The Arnelo Affair

Plot synopsis:
A lawyer's wife, Anne Parkson(Frances Gifford) is bored and neglected. She begins meeting with one of her husbands clients, a nightclub owner Tony Arnelo (John Hodiak) for interior design work. One afternoon she arrives at Tony's and soon after Tony's girlfriend shows up. The girlfriend is upset by Anne being there and starts making a fuss. Tony arrives, hits the girlfriend, and Anne Parkson runs out. Soon after police find Anne's unique compact near the body of Arnelo's murdered girlfriend. Tony planted the compact in a clever plot, Anne finds herself blackmailed and implicated in murder. Tony is in love with Anne and attempts to force her into leaving her husband. A homicide detective soon figures out the facts and confronts Tony. When Tony is made to realize that his lies and blackmail will destroy innocent Anne's place in society, he commits "suicide by cop" attempting to escape the detective's custody.

Tags: murder

Review:
More romantic weeper than noir, Arnelo Affair bulges with lost opportunities.
In The Arnelo Affair, the letter `A' keeps cropping up again and again - as a monogram on a dressing gown, a compact, a key.
Ostensibly it signifies one of the two main characters: Tony Arnelo (John Hodiak ), a predatory nightclub owner, or Ann Parkson (Frances Gifford), wife of Arnelo's square-rigger of an attorney (George Murphy).
But really the `A' serves to remind us that the story is chiefly about the Scarlet Letter of Adultery - the Affair of the title.The movie's sinister, noirish elements are not quite an afterthought, but almost.
During the first half of the movie, ignored and restive, Gifford sulks nobly in the household she shares with Murphy, forever working late on his legal briefs, and her nine-year-old son (Dean Stockwell) who thinks he could benefit from psychoanalysis.
(She, however, may be a riper candidate for the couch, given as she is to swoons and passive-aggressive feigned headaches.)When smooth-talking Hodiak flatters her and hires her as decorator, she obliges and soon finds herself with the key to his apartment and an inclination to use it for naughtier purposes than updating the chintz.
But she soon finds out that Hodiak has many another slip in which to dock his dinghy; and when one of his stable of lady friends is found murdered, Gifford's initialed compact is found with the body.
With the prompting of police detective Warner Anderson, Murphy is jolted out of his complacency and sets out to find the truth....Like The Unfaithful of the same year (a sweetened-up remake of The Letter), The Arnelo Affair seems geared to the women in its audience, more a weeper than a noir.
Even the redoubtable Eve Arden, as a dress-designing upstairs neighbor, gets paraded out as much for her eye-popping post-war get-ups as for her trademark mordant lines (and she's a welcome foil to all Gifford's suffering saintliness).
The Arnelo Affair holds interest, if slackly; its director, Arch Oboler, hadn't much of a feel for the possibilities inherent in the script or the knack for bringing them out.
It's telling that the most memorable characters in the movie are not the principals but Anderson, Arden and the nine-year-old Stockwell..
I have just caught this Movie on TCM, and can understand why George Murphy went into Politics if this was the best MGM could serve up to him.
It is so slow-moving that the attempt to make it a real film-noir effort does not come off.
It featured two of my favouriteplayers in Eve Arden (completely wasted) and Dean Stockwell(the best actor in the Film), but what really hit me was that the leading lady Frances Gifford went through some 90 minutes (it seemed longer!) without changing the expression on her face--her fainting scene was comical.
John Hodiak played his role OK, but the script let him, and the rest of the cast, down very badly.
The Arnelo Affair has John Hodiak in the title role of a nightclub owner with tax troubles getting an affair going with his lawyer's wife Frances Gifford.Frances is a woman with an itch and Hodiak is quite willing to scratch it.
Later on when Woodbury is murdered Hodiak is on the short list of Detective Warner Anderson suspects, but so is Gifford.This film is a great example of the Code strangling the creativity of film making.
George Murphy played Gifford's husband and his is a strangely underwritten role.
If I were doing the film and being that Hodiak is having tax troubles, when Murphy does find out there are hundreds of creative ways he could have done Hodiak good and proper.Eve Arden is in the film in an Eve Arden part.
