Reflections on ... Too Late for Tears (1949)

From the Facebook event page:

“In one terrifying moment she realized what she had done … yet it was too late to turn back … too late for tears!”

Lizabeth Scott (1922 - 2015) was the most haunting and memorable of 1940s and 50s film noir actresses. Because of Scott’s languid mane of ash blonde hair, smoky eyes, sultry demeanor and raspy voice “that sounded as if it had been buried somewhere deep and was trying to claw its way out” she’s been frequently (and unfavorably) compared to the more famous Lauren Bacall. In fact, Scott was a much stranger, more intense and harder-working actress than Bacall, and made more interesting choices. And on Wednesday 20 November the Lobotomy Room film club presents her definitive movie - the tense 1949 film noir Too Late for Tears. It stars Scott at her most enthralling, almost serpentine as a suburban Los Angeles housewife with a treacherous and homicidal dark side.

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston’s most unique nite spot!) devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), specializing in the kitsch, the cult and the camp! Third Wednesday night of the month. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8 pm. Film starts at 8:30 pm prompt! We can accommodate 30 people maximum on film nights. Remember: the film is free so you can buy more cocktails! (One drink minimum).

/ German poster for Too Late for Tears /

“… or they were women like Lizabeth Scott, a kind of blonde Joan Crawford, who weren’t necessarily evil themselves, but whose very presence seemed to invite evil. Every time she appeared, the atmosphere became heavy and we knew that trouble, big trouble, was ahead.”

/ Feminist theorist Molly Haskell in her book From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies (1987) /

/ Lizabeth Scott and Arthur Kennedy in Too Late for Tears /

Too Late for Tears opens somewhere in the suburbs outside of Los Angeles at night, with attractive middle-class couple Alan (Arthur Kennedy) and Jane Palmer (Lizabeth Scott) bickering in their convertible en route to a cocktail party thrown by one of his business associates. Murmuring about a headache, Jane wants to turn around, and grumbles of her dislike for the hostess (“I don’t like being patronized … it’s his diamond-studded wife looking down at me …”). A car speeds past them – and the driver hurls a satchel stuffed with $60,000 in cash into their backseat! It’s a freak incident of mistaken identity, an organized crime handover gone wrong – and changes the Palmers’ mundane existence forever. When Alan clambers into the backseat, opens the case and Jane glimpses the stacked mounds of bills for the first time, her eyes gleam hungrily and she gives an intriguing, satisfied Mona Lisa smile. In fact, her response is almost erotic! The forthright Alan’s instincts are to promptly report the situation to the police. Jane (Lady Macbeth of the suburbs) refuses and instantly seizes control of the situation.  As we soon see, lying and scheming comes instinctively to Jane. And worse is yet to come …

In no time, Jane is dipping into the illicit stash, splurging on a full-length mink coat. Striving to understand his wife’s rapaciousness, Alan pleas with her, “I’ve tried to give you everything!” “You’ve given me a dozen down payments in installments for the rest of our lives!” Jane snaps. One of Too Late’s many assets is that anti-heroine Jane’s motivation is weirdly plausible. When Alan laments that the money has changed her, Jane replies – truthfully – “I haven’t changed. It’s the way I am.” She then urgently launches into a dramatic confessional monologue, which may well be Scott’s career-best acting moment. “I’ve been dreaming of this all my life, ever since I was a kid. And it wasn’t because we were poor. Not “hungry poor” at least. I suppose in a way it was worse: we were white collar poor. Middle class poor. The kind of people who can’t quite keep up with the Joneses and die a little every day because they can’t!” She’s convinced other people look down on her, can sense her comparatively humble origins, and acts out of a toxic, gnawing sense of dissatisfaction, entitlement, class envy and greed. Details of Jane’s past are deliberately left murky. Alan is Jane’s second husband. All we know is that her previous husband was called Blanchard, who she apparently married just for his money, and who apparently committed suicide. How well does Alan even know her?

/ My advice? Find someone who looks at you as lovingly as Lizabeth Scott contemplates that ill-gotten mink coat in Too Late for Tears /  

Inevitably, violent but weak-willed alcoholic criminal sleazeball Danny Fuller arrives at the Palmers’ door to retrieve the money. (Danny is played by Dan Duryea, the peerless go-to actor for weak-willed alcoholic criminal sleazeballs. Duryea and Scott are electric onscreen together). Jane doesn’t respond to his threats the way he anticipates, even after Danny slaps her around demanding, “Where’s the dough?” “Housewives can get awfully bored sometimes …” she purrs, smiling under hooded eyelids. Danny rapidly surmises that Jane is a true sociopath, that this blonde housewife is far more dangerous than he is, that he is out of his depth – and that Jane is almost certainly going to kill him. “You’re quite a gal, Mrs Palmer …” Danny marvels as Jane aims a gun at him. And later: “You know, Tiger, I didn’t know they made them as beautiful as you. Or as smart. Or as hard …”

/ One of the all-time great film noir double acts? Dan Duryea and Lizabeth Scott /

Byron Haskin’s direction is undistinguished but flab-free and tense. Too Late was a low-budget independent b-movie and those limitations are detectable onscreen: the sets are Spartan (the Palmers’ apartment is as impersonal as a hotel room) and most of the action unfolds in only one or two locations. But rather than detract, I’d argue this austerity underscores Too Late’s sense of grittiness and the grim milieu Jane is determined to escape.

Early on – when Too Late was originally mooted as a big-budgeted A-list movie - Joan Crawford was reportedly attached to play Jane (with Kirk Douglas as Danny). Fascinating as it would have been to see Crawford essay this role, I’m grateful it went to Lizabeth Scott instead. Hollywood diva Crawford, after all, was already triumphing at the time in juicy noirs like Flamingo Road (1949) and The Damned Don’t Cry (1950). Too Late is Scott’s ultimate film and role and one of the few times she played the lead. (See also: Desert Fury (1947)). Usually Scott was delegated to femme fatale parts or female love interest for leading men like Humphrey Bogart, Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston, Dick Powell or Burt Lancaster.  Here for once Scott “carries” the film – and she is wholly compelling. For me, Too Late offers a swooning celebration of Scott’s allure, her distinctive nicotine-stained throaty voice and hard-edged beauty (those skeletal cheekbones! Those black batwing eyebrows!).

/ See Lizabeth Scott as the original desperate housewife in Too Late for Tears! /

Boiling with intelligence, smarter than everyone she encounters, constantly scheming, two-steps ahead of everyone else – as portrayed by Scott, you can’t help but root for Jane. (Not that it’s necessarily difficult to outsmart her male victims: often all Jane needs to do is give a melting smile to a man to get her way). And Hoskin’s direction repeatedly invites us to identify with the amoral Jane (we often see her alone in private moments, plotting, smiling to herself, determined). Not to divulge Too Late’s conclusion, but towards the end we get a fleeting glimpse of Jane in Mexico, clad in fur and jewelry and finally able to luxuriate in the luxe lifestyle she’s always dreamed of. Jane looks radiantly happy – and damn it, Lizabeth Scott’s bewitching performance convinces us she deserves it. In Too Late for Tears, Scott casts a spell. 

Note: for years the dimly-remembered Too Late for Tears (also sometimes known as Killer Bait) languished in public domain obscurity, with various grainy, poor-quality edited-for-TV versions circulating online. A cursory Google search will find these - but I strongly recommended you shell-out for the exquisite digitally remastered dual-format DVD / Blu-ray issued by Arrow in 2016.

Further reading:

My analysis of another exceptional Lizabeth Scott film noir - Pitfall (1948).