Pun Salad

Continuing the Pun Salad Noir Festival 2020…

The movie opens with Barbara Stanwyck and John Lund looking guiltily at each other in the living room of a very large house. Barbara's voiceover mentions murder most foul. And then there's a call… the cops are on the way to … what, exactly? Well, a flashback comprising most of the rest of the movie explains it: back in the day, Barbara's in the family way, and she's tracked down the dad to where he's shacked up with a floozie. Her pounding on the door only results in a train ticket to San Francisco being shoved under the door. Get lost, Barbara, you and the kid.

It's the 1950s so nobody says "pregnant".

I'd explain the plot further, but it's ludicrous. Suffice to say that Barbara goes from desperate and miserable, to frantic, to happy, to apprehensive, to desperate again…

And let me just say it's a damn travesty that she never won an Oscar. Because no matter how implausible the plot is, she's totally believable all the way through.

And at a certain point, she goes from "hopeless anguish" to "ice-cold bitch with a plan". In about 0.4 seconds. Personally, I was chilled. I can't think of any current actress who could manage that so convincingly. Okay, maybe Sandra Bullock.