That too should have been brought out more.The Arnelo Affair if someone decides to remake it has lots of room for improvement..
This movie is unsuccessful as a noir, a crime drama -- as anything, really.John Hodiak is always compelling, though he isn't a convincing villain here.
George Murphy is barely adequate.Frances Gifford -- whose bio I just read here, and who had a tragic life -- is very beautiful but directed to act as if in a coma.Even Eve Arden's quips fall uneasily flat in this context.The best performance is given by Dean Stockwell, as the strangely troubled child Murphy and Gifford profess to adore but who seems to be ignored by his father and to have an extreme affection for his mother..
George Murphy is one of those "leading men" that cause you to scratch your head and figure it must have been who was available at the time after better choices were not.John Hodiak is contemptible, as was his usual film persona.
Our heroine is repulsed, but drawn to him; again, the frustrating element that sadly made up the story.
Why didn't this dame get her focus off herself, get actively involved in her child's life, school, friends, volunteer work, learn to make potholders - anything to get herself off the severely underemployed roster.But, that's the way of this type of story, and once bit, you have to endure to the cure.
Okay crime drama is helped by the competence of the film makers but hindered by the flat performance of one of the leads.The actual story of a bored housewife seemingly framed for murder by a cad certainly isn't fresh but Frances Gifford is properly anguished in the lead.
MGM was giving her the big push at this time but almost immediately after this was completed she was involved in a major car accident in which she sustained severe injuries which effectively ending her career and causing her mental problems for the remainder of her days.
Hodiak is also quite good as the rotten Arnelo of the title who manages to shade his rather contemptible character with a bit of conflict.
The divine Eve Arden is also in the cast proving once again she's the best friend a leading lady ever had.
In addition to being a bright spot she looks sensational in one glamorous outfit after another.Where the film suffers is in the role of the husband portrayed by George Murphy.
He could not possibly have played the role more flatly if he actually tried.
Though a remake of EVELYN PRENTICE, THE ARNELO AFFAIR is a perfect example of post-war films meant to reinforce the notion that a woman should be happy at home.
For one thing, John Hodiak gives a good performance as the bad guy.
As for the troubled wife character.
Frances Gifford helps us get a sense of the woman's internal state.
When she reads her son's thoughts about her and breaks down, that's probably the emotional highlight of the film.
Meanwhile, Eve Arden's character puts a bit of a satiric spin on the proceedings, helping it not to become too overwrought and to stay light in the right places.
Ultimately, it's another spin on the old infidelity story, combining the gangster genre with the woman's melodrama..
Frances Gifford gets mixed up in "The Arnelo Affair," a 1947 film also starring George Murphy, John Hodiak, Eve Arden and Dean Stockwell.
In fact, the film was on TCM as part of Dean Stockwell's birthday.
He certainly was an adorable little boy.Gifford plays Anne Parkson, the neglected wife of a successful attorney, Ted Parkson (Murphy).
One night, Ted brings home a shady client, Tony Arnelo (Hodiak), who owns a nightclub.
Arnelo has an immediate attraction to Anne and, upon learning that she has dabbled in room design, he invites her to decorate his club.
Though Anne hasn't yet said "yes," he gives her a key to his place after their first meeting and invites her back the next day at 2.
Tony slaps the woman and the frightened Anne runs away, the compact that her husband gave her falling out of her purse.
In exchange for the compact and a letter he later steals, Tony wants Anne.This is a good-looking film, with beautifully tailored mens suits on Hodiak and Murphy and smashing clothes for Gifford and Eve Arden, who owns her own dress shop.
The dialogue is totally predictable - when Anne asks her husband to go away with her, the words were out of my mouth 30 seconds before she said the line.
The attractive Gifford is a bore and gives no shading to her role at all.
Murphy has a pleasant way about him and Hodiak is okay, but frankly, Dean Stockwell as Anne's son steals that show.
Eve Arden is good but wasted.The music is overpowering, and the pacing is slow.
"The Arnelo Affair" needed a strong actress in the lead, better dialogue and faster pacing.
