On being informed of the existence of an episode of The Barbara Stanwyck Show (1960–61) written by A.I. Bezzerides, directed by Jacques Tourneur, and starring Stanwyck, Joan Blondell, and Dan Duryea, I just wanted it to be as good as its names. That it falls short of their combined powers is no fault of its stars, who could have passed around the phone book and delighted me. With a hard-lit assist from the cinematography of Hal Mohr, "Sign of the Zodiac" (1961) makes a strong enough case for itself in half an hour that I wanted it to be a feature, which is part of its problem.
In justice to the rest of the episode, its opening scenes are hard to beat for sea air, seediness, and the deniable supernatural. The title runs in with the tide through the pilings of an amusement pier where two women have come to see the fortune-teller who lives past the shooting gallery and the concessions stand, the painted owls and palmistry of his establishment flat-washed in the oncoming sunset like just another salt-faded attraction. Helene Terry (Blondell) is playfully excited to be recognized by name after three years, but her steelier, nervier sister-in-law Madge (Stanwyck) is less enchanted by the astrological charts and arcane tchotchkes, definitely not by the professional familiarity of the not even faintly French Pierre (Duryea) who forestalls her introduction, "Please—don't tell me your name. I prefer to get acquainted with you in my own fashion." Her unease with the visit creeps up as his attention widens not just toward her person but the tragedy that he claims to have sensed at once in her face, the death of Madge's husband, Helene's brother, not much more than a year ago, but when his knowledge seems suddenly to flip from the scattershot of a cold reading to confidences only a mentalist with a confederate or a real clairvoyant could know, she pushes over his crystal and tears out into the last of the day, peeling out so fast in her Lincoln Continental that she leaves Helene in the deserted parking lot behind her, her rough blonde curls a helm against the sea breeze, her face tilted in the westering light to an expression we can't fully read.
Considering that Stanwyck and Blondell had last shared a screen in 1931, it's sheerly fun to see them together with their chemistry in such a different key, but casting Duryea as a psychic of indefinite intentions works so well, I can't believe no noir of the classical period ever tried it. He's sinister and trivial at once, his light, naturally sarcastic voice cutting through the flowery dialogue that another actor might have succumbed to making a meal of; it keeps the audience off balance about his spiel whose serial charm stays barely the right side of sleaze, especially as we take in the implication that his clientele is primarily female and of a certain age. He sounds almost clinical as he offers the cards to Helene with the instruction, "Don't cut them, please, just lay your hand on them for the length of a breath to let the spirit pass through," and then outrageously insincere as he takes them back to deal them out, turning up the seven of diamonds like a tease: "You're such a warm person. Such a warm touch." When he goes off his own script, however, confronting an openly insulting Madge with the never-shared story of the name she was given in memoriam and discarded as soon as she could because it disturbed her to bear a dead woman's name, it's a jolt of unexpected and untrustworthy conviction, like a flash of the Stan Carlisle he never was. We can't get a read on him when we can't tell if it's all flim-flam—the cards, the crystal-gazing, the psychometry—or if Pierre really believes in his own powers. Or if the teleplay does, as the steadily darkening tone of the reading encourages the suspicion that the episode has just slipped a gear into the supernatural. He's so effectively ambiguous, in fact, he nearly camouflages whether we should be looking as closely at anyone else in this plot. Does Helene really put any stock in the prognostications of a man who was heard to flatter his last client until he had her safely out the door or is she just enjoying the ego boost of the game? Lighting a cigarette with a kind of impatient disapproval as Pierre links his hands around the glass for a better look at the future, Madge is obviously humoring her sister-in-law, but if she truly believes it's all "nonsense . . . anyone can see he's just a fake," why should it trouble her so much to have a charlatan hold her husband's heirloom watch and hear a voice crying havoc from the crystal, like the ghost of Antony? Is a watch that teleports worse than a body that vanishes, or the secret knowledge of the night-crying seagulls?
( Better look in your crystal ball again. )
My last complaint about "Sign of the Zodiac" is its failure to take advantage of its title beyond establishing that Madge is a Leo and Helene a Sagittarius, of which Pierre could easily have made something as part of his patter. All the same, I am indebted to Tim Blankenship for alerting me to its existence, complete with a pointer to YouTube. It's an impeccable job of liminal, carnival atmosphere and as an excuse for Stanwyck and Blondell and Duryea to be captured on film together, I'll take it. According to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch, if I want more than a half-hour of weirdness between a fortune-teller and two strangers, I should look into Peter Shaffer's White Lies (1967). This nonsense brought to you by my warm backers at Patreon.
