No Down Payment

No Down Payment (1957) was a startling reflection of the post-war years, when World War II veterans were moving into new suburban housing tracts and trying to achieve the "American Dream." Director Martin Ritt's film rips the veneer from the glossy, picture-perfect image of 1950s middle-class life of the Leave it to Beaver era. But if Ritt wanted to reveal ugly truths with his film, behind the scenes he had to conceal the truth from his industry and his government. No Down Payment was based on John McPartland's 1957 novel, which producer Jerry Wald purchased before its publication by Simon and Schuster. 20th Century-Fox's interest in the novel created a buzz, and the book sold out its first printing according to a September 1957 article in The Hollywood Reporter . While the film's credits list screenwriter Philip Yordan as adapting McPartland's novel, the real writer was Ben Maddow, who had been blacklisted from working in films by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Yordan agreed to act as a "front" for Maddow so that the writer could continue to earn a living in secret. Ritt himself had been a target of the HUAC and blacklisted from television in the early 1950s during the height of the Red Scare. While in the East, Ritt had been asked to come to Hollywood to make No Down Payment by Fox production head Buddy Adler, but before he left for the coast Ritt had refused to appear before the committee voluntarily at the request of 20th Century-Fox president Spyros P. Skouras. He told Skouras "I haven't done anything I need to clear myself for. I have nothing to say to this committee. I've lived this long without doing anything I'm ashamed of and I'm just not going to capitulate." Skouras eventually backed down and labeled the accusations against Ritt as "a lot of shit." He told the director that he could go to Hollywood but that he'd "better make good pictures." By 1957, the influence of Joseph McCarthy was waning, although the blacklist wouldn't be broken until 1960 when director Otto Preminger announced that blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo would write his film Exodus (1960) and Kirk Douglas announced that Trumbo had written Spartacus (1960). Under the shadow of the blacklist and under the working title of Down Payment , No Down Payment began pre-production with the press reporting that Robert Wagner, Ben Gazzara and Dana Wynter would star, but all of them had left the project when Ritt shot the film from mid-April to early June 1957. In its posters for the film, 20th Century-Fox proclaimed the studio would be "Bringing You the Screen's Most Exciting New Stars!" These were Joanne Woodward, Cameron Mitchell, Tony Randall (in his first dramatic film role), Sheree North, Patricia Owens, Pat Hingle and former real-life married couple Jeffrey Hunter and Barbara Rush, who had divorced in 1955. No Down Payment is set in Sunset Hills, a development of middle-class homes in California, where a car salesman, an appliance store manager, an engineer, an auto mechanic and their wives are living lives filled with reckless spending, infidelity, regret, jealousy and alcoholism that would eventually lead to sexual assault and death. The film also touches upon racism, when Iko (Aki Aleong) asks his store manager, Herman Kreitzer (Hingle) if he would give him a reference so he, too, could move to Sunset Hills with his family. Deeply religious Herman is shocked when his wife, Betty (Rush), doesn't want him to give the reference because she is worried about what the neighbors would think if a Japanese-American moved in. This, noted Daily Variety was a change from the novel, where the employee was African-American. The film opened in New York on October 30, 1957 to mixed reviews. The Conference of Catholic Bishops called it "a soapy melodrama. [...] Director Martin Ritt tries to use the sudsy story of the couples to reflect the materialistic discontents and confusions arising from America's post-war prosperity, but the social message gets lost in the personal melodramas." Harrison's Reports , an industry publication, deemed it "an engrossing dramatic entertainment that should go over well with adult movie-goers. The characterizations are varied and interesting and, thanks to the expert direction, the players, most of whom are talented young stars developed by the 20th-Fox [sic] studio, come through with earnest and believable portrayals. Worthy of special mention is the performance of Joanne Woodward, who once again proves her exceptional dramatic talents." The film would make back its costs, but it was by no means a box office hit. Nevertheless, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) nominated Woodward for Best Foreign Actress and No Down Payment for Best Film from Any Source in 1959, despite the fact that the film was restricted to adult audiences in Britain due to its content and was banned outright in Ireland. Having the film banned in Ireland and Sweden reportedly infuriated Skouras, who blamed long-time production chief Darryl F. Zanuck for not toning down the more salacious bits. No Down Payment novelist John McPartland had made a name writing pulp fiction full of lurid tales of suburban America, but his own life may have been the inspiration for his books. When McPartland died suddenly in Monterey, California, only 10 months after the release of No Down Payment , it was discovered that in addition to his legal wife and son in Mill Valley, he had a mistress who had given him five children in Monterey, whom the city had named "Mother of the Year." Ten years later, in 1967, a young English rock musician named David Bowie received his first fan letter from an American, 14-year-old Sandra Adams of New Mexico. The then 20-year-old Bowie wrote to Adams, "I was watching an old film on TV the other night called No Down Payment. A great film but rather depressing if it is a true reflection of the American way of life. However, shortly after that they showed a documentary about Robert Frost the American poet, filmed mainly at his home in Vermont, and that evened the score. I am sure that is nearer the real America." By Lorraine LoBianco SOURCES: Aaker, Everett Television Western Players, 1960-1975: A Biographical Dictionary https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/moviedetails/52301?sid=2d168afa-208b-4e6f-b159-19d5b72ebc19&sr=6.562723&cp=1&pos=0 Buhle, Paul and Wagner, Dave Hide in Plain Sight: The Hollywood Blacklistees in Film and Television, 1950-2002 "No Down Payment" Catholic News Service Media Office n.d. "No Down Payment" Harrison's Reports 5 Oct 57 The Internet Movie Database Jackson, Carlton Picking Up the Tab: The Life and Movies of Martin Ritt http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/85078/No-Down-Payment/notes.html Todd, Ben "David Bowie's 1967 Letter to First Ever U.S. Fan Unearthed" The Daily Mail 8 Jan 10