Party Girl (Euterpe Productions, MGM, 1958)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (Wednesday, January 29) Turner Classic Movies did a birthday tribute to actress Cyd Charisse, and I watched one of her least characteristic movies: Party Girl, a 1958 gangster movie from Joe Pasternack’s Euterpe Productions, released through MGM (which had had both Charisse and the film’s male lead, Robert Taylor, under contract for years, but released them both after this film was made; host Ben Mankiewicz said they were the last actors MGM had under contract when the studio system finally breathed its last gasp, but that’s not true: Elizabeth Taylor owed MGM one film on her contract, so before she could do Cleopatra they forced her to make Butterfield 8, a lousy movie that for some God-forsaken reason – probably her near-death experience on the set of Cleopatra – won her an Academy Award). Party Girl was basically like the cheap black-and-white gangster movies that were being made by the yard in the late 1950’s, though it’s different in that it’s in color (so-called “Metrocolor,” which was actually Eastmancolor; Eastman Kodak allowed the major studios who used their process to slap their names on it, which is also how we got “WarnerColor” – though American International’s “Pathécolor” process was actually the old Agfacolor from Nazi Germany and later, after the Russians grabbed it, the Soviet Union) and it has a quite a bit more interesting director, Nicholas Ray. (Most of the black-and-white films in the genre were helmed by Edward L. Cahn or others equally hacky.) The screenplay is by George Wells based on a story by Leo Katcher. Robert Taylor plays Tommy Farrell, a crooked attorney for the Mob in general and one Mob boss in particular, Rico Angelo (Lee J. Cobb, whose Method affectations don’t fit in all that well in a movie whose stars are pre-Method Hollywood veterans).

Tommy has a disabled leg, courtesy of a childhood dare in which he climbed a drawbridge, held on as it opened and then got crushed when it closed again. He effectively uses that, as well as a watch he claims is a childhood heirloom but really is one he buys almost literally a dime a dozen, to win acquittal for Rico’s top hit man, Louis Canetto (John Ireland). Cyd Charisse plays aspiring dancer “Vicki Gaye” (I think we’re supposed to assume that’s a phony name she made up, though if she has a real name we’re not told what it is), whom Farrell meets at one of Rico’s joyless parties at which his minions pay attractive young women to attend. One of the interesting things about this movie is it follows Ray’s obsession with red. Because when you look at a black-and-white photo your eye is drawn to the largest object in it but when you look at a color photo your eye is drawn to the brightest object in it, Ray made it a habit of dressing the most important character in his color films in red so they’d stand out: Joan Crawford’s red sweater in Johnny Guitar, James Dean’s iconic red jacket in Rebel Without a Cause, Cyd Charisse’s red dress here, and even Jeffrey Hunter’s red robe as Jesus Christ in King of Kings. Ray also cast psychopathic gangster Cookie Lamont with Corey Allen, the twitchy actor who’d played “Buzz,” the kid who loses the chickie-run in Rebel to James Dean.

Charisse’s two big numbers are certainly spectacular: after Farrell persuades Rico to give her a featured spot in his nightclub instead of relegating her to the chorus, she first does a spectacular dance in the red dress to an instrumental version of the same theme song we heard in a vocal rendition over the opening credits. Later, in a leopard-skin pattern which reveals a surprising amount of crotch for a film that was still made under the Production Code (however much enforcement had loosened gradually over the years), she does a vaguely Latin-themed number. (Because these are both instrumental solo dances for her, producer Pasternack doesn’t have to worry about either a chorus line or a voice double, since Charisse couldn’t sing.) Most of the film is taken up by Farrell’s crisis of conscience between Rico’s insistence that he stay as his lawyer and Vicki’s that he get out and set up shop in another city where people haven’t heard of him before. Midway through the movie both Farrell and Rico drop out – Rico because he beat a man nearly to death at a meeting of the South Side Club (where a black-and-white process shot of an elevated train passing outside on a track nearby adds to the sinister atmosphere) and Farrell told him to leave town, and Farrell because he’s heard of a doctor in Switzerland (were Messrs. Katcher and Wells thinking Magnificent Obsession here?) who can do a series of surgeries on his leg that would repair the damage done all those years ago (though when he returns from Switzerland he still needs a cane to walk). Then both return with a vengeance as Rico summons Farrell to represent Cookie in a case involving the wholesale elimination of Cookie’s potential competitors – and Farrell refuses. Farrell puts Vicki on a train to take her to L.A. and relative safety, but Rico sends two thugs to kidnap her off the train and bring her back to headquarters at the South Side Club.

The climax takes place at the club, where in a marvelous scene that indicates the level of his cruelty Rico pours acid over a red paper New Year’s decoration, rotting it and saying that’s what he’s going to do to Vicki if she doesn’t come back to him. Vicki duly shows up, but fortunately so do the cops, summoned by Farrell when earlier at an Italian restaurant he wrote down the address on the wall by a public phone so district attorney Jeffrey Stewart (Kent Smith from the Cat People movies and The Fountainhead) and his detail can track them down and either arrest or kill them. In the end, after Farrell gives Rico a big speech to the effect that when they were growing up together as kids, Rico used to fight the bullies and now he’s become one, Rico meets his death in a fall from the top window of the hall and dies. One frustration with Party Girl is trying to figure out when it takes place; the opening title simply reads, “Chicago in the 1930’s,” but it’s hard to figure out from external evidence as to just when in the 1930’s. In particular it’s hard to figure out whether Prohibition is still in effect or not; there are hints that it is (at least one of the drinking establishments shown is obviously a speakeasy) but also hints that it isn’t, including the impeccably labeled bottles of booze out of which the characters drink and the wide-open nature of Rico’s most famous and successful club. It’s also a quite violent movie for 1958, though after The Godfather and its progeny the violence in Party Girl seems quite tame by comparison. Party Girl is an unusual movie but also a flawed one, though one of the things I like about it is the sheer strength and power of Robert Taylor’s performance, Enacting the usual Humphrey Bogart character arc of the disillusioned person who’s been corrupted and then reasserts his idealism and redeems himself, Taylor proves surprisingly good as an actor. I’ve mentioned him, Dick Powell, Errol Flynn and (decades later) Tom Selleck as actors who got stronger and more convincing once they lost the boyish good looks that had made them stars and got cast in deeper, richer, meatier roles.