The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) is a cool, classy, rough and stylish classic film noir hit from John Huston starring Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, John McIntire and Marilyn Monroe.

This heist film noir classic has grungy backstreet scenery and is populated by dishonourable thieves and has a twisted backstabber feel about it, with everyone backstabbing left, right and centre, save for the two central crooks that we root for, Dix and Doc.

Both Dix and Doc have virtue, with Dix played by Sterling Hayden seeming to be the moral helm of the film. It is Dix's fantasy that gives The Asphalt Jungle the most angelic and super-normal film noir conclusion as this moral thief and thug almost ascends in a moment of equine and pastoral magic.

The Asphalt Jungle was based on the novel of the same name by W. R. Burnett. It was the first major example of the heist crime caper trope, while also being a deconstruction of it. It's  a classic of the Film Noir style with a large film noir ensemble cast including Jean Hagen, Sam Jaffe, James Whitmore, Barry Kelley, Anthony Caruso, Marc Lawrence and Brad Dexter; as well as Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, John McIntire and Marilyn Monroe.

After getting out of prison, Erwin "Doc" Riedenschneider goes to Cobby, a bookie, with an idea for a diamond heist. 

Cobby puts him in touch with Alonzo Emmerich, a crooked lawyer, who agrees to front Doc and his crew in the heist, who include Dix, a hooligan who's been in and out of prison, his friend Gus, who runs a diner, and Louis, a safe-cracker. 

Back streets in film noir, The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

What none of them know is Emmerich, who has money troubles, is looking to double-cross the gang by taking the diamonds for himself.

John Huston's film is now considered one of the classics in its genre, and one of the most influential Film Noir ever made. Trope Maker for The Caper and the heist film genre, inspiring several more heist films throughout the decade, including Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob Le Flambeur, and Jules Dassin's Rififi.

Doc is the gangster with good manners, along with Dix — and you might call them both affably bad people. As well as the ins and outs of the gang, police technology is at work in the form of John McIntire, with blond hair, as the desk thumping police commissioner who will stop at nothing to get the crooks.

Barry Kelly is the cop who is both on and off the take, hot and cold, and very much enjoying being in the middle and having the power of the streets. It's a classic cop take and probably the most interesting in the film noir style. Thin of cop Kello in Sweet Smell of Success (1957) as the the ultimate arbiter of both high and low, the figure who can cross the boundary between law and disorder at will — and when it suits.

Barry Kelley in The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

The caper crew in The Asphalt Jungle break down into solid tropes and types. There's the mastermind in the figure of Doc, and the backer in the figure of Emmerich, who turns out to be untrustworthy and greedier than the rest of them put together he turns out not to be trusted. Louis is the burglar, and of course Dix is the muscle. 

The driver is Gus, cat loving and cop hating, providing much-valued diner backdrop atmosphere too. The City with No Name in The Asphalt Jungle (1950), is Cincinnati, at least that is where the exterior scenes were shot. One version of the script even mentioned the city by name but it was taken out because ironically, Cincinnati was facing police corruption at the time.

One of the effective presentations in The Asphalt Jungle is how invasive the cops are. There are cops everywhere in The Asphalt Jungle. In this mid-western city, the cops are ALWAYS there. They are peeping through the blinds, turning up in rail yards and on and off the take on both sides of the law. They're at Emmerich's shag-pad and at his home, and patrolling the noir city at dawn at the famous head of the picture.

Doc lives up to the con men hates guns trope: "I haven't carried a gun since my twenties. You carry a gun, you shoot a policeman. Bad rap, hard to beat."

Sympathetic villainy, Sterling Hayden and Sam Jaffe in
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

The old guy likes young women  look is creepily popular in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) with Louis Calhern keeping Marilyn Monroe down in a tidy shag pad he has somewhere in town, and she is described by the super moraliser cop Commissioner as being old old enough to be her grandfather.

She refers to him as 'Uncle', which he does not like any longer, suggesting that there has been a longer-standing relationship, that is to say, he has known her since she was a girl.

Their slobbery screen kiss is uncomfortable to say the least — a slobbery robbery of youthful femininity.

Brad Dexter in The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Cops are so close in their cars that you have to hide behind pillars. Cops are coming into your café diner and searching the place. Cops are stopping you in railyards and busting you. 

The cops even intrude on the high and mighty and Louis Calhern's game of cards with his invalid wife is interrupted by the cops. The cops in The Asphalt Jungle are on this.

