Interview conducted by Michael Bayer on January 3, 2024
Bayer: Foster, thank you so much for being here.
Hirsch: Thank you, Michael. Happy to be here.
Bayer: I want to start by talking about the book that you’ve just published: “Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties: The Collapse of the Studio System, the Thrill of Cinerama, and the Invasion of the Ultimate Body Snatcher — Television.” Quite a compelling title there, Foster. So, I guess my first question is, you had never published a book about a specific time period, you know, like a decade. Why did you decide to choose a 10-year period to focus on for this book?
Hirsch: Well, fair question. It’s because I think of the fifties as my decade. That’s when I grew up. That’s when I started going to the movies. That’s when I first realized I loved the movies. And I feel, though unconsciously, I had begun writing the book during my first moviegoing experiences as a kid. So, I grew up with movies in the fifties, but I grew up myself as well. The changes of the fifties in many ways reflected my own changes. In other words, I had a personal connection to the decade, and I also felt defensive. I felt that the decade had been misunderstood and dismissed by people who were not there. It was reduced to a set of cliches, and I wanted to address those stereotypes and present the fifties as a more complex, nuanced, difficult but extraordinarily important transitional period in movies and in the national culture and history as well. And so, the book, I hope you’ll agree, is not just about movies. It’s about movies as a reflection of the era itself. And now I’m on part two, the sixties, and as I’m reading other books about the sixties, every single one of them takes a condescending and, I think, stereotype-ridden approach to the fifties. Dismissing it. Dismissing the era is unfair. It’s a kind of labeling that’s too specific, and it’s based on other considerations. The sixties wouldn’t have happened without the fifties. The roots of the sixties are in the fifties, and I tried to develop that thesis in the book.
Bayer: So interesting. But, I mean, you could also say the same for the perception of the fifties in general, right? Oh, the fifties in America: Leave it to Beaver, white picket fences, Eisenhower era. Kind of, you know, boring and conservative. That is such a gross oversimplification.
Hirsch: It’s not that all of those things weren’t a part of the culture, because stereotypes do often have a basis in truth, to be honest. It’s not that it wasn’t there. It was, but there was so much else, right? It’s a much darker, more complex period than it’s been given credit for, and I did not want to take the condescending holier-than-thou approach of writers who adopt the progressive politics of the sixties and condemn what went before. I didn’t want to take that approach. That’s not how I feel.
Bayer: Of course, that leads me into my specific area of interest, which is, given how you just described the stereotypes of the fifties, did that not provide a fertile ground for something like film noir to evolve, and to have a special place just from the contrast and the dissonance and how we perceive film noir versus the white picket fence that we’re talking about?
Hirsch: Well, exactly. Film noir and the stereotype vision of the fifties would seem to be in deep conflict. Wouldn’t you say mortal enemies? How can film noir exist in the fifties? If it’s the fifties of Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best?
Bayer: Do you think noir filmmakers knew what they were doing in terms of producing films that were counter cultural that way?
Hirsch: Yes, I do. And I am going to give you a film that may be one of my favorites, and it’s not as well known, but it speaks to what you are talking about exactly. You know, a wonderful film noir, 1950 or is it 1951, called Cause for Alarm.
Bayer: Yes. That actually just came out on Blu-ray. And it’s going to arrive on my desk in a couple of weeks.
Hirsch: And it is about a house set behind a white picket fence, and on the fence is a sign. “Illness Within.” Is that not a perfect metaphor? The stereotype vision of the fifties as bright, sunny, consumerist, conformist. And there is something really dark going on in that house. The husband is crazy, but do you know what? So is the wife. Loretta Young’s finest hour. She is really great.
Bayer: And it’s funny because it doesn’t get [the attention] — I actually appreciated this about your book, that when you did explore noirs in depth, they were not necessarily the ones we all think of: The Red Menace and Storm Warning, which to me is a masterpiece, but people don’t think of [these films] when they think of noir, and I would put Cause for Alarm in that same category. I really appreciated how you introduced or reintroduced readers to these off-the-beaten-path noirs.
Hirsch: Films that are not very well known at all. Storm Warning which stars Doris Day and Ginger Rogers in a non-singing, non-dancing role, and Ronald Reagan as a D.A.? It’s a fascinating film, little known, about the Ku Klux Klan. Oh, its politics are vulnerable but as a film noir, it’s unique.
Bayer: There is nothing else like that film. And I love how, when you were describing it [in the book], you brought up A Streetcar Named Desire, because the first time I watched [Storm Warning], I’m like, this is streetcar noir!