Bland performance by Frances Gifford in key role ruins the impact....
FRANCES GIFFORD had one of the best roles of her career as the troubled wife of lawyer GEORGE MURPHY in THE ARNELO AFFAIR, but the director fails to get more than worried looks and a coma-like expression that she wears most of the time--while looking very beautiful.
Facially, she bears a strong resemblance here to Donna Reed.She's a woman who feels neglected by her busy husband and falls prey to the flattery of a womanizing man (JOHN HODIAK) who later kills a woman and sets up Gifford as the murderess.
Only through the keen detective work of a doggedly determined officer (WARNER ANDERSON) and the gradual realization of her husband that she's been seeing Hodiak, do the deceptive Hodiak's schemes fall apart as clues are unraveled.
EVE ARDEN, as a dress designer friend of the heroine, has her usual quips but none of them are particularly inventive.It's strictly a B-film that has all the MGM gloss but falters because of a weak script and a poorly directed actress in the leading role.
Miss Gifford gives a bland performance in a role that calls for more than close-ups of a fixed expression.Hodiak is fine as the cunning predator and nine year old DEAN STOCKWELL is lively as Gifford's loving son.
GEORGE MURPHY is unable to do much with the role of the neglectful husband, a thankless role that he plays in stolid style..
pretty classic film noir.
The story of a woman (Frances Gifford) whose marriage to a successful attorney (George Murphy) leaves her feeling under-appreciated.
When she catches the eye of a client who owns an upscale night club (John Hodiak) and, as a means of getting to know her on more intimate terms, offers her a job to redo the interior decorating on his apartment, she eventually accepts, seemingly knowing what this would lead to.
Married with a cute son (Dean Stockwell), she realizes she has everything to lose in the Arnelo Affair, especially when Tony Arnelo turns out to be a womanizer who is not above knocking off an interfering ex-lover, the evidence of which points to Gifford, thus adding considerably to her already heightened sense of anxiety, which seems to put her in a state of semi-shock.
The affair goes on within her social circle which is captured in a great scene in Arnelo's night club after the murder, with Eve Arden, who is Gifford's friend, noticing something going on between Arnelo and Gifford.
Murphy is pretty good as Gifford's husband who realizes she went astray due to his lack of attention.
Gifford is worth seeing for her part as she gives in to her desire for Arnelo all the while racked with doubt and guilt and then fear of losing everything dear to her over doing so.
And Hodiak turns in a great role as Arnelo, with exceeding smoothness and subtlety..
Just one the most confused crime stories ever to reach a movie screen before the advent of Quentin Tarantino.
A lovely "ordinary" housewife (Frances Gifford) - who also dresses like Greta Garbo's understudy - finds herself fatally attracted to a fiery-eyed Italian greaseball (John Hodiak) who owns a nightclub.
Her husband is a nice, reliable, hunk of manhood, that any woman (of that time) would have given her eyeteeth to bed (George Murphy).
Her adorably precocious, pretty and curly-haired nine year old son who has recurring nightmares about chocolate (!) and whose psychological problems provide comic relief (!!) is played by Dean Stockwell.
She has a devoted Black maid and her best spinster friend is an amusing wisecracking clotheshorse in eye-popping outfits (played by Eve Arden) who can sniff out "man trouble" a mile away.So what's wrong with this picture?
It's basically a Harlequin-type women's novel (also known as women's porn) that would like to pretend it's also a murder mystery film noir and witty enough to be an Oscar Wilde adaptation by Joseph L.
The heroine is not guilty of adultery, just of having flirted with the idea of having a life, a career and aspirations to happiness of her own, outside the domination of her boring, all-knowing husband and the prevalent "feminine mystique" which defines her persona, while also lusting for the exoticism of a fling with pencil-mustachioed impudent male Latino flesh.
The powder compact she leaves behind at the scene of the crime actually shows more signs of life and expression than she ever does.
The Tony Arnelo character is really guilty of being a dirty no-good wop from the wrong side of the tracks in spite of his stated (uppity) obsession for beauty and his highly suspicious fixation on his mother.
