Cause for Alarm! (1951) [Film Noir] [Drama]

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A flashback shows how Ellen met George in a naval hospital during World War II while she was dating his friend, Lieutenant Ranney Grahame (Bruce Cowling), a young military doctor whose busy schedule left little time for her. George was a pilot and Ellen swiftly fell in love with him, although the flashback strongly hints he had some capacity for arrogance and selfishness. Nevertheless, they soon married and after the war wound up in a leafy suburban Los Angeles neighbourhood. Unhappily, George is now confined to his bed with heart problems, there is a heat wave and Ellen is spending most her time caring for him. George’s doctor is their old friend Ranney, with whom George thinks his wife is having an affair. In response, Ranney suggests George may need psychological help. After Ellen tells her bedridden husband she dreams of having children, he becomes angry. Meanwhile George has written a letter to the district attorney in which he claims his wife and best friend are killing him with overdoses of medicine for his heart.

A little neighbour boy dressed as a movie cowboy and warding cap pistols (Bradley Mora) befriends the childless Ellen, who gives him cookies. He hands her a toy (fake) television set and asks Ellen to give it to George, which she does whilst serving her husband lunch in bed. He tells her an unsettling story about how as a child he had beaten a neighbour boy with a rake until he drew blood. Thinking the thick letter has something to do with insurance, Ellen gives it to the postman (Irving Bacon), who sees George in the upstairs bedroom window. When Ellen rushes up to find out why he has gotten out of bed, George lets her know what the letter says and who it is addressed to. George pulls a gun and is about to kill her when he drops dead on the bed. In her narration she describes George’s death as “one of those awful dreams.” Ellen panics over the letter and as noted by a reviewer over 50 years later, throughout the film’s second half seems “much more concerned with absolving herself from the blame of his death than missing her spouse.” Running from the house and shown the way by two teenagers in the film’s brief reference to Los Angeles’ mid-twentieth century jalopy culture, she chases down the overly talkative postman to whom she gave the letter but he won’t give it back to her without talking to George first, since he wrote it. However, the postman says she can ask the supervisor at the downtown post office, who has more authority. Ellen is frantic when she gets back to the house, only to find George’s Aunt Clara (Margalo Gillmore) climbing the stairs to see him and stops her barely in time. After the two talk for a while, Clara again heads up the stairs but Ellen stops her once more, saying George told her earlier not to let his aunt see him. Clara leaves in a huff, telling her George was “rude, mean and selfish since he’s been six… he’s worse if anything.”

Ellen goes back up to the bedroom to change her clothes and sees the gun still in George’s hand, narrating, “Somehow I knew I shouldn’t leave it there.” As she wrenches the pistol from his hand, it fires. Readying herself to leave the house, a polite but somewhat aggressive notary (Don Haggerty) rings the doorbell, telling her he has an appointment with George to go over some legal documents. She steadfastly says George is too sick to see anyone. Ellen desperately drives downtown to the post office to see the supervisor, who is friendly and gives her a form for George to sign but then, nettled by Ellen’s unhinged and uncooperative behaviour, tells her he is going to allow the letter to be delivered. Defeated, she returns to the house and as she gets to the front door, a kindly neighbour woman (Georgia Backus) offers to help Ellen, since she has seemed so upset all day…

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Directed by Tay Garnett, produced by Tom Lewis, written by Larry Marcus, screenplay by Mel Dinelli and Tom Lewis, starring Loretta Young as Ellen Jones, Barry Sullivan as George Z. Jones, Bruce Cowling as Dr. Ranney Grahame, Margalo Gillmore as aunt Clara Edwards, Bradley Mora as Hoppy (Billy), Irving Bacon as Joe Carston (the postman), Georgia Backus as Mrs. Warren (the neighbor), Don Haggerty as Mr. Russell (the notary), Art Baker as the post office superintendent and Richard Anderson as the wounded sailor at a naval hospital.

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Source: “Cause for Alarm!” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 6 March 2012. Web. 11 March 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cause_for_Alarm!

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42 Replies to “Cause for Alarm! (1951) [Film Noir] [Drama]”

  3. wasn't this movie also called "the letter" or some thing along those lines? 

    george is lucky his wife wasn't kathy bates.  then he might've had some thing very real to worry about…

    26 minutes in – that's how life should be.  a child should be able to trust any adult.  and parents shouldn't have to worry about being able to trust their neighbors, whether they're new to the neighborhood or not.  all adults in a given neighborhood should be as extra parental figures to the children. 

    such a shame the government doesn't take evil people as seriously as they ought – unless, that is, it's their OWN family members who are directly affected.  then it's a whole different story.

