Devil’s Doorway (1950) and Sapphire (1959)

Toronto Film Society presented Devil’s Doorway (1950) on Sunday, February 23, 2025 in a double bill with Sapphire (1950) as part of the Season 77 Series, Programme 4.

DEVIL’S DOORWAY (1950)

Production Company: MGM.  Producer: Nicholas Nayfack.  Director: Anthony Mann.  Screenplay: Guy Trosper.  Cinematography: John Alton.  Editor: Conrad A. Nervig.  Music: Daniele Amfitheatrof.  Running time: 84 minutes.

Cast:  Robert Taylor (Lance Poole), Louis Calhern (Verne Coolan), Paula Raymond (Orrie Masters), Marshall Thompson (Rod McDougall), James Mitchell (Red Rock).

At first glance, Devil’s Doorway may seem like a typical Western, albeit with John Alton’s beautiful cinematography, and spectacular action. But the plot is not conventional.

Robert Taylor plays a Shoshone Native American who returns from the Civil War, having been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. However, he finds his life shattered by bigotry and greed over his land in Medicine Bow, Wyoming.  Though he intends to raise cattle, white farmers plan to grab fertile tribal lands by pitting the whites against the Natives. The entrance to Taylor’s valley is known as the ‘Devil’s Doorway’, but perhaps that could also symbolically refer to the actions of these settlers.

Director Anthony Mann’s prolific output from 1942- 1967 included classic low- budget noir thrillers, popular Westerns, and later expensive historical epics. Among his many acclaimed Westerns were five with James Stewart, from Winchester ’73 (1950) to The Man from Laramie (1955).

Most movies dealing sympathetically with Native Americans came only at the end of a post-WWII cycle of films on prejudice. These includes films on anti-Semitism – Crossfire; and Gentlemen’s Agreement (both in 1947) – and anti-Black racism – Home of the Brave, Pinky and (MGM’s own) Intruder in the Dust (all 1949); and Lost Boundaries; and No Way Out (both 1950).

20th Century Fox’s Broken Arrow (1950), directed by Delmer Daves, with James Stewart, was one of the first major postwar Westerns to portray Native Americans sympathetically. In fact, at a press preview, Devil’s Doorway was not well-received, but was more successful after MGM re-released it in the fall of 1950, after the success of Broken Arrow.  Although Devil’s Doorway did get good reviews by The New York Times critic and others, it never seemed to achieve the fame of the Fox film, or the same level of praise as Mann’s other films.

The Cast:

Robert Taylor was a huge star of film from the early ’30s (and later on TV) until his death in 1969. He was also known for his WWII war record, and his postwar anti- Communist testimony at Congressional hearings. Though an unusual role for Taylor and a star of his magnitude, it was expected then that a white actor would play the lead ‘good Indian’, with Native actors cast in supporting roles (at best) or as extras. Ironically, none are listed in the cast for this film. However, Taylor was still ably supported by a good cast.

Busy character actor Louis Calhern could be either sympathetic or nasty, as he was here as the main villain. Among his scores of films, perhaps his best-known roles were the crime boss in Asphalt Jungle (1950), and the title role in the 1953 film Julius Caesar.

Paula Raymond played the ‘woman lawyer’ here.  Aside from being a leading lady to Cary Grant in Crisis (1950), and Dick Powell in The Tall Target (1951), she also helped battle a dinosaur in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)!  Raymond later did much TV work.

SAPPHIRE (1959)

Production Company: Artna Films.  Producers: Michael Relph, Earl St. John.  Director: Basil Dearden.  Screenplay: Janet Green.  Cinematography: Harry Waxman.  Editor: John D. Guthridge.  Music: Philip Green.  Running time: 92 minutes.

Cast: Nigel Patrick (Chief Inspector Hazard), Yvonne Mitchell (Mildred Farr), Michael Craig (Police Inspector Learoyd), Paul Massie (David Harris), Bernard Miles (Mr. Ted Harris).

Who killed Sapphire, and why?

As one of the less lurid ads for Basil Dearden’s Sapphire (1959) film declared:  “This is the “sensational story of a girl who didn’t belong”.

This urban crime thriller, filmed in bright Eastmancolor, achieved box office and critical success in the UK, and even abroad. It was considered quite daring in its time, as the murder of a beautiful young woman in London exposes deep racial prejudices, both in the suspects, and the police officers themselves.

A Police Superintendent (Nigel Patrick) and his assistant Inspector (Michael Craig), discover that the victim was Sapphire, an art student. Police notify her doctor brother (Earl Cameron), who to their surprise is Black, as well as her fiancé (Paul Massie), and his middle-class family, including his sister (Yvonne Mitchell) and father (Bernard Miles).

But their investigation also leads them to other suspects amid smoky jazz clubs in a whole other section of town. It turns out that light-skinned Sapphire had been ‘passing’ as white. As the movie makes clear, the white and Black worlds of London seem very far apart despite an increasing interracial society, with people still divided by race and class even within their own groups.

Interestingly, this movie was filmed around the same time as a glossy Lana Turner vehicle, Hollywood’s famous remake of Imitation of Life (1959) where Susan Kohner’s character also tries to ‘pass’. But the world was on the cusp of a new Civil Rights era.

With the exception of a few 1930s Paul Robeson movies, British cinema had only touched on the theme of racial prejudice before.  One exception was Dearden’s own Pool of London (1951), where Bermudian-UK actor Earl Cameron played a merchant sailor in love with a white woman. So it seems fitting that Cameron plays Sapphire’s brother here. He would later appear in many other movies, including the racially charged Flame in the Streets (1961), and Thunderball (1965).

Basil Dearden’s many directing credits stretch from 1942 to 1970. The success of this movie, despite its controversial theme, encouraged Janet Green to also co-write and Dearden to direct another social issue movie, Victim (61), about homosexuality. The director followed with All Night Long (1962), a version of Othello, which also used a modern jazz club setting.  However, his most popular movie was probably a perfect crime caper, The League of Gentlemen (1960), also starring Patrick.

Suave Nigel Patrick starred in many British movies from 1940 on, such as The Browning Version (1951), and (Breaking the) Sound Barrier (1952). But he is perhaps best known in North America playing a Southerner in the Elizabeth Taylor Civil War epic Raintree County (1957).

Versatile Yvonne Mitchell received critical acclaim in either very British roles in Sapphire, and Woman in a Dressing Gown, (1957), or ethnic or foreign characters in Queen of Spades (1949), The Divided Heart (1954), and Tiger Bay (1959).

The only major cast member still alive, Michael Craig, born in 1929, often played the handsome second male lead to Dirk Bogarde, and others. But he did finally become a leading man in British cinema, with a limited Hollywood career.

When very young, his family lived for a time in Canada. which must have helped with his Canadian accent in the Alberta-set Campbell’s Kingdom (1957) opposite Bogarde, or when playing an American in Mysterious Island (1961).

Spot the (real) Canadian:

Born in St. Catharines, Ontario, Paul Massie (David Harris in Sapphire) starred in British films, and played a Canadian veteran pilot in Libel (1959), with Bogarde, and Olivia de Havilland. In the 1970s, he retired from acting to teach at the University of South Florida in Tampa, also directing many productions there. He made sporadic TV appearances between 1985 and 1996, and passed away in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, in 2011.

Notes by David Marigold