Flaxy Martin

Plot synopsis:
The drama begins with a murder and a screaming witness. The witness to the crime tells the police that she can identify the murderer and will never forget his face. Mob attorney Walter Colby (Scott) is called by crime boss Hap Richie (Douglas Kennedy) in the middle of the night to arrange the release of Caesar (Jack Overman), one of his mobsters arrested for the murder. After Colby does so he tells his girlfriend, the unscrupulous mob-connected showgirl Flaxy Martin (Mayo), that he wants to quit the organization and become respectable.
Meanwhile, the syndicate arranges for Peggy Farrar (Helen Westcott) to falsely testify on behalf of Caesar. After Caesar is cleared of the charges, however, she changes her mind. Flaxy and Caesar go visit Peggy at her apartment to force her into silence, and Caesar ends up killing her.
Due to circumstantial evidence, Flaxy is suspected of murdering Peggy. Not realizing her involvement in the killing, Colby tells the police that he did the killing. His plan was to defend himself and get him and Flaxy off. Unfortunately, Flaxy and Hap Richie set him up during the trial and Colby is sentenced for Peggy's murder. As Colby awaits transportation to prison, Sam Malko (Tom D'Andrea), a friend of Colby and former client, tells him that Caesar had been getting drunk and bragging that Colby was sentenced for a killing he committed (the murder of Peggy). Sam also wonders why Flaxy was not helping Colby since she must know the same information.
On his way to prison to serve 20 years, Colby escapes and when he gets to the highway he passes out in front of motorist Nora Carson (Malone). Nora helps Colby get to the city to find out how he was framed. Colby realizes that Flaxy was not the woman she pretended to be.
In the city Colby finds Caesar dead. He later ends up in Flaxy's apartment as mobster Hap Richie arrives. She pulls the gun on both men and as she shoots wildly in the dark, Flaxy kills Hap. Colby calls the police and they arrest Flaxy for his murder.

Tags: murder

Review:
Zachary Scott, Virginia Mayo give their best in often overlooked film noir.
Zachary Scott isn't a name on the tips of too many tongues these days, but in the late 40s he was a very busy boy.
However, in his best remembered movies, like Mildred Pierce and Flamingo Road, he had the misfortune to play second fiddle to the domineering Joan Crawford; many of his roles, too, were as weaklings, leaving the false impression that he was a weak actor (his visage  deeply waved hair, a Tomas E.
Dewey mustache  was considered quite dashing in the post-war years but now looks seriously passé, which doesn't help his legacy either).Flaxy Martin preserves one of his stronger starring performances, as a mob mouthpiece who finds himself in over his head.
He's been balking at his shady job as a syndicate lawyer for a long time, but his girl (Virginia Mayo, who takes the title role) keeps urging him to stick with it until he assembles a nice nest egg.
Unfortunately, she's really the moll of syndicate kingpin Douglas Kennedy, stringing Scott along to keep him quiescent.
When a murder by one of Kennedy's goons threatens to implicate Mayo, Scott takes the rap, confident that he'll get himself off.
The movie mixes a lot of tight, hard scenes  with some soft and sappy ones; the redemptive sub-plot with, as Scott's new love interest, Dorothy Malone (wasted yet again as a good girl) proves flat and superfluous.
Mayo, along with Scott, has one of her better parts; she might have been one of the noir cycle's more memorable femme fatales had her acting skills been on a par with her pouty blonde looks.
And Elisha Cook, Jr. contributes another turn as a bantam rooster barely bigger than his gun.Flaxy Martin, along the the previous year's Smart Girls Don't Talk (also starring Mayo), marks a rare break for director Richard Bare, who from the early 40s until the late 50s and his passage into series television directed little but dozens upon dozens of `humorous' shorts with titles beginning `So you think you're...' and `So you want to be...'.
The overlooked Flaxy Martin, on the other hand, ought to be a bit better known.
Glam Virginia Mayo Is One Bad Babe.
Odd little noir film with Virginia Mayo as the title character, a total conniving bitch!
This must surely be Mayo's most unsympathetic character and shows that she was a better actress than we remember.
She's with a local racketeer (Douglas Kennedy) but also plays his lawyer (Zachary Scott) for a chump.
