With this letter, your host is kicking off a new reading project, running through 11 Stanley Kubrick pictures with literary sources. Like Alfred Hitchcock, most of Kubrick’s films are based on novels, with the collaboration with Clarke as a singular case. And it’s a pretty wild array, from popular authors like Stephen King to classics by Thackeray and Schnitztler.
This set of readings was occasioned by the release of a new book by Kubrick scholars Robert P. Kolker and Nathan Abrams from Pegasus Books, apparently the first “full-length biography in over twenty years” of this great director, perhaps the very last of the classical Hollywood studio system.
First up is The Killing (1955), based on the Lionel White pulp novel of the same year titled Clean Break.
Lionel White was born in Buffalo, NY, in 1905. His first job was as a reporter on the police beat in Ohio in the 20s, but by the early 40s he was a decently-paid magazine and newspaper editor and proofreader living in the Bronx.
White didn’t begin writing and publishing his own pulp fiction till the early 50s, when he was almost 50 years old himself. His first novel was The Snatchers, which was bound with Clean Break in the Stark House edition.
White came to specialize in the big caper and elaborate heist type of crime fiction. That’s certainly the center of gravity of Clean Break. The operation here may be familiar to those who’ve seen its presentation in Kubrick’s adaptation, ‘cause of how striking it is.
At the Long Island racetrack, a hired gun named Nikki shoots the favorite horse Black Lightning on the turn — but this equine assassination and the subsequent riot is only a diversion from the holdup of the betting take by the mastermind Johnny Clay. Then there’s transporting the money and getting back to Manhattan intact. And keeping the plan under wraps, with greedy and unstable people floating around.
White was a no-nonsense hard-boiled stylist. Much of the dialogue covers the logistics. But Johnny Clay is no Dr. Mabuse; this is a clever heist, maybe too clever by half, and it’s kind of like small-time criminals aiming to pull off something more ambitious. Johnny seems to express as much in these lines:
“Jesus,” he said, “be sensible. That’s why this thing is going to work. We don’t want a lot of hoodlums in on it. Take yourself; you’re not tough certainly. But I think you’re right for this. It’s what I’ve been telling you guys from the beginning. We aren’t a bunch of dumb stick-up artists. We aren’t tough guys. We’re supposed to have brains.
White’s style is tough enough, though (Kubrick hired the calloused pulp author Jim Thompson for the script’s dialogue). Check out this report of the dirty cop Randy’s movements.
Randy Kennan sat in back of the wheel of the sedan, a newspaper held in front of his face. He hadn’t long to wait. At exactly eight forty, the front door of the apartment house opened and Marvin Unger walked out and turned west, looking neither to right or to left. Randy gave him an extra minute or two after he had passed the corner and turned downtown. Then he climbed out of the car and entered the building.
The style and the plotting are rock-solid. The main area where this pulp novel discloses any juvenile trashiness is in the casual misogyny of the characters toward the femme fatale Shirley, who torments her husband George, a co-conspirator who also works as a teller at the track.
Johnny sexually attacks Shirley when she’s found eavesdropping on the thieves’ meeting. Later he has a crude exchange with the corrupt officer Kennan regarding the woman, referred to as a tramp and a bum. “Right. And Randy, remember one thing. She may be an oversexed little lush, but you have to handle her with kid gloves. She wants to be romanced, not raped. Probably gets enough of that at home.”
The only character with any real sensitivity is Marvin Unger, who doesn’t have a dire need for the money pot, and seems to be more attracted to Johnny and his devious mind. Unger’s the only one for whom the dry narrator spares a few lines about his inner vacillation:
The last week had brought considerable changes into Unger’s plans. At first, when Sherry Peatty had been found at the door, he’d seriously regretted having gotten himself mixed up in the thing in the first place. He had started to realize all the possible things wrong with Johnny’s scheme. And he had started doubting whether it would actually be successful.
Then, later, after they had gotten together and gone over the final details, he once more became optimistic. His faith had been revived. But, simultaneous with his renewed faith in the robbery itself, he had gradually begun to realize the fundamental weakness in the entire operation.
When Clean Break got adapted into Kubrick’s third film The Killing (1955), Kubrick and Thompson changed and arguably improved the tragic end to this caper. In the book Johnny is gunned down by a mortally wounded and delirious George; but the movie climaxes with a last-minute hassle at the airport over Johnny’s trunk full of cash. Then some woman’s frou-frou dog runs onto the tarmac while the baggage cart is on the way to the plane.
Johnny and his girlfriend Fay just make it out of the airport when the cops start moving in, and when Fay urges him to run, Johnny says “What’s the difference?” in a barely audible mutter.
The new ending lays on at the very last moment a pointedly existential theme, over the simple procedure of the gangster narrative, of the individual versus an enclosing society. As Kolker and Abrams write in their life of Kubrick, “Existentialism was in the air that Kubrick was breathing in the mid-1950s and it influenced his script. Jean-Paul Sartre’s work was slowly being translated and assimilated into the culture.”
The Killing was an absolute breeze of a production, compared to the filming projects to come. But it marks an important transition, since Kubrick and his producer James Harris initially set out to make a literary adaptation, which all of Kubrick’s subsequent films would end up being.
Harris’s cash made it possible not only to option novels but also to acquire the film rights for them, which was much more expensive. With major studio deals in mind, this allowed them to seriously pursue a wide range of projects, in some cases with the help of professional writers […]. Harris and Kubrick pursued crime stories, war, and sexual/romantic dramas. Projects ranged from low-budget productions to star vehicles in the medium- to big-budget range, informed by Hollywood’s considerable output of mid-budget films about war and historical topics.
One of the best parts of these biographical film books are the juicy anecdotes from the set. The Killing has one well-known episode between the young Kubrick and the veteran cinematographer Lucien Ballard, who lensed movies for Josef von Sternberg and Sam Fuller among others. Ballard set up a dolly track and lens different than what Kubrick ordered to save effort. “Stanley looked him in the eye and said quietly, ‘You will either do as I direct or you can leave right now.’”
Sterling Hayden remembered Kubrick as “cold and detached. Very mechanical, always confident. I’ve worked with few directors who are that good.” Guess that’s why he came back for Strangelove.
Marie Windsor, a B-movie star of the era who plays Sherry, recalls that “When he had some idea for me to do or change, he would wiggle his finger and we would go away from the action and he would tell me what he wanted or didn’t want. One time when I was sitting on the bed reading a magazine, he came up and said, ‘I want you to move your eyes when you’re reading.’”
While The Killing seems to mark the start of Kubrick’s ascendancy, it comes in the middle of his partnership with Harris, the independently wealthy film financier maverick, but also a real ride-or-die type with Stanley. Harris was lending the director money to make ends meet.
Apparently things get strained between the two when they get to Paths of Glory, the next book and film pair of this series. I’ll just have to learn from the Kolker and Abrams book as we go along.