1947 / 101 mins / b/w
Dir. Robert Montgomery / Sc. Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer / Cine. Russell Metty / Prod. Joan Harrison
Cast: Fred Clark, Thomas Gomez, Robert Montgomery
Based on the novel Ride the Pink Horse (1946) by Dorothy B. Hughes
35mm print courtesy of Universal Pictures
Introduced by Alexandre Ilic, Columbia University School of the Arts
“The Excitement of Desperate Adventure! The Suspense of Relentless Man-Hunt!”
Of the three female producers in 1940s Hollywood, it was unquestionably Joan Harrison who had the greatest impact on the noir cycle. Following a close collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock, with whom she had worked as a secretary and, later, a screenwriter, Harrison would go on to produce five noir films in Hollywood – the seminal Phantom Lady (1944, screened in the 2018 Kit Noir festival), The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945), Nocturne (1946), Ride the Pink Horse, and They Won’t Believe Me (1947).
In March 1947, Harrison joined professional forces with actor Robert Montgomery, then fresh off his directorial debut, Lady in the Lake (1946), which had attracted critical attention for its experimental use of point-of-view camerawork. Departing MGM for greater creative freedom at Universal-International, Montgomery would collaborate with Harrison on three pictures in which he both acted and directed. Ride the Pink Horse was the first, followed by Once More, My Darling in 1949 and Eye Witness in 1950.
Publicity on Harrison often emphasized her role not just as a producer of crime fiction, but as an avid reader of the same, in particular the work of women novelists. Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1936), which Harrison helped write, had been an adaptation of British mystery writer Ethel Lina White’s The Wheel Spins (1936). Harrison had also planned to adapt White’s follow-up, The Third Eye (1937), early in her producing career in Hollywood. True to form, then, it was Harrison who proposed Dorothy B. Hughes’ Ride the Pink Horse as Montgomery’s first picture for Universal, and who wrote the script’s initial draft.
Like others of her novels, Ride the Pink Horse was set in Hughes’ hometown of Santa Fe. To avoid any offense, this was changed in the film to the fictional New Mexico city of “San Pablo.” The filmmakers apparently had far less compunction when it came to the use of brownface, although Thomas Gomez’s standout performance made him the first Hispanic actor to be nominated for an Academy Award.
– Rob King