  7. Wow!  Such a lengthy introduction!  Too much information about nothing.  Why bother?  It' s not a classic and it's not even especially good, if at all.  Could have been one of her half hour shows with commercials and it might have been of more interest, altho' Barry Sullivan is not exactly much of an actor whereas Loretta Young is pretty much the same in whatever she does.  Please, don't throw rotten tomatoes at me.  It's just an opinion.  

  8. Movies of this era were not made for shock value. They were made to make you feel better when you left the theatre than when you came in. There were often life lessons infused for good measure. These taught you to appreciate what you had or made you want to strive for better. Making the viewer laugh with the characters in the film and lighten the burden of everyday living. Sadly movies made today attempt to shock sadden or revolt the viewer. If Hollywood never made another movie I for one would be quite happy watching all the old ones forever more. Cheers for upload 🙂

  14. Carl Macek in the Film Noir Encyclopedia writes: "A melodrama with a noir flair, Cause for Alarm is an exercise in paranoia and claustrophobia. Directed by Tay Garnett, the film presents the Jones house as a threatening maze filled with hidden evil. The film takes every opportunity to subvert normal, everyday situations into perverse visions of madness. The true noir flavor comes in the total dehumanization experienced by Ellen Jones."

  18. I think I see what the guy meant by needing both of his heads rubbed. It was merely an innocent reference to feeling like his head was sore enough to feel like he had two sore heads. Such different times. Today he could have got himself slapped by the woman. But that was a good old Hitchcok style movie, tension, suspense but no violence and a surprise ending. Lorreta probably over reacted compared to what most women would do in reality but it made for a movie worth watching, I thought.

  19. The film noir – the greatest chapters in the history of cinema! Starting with the 1930 and 1955's film noir created by great directors and actors of high class! Which of the current actors can now replace Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, and Edmond O' Brian …? No one! There are no such persons, who could now mimic film noir. America, as most of these films belong to the film companies of the country, created a fashion, clothes, hats, cigars, whiskey, cars, sparkling night of advertising, casinos, restaurants, and so forth, just yet created ideal breeding ground for crime novels, which served the script for the black-and-white films. Prohibition has created a mafia and gangsters, in their turn became the heroes of many "black" films. The great director Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, John Huston, Robert Siodmak, Rudolph Mate, Billy Wilder and Otto Perminger, Raoul Walsh, Jean Negulesco, Edward Dmytryk, …….. they are not repeatable !!! See the film noir. About 200 of the immortal masterpieces of world cinema! Long live the film noir !!! My eternal love of film noir !!!

  23. Too drawn out and ultimately silly plot relying on the constantly annoying narration of improbability by Loretta Young. I had to strain to complete viewing this one because I was hoping against hope that the denouement would eventually come to its senses. Futile effort, however, and I'd advise against wasting your time on this mediocre film. Unlike many movies of the film noir genre, even the cinematography (which was pretty bland) couldn't redeem this lackluster undertaking.

  28. Funny. Just re-read (for the third time) Loretta Young's ("adopted," actually her biological) daughter's (Judy Lewis) autobio, "Uncommon Knowledge," about how Judy had to spend her much of life pretending that she was NOT Clark Gable's child. I always sensed that Loretta Young was a narcissist, and so it doesn't surprise me that she put her daughter (who died recently) through some horrific psychological changes, just so that the sanctimonious "Iron Butterfly" could retain her star status in Hollywood, at whatever cost!! Loretta was said to have possessed uber-spun-steel resolve and religiosity that gave even JOAN CRAWFORD pause . . .

  31. Kept me on the edge ! Barry was great as he slowly lost his mind with thoughts of his beautiful wife making love to her former lover !! Even with the letter disposed of in today's forensic world both of them would be lucky to get life sentences !!! Loretta was supposed to be one hell of a Slut open to anything and anyone when it came to Sex !!! Those oh so tempting lips !!! Great !!!

  33. I would have liked to see Bette Davis play that part but THATS OK. Great movie. I think what keeps people on the edge of their seats is that we all believe we are so smart and so strong but deep down we know that a clever spouse really can drive us out of our minds until we fully believe the unthinkable. Its really not so hard and thats tragic.

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