Hirsch: Yes, it is streetcar noir, absolutely, with Ginger Rogers as a visiting relative who makes trouble, and Doris Day as the wife in love with her sexy but very damaged husband. Yes, it was intended to be a variation of Streetcar mixed with this crazy story about a Klan murder in a small Southern town. Fascinating. I remember, because I am old enough to have been there, the previews of that film were sort of a scandal in 1951, and I remember seeing the preview and being really scared. Partly scared because the stars of the film were Doris Day and Ginger Rogers, and you saw these dark images in the preview. If that’s available, people should look at it; the preview itself is startling and created quite an uproar in 1951.
Bayer: Yeah, I am trying to think. Ginger Rogers went on to make Tight Spot. That was after [Storm Warning], right?
Hirsch: And she is perfectly cast for the part [in Storm Warning]. And Doris Day is remarkably good in a straight dramatic role. Hitchcock thought so. He said he thought she was terrific and he cast her…from this…in The Man Who Knew Too Much.
Bayer: If I recall, the first confrontation of the sisters, before Doris Day knew what Cochran had been up to but Ginger Rogers knew, and there’s the camera while they’re talking. The camera stays on Ginger Rogers’ face while she is processing [the information], and it is startling acting without a single word of dialogue.
Hirsch: And it’s very like the scene in the bowling alley between Vivien Leigh and Kim Hunter in the movie Streetcar the same year… which was based on the 1947 Broadway production. The producer of [Storm Warning] was Jerry Wald…who saw that production and was knocked out and told his screenwriters, “I want you to incorporate elements of Streetcar into this film.”
Bayer: By the way, just a quick detour, but I couldn’t believe it when you wrote in the book that you took classes with Stella Adler. You really were there.
Hirsch: I wasn’t an acting student. I was an observer.
Bayer: I mean, when you say this is your decade, it really was.
Hirsch: Oh, it really was. And I talked to a lot of survivors from the decade. You know, all the quotes from celebrities in the book are from firsthand interviews. I’ve spoken to all the survivors, and I’m in touch with some who are still with us! So, I do. I feel possessive, I guess. Do I feel defensive? Sure, it’s my decade, and I contend that it was the finest 10-year period in the history of American film. I mean, there is no competition now in terms of what’s being produced compared to what was produced in the fifties. How we’ve fallen! But that’s a subject for another day.
Bayer: That’s a big statement. Okay, so back to noir in the fifties. As the world’s number one noir fan, as I like to call myself, to me, the forties, especially the late forties, was the peak of the noir aesthetic. It was still very much in-studio, with the low-key lighting and lots of shadows, and when I think about the fifties, I mean there are some fifties noirs that happen entirely in the daytime. The fifties noirs to me are bright and open. It’s kind of like the terror has been brought out into the middle of the street for everybody to see it. The Lineup, I think, is a 1958 noir that doesn’t have a single scene at night. Jeopardy, which is the Barbara Stanwick film, you know, is a little bit of a goofy film but very much about the open daylight there. To me, there’s a very stark contrast [between the decades], do you…?
Hirsch: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And what you’re saying is very relevant to our film of the moment, Cause for Alarm, which is set in an American suburbia location, shooting in real streets, real houses, no darkness. That’s the texture, the visual texture you’re talking about changes for a number, not for all of them, but for a number of them [in the fifties).
Bayer: Right. So again, I’m very subjective here, of course, but the forties “look” was so brilliant and beautiful in my view.
Hirsch: But it doesn’t disappear entirely. Michael. In fact, if you put me against the wall and asked which is my favorite film noir of the fifties, I would say Sudden Fear. And that becomes a high-art version of the forties aesthetic you’re talking about. You refer to the shadowed lighting, and that climax through the darkened streets of a real downtown San Francisco is most powerful, I think, in terms of the lighting and the city at night.
Bayer: Yes. And the alienation of her being out there on those streets all alone.
Hirsch: It’s a powerful representation of the tropes that you’re talking about. But here carried to, in my mind, to a climactic level in 1952.
Bayer: Right. The fact that they kind of got away from some of the traditional noir aesthetic, the B&W aesthetic from [the forties). Do you think that was a stylistic choice? Or do you think it was more about economics, or what?
Hirsch: I think it was part of the movement in the post-war period to offer audiences something new. And so there was a trend toward location shooting for other genres as well. That location shooting opened up films in a way that the old studio aesthetic did not allow for. I think it was one of the ways that the studios expanded their palette and the range of their offerings. They still shot in the studio a lot, but there was so much more location shooting, right?