Lots of murders here and there and plot twists aplenty.Dorothy Malone plays the nice country girl, Tom D'Andrea is Sam the mechanic, Helen Westcott is the hapless Peggy, Elisha Cook plays the gunsel again, Marjorie Bennett is the nosy neighbor, Douglas Fowley is the detective, and Bill McLean is the hotel desk clerk.Scott actually gets the most screen time because Mayo disappears while he has his country adventure and meets Malone.
But everyone is good and works well together.
While Malone is stuck in frilly frocks and aprons, Mayo does the glam bit and looks just great.Aside from solid work from the trio of stars--Mayo, Scott, and Malone--D'Andrea and Westcott are very very good as well.
For those of us who remember D'Andrea as the neighbor on The Life of Riley it's always pleasant to see what a good supporting actor he was.
Trouble in the beautiful shape of Virginia Mayo.
Virginia Mayo is a man trap in "Flaxy Martin," a 1949 noir starring Zachary Scott, Dorothy Malone, Helen Westcott, and Tom D'Andrea.
Scott plays a mob lawyer Walter Colby, who's sick of the cases handed him by mobster Hap Ritchie (Douglas Kennedy).
He's in love with Flaxy (Mayo), who is two-timing him with Hap, though Walter doesn't know that.
When Walter finds out a witness (Westcott) was paid off to give an alibi to one of Hap's henchmen in a murder case, he threatens to go to the D.A. about it.
Before he knows it, with Flaxy's help, he's been framed for the witness' murder.
He escapes from custody and, going on the run, meets Nora (Malone).Compelling film with excellent performances by Mayo, Westcott, Malone, and Elijah Cook, Jr., as one of Hap's ruthless thugs.
Mayo is as cold as they come, sexy and convincing as she manipulates her men.
He has a small role, but he's very good.
Zachary Scott is Zachary Scott - he has a strong film persona, a good speaking voice, and does tough well.
He's not that slimeball Monty from "Mildred Pierce," though, just someone who works for a low-life.Well worth seeing..
The real stars of this are Dorothy Malone as a good girl, Tom D'Andrea as a shady decent guy, Helen Wetcott as a very bad girl .
And in the title role, Virginia Mayo.
Here, though, she gives a chilling performance as a voracious, two-timing bitch.The little smile that comes over her face when others are arrested or convicted is truly chilling.
We dislike Flaxy intensely and can't wait for her to get what's coming to her, as we know she will (this being a major-studio production.) Malone is very convincing as the country girl who seems to to be a backwoods type living improbably close to Manhattan.
Everyone is good, even Zachary Scott, though he seems not to be trying very hard and to be phoning in his performance at times.This one will chill you and you'll want to watch it again..
Zachary Scott plays a rather naïve New York lawyer covering tracks for his girlfriend, a double-crosser in-cahoots with mobsters who's also involved in the killing of a paid witness in a criminal trial; he's framed for the murder and takes it on the lam, meeting a lovestruck librarian along the way.
Virginia Mayo's devious Flaxy Martin takes a backseat to all the low-life male characters in the picture (who amusingly refer to each other as "Baby" and "Sweetheart"), and even runs a distant second to Dorothy Malone as the nice girl who believes in happy endings.
Malone helps ground the heady proceedings in a form of movie-reality, even though the Warner Bros.
Lawyer Thinking With His Male Member.
A really good cast puts over a noir feature from Warner Brothers that's undone by an incredibly, unbelievable plot component.
As another Warner Brothers star used to say, "what a maroon".Zachary Scott plays a criminal attorney who gets off mob hit man Elisha Cook, Jr. on some perjured testimony by Helen Westcott.
When Scott finds out about the perjury he fears bar association sanctions and determines to break with mob boss Douglas Kennedy.
But Kennedy has other plans that involve Scott's girl friend Virginia Mayo who is in the title role of Flaxy Martin.Mayo's trading up and she goes to Scott with a tearful story about how she's suspected in the murder of Westcott.
So what does this brilliant lawyer do who is now thinking with his male member?
But not against some perjured eye witness testimony that Kennedy gets to help the prosecution along.Of course Scott escapes and starts looking for more than vindication.
In that he's aided by friend Tom D'Andrea and farm girl Dorothy Malone who feels sorry for him.
After that horrible premise, the film does pick up and ends rather well.
If you've seen Virginia Mayo in White Heat you know how it ended for her there.
