandish not realizing the shock she is experiencing is not from her ordeal but from seeing the bullet-ridden body of her lover. Fenner takes her to a hotel room to await her father thinking he has done something good but not realizing how anguished she is. He hears a scream from the room and rushes in to find that Miss Blandish has thrown herself from the window and lies dead on the sidewalk below. The final scene is very nicely done and slickly framed and shows part of Miss Blandish's arm and people carelessly treading on an orchid.

No Orchids was filmed in England with a largely international cast which makes for some odd accents for a film set in New York. Lilli Molnar who played Ma Grisson was Hungarian. Reporter Dave Fenner was Scottish. Charles Goldner who played Louis the head waiter was born in Vienna when it was in Austria-Hungary; this actually fits his role well so doesn't jar. Zoe Gail who plays Margo the nightclub singer who assists Fenner, was South African. Only one other cast member was from the US and the rest, in addition to the one mentioned above, were from England, Poland, Austria, and Canada.

There are some great character actors in the film: Louis the headwaiter provides some comic relief; the erudite lush, Doc; the dim Barney who has a remarkable face that makes you recoil; the affable grandpa who runs the gas station and sews the arm back on his granddaughters doll. Accents notwithstanding, I liked the casting.

Clowes also included several night club acts that are pretty good. Margo sings two songs— But When He Got It, Does He Want It and Where Do We Go From Here— that reflect the relationship of Slim and Miss Blandish. But When He Got It ... has clever lyrics such as this interesting verse, Lancelot got hot pants a lot though he didn't care for romance a lot but damsels favors brought luck with them but when he carried them off he was stuck with em. There is also an amusing performance where a performer does an impression of both Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. And where would a 1940s nightclub be without an elaborate dance routine.

When No Orchids came out it was called one of the worst, most depraved, films ever made because if its violence and sexual content. This opinion is, of course, understandable for its time but now it is rather tame and might get a PG rating. One scene in particular you might not understand without having read the book. Cutie (Maisey is the book) is a hostess in the Grisson club. She wears a uniform jacket with a zipper which Fenner plays with noting the smooth action. In the book we know that Masie makes extra money by letting male patrons unzip her jacket and fondle her breasts. It's made obvious that Slim and Miss Blandish are sleeping together and Margo entices Fenner into her bed. We also see Margo's bare back which obviously means she is nude! The violence isn't extreme by our standards with brutal beating death of Miss Blandish's fiancé being the worst and most of that is implied.

I enjoyed the noir filming techniques with use of shadows, low angles, two-shots. My favorite scene is the one in Barney's hideout. Miss Blandish is coming down the stairs, Bailey is sweating and trying to negotiate his way out, and the actors are moving into place in the background. All the while Slim, impassive, is in the foreground tossing dice onto a plate. The mise en scène is just wonderful.

I'll probably update this post after I've read some other reviews. As an experiment, I thought I would put my thoughts down without outside influence. The Wikipedia reference doesn't count because I only looked at the first paragraph where the film's initial reception is mentioned.

Film reviews
No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948) John Legh Clowes. Twenty Four Frames.

No Orchids for Miss Blandish. DVD Savant Review.

No Orchids for Miss Blandish. TCM