The fatal flaws of noir are also in evidence. If Riedenschneider had only left 5 minutes earlier rather than indulge his penchant for young girls, he'd have gone free.

Heist dynamite moment Anthony Caruso in The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Also, when the railyard security guard mentions that some guys bring young girls there to have their way with them, Doc becomes transfixed by this idea and allows his face to be illuminated by the guard's flashlight, which causes him to identify and then try to apprehend Doc and Dix. This man has a flaw as common as the greed which drives them all.

Jean Hagen in The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

The bad guys aren't all bad. One played by Anthony Caruso is a family man, one is tough but has an intense loyalty, even Dix has his generous side, and is a poor kid who just had a lot of bad breaks. 

And the good guys are hardly all good. One detective is corrupt, others are a bit slow, and the Commissioner comes across as a kind of extremist and morally superior fanatic.

John McIntire in The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Marilyn Monroe in The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

The Commissioner describes Dix to the newspapers, as "a man without human feeling or human mercy," with his human, brave, and honourable sides being ignored, so hard luck follows this flawed angel even after he is dead.

And of course it is one last job! Both Dix and Doc at least are planning to retire after the caper, as it appears to be the case for Hardy (Louis Calherne).

And as for Dix.

Domestically, he's a nightmare. He lives with the most charming young woman you've ever seen, and all he can do is sit and curse about how the universe has kicked him down.

She dotes on him. Him and his filthy vest and bum's battered hat.

Dix, played by Sterling Hayden in The Asphalt Jungle

The Asphalt Jungle is the lost love life of Dix, the thug from down the tracks and played by Sterling Hayden.

He's tough about not doing the dishes and lives like a loser, hands clasped, angrily focusing on the negative, steaming about one day 'making it big'.

Then at work (Dix works as a thug) he bitches around there too, bullying and grumbling. With his colleagues, being touchy about everything is a point of homour with Dix. He enters the room in a stink and with a shitty stare, half asleep within angry thoughts.

Then he goes back home, hangdog, to find that the woman who loves him (flawed as she is for even doing so) is leaving him. Dix doesn't even know how to try and stop her. Just asks for her address, like the hulking big half-shaven confused-ass faced looking disappointment he is.

Dix tries a kiss. It's kinda rough. He can't quite get it right.
He says: "Doll. Maybe I wanna get in touch with you."

"Oh sure," she says. "My new address. I'll be at 42 Merton Street."
And Dix remains a terrible disappointment.

"Some Sweet Kid"

Marilyn Monroe in The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Mr Emmerich doesn't have anything going for him.

He only ever does bad stuff. His wife is a paranoid woman, one of many in film noir to have a good reason to be paranoid.

In the case of his own love interest Emmerich could be best categorised as an abusive sugar daddy.

While his wife lies grimly abed at home, tended by three servants, he plain drools over Marilyn Monroe, who plays Angela, the dippy daft doll he treasures and lavishes cash upon, the apple of his salivating eye. She's too young for him, and she doesn't seem to know it. She is in fact a child and described by the police commissioner as 'young enough to be his grandaughter'.

Mr Emmerich doesn't deal in love, and of all the woman-grubbing abuse in The Asphalt Jungle, his is the most cynical. We know, as he knows, that bad things will happen to him in the end, and that fate will grab his collar at any second.

 Mr Emmerich is going out in style, drooling his way through his illicitly gained fortune, broken before he even began, a figure of disgust who has little hope in himself.

Marilyn Monroe was about 24 years old when this was shot, and Louis Calhern, who plays Mr Emmerich, a cool 55.

Unfair, cruel, too conniving to be truly smart, and all things wrong with #notallmen, all that Mr Emmerich can say at times is: "Some Sweet Kid." His unspeakable desires do render him speechless.

Angela: What's the big idea standing there staring at me, Uncle Lon?
Emmerich: Don't call me "Uncle Lon."
Angela: I thought you liked it.
Emmerich: Maybe I did... I don't any more.


Angela: I had the market send over some salt mackerel for you. I know how you love it for breakfast.
Emmerich: [Looks at her in ecstasy] Some sweet kid.

? Mrs May Emmerich ❤ Mr Alonzo D. Emmerich?

Mrs Emmerich is in the noir mode of the hysterical woman but is more sinned against than sinning, and her illness is Mr Emmerich's strength and the value behind his vice and wickedness. He does not love his wife and maybe even loves her illness. 

