The File on Thelma Jordon

Many years back -- I think it was just before I started blogging, because I remember making a post briefly mentioning the Burt Lancaster movie Atlantic City in conjunction with it -- TCM and Paramount signed an agreement on TCM getting the broadcast rights to a handful of the post-1949 Paramount films. One that aired as part of it and then didn't show up for a long time was The File on Thelma Jordon. Recently, the movie showed up again as part of Eddie Muller's Noir Alley series, so this gave me another chance to watch it and do a post on it.

We don't see Thelma Jordon at first even though she's the title character and in many ways the main character. Instead, we meet Cleve Marshall (Wendell Corey), walking into the office of his boss, Miles Scott (Paul Kelly), late one evening. Cleve is an assistant DA and part of the investigative unit of the DA's office. Anyhow, Cleve goes to the office because he doesn't want to be at home. It's his anniversary, but his wife (Joan Tetzel) has invited her side of the family to a party and they make Cleve feel inadequate and smothered as though he has no say in anything that goes on in his life. Additionally, all that has led him to drink heavily, with his wife calling up all the drinking locations Cleve frequents.

Miles leaves the office and Cleve stays to keep drinking, which is when Thelma Jordon (Barbara Stanwyck) comes in. Apparently she's recently moved in with her elderly Aunt Vera, who is also fairly wealthy but doesn't have any family apart from Thelma. Vera has been getting harassed and is a bit eccentric, so Thelma wants plainclothes investigators not from the police to check up on Aunt Vera and make certain everything is OK.

The two walk out of the building, whereupon Thelma finds she's been ticketed for parking right in front of the building. But Cleve works for the DA's office, so he can get the traffic ticket "fixed", for which Thelma will be eternally grateful. She drives him around to his favorite joints, since he's clearly drunk and needs a designated driver, not that they used the term back in the day. But it leads Cleve to think fall in love with Thelma, since his own marriage is loveless. Thelma seems willing to have Cleve in her life.

But there are some big problems, one of them being that Thelma has to lie to everyone around her about what's going on and only see Cleve in clandestine situations. She's also being less than honest about her own life, as Cleve learns that she was married to a man named "Tony" -- and may still be, as it seems Tony has come out west from Florida looking for Thelma. Perhaps it's Tony who has been harassing Aunt Vera, as he could be looking for some of Vera's money in exchange for getting a divorce from Thelma.

Eventually Aunt Vera has enough of all this, and when she thinks she's heard another intruder, she picks up a gun and goes looking for the intruder herself, at which point we hear a gunshot that kills poor old Aunt Vera. Thelma finds Aunt Vera dead, and calls up Cleve. But Thelma wants Cleve to help her cover up any evidence that might lead police to question whether Thelma was the one to kill Aunt Vera! That, and there might also be evidence that Cleve was having an affair with her!

Things get worse when the DA recuses himself from the case, leading to Cleve having to be the one to prosecute it! Not that he can reveal anything of the affair, because that would also reveal he was in on the cover-up, and that would be a serious ethical no-no.

Unfortunately, there's still the Hollywood Production Code, so we know that Cleve is going to have to pay for what he did wrong. Thelma doing so is one thing; it's not that difficult to compare her to a less blatantly sexual version of Lana Turner's character from The Postman Always Rings Twice. But there would be more suspense if there were the possibility of Cleve being able to get away with the things he did in covering up Aunt Vera's shooting death.

The result is that we get a movie that's competently made, and features reasonably good performances, even if Wendell Corey isn't really anybody's idea of a hot romantic lead. But the Production Code really hamstrings the movie, right down to the ending that makes everybody pay, but only in a way that Hollywood and not real life could provide.

So The File on Thelma Jordon is definitely worth a watch, but be aware that it's a frustrating watch at times.