Bayer: Another distinction between the forties and the fifties (obviously, those are the key noir decades): Is it an oversimplification to say that World War II had the greater influence on the forties noirs and the Cold War had the greater influence on the fifties noirs? Or do you think that’s too simple?
Hirsch: No, I think it’s accurate. I’ve always felt that 1940s noir, in a sense they were war films. They were responses to the war, whether literally or metaphorically. But they were war movies. And the re-alignment of roles, the fear of powerful women which percolates throughout the classic era, that changes in the fifties. The femme fatale of the forties disappears by and large in the fifties. She’s there, but not in central roles. Instead, I think, that character type is replaced by a genre of drama I like a lot, the woman-in-jeopardy format, so Cause for Alarm, Jeopardy. A guilty pleasure favorite of mine is Julie. I love it. I don’t care what anybody says. I love Andrew Stone; he’s my favorite director. He’s the discovery of the fifties. A whole series of noir thrillers in the fifties that are second to none.
Bayer: The Steel Trap.
Hirsch: The Steel Trap is a great film, but Highway 301!
Bayer: Yes!
Hirsch: Julie, Cry Terror, The Night Holds Terror, The Decks Ran Red.
Bayer: I love that one.
Hirsch: I mean, he is terrific. He started out making musicals and comedies, and he ends up in the seventies with The Great Waltz and Song of Norway, which couldn’t be less noir. Fascinating figure because he had the longest life of any American director. I think he was 98 or 99 at his death.
Bayer: Wow!
Hirsch: Unsung hero. Andrew L. Stone. Fabulous filmmaker! He had his own touch on film noir. He hated the studio. Location, location, location.
Bayer: I love that you brought up The Decks Ran Red because no one ever brings that up in a noir context. But it is wonderful. To me there’s a category called nautical noir. It’s actually one of my favorite subcategories of noir, and [The Decks Ran Red] is a perfect example of nautical noir, not to mention the cast, the brilliant noir cast.
Hirsch: It is a terrific, unsung film, and The Steel Trap which you mentioned is, I think, just now coming into its own. Well, I’ve shown that wherever I could, and people didn’t know it. But I think it’s becoming known. That has a good DVD, doesn’t it? Is there a first-rate DVD available?
Bayer: I’m not sure if it’s on DVD. It’s definitely not on Blu-ray, but it might have some kind of release on DVD. One of the things I love that you said in the book, I don’t know if I have these words exactly right, but you said noir was too important to suffer sudden rigor mortis, and I love that.
Hirsch: There’s some good end-of-the-classic-period noir…Experiment in Terror could have been made in the fifties. There’s nothing sixties about it. It could have been made in the fifties. It has the location shooting, the taut construction, the woman in jeopardy. It has all the highlights of the fifties noir as I’ve been defining it, and, of course, would you agree that the old classic noir sort of comes to an end in 1967 with Point Blank, which is like the beginning of the neo-noir movement? That very self-consciously overturned a lot of the narrative and visual and character patterns of the classic noir era.
Bayer: Yeah, I fully agree. And of course, Cape Fear often gets overlooked. But you really…you could argue it doesn’t perfectly fit the noir definition, but…
Hirsch: I think it’s noir. Noir is often about a middle-class family that’s invaded by crime. And that’s the setup of that movie. I think it does fit. And again, it’s 1950s noir though chronologically in the sixties. Historians like to be very precise, but we can’t because the fifties didn’t end on December 31, 1959, neither in movies nor in real life.
Bayer: So, Foster, I think my favorite part of your book is the first section which devotes a chapter to each of the major studios and even the minor studios. And really gets into the behind-the-scenes and not the obvious information that someone who has studied that era would already know. It really gets into personality conflicts and things like that, so obviously you know the studios very well from that era. Which studio in the fifties do you think mastered noir better than the others?
Hirsch: I would say the studio that died. RKO.
Bayer: Really?
Hirsch: Yes, even under the madman management of Howard Hughes, RKO continued to produce, I think, the most lustrous film noir of the era. And you mentioned that I single out some films that aren’t so well known, and I do pause to discuss RKO’s Where Danger Lives with Faith Domergue, which is not a very well-known film at all. It’s really good, and it’s RKO. In the late forties under Dore Schary when Howard Hughes took over, there were a number of great films. I feel RKO is darker and more velvety and more menacing than any other black tones in movies. I think RKO had the best track record in film noir up to the end, and my favorite film noir, not only of the fifties, but of the forties, just my favorite, Sudden Fear, was released by RKO. Independent production, but RKO released the film. Howard Hughes interfered with everything, but he didn’t interfere with most of the noir. Something within him said, “These films are good. I’m going to leave them alone.” Right?
