The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) is the ultimate anti-Communist paranoid thriller mash-up Red Scare classic film noir.

With a large cast and yet larger reputation for more back-room witch-hunting and Communist panic than any other movie in the film noir style, The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) tells of a powerful Communist cell in the docklands of San Francisco Bay.

As a blunt noir thematic descant The Woman on Pier 13 is also a fast-assed attack on any and all Hollywood radicals who defended their party membership on the grounds of a youthful indiscretion.

I Married a Communist must also be read as Hollywood’s version of its own internal politics. Someone got to the moguls and infected them with the idea that Communists had infiltrated and infected and otherwise corrupted showbusiness at every level from the theater door to the scripts and properties departments.

Robert Ryan and Laraine Day in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

Directed by Robert Stevenson and starring Janis Carter, Laraine Day, Robert Ryan, Thomas Gomez, Richard Rober, William Talman, John Agar and with Fred Graham lurking in the background it previewed in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1949 under the title I Married a Communist — but this is a film that had many titles. 

Historian Daniel J Leab reportedly encountered “well over a hundred titles” in RKO files prior to December 12, 1949. The depths of noir history plumbed in this exemplar of the style might justify and entire book, or better still a film noir motion picture. 

Richard Rober in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

A picture telling the story of the deadliest piece of classic trash consigned to the screen, a film forced out of the darkness itself, to make film noir history, an object lesson of its own paranoia. As Hollywood hunted Communists and imagined them, reimagining them here as psychopathic gangland mobsters, so its scions fuelled the panic and created mad masterpieces like this.

Genuine looking props in I Married A Communist (1949)

It is said that excited and domineering owner of RKO Radio Pictures, producers of all of the best films of all time and without doubt the hottest future media property on the planet, Howard Hughes, reputedly offered the script of I Married A Communist — or whatever it was called — to directors as a test for presumed communist leanings. 

Janis Carter in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

Director Joseph Losey would claim the film was a “touchstone for establishing who was not a "red": you offered [it]... to anybody you thought was a communist, and if they turned it down, they were.”

 According to Losey, thirteen directors turned down the film including himself, though this number has since been disputed. John Cromwell said it was the worst film script he had ever read while Nicholas Ray departed shortly before production began. 

Robert Ryan, Fred Graham and William Talman

Script rewrites were frequent and extensive, and the script had to pass through many hands before a final draft was constructed, including those of Art Cohn, James Edward Grant, Charles Grayson and Herman Mankiewicz.

The script was still considered incomplete even with these contributions, leading RKO to bring on veteran screenwriter Robert Hardy Andrews to polish what would become the final iteration of the screenplay. 

Communist lair in Red Scare classic film noir The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

Finally the weirdness makes it to screen and a coherent crime and blackmail emerges, but not with the word Communist in the title. 

There is a moment in the immediate few opening minutes of The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) when Laraine Day says to Robert Ryan, seconds after they are married: "But Brad, you don't know anything about me!"

Fred Graham and William Talman in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

Quickly unpacked we might suspect this wife of being the Communist at the start, and funnier still, it is always the men whose pasts we need to check as it is. What kind of past do people have in noir greater than a Communist past? Brad might not know anything about Nan —  his new wife — but the initial antic here is that she does not know anything about Brad — and Brad is the one with the dicky past apparently.

Where Brad has been since he was a Communist is fascinating, as his simple life as a stevedore in the old days seems to have undergone some kind of Randian transformation into an ideal industrialist, always able to stand stock still in an immaculate suit, staring with transformative and hypnotic power upon a room or another individual. 

The idea is that former Communist Party membership could be considered to be worthy of blackmail, and such were the punishments and restrictions on being Communist, such was important, a bit like people having their old tweets dug up — but much worse.

Janis Carter in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

How could a script deemed to be so poor by so many of RKO's and by natural extension and logic —  film noir's most illustrious directors commute into a classic film noir? How could audiences be incorrect about the great status of such poor filmmaking fare? It can happen and as it happens, happens in the case of The Woman on Pier 13 (1949). For these reasons a lesson on the noir style and the auspicios entrance of two great guiding factors in the history of noir — Howard Hughes and Communist infiltration.

The office at night —  film noir The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

The one question we never find out for real is the actual extent of the Communism, although as we see in this picture, historic membership is probably as important —  sometimes more so.