We know that Mrs Emmerich must at least have an hysterical tendency because she is always in bed, like Merle Oberon in Dark Waters, and possibly possessing the same internalised guilt and fear as Joan Bennett in The Secret Beyond the Door (1947).

Alonzo Emmerich plays 'casino' with his wife May, like they did back in the old days.


But he isn't concentrating, and she doesn't notice, she is so grateful of the attention.

This is because Mrs Emmerich's bed is her prison and her hysteria is a symbol of marriage.


And not just her marriage, but all American, all-American marriage. In this all-American marriage, Mr Emmerich is in business and is never there; she is a domestic prisoner, disabled, immobilised, too pampered to move past the door, too fearful to think about herself, thanks to the heavy gaslighting.

At the end, Emmerich can't even bring himself to write his wife an honest suicide note. In one of The Asphalt Jungle's emotional moments, he tries.

Emmerich can't bring himself to be near her even in death. He can't even lie that he loves her.

Have a look at that note. Emmerich squeezes out the "I" of "I Love You" but that is as much as he can manage. It gets too tough after that.

Can't Even Bring Himself to Lie ...

Sam Jaffe as 'Doc' Erwin Riedenschneider

Doc Riedsenschneider: "One way or another, we all work for our vice."

As a young man, Sam Jaffe lived in Greenwich Village in the same apartment building as a young John Huston.

The two men became good friends and remained so for life.

Jaffe was later to star in two of Huston's films: The Asphalt Jungle and The Barbarian and the Geisha.

Jaffe's closest friends also included Zero Mostel, Edward G. Robinson, Ray Bradbury, and Igor Stravinsky. Jaffe was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses during the 1950s, supposedly for being a communist sympathiser.

Despite this, he was hired by Robert Wise for The Day the Earth Stood Still and then by director William Wyler for his role in the 1959 version of Ben-Hur.

In The Asphalt Jungle , 'Doc' the mastermind, and the only of the gang to even live to the end of the picture, AKA Riedenschneider, hangs himself on a lusty petard, only near the finale.

It is a wonderful dance however, from Helene Stanley.

What was my vice, again?

Helene Stanley, the dancer in the 'Doc's Downfall' scene of The Asphalt Jungle, made her film debut at age 14 in Girls' Town (1942), then played a series of juvenile roles at Universal in 1943-45, sometimes as part of a teen dancing group known as The Jivin' Jacks and Jills.

She worked at MGM (where her stage name became Helene Stanley) and elsewhere from 1945-50 and at 20th Century-Fox in 1952. Her last role at MGM, was this incredible and uncredited dance in The Asphalt Jungle.

For Disney, Helene modeled Cinderella (1950), Sleeping Beauty (1959) and the young wife in 101 Dalmatians (1961). Also for Disney, Helene appeared in the Davy Crockett TV-films as Davy's wife Polly. Helene was briefly the third wife of gangster Johnny Stompanato, whose subsequent fatal affair with Lana Turner made headlines.

She formally retired from show business on the birth of her son in 1961 and the cause of her 1990 death was not reported.

And Doc sure loves here for this brief, hip, jiving, sexy moment. It's one moment too late, as the script kinda clumsily tells us. Her dance also appears to attract two police officers, who spot the Doc and bring him smoothly in.

Death and a Horse

The Asphalt Jungle is set in in an unnamed Midwest river city, that is probably Cincinnati.

However for Dix, the unknown quantity he seeks in life is to be found only at home, in Boone County, Kentucky.

It's there that Dix goes to die at a horse's feet, driven there and propped up all the way by the sympathetically aghast girl that has nothing better to do in life than dote on him.

Dix has a protective quality, but that is not love. And he does barely ever look at her.

Nah. Too much of a bum for that!

Instead Dix prefers to stare off screen at distant unobtainable truths. Which he growls at.

She cries in the meantime, and ought to be relieved when the guy makes that last stumble, almost free of his mortal coil as he slumps to the ground, dead but not buried.

Dead but not buried and nuzzled by a horse.

Luggish Dix is never really in love, and can't known his mind. The last doctor to see him says:

"Well, he won't get very far, that's for sure. He hasn't got enough blood left in him to keep a chicken alive"

"Kentucky Noir"

Welcome to the Jungle on WIKIPEDIA
 The Asphalt Jungle at AFI