Bayer: Interesting. What was the final year for RKO?
Hirsch: They died in 57, and they had backlog released by Universal International that trickled into 58, and maybe even 59.
Bayer: I also loved how you pointed out…I did not realize that Warner Brothers had the moniker as the “un-MGM.” Which makes so much sense! I believe that late-thirties Warner gangster films and proto-noir films are some of the masterpieces of crime films, and they did it in a way where you could tell you were watching [Warner Brothers], not just because of the cast, but you could tell you were watching a Warner Brothers crime film every time, and part of that was because, at least to me, the quality, which is so overwhelming. Everything, from the score to the acting, to the script to the effects. There was just something so comforting about Warners, and then, I feel like Warner shone brightly as a noir studio very early on, but then kind of lost some of the luster. Do you agree with that?
Hirsch: Yes, I think you’re right. I’m trying to think of a major fifties noir from Warner other than Storm Warning.
Bayer: Off the top of my head, I can’t.
Hirsch: Columbia had a good track record with noir.
Bayer: Very good, yeah. In fact, you say in the book, which I didn’t realize, that Columbia had the longest lasting B unit division, which would explain…They had an unbroken string of really great gritty noirs throughout the whole cycle.
Hirsch: And into the later fifties, as a matter of fact. And Universal, which didn’t have such a great track record in noir after all, reluctantly released Touch of Evil, which is often considered — incorrectly — noir’s epitaph. They say Touch of Evil is the end. It’s a great film, and it’s an Orson Welles carnival, but what to do with Odds Against Tomorrow from United Artists in 1959, which is one of the great heist films that doesn’t fit into the historical divisions that people like to make for convenience and ease?
Bayer: And I think the race relations angle to Odds of Tomorrow almost sets it up for the sixties, more like a socially conscious crime film. It is really an interesting film.
Hirsch: Yes, that is true. But my defense of the fifties is that in the late forties and fifties Hollywood did not ignore race issues. There are many films that take what were for the time progressive attitudes toward race. So, Odds Against Tomorrow is not some unique, lonely beacon. It’s a part of a series of films that discuss it. Or what do we do with The Defiant Ones? Pinky in 1949? You know, for all their faults, and we are in a different place now than then, the subject was not ignored, right? Certainly, Odds Against Tomorrow sets us up nicely for the next decade, and it is sort of fun to speculate that the last classic noir of the fifties ends in an apocalyptic explosion.
Bayer: Yes. It’s such a brilliant scene, wow! I hadn’t thought about that.
Hirsch: That apocalyptic explosion of 1959 echoes the explosion at the end of White Heat in 1949, a Warner Brothers gangster movie, right?
Bayer: Right. Those are the bookends. Those are the bookends for your decade.
Hirsch: Yes! The explosion at the end of White Heat is the end of the gangster film. The explosion at the end of Odds Against Tomorrow is arguably the end of classic noir. But not really.
Bayer: So, the last question I’m going to ask about a studio is United Artists. Thank you for making me aware of these two guys, these two lawyers who, it seems the way you described it, were almost defensive because they knew they didn’t have the talent, so they didn’t even pretend to try to oversee creatively, right?
Hirsch: They didn’t pretend at all. They set up a new business model in which the creators had a lot of power and say-so over their work to a degree that wasn’t possible at the other studios. So, the model they set up was perfect for the post-studio era.
Bayer: Yeah, without them we would never have The Night of the Hunter, which to me is a masterpiece, The Night of the Hunter. I mean, it sounds like that would never have been made at any other studio with a first-time director and a very, you know, dark, strange horror fantasy.
Hirsch: That was a perfect example of what the new United Artists was set up to do. It would not have been made [anywhere else]. But, on the other hand, the lawyers did not know how to market. The film failed in 1955. I remember seeing it at a matinee, and there couldn’t have been more than a dozen people in a large theater, first matinee’s run. I knew then that I’d seen a great film, but the reviews were negative, and the audience’s response for what audience there was, was pretty indifferent or puzzled. United Artists released the film, but they didn’t know how to market it. They did not defend it, and they did not nurture it, so their heroism is qualified.
