Roy William Neill | Whirlpool / 1934

in circles

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dorothy Howell and Ethel Hill (screenplay, based on a story by Howard Emmett Rogers), Roy William Neill (director) Whirlpool / 1934

 

Roy William Neill’s 1934 drama, Whirlpool begins in a carnival owned by Buck Rankin (Jack Holt) who quickly turns from a rather shady dealer, whose many carney booths sham the customers out of their money, into a man who, having fallen in love with a young local girl, Helen (Lila Lee), is suddenly ready to sell his business and “go straight”—much to the surprise of his best friend Mac (Allen Jenkins).

   Fate, however, intercedes as, while trying to stop a carnival melee, Buck accidentally kills one of the participants and is sentenced to prison for 20 years. In the meantime, Helen tells him on a prison visit that she is pregnant, refusing his offer to divorce her.

      The prison is surrounded by a deadly whirlpool that has taken the life of many a prisoner who has attempted to escape. And after witnessing just such an event, where a prisoner jumps into the waters to drown, Buck determines to free Helen from the shame of being married to a criminal by forging a letter to her on the warden’s stationery—he works in the warden’s office—informing his wife that he has died while attempting to escape, his body lost to the circling waters.

       The whirlpool comes to symbolize, in many respects, the life in which Buck and all the others who know him are enmeshed, history itself circling back to haunt him and those he loves.

     Released from prison years later, Buck attempts to transform himself into a new man, Duke Sheldon, who with his best carney friend, quickly becomes wealthy through gambling, skills he has honed from his years at the carnival and in prison. Helen, believing herself to be a widow, has remarry, her new husband being a local Judge, Jim Morrison (Willard Robertson). Duke, formerly Buck, is dating a club singer, Thelma (Rita La Roy), but his real relationship is with his friend Mac, a basically comic figure who complains of stomach pains throughout.  

    Their friendship seems far deeper than his relationship with Thelma, and at one point when he seems not to be paying enough attention to her she even accuses both of being “just gentlemen,” presumably hinting they are not “real” men. And Mac himself, at one point when Duke is busy attempting to determine where he should place the roses in his apartment, comments “I’m dying and you’re worried about pansies.”

       Both are also jealous of a new woman who has come into Sheldon’s life, actually, unknown to them, his daughter, Sandy (played by lesbian actor Jean Arthur). Sandy, a news reporter assigned to get an article on Duke Sheldon, who is scheduled to testify on behalf of another gangster, visits his nightclub, almost immediately recognizing her presumably dead father through a photo which her mother has kept on her bureau of her first husband. When she also spots him wearing his wedding ring, she tells him who she is and the two quickly bond, he now realizing that by appearing at the trial he will bring unwanted attention and perhaps reveal Helen as an unintentional bigamist.

       Father and daughter begin to spend time together, dining out and attending sporting events, which also troubles Sandy’s boyfriend Bob (Donald Cook) and worries Helen, without, of course, either of them knowing who the man is. Accordingly, Duke determines not to testify, arguing with the gangster’s lawyer and bringing up even more questions to the press.

       When the lawyer threatens to reveal Duke’s alias and his past, the two struggle, the lawyer’s gun going off and killing him. Duke quickly sends Sandy, Bob, and his friend Mac out the back way before the reporters, having heard the gun, break into the apartment. As they enter, Duke puts the gun to his own head and shoots, keeping the truth of his existence hidden except for Sandy and Mac—neither of who will ever reveal what they knew, Mac to protect the memory of his “friend” and Sandy to protect her mother.

        This film did well at the box office and kickstarted Arthur’s career.

 

Los Angeles, March 8, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2024).