In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

222 7 The Big Number (A Side) SIREN CITY Six Songs an Evening Unlike Coral Chandler, who’s responsible for the deaths of both her husbands , Nora Prentiss (Ann Sheridan) in Vincent Sherman’s 1947 film of the same name is selflessly devoted to her husband to the bitter end. (In this, her character’s estimable, albeit very nearly masochistic, commitment to her spouse, like Elizabeth Hintten’s in The Bribe, no doubt allayed male postwar fears about marital infidelity and female promiscuity.) If one difference between Nora Prentiss and Dead Reckoning is that the former film, like Gilda, revolves around a woman who lives to sing another day, the fact that Nora and Coral perform their songs while backed by an orchestra indicates that, unlike Veda in Mildred Pierce, they enjoy a certain level of professional success . (Ann Sheridan, the “Oomph Girl,” had appeared in numerous musicals in the ten-year period from the 1934 Murder at the Vanities to Shine on Harvest Moon in 1944.) Certainly, one cannot imagine either Nora or Coral spending her downtime, as Elizabeth Hintten claims she does, doing housework. It’s therefore surprising when Nora assumes this domestic persona early in the film, although it’s plainly coded as a performance. Richard Talbot (Kent Smith) is a successful San Francisco doctor who, according to one synopsis, “leads an unsatisfying and ordinary life with his wife and two children.”¹ It might be more accurate to say, however, that Miklitsch_pp192-254.indd 222 Miklitsch_pp192-254.indd 222 12/8/10 4:25:14 PM 12/8/10 4:25:14 PM The Big Number (A Side) 223 Talbot’s ordinary life is relatively satisfying until he meets Nora after she’s hit by a car outside his office where he professionally attends to her knee. Identifying herself to a street cop as a nightclub singer (he translates this to “entertainer”), Nora tells the good doctor she watches him come and go every day from her apartment (Talbot, it’s important to note, is initially the object of Nora’s gaze) and sets her watch by him. After Talbot applies a bandage (“That doesn’t look bad”), Nora, her leg crooked like a pin-up’s, asks “The bandage or the leg?” (she later apologizes for being “fresh”) then, rejuvenated by a drink and cigarette, exclaims, “Feel like a new man.” Things take a romantic turn when Nora goes back to the doctor’s office to see if she can return to work and Talbot, who’s been repeatedly rebuffed by his wife, asks about the nightclub where she sings. Her response—“If it’s food you want, stay away. But the singing’s good, if it’s singing you want” —is suggestive both because it bespeaks self-confidence (Nora knows she’s a good singer) and because it simultaneously recognizes Talbot’s tentative feelings for her and sets limits, at least for the moment, on what she’s willing to offer him (singing, not sex). The ensuing night shot of the waterfront outside Dinardo’s club is alive with the sound of tugboats and its bustle contrasts with the earlier schedule-bound scenes set at the doctor’s house. Inside, a trio of lettermen introduces Nora who, isolated by a spotlight as she sits at the bar holding a flower and backed by a big band, recites the first, extravagantly deprecatory verse of Moe Jerome, Jack Scholl, and Eddie Cherkose’s “Would You Like a Souvenir?”: “How can I make history / When no one’s ever heard of me / I’ve never done a thing that should be noticed / No one ever fought for me.” After depositing the flower with the bartender, Nora, like Elizabeth Hintten in The Bribe, starts to make her way around the room, pausing at a table to return a cigarette case to its male owner and ruffling another man’s hair as she continues to sing: “Would you like a souvenir / Some memento / That will always keep our dreams in touch? / Darling, it means so much.” When Nora spots Talbot sitting at a table, she sings her way over to him, then sets her elbows on the top of a chair (“If your conscience hurts / Don’t let it / I’m a get it / While it’s here”) before returning to the bar where, concluding her routine, she picks up the flower, “You’ll be making no mistake if you take a souvenir.” As...

Share