Noir Nook: Five Things I Love About Jane Palmer

Noir Nook: Five Things I Love About Jane Palmer

In addition to being a cracking good movie, Too Late for Tears (1949) holds a special place in my heart because it’s one of my younger daughter’s favorite noirs, and with good reason: it boasts a fine cast headed by Lizabeth Scott, Dan Duryea, and Don DeFore; an appropriately dramatic score from Oscar-nominated composer Dale Butts; and a first-rate tale based on Roy Huggins’s Saturday Evening Post serial about a housewife (Scott) who’ll do anything to hold on to a cache of cash. And it’s that very determined housewife, Jane Palmer, that’s the very best thing about Too Late for Tears.  In this month’s Noir Nook, I’m taking a look at five things I love about this unforgettable dame. (But watch your step – there are spoilers dead ahead!)

1. Jane’s introduction. In the span of just a few minutes, we learn quite a bit about Jane. When we first meet her, she and her husband, Alan (Arthur Kennedy), are driving to a dinner party, but Jane has changed her mind about going and wants Alan to turn the car around. Her reason? The dinner’s “diamond-studded” hostess, according to Jane, “[looks] down her nose at me like that big, ugly house up there looks down on Hollywood.” You might not realize at first that Jane is serious – after all, her voice is pleasant, her words are mannerly, and she’s actually smiling. But seconds later, she tries to literally remove the keys while the car is in motion, and we suspect that this is a gal who means what she says.

• Jane’s grace under pressure. Jane and her husband don’t make it much further down the road when a man in a passing car tosses a satchel full of money into their vehicle. Minutes later, the rightful recipient appears on the road and Jane takes off, steering the vehicle through the winding Hollywood Hills like a seasoned vet at the Indy 500. She’s not a bit ruffled by the dangerous situation – in fact, a slight smile plays about her lips as she confidently speeds through the darkened streets and before long, she manages to lose their pursuer. A few days later, when a stranger by the name of Danny Fuller (Duryea) shows up at Jane’s door, she’s cooler than the other side of the pillow. Danny initially claims to be a law officer, but he soon reveals that the money is his and he accuses her of already starting to spend it when he finds a hidden stash of new clothes and furs. “Spending it?” Jane repeats in a voice as smooth as butter. “I’m sorry, but you’re not making sense.” The next time Jane encounters Danny, we see more of the same; Danny breaks into her apartment while Jane is still in bed, but she doesn’t scream or hide. Instead, she asks him, “Did you think of knocking?”, and then, after brushing her hair, she calmly offers him a drink. Even Danny has to admit that she’s “got quite a flair.”

• Jane’s cleverness. Once it becomes clear that Alan isn’t going to allow Jane to keep the money, she comes up with a practically foolproof plan to remove him from the picture. And that’s just the beginning; with every obstacle that’s tossed in her direction, Jane manages to leap over it with aplomb. When she visits the train station to retrieve the money that Alan checked into the baggage claim, she correctly surmises that she’s being watched and pays a stranger to pick up the satchel for her. Suspicious of the man who shows up claiming that he served in the war with Alan (DeFore), she arranges for one of Alan’s actual Army buddies to refute his story. And once she’s finished using Danny, she kills him – after craftily convincing him to purchase the poison!

• Jane’s self-awareness. Jane knows exactly who and what she is. She’s not kidding herself that she’s some noble character – she’s aware that she won’t be satisfied until she has enough money to go where she wants, buy what she wants, and be who she wants. And not only that, but she knows why she’s the way she is, as she explains to a rather clueless Alan: “You’ve got to let me keep that money. I won’t let you just give it away,” Jane tells him. “Chances like this are never offered twice. This is it. I’ve been waiting for it, dreaming of it all my life. Even when I was a kid. And it wasn’t because we were poor – not hungry-poor, at least. I suppose, in a way, it was far worse. We were white collar-poor, middle-class poor. The kind of people who can’t quite keep up with the Joneses and die a little every day because they can’t.”

• Jane’s humanity. It can’t be denied or swept under the rug – Jane Palmer is a straight-up sociopath, a cold-blooded killer. And for most of the movie, she demonstrates a total lack of conscience and a single-minded sense of purpose that supersedes everything else in her life – she’ll lie, connive, and even resort to murder, if need be. But to her credit, there’s one scene where she shows that she’s not completely ruthless. She and Alan are in a boat on a lake, where she plans to shoot him and throw his body overboard. But to our surprise (and her own), she’s seized with an attack of conscience (“I feel… chilled,” she whispers). She abruptly tells Alan she wants to return to the shore – and that she wants to mail the claim check to the police. Unfortunately for Alan, he actually laughs at Jane, dismissing (or not even noticing, really) her troubled demeanor, which leads to a series of ill-fated actions that end with his death. If only Alan had listened to her… but he didn’t, and once the deed was done, there was no turning back for Jane. In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say. But at least she tried.

And there you have it – the top five reasons why I can’t get enough of Jane Palmer in Too Late for Tears. Are you a fan of this fatal femme? Leave a comment and let me know!

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– Karen Burroughs Hannsberry for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Karen’s Noir Nook articles here.

Karen Burroughs Hannsberry is the author of the Shadows and Satin blog, which focuses on movies and performers from the film noir and pre-Code eras, and the editor-in-chief of The Dark Pages, a bimonthly newsletter devoted to all things film noir. Karen is also the author of two books on film noir – Femme Noir: The Bad Girls of Film and Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir. You can follow Karen on Twitter at @TheDarkPages.
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