Bayer: Alright, I don’t want to take up much more of your time, Foster. You’ve been very generous. I do want to end on a note of optimism for noir in the future. So, the whole mission of my enterprise with Heart of Noir is to help to preserve the appreciation of film noir, especially among younger generations. Granted, you know, a website’s not going to do that on its own. What do you think? First of all, what is your prognosis for the future of appreciating film noir. Do you think a hundred years from now film historians will look back and still believe it was a great creative cycle? Do you think it will fade? Do you think it will get stronger? And then, within that context, how do we make sure it doesn’t fade?
Hirsch: Well, noir is doing better than any other kind of film from the studio era. Hollywood noir has wonderful groups that support it. The Film Noir Foundation, founded by Eddie Mueller — I serve on the Board of Directors, I’m happy to say — has been a wonderful custodian of restoring noir, preserving noir, and screening noir at more city festivals throughout the country. Audiences have grown. I host festivals in cities each year, and I’ve noticed that the audience size is growing, more young people and appreciative young people. So, I think the future of classic films bodes well, right now, in the sense that younger people… for the series at Film Forum for my book, “50 for the 50s,” [these were] not old timers. Largely young people came out. The Night of the Hunter was the biggest seller of the series. All the young people were moved, impressed by the film, huge applause at the end. When we screened the film at the 700-seat Music Box Theatre in Chicago, hundreds of people came, over 600. They loved the film. And young people, not my generation.
Bayer: These young people…because you teach in the film milieu, so were these young film school students, or do you think these were just young people generally?
Hirsch: A and B, okay. There were certainly film school people [but also] just young people interested in and open to seeing and appreciating classic era films.
Bayer: I’m thrilled to hear that.
Hirsch: Repertory theaters are doing well. The Music Box has been doing land-office business post-pandemic. They know how to program. They know their audience. Film Forum has had fabulous business post-pandemic. Younger people are coming out for the old films and enjoying them, not just the film noir, but musicals. Melodramas. Westerns. The only film type I’m having trouble pushing is one of my own favorites, but very few people share my enthusiasm, and that’s the old school, Biblical epic or ancient world epic.
Bayer: I have been devouring them for two months! I’ve watched every single one of them. I love them.
Hirsch: I couldn’t get anybody in any of the theaters that I’m working with to show The Robe. I said, “That’s the film that saved Hollywood in 1953!” Great. Nobody wants to show it. But I did get one of the curators to show the sequel to The Robe: Dimitri and the Gladiators. That’s as far as I’ve gotten.
Bayer: It’s so funny you bring that up. I love those films.
Hirsch: I’m interviewing…I’ve become friends with Paul Newman’s daughter, Melissa, who has come out with a new book, and she said her father — and I knew this — hated The Silver Chalice, his first film. I just think it’s terrific. And she looked at me and she said, “Do you really like that film?” I said, “Yeah, I really do,” and she said, “Father would show it to us occasionally, and … he gave us whistles and [noisemakers] and at points in the film we had to make sounds and scream and denounce the film.” I don’t share that opinion. I think it’s magnificently designed.
Bayer: Well, I’m even more glad now that I put the Ben-Hur photo in the review of your book.
Hirsch: Yes, Ben-Hur is one of the great films, period. But they’re not popular today. I’m in the minority.
Bayer: Well, you know, one of the reasons I created this site is because of my students, because I was shocked at how…forget film noir, my undergrads and graduate students, I ask them about films all the time, and to them a film before 2000 is old and not very relevant. You know, I just can’t let that go. I want, I feel like I need to do everything I can to, you know, not just preserve these films for a very small kind of special interest group of film lovers or film students but make them more widely appreciated for the future. I’m just afraid they’ll fall by the wayside.
Hirsch: My sense is that’s not about to happen. And I do program my courses so that there is a heavy emphasis on the studio era, and very, very little about contemporary filmmaking. They know more than I do! I can’t talk to them about the latest Marvel franchise. I don’t know anything they couldn’t tell me, and I don’t want to know anything. I don’t want to waste their time and mine by showing those films in class. So they get a heavy dose of classic era Hollywood in my class. I’m the only one who does that, and programmers around the country are seeing that these great films, from the fifties in particular, still have box office appeal.
Bayer: Thank you. That is a great place to conclude. Foster Hirsch, I cannot tell you what an honor it has been for me to talk to you. I really, really appreciate your time, and I’m sure my audience will be thrilled to hear your thoughts, too. Thank you so much for the conversation.
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