1952 / 105 mins / b/w
Dir. Fritz Lang / Sc. Alfred Hayes / Cine. Nicholas Musuraca / Prod. Jerry Wald, Norman Krasna, Harriet Parsons
Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Robert Ryan, Barbara Stanwyck
Based on the play Clash by Night (1941) by Clifford Odets
DCP courtesy of Warner Bros.

Introduced by Ron Gregg, Columbia University

“Livin’ in my house! Lovin’ another man! Is that what you call bein’ honest? That’s just givin’ it a nice name!”

The cycle of crime films now known as film noir has long been associated with its male producers – people like Adrian Scott, Mark Hellinger, Hal Wallis, and others. But recent scholarship has helped underscore the talents of three “gal producers” (as they were dubbed) who also worked within the cycle: Joan Harrison, Virginia Van Upp, and Harriet Parsons. As film historian Shelley Stamp writes, “Among very few women in executive positions in Hollywood during the 1940s and early 50s, it is notable that all three played an instrumental role in producing film noir.”

Of the three, Parsons was most to the manor born, the daughter of famed gossip columnist Louella Parsons. Her early film career followed her mother’s footsteps as Hollywood’s preeminent star whisperer: Harriet’s first producing roles were on Columbia Pictures’ Screen Snapshots and Republic’s Meet the Stars short subjects. But by 1942, she had graduated to feature films at RKO, where she produced six pictures between 1945 and 1954. For Clash by Night, Parsons worked with the producing team of Jerry Wald and Norman Krasna, who assigned her the responsibility of supervising daily progress.  

Parsons was not perhaps the most obvious choice. In adapting Clifford Odets’ 1941 play, director Fritz Lang had declared his intent to emphasize the supposed “problem” of women’s proclivity for extra-marital relationships, with a plot featuring Barbara Stanwyck’s character in an affair with a misogynist and racist movie projectionist (Robert Ryan). Lang claimed to have done “a lot of research” on women’s faithlessness, and was of the opinion that “seventy-five percent of married women betray their husbands.” Lang’s imperious manner on set meanwhile terrified rising star Marilyn Monroe, who reportedly vomited before almost all of her scenes.

But none of this stopped RKO from trumpeting Parsons’ role as a way of marketing the picture to female audiences. For the film’s promotional campaign, Parsons accompanied Lang and Stanwyck on a ten-city tour, during which she appeared before “women’s groups, women’s page editors and on radio and video shows aimed principally toward femme audiences,” according to a report in Box Office. One wonders what Parsons made of Lang’s stated themes in her appearances.

– Rob King