Merle Oberon was reportedly on salary as the film's female lead for several months before RKO announced that she would be replaced by Jane Greer, who was again quickly moved to a different production.

Thomas Gomez and Janis Carter in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

In January of 1949, Paul Lukas was reportedly brought on to play the communist leader. He collected nearly $50,000 before RKO moved on from him in March. Production began in April 1949 under Robert Stevenson and lasted a month. 

Howard Hughes and RKO took great lengths to ensure the credibility of the film's anti-communist messaging, going so far as to contact Luis J Russel, an ex-FBI agent and HUAC investigator, for genuine Communist Party cards to use as models for the prop cards employed in a communist meeting scene.

Thomas Gomez in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

Subterfuge, lies and paranoia, a place of no escape and a deadly situation a woman so beautiful and deadly, and she will happily give her body it appears, even if it makes one single convert to Communism and she still reminds her superior that the party ideology says she can convert up to 1,000 men.

A deadly and shocking past which catches up with the hero and a villainous and powerful web of evil so strong it can do anything and corner everybody a web operating at  night, in shaded smoky back rooms in warehouses at the docks.

John Agar in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

Magical and unique in film noir The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) is its own paranoia embodied, and a greater sum of what is seen on the screen, a product of the system as much as a product of its hour, almost unable to say anything meaningful about Communism while able to say virtually everything about classic film noir at the same time.

The simple film noir motif for example concerning a domesticated and successful individual being taken apart around the subject of a secret past revealed, is the strong top layer of The Woman on Pier 13 (1949).  

Janis Carter in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

A magical layer transforms the crime of The Woman on Pier 13 most effectively with wild misinformation about Communism, a catalogue of fake noir writ so large that it obscures any reason or logic for the fact that it is at one level supposed to be an ideological or political belief — when actually the Communists are truly only interested in crimes like murder and extortion. That is where the fun is.

The highlight of this crazed political party's activities is a drowning. For political and criminal reasons that go on down at the docks at night, the communists drown somebody in a particularly comic and bloodthirsty scene.

A unique proposition in Hollywood history perhaps The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) is on the surface a less than high quality picture with a great cast which gives the lie to an absolute treasure trove of film noir excellence, acting as a style summary, a genre history and a deep dive into everything that made film noir noir.

Do not be taken with the idea that a classic film needs to be a good film — or that in watching The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) that you may simultaneously watching classic film noir while perplexed that you are not watching a great, classic nor even very good movie production to begin with. To call The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) a production that is less than high quality is unfair for a production that gives so much to the classic status of the style.

William Talman in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

The contradiction is real but so are the chops of The Woman on Pier 13 (1949). It's classic film noir in making of itself the hardest fastest peg on which a whole hat-rack of film noir sins can be hanged.

So much of this must be down to the merciful fact that The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) is filmed by Nicholas Musuraca which means that every second of the way, and despite what the script says and does, 

Robert Stevenson, ever versatile, and the winner of the Classic Film Noir Booby Prize of 1949 — congratulations, you get to direct The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) —  the most toxic film noir production in all of old Hollywood  — Howard Hughes' poisoned Communist challenge. It turned out great.

Janis Carter in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

Robert Stevenson (1905 – 1986) was a British-American screenwriter and film director who was contracted by David O. Selznick and moved to Hollywood, but was loaned to other studios, directing Jane Eyre (1943). He directed 19 live-action films for The Walt Disney Company in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s — including Mary Poppins (1964),  The Love Bug (1968), Herbie Rides Again (1974), and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). 

In his noir birth-rites of passage he followed The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) with Walk Softly, Stranger (1950) with Joseph Cotten, My Forbidden Past (1951) with Robert Mitchum and Ava Gardner, and The Las Vegas Story (1952) with Jane Russell and Victor Mature. 

Robert Ryan, a liberal, was the only available contracted RKO actor and only agreed to be cast out of fear for his career. After the film had been completed, and ahead of planned retakes, Hughes insisted Ryan needed to be taught how to work with a gun, with screen tests of Ryan's progress being delivered to him personally.