In fact I'm sure Mayo was cast in Flaxy Martin on the strength of White Heat.As for Zachary Scott the part he has is one I think might have been written with Humphrey Bogart in mind, but Bogey left Warner Brothers the year before.Though it's rather unbelievable Flaxy Martin is good display of the talents of both Virginia Mayo and Zachary Scott..
Doesn't Gel. Catch that great scene where Flaxy (Mayo) beats up a blackmailing Peggy, (Westcott) with the timid hotel clerk hovering outside the door.
Looks to me like Warner Bros.
used the film as an A-team try-out for cast principals and director.
Now, Scott, for one, comes through perfectly as the lawyer with a wobbly compass— I'm just sorry this fine, exotic actor never got the recognition his talent deserved.
The material, however, with its nifty double- cross, really merited an A-team director, like Walsh or Curtiz.
Instead, the studio gave featurette director Richard Bare a shot, and the result shows he had little feel for the dark material.
Unfortunately, the movie is inferior grade noir, lacking in both style and edge.
Take the early scene where Walt (Scott) and Hap (Kennedy) iron out wrinkles in the plot to free Caesar (Overman) from a murder rap.
They're standing stock still in Hap's living room, talking, and that's the trouble: they stand stock still for about two minutes doing little more than delivering their lines.
But Bare seems most at sea in directing the lead actresses.
Mayo looks lost in her key scenes with Scott— the second side of Flaxy's devious personality, the calculating side, fails to appear, and thus we're left with a very pretty girl speaking the lines, but without the necessary depth.
Now, Malone later proved a fine actress of many dimensions, (e.g. Written on the Wind {1955}).
Here, however, she's stuck in a thankless good girl role, so likely director Bare is at fault for not giving her the necessary cues.
I suspect the movie would have improved had actresses Malone and Mayo switched roles.Then too, Walt's sudden turn-around with 40 grand in his pocket is awkwardly handled.
Even an A-grade filmmaker would have trouble making this bit of Production Code hokum believable, but in Bare's hands it comes across as little more than a clumsily developed happy ending.
Thus, it's not surprising that the studio returned the director to making the humorous shorts he was so good at following this failed experiment.
I also better understand why editors Silver and Ward omitted this entry from their highly successful tome Film Noir.
Unfortunately, the movie may have all the trappings of the genre, but like bread dough in the hands of a neophyte baker, the loaf simply fails to gel..
Zachary Scott has most of the best lines and Virginia Mayo gets the complete glamor treatment in the title role of FLAXY MARTIN.
Both of them score heavily in this tight little crime melodrama that suffers only when the plot's loopholes begin to show.
Dorothy Malone gets third billing as the wholesome librarian who sticks her neck out to help a man she almost runs over on a dark and stormy night.
Her motivations for taking him in and then discovering he's a man on the run from the law are never completely believable.Nor is the way Scott tries to shield Mayo from the police by pretending that he's the man who murdered a woman the mob wanted to get rid of.
He's a lawyer for the gangsters and sticks his own head into a noose by thinking that he can back himself into a corner and then get out.But aside from these plot contrivances that don't ring true, the story about a lawyer being double-crossed by the gangsters he was protecting is tight and suspenseful.
The supporting cast includes Douglas Kennedy, Elisha Cook, Jr., Tom D'Andrea and Douglas Fowley, all well-used and fitting into the noir-like atmosphere of the melodramatic turn of events.The amusing tough guy talk from Zachary Scott gets the kind of delivery that shows he was a very capable actor who deserved more recognition with better roles in A-films.
He's excellent here and Virginia Mayo is so convincing as a scheming tramp that it makes me think Bette Davis was right when she told Warner Brothers they should have offered the role of Rosa Moline in "Beyond the Forest" to Mayo.
Lawyer Zachary Scott (Walter Colby) is fed up of defending gangster boss Douglas Kennedy (Hap).
He agrees to one last case before he intends to collect payment and start a new life with girlfriend Virginia Mayo (Flaxy Martin).
Mayo is also Gangster boss Kennedy's girl.
It's not Scott.The story has a ridiculous premise in that lawyer Scott puts himself up as a murderer in a crime he did not commit so that he can get himself off with his lawyer self-cleverness and then be with Mayo forever.
The film follows Scott as he realizes what has been going on and we discover whether or not he can receive the justice he deserves.Or doesn't!
The film is made interesting by the female roles - Mayonaise, and Dorothy Malone (Nora) as the librarian love interest for Scott once he escapes from custody and sets out to prove his innocence.
