censorship, (19)

134

Blackout

vorce, and the terms lousy, lousing, and brassiere. Songs and costumes would require PCA approval, and he added that the “jive seąuence” should be “handled with the greatest care to avoid any possible suggestion that Cliff [Elisha Cook Jr.] and the rest of the musicians are dope addicts.” (This rather short-sighted comment makes no reference to sexual innuendo in the jazz §equence.) As a finał notę indicating multiple wartime censorship considerations, Breen sent the script to Addison Durland, “our Latin American advisor,” regarding “Latin American angles of the story.” With a much-restricted wartime international market, Latin American and domestic au-diences were crucial for Hollywood.²¹ Universal resubmitted a script for Phantom Lady on September 14. On September 16 Breen stated that changes had not been madę. The censor reiterated his ban on drinking and sugges-tive dialogue.²² As it happened, Phantom Lady and Double Indemnity were then resubmitted to the Hays Office for PCA approval on September 21, 1943—Universal sent the script for Harrison/Siodmak’s project for consid-eration as Paramount (after a pronounced lapse in correspondence) sent Wilder/Chandler’s script to Breen.²³ One wonders whether former room-mates Siodmak and Wilder were in cahoots. Phantom Lady was approved by the PCA the next day—followed by the milestone endorsement of Double Indemnity two days later. Whatever transpired proved a strategy for suc-cess. Wilder and Chandler had certainly been working through the summer to gain PCA approval on Double Indemnity, yet it is remarkable that these potentially scandalous projects gained such swift, sudden, and compara-tively easy PCA endorsement by the fali of 1943 and that Harrison and Siod-mak’s less-than-subtle orgiastic jazz jam session sailed so painlessly by the censors. Perhaps the strategy of “bombard them and keep them busy” re-sulted in divided (and diluted)'efforts by the guardians of cinematic virtue to strictly enforce censorship based on a 1930 morał blueprint that was in-creasingly contradicted by violence and political propaganda during the war.

Phantom Lady-was filmed from the end of September through late Oc-tober, and postproduction continued into November. Breen was busy ap-proving changes through October, while he was approving Wilder’s Double Indemnity revisions from September 24 to December 1. By December 7, 1943. Phantom Lady was reviewed by PCA members Pettijohn, Zehmer, and Durland—with Breen noticeably absent—in a report by L. Greenhouse that classified the film as a melodrama-murder mystery, citing “murder” and “some social drinking,” no “adultery or illicit sex,” an “unsympathetic drunk character,” and a “Latin American singer” (portrayed by Brazilian star Aurora, Carmen Mirandas sister).²⁴ A PCA seal was granted the next day, on December 8,-yet Universal publicity for Phantom Lady, like many of these

Rosie the Riveter Goes to Hollywood

\    »35

films noir described as “red meat,” heralded and eroticized how the female heroine is “roughed up” by małe costars during production; in this case the brutal encounter ensues after jazz drummer Elisha Cook Jr. leads our un-dercover detective heroine up to his shady bachelor pad just after the jam session and learns that Raines is on the job rather than on the make. Publicity often conflated sex and violence to titillate. Studio promotion narra-tives capitalized on suggesting morę than censors would visually allow on-screen. In “Star’s Portion Not Ali Roses” Universal’s studio press book for Phantom Lady describes female star Raines as having“paid off three-to-one for her acting ability on the set one day. Teamed with Elisha Cook, Jr., in the ‘jive’ seąuence,” she did “seven ‘takes’ of one of the wildest scenes re-cently put on the screen.” Surprisingly reminiscent of wartime espionage thrillers (like This Gunfor Hire), publicity explains how Raines “drops her purse while searching for a cigarette” for the małe character, who “discov-ers her ‘secret orders’ to apprehend him. He has been making love to her, but his emotion changes to hate and fear.” As the film capitalizes on bona fide violence, the press piece details how “Cook grabs her, tries to get the truth from her. In the struggle, a lamp is overturned and a divan gets kicked around. Director Robert Siodmak, wanting to put a punch into the seąuence, had the pair run through it seven times. Next day Miss Raines ap-peared on the set with 21 bruises. The make-up man was summoned to ‘cover up.’ ”²⁵ Universal’s efforts to accommodate the PCA continued through January 6,1944, when Pivar submitted a revised ending for Phantom Lady to Breen, but according to MPAA/PCA files the censor sent no reply.²⁶ With both Phantom and Indemnity completing production and nearing release Breen may have resigned himself to a losing battle with both films.

Wartime industry, critics, and the public struggled with how to classify and conceive of the film. A January 21,1944, Motion Picture Daily review noted Universal’s deviation from its earlier horror tradition, describing Phantom Lady as “not just another horror film. On the contrary, as pro-duced by Joan Harrison and directed by Robert Siodmak, is top-notch psy-chological murder mystery melodrama packed with 87 minutes of suspensę and action in the best Alfred Hitchcock manner.” Drawing on Hitchcock’s female gothic thrillers Rebecca, Suspicion, Shadow ofa Doubt, and espionage thrillers Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur, it praised Phantom Lady as “guaranteed to leave limp hearty devotees of this type of film.” Trades called Raines “romantic,” the “surreptitious” jive session “uniąue,” and the jazz musie “part of the action.” Evoking a wartime małe psyche, Tone’s “person-able sculptor” is “afflicted with paranoia” that “leads him” to commit a “se-ries of vicious murders” in a “grand performance.”²⁷ Yet New York Times