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Ray Enright

Ray Enright was a Hollywood director.

Ray Enright does not have that good a track record as a director.He made a lot of musicals in the 1930's, which sometimes havegreat musical numbers from their choreographers, but which otherwiseare dismal viewing experiences in their dramatic sections.TheSinging Marine is just plain stupefying;On Your Toes(1939) is notable only for the Slaughter on Tenth Avenue Ballet,andDames (1934) for its Busby Berkeley finale (includingthe wonderful long sequence choreographing "I Only Have EyesFor You".) On the plus side,Ready, Willing and Able(1935) is more enjoyable throughout, although once again, thebig typewriter finale choreographed byBobby Connollyis the best part. Did Enright make any creative contribution tothe spectacular dance numbers that run through his films?

In the same year, Enright made an amusing comedy,The Traveling Saleslady(1935).

While the Patient Slept

Ray Enright's whodunit,While the Patient Slept (1935), issurprisingly faithful in its plotting toMignon G. Eberhart's1930 novel. But it lacks the marvelous mise-en-scène Eberhartbrought to her prose account of mysterious nocturnal goings-onin a spooky old mansion.

Still, this film must have been a hit with audiences, because it launched a whole series of films, in which every actress on the Warner Brothers lot played Eberhart'snurse detective Sarah Keate.

Trail Street

Visual Style

Trail Street (1947) is a little known Western, directedby an even more obscure figure, Ray Enright. I was just channelsurfing when this came on, and started to watch it with the soundturned off. The visuals looked interesting, and watched the wholemovie silent, just occasionally turning on the volume to get someclues about the story. The visuals are more graceful than I wouldhave expected.

There are some vigorous camera movements, in whichEnright follows a character through a crowd:

One shot shows heroRandolph Scott and friend walking down the side of a bustlingWestern street.
Another follows a dance hall woman singer througha crowd, up the saloon staircase, and across the balcony, whereshe leans over to address the crowd below.

Even when Enright isnot moving his camera, many of the visuals have a kinetic quality.People are always moving into or out of the frame. Their motionsare graceful and vivid. There is a long sequence of various couplesin the plot dancing at a fete. Even Robert Ryan, who I do notthink of as the ballroom dancing type, has a rhythmic outing withhis girlfriend here. All in all, while the film is no masterpiece,it shows graceful mise-en-scène.

Another notable sequence: when Scott rescues the old farmers thathad been tied up by bad guys. This sequence ends with an architecturallystriking shot. It looks much different from anything I've seenin a Western before. Some fresh visual thinking is at work here.

Noir Costumes and Steve Brodie

1947 was the best year of actor Steve Brodie's career. He gotto play a leading man in the wonderfulDesperate (Anthony Mann).And he had smaller but juicy roles as villains inOut of the Past (Jacques Tourneur) andTrail Street. While he played working class stiffs in the othertwo films, he gets to swagger around as the town's villainousland baron inTrail Street. Brodie sports the sort of thinmustache worn by Society types, such as Zachary Scott's spinelessrotter inMildred Pierce.

Brodie also gets some of the bestclothes of his career, ornate, spiffy Western suits. Costume designerAdele Balkan actually gives better clothes to supporting actorsBrodie and Ryan, than she does to star Randolph Scott. Whilethis is sociologically accurate - it makes sense for town moneybags Brodie to be better dressed than Marshall Scott - it somewhatviolates Hollywood tradition. Similarly inBodyguard (Richard Fleischer),Balkan has supporting actor Philip Terry in dressier suits thanlead Lawrence Tierney.

The elegant Western suits worn by RobertRyan and Steve Brodie inTrail Street are frequently pinstriped,and recall the dressy pinstriped suits worn by men in film noir,at its height in 1947. This is the first and only Western I canrecall seeing which adapts such modern noir looks to its Old Westcharacters' clothes. Pinstripes are especially effective at addingsome glamour to black and white films, such as bothTrail Streetand film noir. They are just as flattering to men here in Westernmode, as they are in the urban landscapes of film noir. Just threeyears later, in 1950, most Hollywood Westerns would break outin full color, in an attempt to give theater audiences an experiencethey could not get from their black and white TVs at home. Cowboycostumes would turn into symphonies of color. The experiment withpinstripe suits seen inTrail Street would have littlepoint or place in these all-color extravaganzas.

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