There’s nothing like a B&W crime film for atmosphere, shadows, snappy dialogue, sharp outfits and solid-body American cars.
So you can anticipate my interest in a B&W crime film set in the world of newspapers. One would be playing as part of Palm Springs’ annual Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival.
Already bound for Palm Springs last Sunday, I made sure to arrive early enough to catch the screening of 1952’s “Scandal Sheet.” With a title like that, how could I resist?
This was my first time at the festival, which takes place at the Palm Springs Cultural Center, the former Camelot Theater. In the lobby I ran into Murray Gilkeson, a reader from La Verne who always buys a weekend pass.
He’s been urging me for years to attend, while at the same time fretting that exposure in my column might be a double-edged sword (or a snub-nosed revolver) for the appealingly low-key festival. Life, as in a film noir, is filled with bad choices and moral ambiguity.
For 23 years, the festival has offered a weekend of vintage B-movies involving murder, booze, dames, big cities, skinny ties, upturned raincoat collars and neon lights glaring through slatted blinds. Everyone onscreen is constantly lighting up cigarettes, except for infants, who require assistance.
Who was Arthur Lyons, the festival’s founder? A writer of mysteries and nonfiction who lived in Palm Springs and died in 2008, Lyons served one term on its City Council in the 1990s.
Boy, I’d have liked to cover meetings where an elected official was responsible for such books as “Three With a Bullet,” “False Pretenses” and “The Dead Are Discreet.” Not to mention “Satan Wants You: The Cult of Devil Worship in America.”
Lyons founded the festival in 2000. This year’s iteration showcased bracingly titled films like “This Gun for Hire,” “Appointment With Danger” and “The Devil Thumbs a Ride.” Other plans kept me close to home until the festival’s last day. But I did make it to “Scandal Sheet.”
Broderick Crawford plays a gruff editor who has turned a stodgy newspaper into a tabloid with lurid crime stories. Then he runs into his ex-wife, who threatens to go to a rival newspaper to expose how he abandoned her and changed his identity.
Their argument ends with her accidental death. He decides the right thing to do is to cover it up.
It doesn’t go well. His star crime reporter keeps turning up clues about the killer. What can Crawford do? As editor, he has no choice but to print them and sell more papers.
“Scandal Sheet” was a hoot, and at 82 minutes, or about half the length of a Marvel movie, there wasn’t an ounce of fat in it. “All the President’s Men,” “The Post,” “Spotlight” and “She Said” are all well and good, but a less high-minded newspaper movie was inspiring in its own way.
I had only one letdown. The man introducing the film mentioned a movie poster in the lobby for “Scandal Sheet,” and your columnist immediately resolved to find the poster afterward and get a selfie with it.
The poster, sadly, turned out to be the Italian version. I skipped the selfie.
The title “Ultime della Notte” just doesn’t have the same punch.
More Palm Springs
This was my third visit to Palm Springs, and if too short, it was still enjoyable.
As with Joshua Tree, another tourist-oriented town, I was belatedly reminded that Palm Springs is humming only from Thursday to Sunday. Naturally I was there from Sunday to Tuesday. A couple of museums I’d have liked to visit were closed.
That said, the quieter pace and emptier sidewalks of a Monday had their own appeal.
Also as with Joshua Tree, I had delayed my visit until this most unusual spring got into gear with consistent temperatures.
You know how restaurant servers sometimes ask what heat level you prefer for your spicy food, then give you a range of choices? In Palm Springs, I like the weather toasty. But not unbearable. And warm enough in the evenings that even a fellow who gets cold easily can sit outside in short sleeves and short pants, comfortably.
Well, my order was fulfilled: highs around 95, evenings around 80. For me, the sweet spot. In that sense, Palm Springs reminds me of summers in my native Midwest, only without the lush lawns (or crushing humidity).
Goldilocks weather. If I could leave a city a 20% tip, I would.
In the works
While in Palm Springs, I couldn’t stop myself from conducting interviews and doing research. The result will be two columns, possibly three. Purely by chance, I even met the mayor. She was buying a book.
For me it’s a fun change of scene to report back from the greater Inland Empire, like a foreign correspondent in the mysterious 760. (Trench coats in Palm Springs or Joshua Tree, however, are not recommended.)
I do have columns contemplated or in progress from Redlands, from Pomona, from Ontario, from San Bernardino and — whew — from Riverside. A full week off is also contemplated, the first break in my schedule in 2023.
Stay tuned for all the above. And thank you for reading.
brIEfly
The Palm Springs Walk of Stars is, like Hollywood’s, almost impossible not to look at when you’re walking downtown, even when the sidewalk tiles are facing the opposite direction and you have to read them upside down. I spotted one for Arthur Lyons and another for recent column subject Harpo Marx. Many are for people who were only famous locally and share the same one-word career summary, a kind of sidewalk humblebrag: “Humanitarian.”
David Allen, humanitarian, writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
