I've written several posts on this blog about actress Tallulah Bankhead [1902-1968], a Huntsville native. These pieces include her films Lifeboat and Faithless, her visits to Birmingham and then around Alabama, her appearances on Lucille Ball's TV shows and her final acting role in a two-part episode of the 1960s Batman TV show as the villain, Black Widow. Now it's time for a look at her 1932 film Devil and the Deep, made in the same year as Faithless.
That film is what is known as a pre-Code movie, Hollywood movies made from the late 1920s until 1934, when the Hayes censorship code went into effect. These films included subject matter ranging from abortion, prostitution and infidelity to profanity, illegal drug use and sexual situations. All of that disappeared when the Hays code was adopted. Crime and sin had to have consequences and punishment. I've written a blog post on one such very strange film featuring two Alabama connections, Murder at the Vanities [1934].
So, what is Tallulah up to in Devil and the Deep?
In this film she is Diana, wife of submarine commander Charles Sturm, played by Charles Laughton in one of his earliest Hollywood films. He is pathologically jealous of every man she meets, including Lieutenant Jaeckel [Cary Grant]. Jaeckel and Diana are just friends, but no matter. As the film opens, Sturm is having him transferred, and the pair must say their goodbyes.
Much of the film's first half takes place at a restaurant, but then Diana decides to leave and privately asks Jaeckel to come see her later in the evening. Sturm discovers them together and his anger at the dinner rises to hysteria after Jaeckel leaves, and he strikes Diana. She leaves the house immediately and begins walking the city streets.
Well, who should she encounter but the handsome Lieutenant Sempter [Gary Cooper], who is actually Jaeckel's replacement. Diana won't find that out until the next day, however, just as he doesn't know who she is. They talk themselves into a one night stand. Imagine their surprise when Sempter shows up at the house the next morning to report for duty.
Sturm's suspicion transfers to Sempter, and the commander begins to plot revenge. On the night the sub is to get underway, Diana goes aboard to warn her lover Sempter about Sturm. The commander orders the vessel to leave port with Diana still on board. Sturm has the sub deliberately maneuver into an oncoming ship and several compartments are flooded.
As survivors gather in the control room, Sturm and Sempter each assert command after Diana reveals her husband's madness. Sempter eventually takes control. In a long, exciting and apparently pretty accurate sequence, we see the crew and Diana use the escape trunk and Momsen lungs to exit to the surface. Laughing maniacally, Sturm stays behind to drown.
A court martial later clears Sempter of the most serious charges. He and Diana meet again in a store and leave together in a cab.
Devil and the Deep is based on the novel Sirenes et Tritons [1927] by Maurice Larrouy (1882-1939), a French naval officer and author of numerous novels. Marion Gering (1901-1977) directed the film, one of many he did in the 1930s. The movie is the only one in which both Cary Grant and Gary Cooper appear, although they had no scenes together.
She made some 20 films between 1918 and 1966, yet Bankhead was best known for her stage performances in London, on Broadway and around the United States. Her best known film is probably Lifeboat [1944], an Alfred Hitchcock film that also stars another Alabama native, Mary Anderson. That movie is wonderful, Bankhead is in fine form and Hitchcock's cameo on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean is well done.
I really enjoyed this film, just as I did another of Bankhead's films that year, Faithless. She does a good job playing the Commander's long-suffering wife, and wearing that slinky white dress through the first half of the film. The second half turns out to be an exciting series of scenes aboard the submarine and inside the escape trunk. Oh, and Laughton, Grant and Cooper are pretty good, too!
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