#virginia kellogg

[creepynostalgy]

Eleonor Parker in Caged! (1950)

[kino51]

White heat  1949

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

White Heat. Directed by Raoul Walsh. Starring James Cagney.  Written by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts based on a story by Virginia Kellogg. Cinematography by Sidney Hickox. Edited by Owen Marks. Warner Bros., 1949. “He finally got to the top of the world. And it blew right up in his face.”

[gregorygalloway]

White Heat was released on 2 September 1949.

50-year-old James Cagney had vowed to never do another gangster film, and vowed never to return to Warner Bros (Cagney had successfully sued the studio for breach of contract in 1935), but admitted he “needed the money.”

Cagney had script approval and settled on a story by Virginia Kellogg (Kellogg received the film’s only Academy Award nomination), with Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts writing the screenplay (with input from Cagney’s friends Humphrey Bogart and Frank McHugh).

Cagney was unhappy that Raoul Walsh had been hired to direct, even though they had worked together twice before (1939′s The Roaring Twenties, and 1941′s The Strawberry Blonde).

White Heat was a commercial and critical success, and was listed as one of Time magazine’s “Best Movies of All Time” (since 1923).

[tcm]

CAGED (’50) by Kim Luperi

“For that 40 bucks Tom and I heisted, I certainly got myself an education,” Marie (Eleanor Parker) scornfully remarks as she leaves prison for an uncertain future in CAGED (’50).

Just as Marie, who nervously walked into jail a naïve young woman and cynically walked out into a newfound criminal career, received a tragic schooling by the prison system, writer Virginia Kellogg got quite an education behind bars, too. Her undercover research laid the groundwork for the brutal story on which CAGED is based, leading to the Oscar-nominated script she co-wrote with Bernard C. Schoenfeld.

Under the direction of Warner Bros. producer Jerry Wald, Kellogg, a special officer of the Los Angeles Police Department, spent almost two weeks as an inmate in one prison and observed the action in three more. (It was illegal for someone to be committed without due process, but an "honest and courageous" official bent the rules for her.) The result was “Women Without Men,” Kellogg’s tale detailing the corruption and atrocious conditions behind bars that molded and ultimately hardened criminals. While I couldn’t locate “Women Without Men,” I did find Kellogg’s 1950 Colliers piece "Inside Women's Prison.” The jury’s out as to whether the articles are the same, but as you’ll see, the events in the latter unquestionably inspired CAGED. 

Kellogg's penal alter-ego was "Virginia Laurel,” an ex-real estate clerk sentenced to three years for embezzlement. Behind bars, she crossed paths with a woman who accepted a ride from a stranger whose "hot" car was pulled over by police; unaware of the man’s crime, the innocent woman was charged as an accessory. In jail, she held fast to her morals with hopes of returning to her family, but not long after, the "queen" of the resident shoplifting gang lured her into a life of crime.

Obviously, Kellogg’s observations greatly influenced her devastating portrait of Marie, who experienced the opposite of rehabilitation. In fact, Kellogg argued that most state penal institutions were "crime universities for young women," where inmates were given "courses by experts in evildoing" and re-released into society loathing the law, ensuring their return for "postgraduate work.” Indeed, at the end of CAGED, Superintendent Benton (Agnes Moorehead) keeps Marie’s file active, presuming: “She’ll be back.”

The two most prominent concerns Kellogg observed behind bars were deep rooted political corruption and rampant drug use. Female guards, who were sometimes on organized crime groups’ payrolls, were known to smuggle illegal items inside (for themselves and for sale), which CAGED alludes to. Speaking of crime groups, inmates often became so desperate for parole after exhausting all legitimate options that they’d take whatever “job” outside crime rings offered in order to secure their release, as gainful employment was a necessary condition for parole. These “offers” were generally of the illegal variety, Marie’s included; the Production Code Administration (PCA) even made Warner Bros. change Marie’s original post-prison prostitution gig to shoplifting, the lesser of two evils in their eyes.

