Gypsy Wildcat (Universal, 1945)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night at 10 p.m. I ran my husband Charles and I a movie: Gypsy Wildcat (Universal, 1945), the fifth and next-to-last of the Technicolor extravaganaze starring Maria Montez and Jon Hall in the mid-1940’s. To this pointing he series they had cast Montez as either an Arab (in the first one, Arabian Nights, 1942; and the third, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, 1943) or a Polynesian (in White Savage, 1943, and Cobra Woman, 1944),so for thisa one the “suits” at Universal decided it was time for a change of pace and cast her as a Gypsy. Charles objected to the use of the term “Gypsy,” saying that for actual Rom people it’s now considered almost as much of a racial slur as Blacks consider the “N”-word, but if y ou’re looking for racial sensitivity about the last place you should expect to find it is in a 1940’s Hollywood movie, especially one made at Universal, which for some reason had a reputation as themost racist studio in Hollywood. (One 1940’s Hollywood film that seems surprisingly modern in its racial sensibilities is the Val Lewton-Jacques Tourneur masterpiece I Walked with a Zombie, with its surprisingly sensitive treatment of voodoo and the strong suggestion that even though slavery has been abolished for over a century, the Rand family is still living o a fortune built on slave labor and it has corrupted them.)

Gypsy Wildcat has some fascinating credits both in front of and behind the cameras; James M. Cain is one of the credited screenwriters (though this story is far from the noir novels that made his reputation), along with James Hogan, Ralph Stock and Gene Lewis. (Hogan and Stock are credited with the “original” story and Hogan, Lewis and Cain – in that order – with the screenplay, and I suspect Hogan would also have directed if he hadn’t died suddenly just before Gypsy Wildcat wtnt into production.) The director is Roy William Neill, who made all but the first of Universal’s 12 Sherlock Holmes movies with Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, and that probably accounts for Bruce’s odd casting here as a “High Sheriff” in the pay of the film’s principal villain, Baron Tovar (Douglass Dumbrille). The film kicks off with a scene at a Gypsy carnival put on by a band whose leader, Anube (Leo Carrillo), opens the movie with a spiel insisting that all the attractions at the carnival will be free. Naturally that arouses our suspicions immediately; we know from previous experience with Hollywood’s stereotypes about Gypsies that there will be a lot of highly creative means to separate the attendees from their money.

Into the Gypsy camp rides Michael (Jon Hall), waving an arrow he’s just pulled out of a dead man’s back. The dead man is Count Otto, and he was the local authority until he was killed by Baron Tovar,who sought to displace him and take over. He’s determined to frame the Gypsies for his crime, and whent hey refuse to hand over the killer because they have no idea who that is, he orders them all arrested and taken to his castle. (For all the escapism of the Montez-Hall films, their bad guys often act like the Nazi occupiers in U.S. movies about World War II – or the real-life Nazis.) Into the mix comes Carla (Maria Montez), Anube’s adopted daughter and star dancer of the carnival.amd pof course one look at her and Michael is smitten on first sight. So, alas, is Baron Tovar, who determines to get her for himself. He’s even more determined to get her when he spots a locket she wears around her neck, and just when we’re thinking, “Oh, no, they’re not going to poull the gimmick of having her turn out to be a long-lost princess,” they have her turn out to be the daughter of a long-lost … well, countess, anyway. It turns out that she’;s the rightful heir to the Baron’s estate and the moment she says the word, he’ll be dispossessed and out of there. In the film’s kinkiest scene, Baron Tovar gets Carla to agree to marry him by tying Michael up and having knife throwers throw knives at him.

After promising beginning the film turns surprisingly dull, as the characters chase each other over the same familiar Southern Californa locations Republic used for their Westerns and serials. Some of those rock formations have been in so many movies you want to wave to them and say hello. The Wikipedia page on Gypsy Wildcat has some fascinating comments from both Maria Montez and James M. Cain. Montez said oif the film, "This one is more golden bantam. I'm tired of being a fairy-tale princess all the time. In every picture I have royal blood. I told the studio I wanted to do something else. I thought everything was fixed when they put me in Gypsy Wildcat. But do you know what happens at the end of that picture? I turn out to be a countess.” And Cain, who was brought in towards tne end of the writing process and said he simplified the script and won the praise of producer George Waggner, said the film "was the beginning of a new phase of my picture career. After that I was a professional at the business; after that, I did all right," even though he did not have many screen credits and his list on imdb.com includes only one film noir, Out of the Past (an uncredited rewrite job), even though Cain’s greatest reputation was as a noir fiction writer. Gypsy Wildcat was the sort of O.K. movie that could have been considerably better, and at the end Dumbrille has got his and Montez and Hall are ruling from the big castle (obviously a model Universal patched into the exteriors,while its interiors are recycled sets from Universal’s old horror films, including an antechamber recycled from The Mummy’s Hand, a big set they reused often),presumably as queen and prince consort.