In justice to the rest of the episode, its opening scenes are hard to beat for sea air, seediness, and the deniable supernatural. The title runs in with the tide through the pilings of an amusement pier where two women have come to see the fortune-teller who lives past the shooting gallery and the concessions stand, the painted owls and palmistry of his establishment flat-washed in the oncoming sunset like just another salt-faded attraction. Helene Terry (Blondell) is playfully excited to be recognized by name after three years, but her steelier, nervier sister-in-law Madge (Stanwyck) is less enchanted by the astrological charts and arcane tchotchkes, definitely not by the professional familiarity of the not even faintly French Pierre (Duryea) who forestalls her introduction, "Please—don't tell me your name. I prefer to get acquainted with you in my own fashion." Her unease with the visit creeps up as his attention widens not just toward her person but the tragedy that he claims to have sensed at once in her face, the death of Madge's husband, Helene's brother, not much more than a year ago, but when his knowledge seems suddenly to flip from the scattershot of a cold reading to confidences only a mentalist with a confederate or a real clairvoyant could know, she pushes over his crystal and tears out into the last of the day, peeling out so fast in her Lincoln Continental that she leaves Helene in the deserted parking lot behind her, her rough blonde curls a helm against the sea breeze, her face tilted in the westering light to an expression we can't fully read.
Considering that Stanwyck and Blondell had last shared a screen in 1931, it's sheerly fun to see them together with their chemistry in such a different key, but casting Duryea as a psychic of indefinite intentions works so well, I can't believe no noir of the classical period ever tried it. He's sinister and trivial at once, his light, naturally sarcastic voice cutting through the flowery dialogue that another actor might have succumbed to making a meal of; it keeps the audience off balance about his spiel whose serial charm stays barely the right side of sleaze, especially as we take in the implication that his clientele is primarily female and of a certain age. He sounds almost clinical as he offers the cards to Helene with the instruction, "Don't cut them, please, just lay your hand on them for the length of a breath to let the spirit pass through," and then outrageously insincere as he takes them back to deal them out, turning up the seven of diamonds like a tease: "You're such a warm person. Such a warm touch." When he goes off his own script, however, confronting an openly insulting Madge with the never-shared story of the name she was given in memoriam and discarded as soon as she could because it disturbed her to bear a dead woman's name, it's a jolt of unexpected and untrustworthy conviction, like a flash of the Stan Carlisle he never was. We can't get a read on him when we can't tell if it's all flim-flam—the cards, the crystal-gazing, the psychometry—or if Pierre really believes in his own powers. Or if the teleplay does, as the steadily darkening tone of the reading encourages the suspicion that the episode has just slipped a gear into the supernatural. He's so effectively ambiguous, in fact, he nearly camouflages whether we should be looking as closely at anyone else in this plot. Does Helene really put any stock in the prognostications of a man who was heard to flatter his last client until he had her safely out the door or is she just enjoying the ego boost of the game? Lighting a cigarette with a kind of impatient disapproval as Pierre links his hands around the glass for a better look at the future, Madge is obviously humoring her sister-in-law, but if she truly believes it's all "nonsense . . . anyone can see he's just a fake," why should it trouble her so much to have a charlatan hold her husband's heirloom watch and hear a voice crying havoc from the crystal, like the ghost of Antony? Is a watch that teleports worse than a body that vanishes, or the secret knowledge of the night-crying seagulls?
( Better look in your crystal ball again. )
My last complaint about "Sign of the Zodiac" is its failure to take advantage of its title beyond establishing that Madge is a Leo and Helene a Sagittarius, of which Pierre could easily have made something as part of his patter. All the same, I am indebted to Tim Blankenship for alerting me to its existence, complete with a pointer to YouTube. It's an impeccable job of liminal, carnival atmosphere and as an excuse for Stanwyck and Blondell and Duryea to be captured on film together, I'll take it. According to
spatch, if I want more than a half-hour of weirdness between a fortune-teller and two strangers, I should look into Peter Shaffer's White Lies (1967). This nonsense brought to you by my warm backers at Patreon.
