Tuesdays in November | 20 films
Ruth Roman’s career spanned more than four decades, from uncredited bit parts in the early 1940s to featured roles on 1980s television. But for a window of time in the early 1950s, she achieved her strongest degree of popularity and star power—even if top stardom would prove elusive. Every Tuesday in November, Roman receives star treatment with a showcase of films highlighting her talents from the 1940s into the 1960s.
The Boston-born actress had been floating around Hollywood since 1943, trying to break through. She landed an 18-month contract with David O. Selznick, but it led nowhere because he only used her for publicity stills. A subsequent six-month contract at Paramount simply resulted in more bit parts. So, one day in 1948, while visiting the RKO lot, she made an unscheduled visit to producer Dore Schary, whom she had met when they were both employed by Selznick. After she pushed her way past his secretary, a bemused Schary realized she’d be perfect for a film he was casting: The Window (1949).
Based on a Cornell Woolrich story, this modestly budgeted, deeply suspenseful film is about a little boy, Tommy, who constantly fibs to his parents. (He is played by child actor Bobby Driscoll, who was awarded a special Outstanding Juvenile Actor of 1949 Oscar for his performance.) After Tommy witnesses the married couple upstairs murdering a sailor, he tries to tell his parents and the police, but no one believes him. Tommy now grows ever more terrified of the neighbors, who become aware that he knows what they did. Directed by Ted Tetzlaff, a former cinematographer who had recently shot Notorious (1946), this is a special feat for truly approaching Hitchcockian suspense and irony. (For more films of this nature, check out this month’s TCM Spotlight.)
Roman’s part was that of the married upstairs neighbor, with her husband played by a menacing Paul Stewart. She later recalled that she wasn’t allowed to wear make-up for the role: “They wanted me to look older. I saw a rough cut without the music; I remember seeing it in a projection room all by myself. I left crying and thinking, ‘They’ll never let me perform again.’ I later saw it with a full audience and with all the sound, and the people were screaming. Goes to show you, doesn’t it?”
With The Window’s release held up for a year, Roman took a role in Belle Starr’s Daughter (1948), a minor Western that nonetheless brought her strong notices: “Her personality registers incredibly,” said “Variety.” “She’s star stuff.” Meanwhile, producer Stanley Kramer saw a pre-release screening of The Window and invited Roman to audition for his next film, Champion (1949). Starring Kirk Douglas and boasting brutally realistic fight sequences and intense noir visuals, it would become one of the finest boxing films ever made. Reading the script, Roman figured her audition would be for the character of the gold-digging girlfriend, Grace, so she arrived at Kramer’s office in heavy makeup and a tight-fitting black dress. “Actually, I thought of you for the other girl,” said Kramer—meaning the shy and wholesome wife, Emma.
Roman described the production of Champion as her “happiest 26 days in the movies... The role of Emma did more for my career than any other role.” She was helped by the fluke of The Window and Champion opening three days apart in May 1949, with both becoming smash hits and prominently showcasing Roman’s talent. “I think that is what helped me so much,” she said, “because in The Window I played a killer and in Champion I played a sweet wife. They happened to be two of the biggest sleepers of the year. I was very lucky.”
Now in demand by several studios, Roman signed with Warner Bros., who immediately put her to work in the Western Barricade (1950), followed in rapid succession by a melodrama, Beyond the Forest (1949); a comedy, Always Leave Them Laughing (1949); and two more Westerns, Colt .45 (1950) and Dallas (1950). Though she was working constantly, often with major male stars like Gary Cooper and Errol Flynn, she was not too happy with her parts. Bette Davis worked with Roman in Beyond the Forest and said, “It’s awful to waste that girl’s talent in such a small role. She’s too good for that.” Roman asked to be released from her contract but the studio refused, threatening suspension if she didn’t take the assignments. “I had maybe five cents at the time,” recalled Roman, “so I worked. Brother, how I worked!”