As noted The Woman on Pier 13 was a film that had many titles. Quoted from Wikipedia:

While Hughes still insisted the title I Married a Communist was the most marketable aspect of the picture, his staff maintained the title must be changed, and a lengthy search went underway. Hughes' reluctance made the decision difficult precisely . Historian Daniel J Leab reportedly encountered “well over a hundred titles” in RKO files prior to December 12, 1949. Of these included an initial list of nineteen titles sent to Hughes in October which consisted mostly of the words “San Francisco”, “Melodrama”, “Waterfront” and “Midnight” in different arrangements. In November it was nearly settled that the picture be called “Where Danger Lives”, before Hughes decided the film's title should be “an out-and-out melodramatic title” that was not “possibly associated with communism”. “Incident on Pier 13” was in the rotation of suggestions by early December, and “The Woman on Pier 13” appeared on lists of potential titles as early as December 19. The title was officially announced as The Woman on Pier 13 in January 1950.

Vanning: The party decides who's out and when.

The structure of the Communist party isn't precisely explained but Vanning (Thomas Gomez) gets his instructions from unseen and undiscussed entities over the telephone. This figure appears to be wealthy and powerful and so possibly a member of the establishment. The implications of The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) are that Communists are present and pulling strings in all areas of American life, from the lowly stevedore — right into government.

Deep within the critique of not just Communism but politics in total, is an anti-intellectualism that pervades I Married A Communist. When Vanning from the Communist Party moves in he does so with criminal guile and a lack of sentiment that is similarly brutal.

VANNING:  I’m a student of contracts.  They’re what makes this country of ours fabulous to the rest of the world. (finds what he seeks) On one hand, we have Bradley Collins – the great success story.  On the other – here I have the record of a very unsuccessful young man named Frank Johnson.

                        Brad shows no visible reaction – asks:

BRAD: Who’s he?

VANNING: He was typical of the lost generation – produced by the 30’s.  He left school – ambitious, strong, intelligent – hunting a job, to make his start up ladder.  Unfortunately – there were no jobs.

BRAD: (calmly) Why tell me about him?

VANNING: I’m coming to that – Mr. Collins. (consults documents) Embittered – and violent by nature – Frank Johnson joined the Young Communist League – then became a full fledged member of the Party… (seem to skip through document – hitting only the salient details).. Party card listed Frank J… Agit-prop activities, strikes in New Jersey … Very prominent in strong-arm work .. Then suddenly – broke all connections with the Party and disappeared … Reason unknown.

He stops – puts folder down – removes spectacles in a gesture we’ll learn is characteristic.  With spectacles off, VANNING is a changed man: cold, hard, the complete “intellectual”

VANNING: (continued) … Or was unknown until now…

The most brazenly atrocious planning and writing around Communism in The Woman on Pier 13 is around the Communist cell's likeness to a criminal mob. Not only do the Communists meet only at night in darkened industrial settings, they also carry out screaming murders much in the mode of gangland types.

The most incredible of these featured in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) has to be the drowning of a man by the Communist's heavy killer thug and mook squad, William Talman and Fred Graham. Talman's psychopathy is developed in the picture, making him a bow-tie wearing fairground hustler guy with a Tommy Udo giggle, and a mania for killing that seems to be so all consuming that it overtakes his Communism — which is incidentally not much in evidence.

Laraine Day and Thomas Gomez in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

The same is said for Fred Graham, and even more surprisingly the Communism of Thomas Gomez and Janis Carter. Neither Vanning nor Christine seem to discuss their ideology much in fact, and most of what Communism involves is merely an expression of your own psychotic evil, and whatever form that takes.

With Thomas Gomez as Vanning, his own brand of Communism is power-hungry meanness and exploitation, leverage and control. At the same time murder is also a fond love of Vanning's, he can commission them but also kills one of the most beautiful women in the city, just on a business decision.

Janis Carter in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949)

Vile evil and gang wickedness is the nature of Communism at the extremes of noir's own style and in The Woman on Pier 13 (1949).

Alternate Titles: Beautiful But Dangerous / I Married a Communist

Release Date: 3 June 1950

Los Angeles opening: 7 Oct 1949 / San Francisco opening: 12 Oct 1949

Production Date: 25 Apr--late May 1949

Copyright Info: Claimant Date Copyright Number RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.28 September 1949 LP2633

Sound: RCA Sound System

Duration (in mins):72-73

The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) on Wikipedia