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The Killers (1946)
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TYPE OF FILM: Noir
STUDIO: Universal-International
PRODUCER: Mark Hellinger
DIRECTOR: Robert Siodmak
SCREENWRITERS: Anthony Veiller and (uncredited) John Huston
SOURCE: “The Killers,” short story by Ernest Hemingway
RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes
PRINCIPAL PLAYERS:
Burt Lancaster………………………….……….…………Ole “Swede” Anderson, also Peter Lund
Ava Gardner…………………………………………………………………..………Kitty Collins
Edmond O’Brien……………………………………………………………………….Jim Reardon
Albert Dekker………………………………………………………………………Big Jim Colfax
Sam Levene……………………………………………………………..….Det. Lt. Sam Levinsky
Charles McGraw…………………………………………………………………………………Al
William Conrad………………………………………………………………………………..Mak
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DID YOU KNOW?
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When Mark Hellinger decided to make a movie from Ernest Hemingway’s landmark short story, “The Killers,” he hired John Huston to write the screenplay. The job was more than an adaptation, because Hemingway’s story never lets the reader know why “the Swede” is being killed. The opening sequence, in a little diner in which two hit men thuggishly ask about their intended victim, is all that Hemingway wrote. All the rest—the robbery, the girl, the double and triple crosses—was created by Huston. When Hellinger and Huston, two of the most overblown egos in Hollywood, clashed, Hellinger removed Huston’s name from the writing credits; only the name of Huston’s collaborator, Anthony Veiller, appears on the motion picture.
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THE STORY
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Two tough guys, Al and Mak, enter a little diner in Brentwood looking for Ole “the Swede” Anderson. When he doesn’t show up as expected, they go to hunt for him. A young man at the counter goes to warn the Swede that they’re coming, but the Swede refuses to run, accepting the inevitability of his imminent death. He lies back in his squalid room until the killers walk in and shoot him. Insurance investigator Jim Reardon tracks down the beneficiary of Anderson’s life-insurance policy—a hotel maid—and begins to trace the life of the dead man, connecting him to a robbery at a hat factory that netted more than a quarter of a million dollars.
When Reardon locates Anderson’s old friend, police lieutenant Sam Levinsky, the early years of the ex-fighter come into focus as Levinsky’s wife, once the Swede’s girl, tells Reardon how he met Kitty Collins, the girlfriend of gangster Big Jim Colfax, and instantly fell for her.
Kitty and Anderson became an item, and when she was caught with stolen jewelry, he took the fall for her, going away for three years. After his release, Anderson found Kitty had gone back to Colfax while he was in jail, and when the gangster planned a big robbery, the Swede decided to participate. Kitty came to Anderson in the middle of the night to warn him that the gang planned to cheat him out of his share, so he took vengeance by stealing the entire $250,000. As planned, he and Kitty went to an Atlantic City hotel but, two days later, she disappeared—with the money. When he discovered that she’d left him, he tried to commit suicide, but the chambermaid saved him.
Reardon, still tracking the money, finds Colfax, now a successful contractor, which leads him to a meeting with Kitty. He has clearly been set up when the two men who killed the Swede show up and try to kill him, but he and Levinsky turn the tables and shoot them while Kitty escapes.
At Big Jim Colfax’s house, Reardon and the cops find him dying. Kitty arrives, and they learn that she left the Swede in Atlantic City to return to Colfax, who had planned the double cross in order to get the entire payroll for himself. As he takes his last breaths, Kitty begs him to tell the cops that she’s innocent.
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Burt Lancaster made his screen debut in The Killers, remarkable for a major production. Lancaster, the big, rugged, handsome former circus performer with a chiseled body of steel, has, in the best noir tradition, totally succumbed to the charms of the wrong woman. He is so emasculated that, when he learns two hit men are coming to kill him, he doesn’t even get out of bed to run or fight. When he’s betrayed by Ava Gardner, who has fled with a quarter of a million dollars, he never thinks of the money but tries to jump out a window because he’s lost the girl who cold-bloodedly double-crossed him. He plays the same beaten-down role in Criss Cross.
Gardner, the extraordinarily beautiful and sensual actress who could turn most men to jelly, did the same in real life. Married to three famous men (Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra), she was well known to lead an active social life. Among her myriad affairs was one with the powerful Howard Hughes, who was more active in Hollywood in the 1940s than he was with his airplane company. It has been reported that Robert Mitchum actually telephoned Hughes to ask permission to sleep with the actress. Hughes is said to have replied, “If you don’t, they’ll think you’re a pansy.”
Robert Siodmak was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Director.
The musical score by Miklos Rozsa introduced the memorable “dum da dum dum” theme made famous by the television series Dragnet.
The Killers was remade in 1964 with Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes, Angie Dickinson, and Ronald Reagan—in his last screen role—as a brutal gangster. Originally made for television, it was regarded as too violent and had theatrical release instead.
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BEST LINE
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Reardon has tracked down Big James Colfax, who denies any knowledge of knowing the Swede. As Reardon relates the history that Colfax already knows, the tale turns to Kitty and the Swede’s relationship. “That guy, what’s his name? The Swede?” asks Colfax. “Never had a chance, did he? You might say Kitty Collins signed his death warrant.”