And what about the Dean Stockwell character's equally ambiguous attraction to his own mother?
The gangster's girlfriend is an actress (i.e. another transgressive working female, a.k.a. a whore, which is the only alternative to being a "mother" and a "dried-up old maid" in this universe) who deserves to die and whose only excuse for living is making trouble for everybody else.
This is also the film that put a definitive end to Eve Arden's career as a serious character actress playing funny women and turned her into a prop and the role model for drag queens everywhere, i.e. a frustrated old maid milliner whose financial independence allows her to indulge in extravagant dress, barely controlled nymphomania, tough-girl mannerisms bordering on lesbianism and unfunny deadpan cracks that simply overstay their welcome for lack of substance and meaning, double, single or otherwise.The men walk like they are afraid to dent or crease the architecturally daunting square-shouldered suits they are expected to macho-posture in and the women are made breathless and dizzy from the repression three-way girdles exercise on their vital organs and cute hats on their brains.
By the time the Frances Gifford character turns off that horrifically elaborate chrome and lucite monstrosity of a lamp at her bedside, you really wish to God the sleeping pills will take effect and this nightmare will end, even though she has sleep-walked in a near-comatose state all through the film..
"The Arnelo Affair" is like a pig wearing a Chanel dress.
So, while the movie looks nice since it was made by the top studio of the day, at its heart the film is unappealing.Mr. and Mrs. Parkson (George Murphy and Frances Gifford) appear to be a happy and successful couple.
After all, he's a lawyer, they have a cute son (Dean Stockwell) and have a lot going for them...except Mr. Parkson is about as romantic as a punch in the kidneys!
Considering how much he neglects his wife, it's not surprising that Anne would be drawn to Tony Arnelo (John Hodiak)...a suave thug who runs a swank nightclub.
On the pretense of going to his apartment to give him decorating ideas, Anne goes alone to Arnelo's...and he tries to woo her.
She never says yes, she never says no...and seems like a bit of a milquetoast, actually.
Later, she comes to his apartment again and witnesses him slapping around an actress...and Anne stomps off due to his boorish behavior.The next day, the newspaper says that the same actress was found dead...and Anne is pretty sure Arnelo did it.
EVERYTHING she does from her on in the film makes zero sense and made me question whether or not the character was supposed to be suffering from a head injury or a case of indigestion.
Regardless, Frances Gifford delivers a confusing mess of a character--some, no doubt, due to bad writing.
And, by this point, the film completely lost me.
Bad dialog, confusing and irrational characters and a script that seems like it never even went through re-writes or revisions make this a very difficult film to finish.
I don't know who's to blame for Gifford's unrelieved stony face, but it's like she and Hodiak are having a dour-off to see who can be more expressionless.
Even the usually affable Murphy gets little chance to beguile.
The premise is pretty standard crime fare—a neglected wife (Gifford) is drawn from her comfortable shell by a handsome shady character (Hodiak).
Since the wife's also a mother, she struggles with the temptation, but is constantly reminded how neglected she is by her lawyer husband (Murphy).
Soon a murder connected to Hodiak occurs.
Now a potential scandal hangs over the luckless Gifford's and her attempt break with the heartless Hodiak.Writer-director Oboler was an interesting talent.
Thanks to that airbrushed studio, we can't even be sure there was an actual affair between the wife and the practiced seducer.
That way, the wayward wife doesn't have to be punished more than she is, and audiences could go home feeling good.
That way, Oboler might have been drawn in a noirish direction, which the material richly deserves.
Anyway, only the presence of sassy cynic Eve Arden and canny kid Dean Stockwell lend the film any spark.
I especially like that scene with dad Murphy and son Stockwell fixing the broken stool.
And a good example of Oboler at his worst is Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer's "The Arnelo Affair" (1947).
You don't need to actually view the movie.
Aside from Eve Arden (admittedly she has the best of the wordy screenplay), the acting, led by frozen-faced Frances Gifford and stiff-as-a-dummy George Murphy, is almost as bad as the over-lit sets and the incredibly store-windows wardrobe.