Then in late 1950, Roman made two films back to back that would rank among her finest: Strangers on a Train (1951) and Tomorrow is Another Day (1951). Strangers is arguably one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best movies, with the director’s ideas about duality and the transference of guilt never more explicitly visualized than in this story of two men who “swap” murders. At least that’s what the deranged Bruno (Robert Walker) thinks is happening. By chance he meets a tennis player, Guy (Farley Granger), and soon proposes that they each kill the person in the other’s life that they would most like to be rid of: Guy’s estranged wife, who refuses to divorce him, and Bruno’s father. Guy laughs off and dismisses the crazy notion—until Bruno does murder Guy’s wife. Roman plays Anne, a senator’s daughter and the wholesome woman Guy would marry if only his wife would divorce him.
Roman later said that Hitchcock didn’t actually want her for the role. “He wanted some cool blonde, you know? It wasn’t because he thought I was a bad actress; he just didn’t think I was right for it—and I don’t believe I was right for it. He had some woman come on the set and give me the English pronunciations of certain words. He wanted me to be a very proper Bostonian. Of course, I do come from Boston! We got along beautifully after we got to know each other.”
A week after Strangers wrapped, Roman started work on Tomorrow Is Another Day, an unheralded crime drama directed by Felix E. Feist. Seen today, it is a riveting film noir that remains far too little known and will prove a major discovery for new viewers. Steve Cochran plays a man just released after 18 years in prison for the juvenile killing of his father. He has a tough time reintegrating into society but meets a blonde taxi dancer (Roman) who reluctantly strikes up a friendship with him. When Roman’s police officer paramour is killed and Cochran becomes the suspect, they flee New York together and in time become lovers. They hitchhike and ride freight trains; she reverts to her natural brunette hair and softens into (once again for Roman!) a wholesome woman. They settle down on a farm as lettuce pickers, and they find peace ...until their past catches up to them.
The roles were big departures for both actors. In one scene, as they walk down a country road in jeans, he says to her, “You sure look different,” and Roman answers, “I am different.” They might as well be talking about themselves as actors. Cochran was known for playing tough, cold-hearted thugs, not the vulnerable, nervous, immature yet sympathetic man here. Roman often was cast for her “wholesomeness,” and usually did not have the chance to play the blonde floozy type of character as she does in the first part of this film. Her transformation is convincing, vibrant and moving, and her chemistry with Cochran is palpable. That’s no surprise, for they were old friends from their early theater days in New York, where they had struggled much like their characters. As Cochran said of those years, “There were a lot of times when Ruth and I would sit at a lunch counter trying to figure out where we could land any kind of a job in the theater.” They had previously appeared together in Dallas, but in Tomorrow is Another Day, they are front and center, fully carrying the story to heartbreaking effect.
Among the other films in our tribute, Great Day in the Morning (1956) is an above-par, beautifully photographed color Western from director Jacques Tourneur, with Roman as a saloon hostess who becomes involved with Robert Stack. Young Man with Ideas (1952) is notable for Mitchell Leisen’s light directorial touch and the strong feeling of marital closeness that Roman’s character forms with Glenn Ford’s, even as they bicker and argue. (Ford joined the film after 12 days of shooting when he replaced the originally-cast Broadway actor Russell Nype.) “The Hollywood Reporter” noted Roman’s comic chops: “[She] demonstrates a fine talent for comedy which hits a high spot in a gem of a scene in which she gets delicately and hilariously tipsy.”
By this point, with her best films behind her, Roman’s star power was fading, although she kept busy in television and an occasional feature for many years to come. After she died in 1999, her “The New York Times” obituary was headlined, “Ruth Roman, 75, Glamorous and Wholesome Star”—and the first sentence aptly described her as “a screen actress who parlayed her electrically charged combination of sexiness and wholesomeness into Hollywood stardom in the late 1940s and ‘50s.”
