Crime of Passion
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Gerd Oswald
Barbara Stanwyck
Sterling Hayden
Raymond Burr
Fay Wray
Virginia Grey
Film Details
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Synopsis
After San Francisco newspaper reporter Kathy Ferguson helps two Los Angeles homicide detectives, Capt. Charles Alidos and Lt. Bill Doyle, capture a woman who has killed her husband and fled to San Francisco, her coverage of the event brings her an excellent offer from a New York newspaper. She declines it, however, as she and Bill have fallen in love and she relocates to Los Angeles, where they marry and move into Bill's San Fernando Valley house. Kathy quickly becomes bored with her role as a housewife and begins to view the regular card games with Bill's colleagues and the inane conversation of their vacuous wives as a form of torture and comes to despise their mediocrity. Although Kathy is anxious for Bill to advance in the police department, he lacks ambition, so Kathy decides to elevate their social circle within the department by contriving a meeting with Alice Pope, wife of the all-powerful Inspector Tony Pope. After Kathy persuades Alice to let her organize a surprise birthday party for Tony, she drives a wedge between Tony and Alidos when he and his wife Sara miss the successful event, due to Kathy not inviting them. Later, Kathy visits Tony in his office and begins to insinuate herself into his life. In a calculated move, Kathy persuades Bill to leave the LAPD and join the Beverly Hills force, although he will lose his seniority. Tony refuses Bill's resignation, however, and informs him that he is planning to make changes within the division. As Kathy believes that Alidos is impeding Bill's promotion, she claims that Sara is gossiping about her and Tony, causing Bill to go to police headquarters and beat up Alidos. Neither Bill nor Alidos choose to involve Tony in their dispute, but he has to resolve it nevertheless and eventually transfers Alidos to another division and promotes Bill to acting captain. One night, when Bill is out of town, Tony comes to tell Kathy that Alice has been hospitalized, in need of complete rest, as she can no longer stand the tensions and pressures of his job. Tony is contemplating retirement and Kathy seizes the opportunity to suggest that Bill might replace him. Tony grabs Kathy and they embrace. Later, when Kathy finds out that the Popes are moving to Honolulu, she insists upon meeting Tony and learns from him that he regards their very brief affair as having ended. Tony also tells her that he has decided not to nominate Bill for his job, as he thinks Bill is "not good enough," and plans to retransfer and promote Alidos. Bill and Kathy's marriage begins to crumble as a result of her obsession to see him promoted. One night, while waiting for Bill at police headquarters, Kathy steals a gun from the evidence desk and goes to Tony's house, where she begs for Bill to be promoted, as she needs to justify her adultery somehow. After Tony tells her that he has always seen through her scheming ways, a distraught Kathy shoots and kills him. When the murder is discovered, Bill is appointed to take charge of the investigation. After Bill discovers that the gun, which was used in another killing, is missing and realizes that Kathy had the opportunity to take it, he returns home and confronts her. Kathy admits everything and, ever ambitious for Bill, tells him that as he is now a "good enough cop" to have solved his boss's murder, he can advance within the department. Bill tells her that he is the "same cop" he always was and, resignedly, drives her to police headquarters where he books her for questioning in the killing.
Director
Gerd Oswald
Cast
Barbara Stanwyck
Sterling Hayden
Raymond Burr
Fay Wray
Virginia Grey
Royal Dano
Robert Griffin
Dennis Cross
Jay Adler
Stuart Whitman
Malcolm Atterbury
Robert Quarry
Gail Bonney
Joe Conley
S. John Launer
Brad Trumbull
Skipper Mcnally
Jean Howell
Peg La Centra
Nancy Reynolds
Marjorie Owens
Norbert Schiller
Harry Wilson
Geraldine Wall
Helen Jay
Edward Kafafian
Madelon Erin
Nan Dolan
Sally Yarnell
Crew
Jack R. Berne
Jack R. Berne
Jill Campbell
Herman Cohen
Paul Dunlap
Jo Eisinger
Verna Fields
Marjorie Fowler
Mary Gibsone
Bob Goldstein
Morris Hoffman
Grace Houston
Joseph La Shelle
Shirley Madden
Jack Masters
Francis J. Scheid
Robert J. Schiffer
Leslie Thomas
Joseph Thompson
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Crime of Passion
When the film begins, Kathy is a San Francisco newspaper advice columnist, a "sob sister," in the jargon of the era. In short order, Kathy convinces a murderess to give herself up, falls in love with the policeman working on the case, played by Sterling Hayden, and abandons her career to marry him and become a suburban Los Angeles housewife. But she soon grows bored with that life, and channels the ruthless ambition she had previously used to advance her career to try to advance her husband's. She does so by scheming, lying, betraying her husband's colleague, and having an affair with the husband's boss. Finally, Kathy's perfidy escalates to an even worse crime.
Besides Stanwyck, Crime of Passion had several participants with superb noir credentials. It was written by Jo Eisinger, who also wrote two of the most psychologically complex film noirs, Gilda (1946), and Night and the City (1950). Director Gerd Oswald had recently directed his first feature film, which would become a noir classic, A Kiss Before Dying (1956). Co-star Sterling Hayden's credits included The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and a noir Western, Johnny Guitar (1954). And Raymond Burr had been a stellar villain in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954). The same year that Crime of Passion was released, Burr began his long stint as TV's Perry Mason, and Oswald would direct some episodes of the series.
Dismissed as a routine crime melodrama when it opened in early 1957, Crime of Passion resonates much more deeply nearly fifty years later. From a post-feminist perspective, it seems to be a strikingly modern commentary about how women were driven mad by the limitations imposed on them in the postwar period. It's also interesting to look at how the film noir style had evolved from the 1940's to the 1950's. The light-and-shadow look of 40's noir had given way to what's been called "darkness in daylight," and in Crime of Passion, the bright, harsh light of southern California was particularly effective, almost suffocating in its brightness. The bland suburban atmosphere becomes as menacing as the urban shadows of the previous decade.
Stanwyck was nearly fifty when she made Crime of Passion, and though she was still slim and elegant, she made no effort to hide her age. The unflattering hairdos and makeup of the period didn't do her any favors either, so the specter of being an aging career woman at a time of cozy domesticity added another layer of desperation to her characterization. But ultimately, it's Stanwyck's characteristic fierceness and intensity that propels her character, and the film, and makes Crime of Passion a worthy farewell to film noir from Stanwyck.
Director: Gerd Oswald
Producer: Herman Cohen
Screenplay: Jo Eisinger
Cinematography: Joseph LaShelle
Editor: Francis J. Scheid
Costume Design: Grace Houston
Art Direction: Leslie Thomas
Music: Paul Dunlap
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Kathy Ferguson Doyle), Sterling Hayden (Bill Doyle), Raymond Burr (Tony Pope), Fay Wray (Alice Pope), Virginia Grey (Sara Alidos), Royal Dano (Charlie Alidos), Stuart Whitman (Laboratory Technician).
BW-86m. Letterboxed.
by Margarita Landazuri
Crime of Passion
Quotes
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Notes
This film's working titles were Love Story and The Deadly Triangle. The film's pressbook indicates that certain sequences were filmed in Los Angeles Police Department headquarters.
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States Winter January 9, 1957
Completed shooting July 1956.
Released in United States Winter January 9, 1957