Desert Fury

Desert Fury
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Lewis Allen
Screenplay by	A. I. Bezzerides Robert Rossen
Based on	the novel Desert Town by Ramona Stewart
Produced by	Hal B. Wallis
Starring	Lizabeth Scott John Hodiak Burt Lancaster
Cinematography	Edward Cronjager Charles Lang
Edited by	Warren Low
Music by	Miklós Rózsa
Color process	Technicolor
Production company	Hal Wallis Productions
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	August 15, 1947 (1947-08-15) (United States)
Running time	96 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$2.9 million (US rentals)

Desert Fury is a 1947 American film noir crime film directed by Lewis Allen and starring Lizabeth Scott, John Hodiak and Burt Lancaster.

The story was adapted for the screen by A.I. Bezzerides and Robert Rossen, based on the racy novel Desert Town by Ramona Stewart. The picture was produced by Hal Wallis, with music by Miklós Rózsa and cinematography in Technicolor by Charles Lang.

Plot

Fritzi Haller (Mary Astor) is the powerful owner of Purple Sage, a saloon and casino in the small fictional mining town of Chuckawalla, Nevada. Her daughter, Paula Haller (Lizabeth Scott), has just quit school and returned home at the same time that gangster Eddie Bendix (John Hodiak) has returned. He was once involved with Fritzi, but left town under suspicion of murdering his wife.

Paula does not have a good relationship with her mother Fritzi and when she sees how unpleasant Eddie is for her, she begins a relationship with the crook. Paula's old boyfriend, and local lawman, Tom Hanson (Burt Lancaster), along with Bendix's sidekick, Johnny Ryan (Wendell Corey), try to break up the relationship. When Fritzi finds out, she angrily tries to protect Paula and put a stop to her seeing Bendix. But the resolute Paula does not give up easily until she knows the past of her beloved Eddie.

Bendix's past catches up with him in an unexpected way when the car he is in, running from Hanson (who wants to rid the town of the likes of Bendix and Ryan), crashes through the railing as it is going onto the bridge and plunges down the embankment, killing him.

Cast

• Lizabeth Scott as Paula Haller
• John Hodiak as Eddie Bendix
• Burt Lancaster as Tom Hanson
• Mary Astor as Fritzi Haller
• Wendell Corey as Johnny Ryan
• Kristine Miller as Claire Lindquist
• William Harrigan as Judge Berle Lindquist
• James Flavin as Sheriff Pat Johnson
• Jane Novak as Mrs. Lindquist
• Anna Camargo as Rosa

Production

Scenes were shot on location in the small Ventura County, California, town of Piru, with the northwest side of Center Street, at Main, used as the exterior of Fritzi's saloon and casino; the Piru Mansion was used as the Haller home and the historic Piru bridge was used as the locale of the car crash. Some scenes were also shot in Clarkdale, Arizona.

Some outside shots were filmed in the Old Town section of Cottonwood, Arizona.

Release

The film had its world premiere in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, July 23, 1947 with principal stars Burt Lancaster and Lizabeth Scott in attendance.

The movie was released by Kino Lorber on Blu-ray and DVD in the U.S. on Feb. 26, 2019.

Reception

Critical response

When the film was released, The New York Times roundly despised it. They wrote, "Desert Fury is a beaut - a beaut of a Technicolored mistake from beginning to end. If this costly Western in modern dress had been made by a lesser producer than Hal Wallis it could be dismissed in a sentence. But Mr. Wallis is a man with a considerable reputation, being a two-time winner of the Irving Thalberg Award of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and Desert Fury is such an incredibly bad picture in all respects save one, and that is photographically."

In later years the film has been praised as a seminal and unique Hollywood melodrama due to its bold overtones of homosexuality:

Film scholar Foster Hirsch wrote, "In a truly subversive move the film jettisons the characters' criminal activities to concentrate on two homosexual couples: the mannish mother who treats her daughter like a lover, and the gangster and his devoted possessive sidekick. (...) Desert Fury is shot in the lurid, over-saturated colors that would come to define the 1950s melodramas of Douglas Sirk."

Film noir expert Eddie Muller wrote, "Desert Fury is the gayest movie ever produced in Hollywood's golden era. The film is saturated - with incredibly lush color, fast and furious dialogue dripping with innuendo, double entendres, dark secrets, outraged face-slappings, overwrought Miklos Rosza violins. How has this film escaped revival or cult status? It's Hollywood at its most gloriously berserk."

In one notable piece of dialogue for the period, Paula asks Eddie how he and Johnny met. He replies: "It was in the automat off Times Square, about two o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. I was broke, he had a couple of dollars, we got to talking. He ended up paying for my ham and eggs.""And then?", Paula asks. To which the reply is: "I went home with him that night. We were together from then on."

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 57% based on 7 critics, with an average rating of 5.5/10.

Re-release

Paramount reissued the film in February 1959.

Preservation

The Academy Film Archive preserved a screen test for Desert Fury, with Burt Lancaster and Lizabeth Scott, in 2012.

External links

• Desert Fury at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• Desert Fury at IMDb
• Desert Fury at AllMovie
• Desert Fury at the TCM Movie Database
• Desert Fury information site and DVD review clip at DVD Beaver (includes images)
• Desert Fury film clip on YouTube