Angels Flying Too Close To The Ground-I Hear The Noise Of Wings-A Drifter’s Tale-Alice Faye And Dana Andrews’ “Fallen Angel” (1945(-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

Fallen Angel, starring Alice Faye, Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, directed by Otto Preminger in his prime, 1945

I am not going to fall all over myself spending good cyberspace getting into the thick of the “dispute,” nice tame word for a civil war, that has flared up at this publication. That is the dispute between young Sarah Lemoyne, who in the interest of transparency which seems to be a by-word these troubles days when nothing seems to be what it is on its face, or at least people want to suspect some deeper motive I have given some advice about how to handle my old corner boy from back in North Adamsville high school days her sparring partner Sam Lowell. Grandfatherly advice is the way Sarah put and that seems about right except to the gossips who think “something is going on” between us which is ridiculous although I would have to admit that if I was younger I wouldn’t be late taking a run at her assuming that I was between one of my three marriages not made in heaven. Sam, if he were honest which is not likely these days, would have too although if Laura Perkins sees this I am only kidding. All of this to say I am glad, lemmings to the sea glad, to be doing a film noir review after some time away beating down both Sherlock Holmes’ door and young fellow reviewer Will Bradley’s as well. What has happened is that Sam is so wrapped up in his dispute with Sarah that he let this one get away and Greg Green, our esteemed site manager, tagged me for the assignment. But enough, to the chase.  

My mother, rest her soul, maybe, when I was a kid, when her brood of five boys and two girls were growing up warned me, us against drifters, grafters and grifters, especially the latter since they will take all your money and laugh on the way out of town. Naturally I ignored that warning when I came of age and was totally enchanted by these guys, mostly guys then anyway although more than one woman acquaintance did me worse than any grifter ever did, and had done my fair share of drifting especially after Vietnam did me in about what was what in this wicked old world. So from minute one of this film Otto Preminger’s Fallen Angel when Eric, lets call him Eric, Eric Stanton since that was the name he used when he grabbed a marriage certificate in his big end around on-screen scam, played by 1940s heartthrob Dana Andrews, got hauled off a Greyhound San Francisco bus by the world-weary driver after pulling the oldest trick in the book-the sleeping passenger who overshot his ticketed destination- I was all in. Not only pulled off that freaking bus in the dead of night by that bastard driver but wound up in some Podunk town, the name does not matter since such towns were, are, legion the exception being that this Podunk is along the Pacific Coast Highway with nice views of the Pacific heading to the Japan Seas.   

Eric, with a solo buck in his pocket heads to the all-night diner one can find in even the crankiest of towns. The joint, Pops Eats, it figured right will become headquarters for a time for Eric as he tries to turn that dollar bill into some working capital. Yeah, Eric is down and out right this moment but he is a big idea man, some working, some no but in the drifter, grifter racket you play the percentages and watch out for the dirty coppers who want to spoil your play. Here is Eric’s problem, a problem which will dodge him the rest of the film so you know it had to be a woman. A freaking waitress named Stella, played by saucy Linda Darnell, who has half the guys on the West Coast crawling up walls and spending sleepless nights trying to get into her bed (implied remember this is Code Hollywood). This Stella to my mind is nothing but a tramp, maybe not the worst round heels that has hit the streets but working her way up the food chain. Any man’s woman is what we called it back in the day, hell, whore and heart-breaking ball-buster if you really want to know.

Frankly a self-starter like Eric doesn’t figure to get into the claws of a she-devil like Stella (or maybe she was just a girl looking out for herself in a hard-ass world not selling her good looks and trophy wife aspect too cheaply). Maybe I missed something in her allure to the male sex but even senior citizen Pops tried to take a run at her, a run at his employee serving them off the arm at his joint (although her attendance record left something to be desired when she was out with some guy, who knows who, much to Pops’ chagrin). In any case Stella did get her claws into Eric and had him running through hoops to marry her. Problem-no dough. That is when after getting a little working capital doing a promo job for a fakir, a fly-by-night fortune teller, he gets the bright idea of going off and romancing the younger sister, June, played by fetching Alice Faye, who seems to be more his speed but who knows what churns a guy up, of one of the town’s leading families. The play is to marry her, grab her share of the family dough and then divorce her. I liked the play even if it seemed to have too many moving parts.     

 

I need not have worried because dear sweet Stella turned up dead, very dead, one late night after Eric had married June (and had taken off on his wedding night to see, well, to see Stella bad play, very bad). Guess who the number one fall is? Yeah, Eric has to think quickly because otherwise he will take the big step-off at the Q some forlorn midnight and then he really would hear the angelic noise of wings, hear them loud and clear. He and June take off for Frisco town to grab the dough since no matter what he has done she loves the guy, wants him to be whatever he wants to be, no questions asked. While in Frisco June gets picked up by the coppers and sent back to Podunk to put the squeeze play on Eric. This is where this seemingly naïve small-town girl with stars in her eyes shows her grit though. She doesn’t knuckle under, doesn’t rat him out to the local coppers. Meanwhile Eric has finally put two and two together since he didn’t do it. George a guy from Stella’s old home town of San Diego who had dated her on the night she was murdered. No. Pops. Come on. No, it was an old New York City ex-cop named Judd who had been kicked off the force for being too rough on the clientele. He had been sitting in Pops all along seeing what a tramp Stella was, seeing her moving toward Eric and that was that. So, yeah, Judd will be hearing the noise of wings. As for June and Eric, Christ he finally woke up to June’s charms for their own sake. About time. This film and review was certainly better than dodging the Sarah-Sam dispute.