These 2 women show strength of character to be applauded with Mayo getting the juicy nasty role to play - and she plays it well.
I'm afraid Zachary Scott is completely unlikeable as demonstrated by his reactions to both Mayo (I just don't believe his stupidity) or Dorothy Malone (he's just an obnoxious you-know-what to her).
The film also contains that ultimate pipsqueek hard-man Elisha Cook Jr (Roper).
I liked the way that enemies Douglas and Scott had to work together at the end to try and get the better of bad girl Mayo when all 3 were in the same room at the film's end.
The film is called Flaxy Martin - maybe we should have concentrated more on her and less on the very poor Zachary Scott..
Fascinating characters and performances undone by a really dumb plot device..
Zachary Scott is excellently cast as a mob lawyer who is sick of defending low-life scum.
Despite the people who pay his salary, Scott is a decent person--and is unwilling to lie or cheat to gain acquittals.
When Scott realizes this, he unwisely announces he is resigning from the employ of a mob boss AND turning states evidence--not a good idea!
Scott's lady friend is Flaxy (played by Virginia Mayo).
Eventually, she is pulled into a plot to destroy Scott since Flaxy's boss needs Scott out of the way.So far, the plot and characters are wonderful--very noir-like and very juicy--especially Mayo.
Flaxy is involved in a murder and when she goes crying to Scott, he tells her that HE will tell the police he did it and it was self-defense.
But, when the case comes to court, the mob provides a witness that buries Scott--getting his a 20 year sentence.
While this IS intriguing, it makes you stop and say "why did Scott's character plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit--especially when it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that Flaxy was involved up to her neck?!".
No lawyer, particularly a sharp one like Scott played, would ever confess to a crime he didn't do--especially when there's little apparent motivation for destroying his life and career.
A bit later, when a woman helps Scott after he breaks out on his way to prison, this, too, seems to make little sense--her motivation also made no sense.
Well, given Scott's and Mayo's acting, it is.
In particular, Mayo was so conniving and evil that I loved watching her in action--she was the perfect film noir 'dame'!
In addition to their good work, I also loved Elisha Cook in a supporting role as a young thug--he was excellent and fun to watch in action--mostly because he really had the noir-style dialog down pat!
In addition to the acting, the second half of the movie is better written--more taut and without the hole-riddled plot.
If only they'd worked out the plot leading up to this, it would have been a terrific film.By the way, although Virginia Mayo was very good in the film, I don't know why they named the movie after her character--she was NOT the main focus of the film and Scott's character occupied the vast majority of the screen time, though I guess she was a lot better looking than Scott!.
Atmospheric and prophetic role for Dorothy Malone..
Entertaining little film noir gem handled with skill and style.
The cast make the film quite bearable along with the direction, soundtrack and lighting.
What I thought so very striking was that Dorothy Malone's character had some pretty amazing ties to her role as Constance MacKenzie in the TV series, "Peyton Place" nearly two decades later.
In the film, she works in a library.
Finally, in the TV series she waits for her lover to get out of prison as she does here in the movie with her soon to be lover, Zachary Scott..
Slumdog Film Noir.
This Warner Brothers double feature under card has some good points.
A poor script totally undermines some good acting and decent directing.
Virginia Mayo and Dorothy Malone are fine in the lead female roles.
Zachery Scott is okay in the male lead.The plot is often lost and more than a little confusing at points.
The cops look stupid throughout the movie.
It is one of these where the lead (Scott) is innocent and too nice a guy to be guilty.
Mayo is given a moll role and Malone a romance role to balance the moll.I note the Director here, Richard L Bare, because he became a really good sit-com director later when he did Green Acres on CBS.
There are scenes here where he sets up a great film noir atmosphere, but they are too few and far between to save this one.
Mayo disappears for 45 minutes!.
Producer: Saul Elkins.Copyright 12 February 1949 by Warner Bros.
U.S. release: 12 February 1949.
86 minutes.SYNOPSIS: A crime melodrama, involving blackmail, theft and murder.COMMENT: Director Richard Bare certainly opens this film at a fast pace.
But the construction of this film is rather similar to that of "Impact", with Miss Malone looking very demure as the sub-heroine and Miss Mayo disappearing from the film altogether for a 45-minute stretch.
However, David Lang's script has a fair share of suspense and Elisha Cook gives yet another of his sterling characterizations.