As far as drugs go, dope smuggling was common, with those in charge frequently creating addicts of unassuming prisoners. Kellogg’s most outrageous drug story was quite incendiary: An inmate was discovered at the foot of a dazed staffer’s bed, waiting with an alarm clock and hypodermic needle to inject the official with dope every three hours. An episode like that would obviously not fly onscreen, so the PCA pressured Warner for “an ideal solution to the problem”: swapping dope for alcohol.

These are but a few of the brutally authentic experiences that made the watered-down leap to the screen in CAGED. Kellogg’s candid exposé contained blunt descriptions of episodes involving the likes of syphilis, drunken doctors, lesbianism and abuse, details which proved too provocative for the Production Code and were either omitted or vaguely alluded to.

Despite the cynicism of her tale, Kellogg herself turned her attention to reform after witnessing such corruption. Among other things, she argued for sufficient mental standards for matrons and education for inmates. These principles, Kellogg contended, would provide the bare minimum required for a shot at rehabilitation. "It costs a little more, but it is cheaper in the long run," she argued. And shouldn’t a human life be worth it?

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

Caged

“Pile out, you tramps. It’s the end of the line!”

“In this cage, you get tough, or you get killed.”

“Who’s the cute trick?”

“Kindly omit the flowers.”

“Keep it active. She’ll be back.”

Screenwriter Virginia Kellogg went behind bars to capture slang and elements of prison routine, and boy did it pay off. John Cromwell’s CAGED (1950, TCM, Plex) is a punchy good time, even when it’s hectoring the audience about the need for prison reform. It set many of the tropes of the women’s picture, but stands on its own perched on the dividng line between camp and high drama. It’s also unusual in that it got veiled lesbianism and references to drugs and prostitution past the Production Code. Eleanor Parker stars as the young innocent sent to prison because she was in the car while her husband got himself killed trying to rob a gas station. She’s thrown into a world of corruption, sadism, sexuale exploitation and terrific character women. A lot of the fun comes from watching the situation change her, and Parker gives a carefully modulated performance in which the young innocent is as interesting and believable as the woman she becomes. She’s not the whole show. You also get Ellen Corby as a crazed husband killer, Jan Sterling as a dumb blonde, Betty Garde (the original Aunt Eller) as the recruiter for a shop-lifting ring, Lee Patrick as a vice queen who could be the dictionary illustration for “lipstick lesbian,” Olive Deering as a suicidal inmate, Jane Darwell as matron of the isolation room, Gertrude W. Hoffmann as a lifer and Gertrude Michael as a fallen society woman. Best of all are Agnes Moorehead, who could ring nuance out of a laundry list, as the sympathetic warden and Hope Emerson as the sadistic matron who looks on Parker as a source of income and possibly something more. Cromwell was always a whiz at directing actors and melds the cast into a solid ensemble. He and cinematographer Carl E. Guthrie create some powerful visuals, but one of the most stunning effects uses sound. In her first night in the cell block, Allen has to adjust to sleeping in a room full of people as the soundtrack fills with coughs, yawns, and sobs that gradually overwhelm her and us.

[felicereviews]

Caged (1950)

What could have been a propaganda piece akin to Reefer Madness ended up being a pretty good movie about a women’s prison.

Agnes Moorehead plays the kindly but tough prison matron.

Eleanor Parker plays new fish Marie (on the right in the photo above).  Marie is in jail for armed robbery, which she says she did out of desperation.  While incarcerated she finds out she’s pregnant.  The wicked guard, played by Hope Emerson, only helps the inmates who can pay her and Marie has no one and nothing.

The inmates take care of the newbie and guide her through the many levels of emotions women experience when they are locked up.  There are some sad parts, including a suicide, but all in all it’s a real good movie.

TCM is showing it tomorrow as part of the prison movie series in its 31 Days of Oscar celebration.  It’s also available on disc from Netflix.

Caged was nominated for 3 Academy Awards including Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Screenplay.  The author, Virginia Kellogg, actually had herself incarcerated to write the original story ‘Women Without Men’.  Although not a winner (it shared the Oscar nominations with All About Eve and Sunset Blvd so competition was stiff) I also didn’t feel like I was watching a spectacle and I didn’t feel like I was watching a comedy.  They did a pretty good dark character study (for 1950 cinema) and I am glad I watched the film.

B+

[lgmk]

7.5/10

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