rabbit and rattler
by Douglas Messerli
Jo Swerling and
Robert Riskin (screenplay, based on a story by W. R. Burnett), John Ford
(director) The Whole Town’s Talking /
1935
Arthur
Ferguson Jones (Edward G. Robinson) is the seemingly perfect employee, having
never been late to work in eight years! And, after years of near slavery, he is
unknowingly about to receive a raise. That is until one morning when time
stops. His new alarm clock breaks down and he is over a half-an-hour late! The
same executive decree that is ready to award him, now proclaims he is about to
be fired. The poor office manager-middleman, Seaver (Etienne Giradot) has an
unsolvable problem.
But that is only the beginning of the
complex series of mirror oppositions posed in one of John Ford’s few outright
comedies, scripted by Frank Capra’s usual collaborators, Swerling and Riskin.
First of all, if this work is a comedy, it is also a gangster film that,
perhaps because its small budget, escaped the censure of the Hays Committee,
helping Robinson to transform his almost moribund career to become a master
actor of that genre.
And then there is the second unsolvable
problem of Jones’ imaginary love life with his office mate, Wilhelmina Clark
(Jean Arthur), who, after working until 9:30 the night before, shows up for
work even later, and is fired in Jones’ place. Fearful of everything
(Wilhelmina describes Jones as a rabbit), Jones has nonetheless been so
infatuated with her as to steal a photograph of Miss Clark. Even if he has been
saved from unemployment, accordingly, his only dream of sexual happiness is
about to be taken from him. And then on this particularly unlucky day for Jones—a
day apparently chocked full of outrageous predicaments—the newspaper runs a
photo of gangster “Killer” Mannion (also played by Robinson), a dead ringer for…Jones,
of course! The man afraid of his own shadow is suddenly perceived as public
enemy number 1. By lunch time, when he accidently joins Wilhelmina for lunch,
the whole town, if not talking, is at least whispering about Mannion’s escape
from prison and his determination to plug a small time informer, “Slugs” Martin
(Edward Brophy). It only takes a nebbish snitch like a local diner, Hoyt
(Donald Meek) to bring the police down upon the innocent Jones.
Arrested with Jones, Wilhelmina is taken
into another room to be interrogated and in a much lighter and sarcastic manner
admits everything, that she is not only Mannnion’s moll but that Mannion has
committed every crime they accuse him of—hundreds of criminal actions!
The comic mischievousness of these
scenes, however, soon dissipates as we realize the Kafka-like dimensions of the
situation, as Jones faints, finally being recognized by the office manager with
whom the film has begun. The police realize that Wilhelmina has taken them, to
use the American idiom of the film, on a sleigh ride.

In this vertigo of comic tropes, the
director moves quickly to the political left by having Jones’ employer,
Carpenter, call him in to congratulate Jones for the publicity he has brought
to the company, and, along with a local reporter, whips up a writing series for
Jones in which he will pretend to ghost-write Mannion’s “autobiography,” the
mirror image relaying the truth of the man on the other side of the
looking-glass. The implications of this maneuver, which they convince the
innocent Jones to become involved through an afternoon of heavy cigars and
alcohol (refused, at first by the abstentious employee), puts everything into a
delirious tilt, as this nearly angelic everyman is forced to speak in the voice
of the devil. Jones’ only reward for this ridiculous act is his insistence that
his boss rehire Wilhelmina, who, when she hears of the situation, makes certain
that Jones will also get paid.
With whirlwind velocity, Ford takes his
comedy into completely new territory as he brings Mannion into the poor Jones’
room, demanding, like his employer, control over Jones’ life: Jones may use his
identifying letter during the day, but Mannion will use it during the night. By
day, Mannion will sleep in Jones’ bed, and insists that Jones—as if he were a
berated husband—return home by a certain hour. Even the metaphor of two men
sharing the same bed might have led the Hays office of the day into horrible
flutters of moral outrage, but somehow Ford and his writers got away with it
all. It is clear now that Jones is trapped between the images of himself,
trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea. When Mannion returns the next
morning, he finds that his “other” self has, understandably, not been able to
sleep, a common problem of a disaffected mate.
Now terrified that Mannion will read his
boastful taunts in the newspaper, Jones spends the next day trying to reach the
newspaper acquaintance without success, dragging himself home late, fearing the
criminal’s reactions. But when Mannion reads the newspaper nonsense he demands
that Jones write his “autobiography”
through Mannion’s own words, a bit like turning the fiction inside out, the
“ghost” becoming the voice of the real beast, not unlike Stein’s Autobiography of Alice Toklas. The
result is that prison secrets are revealed that only a few know about, which
again puts Jones into a dangerous position. Mannnion accepts the absurd
suggestion of the authorities that Jones be locked up for his own protection,
killing “Slugs” within the prison where he is arrested “in protection.” By this
time, we sense, Ford has almost dropped the comic tropes of his fascinating
film, transforming it to a possible tragedy, as we begin to perceive that
Mannion’s gang has kidnapped not only Wilhelmina, but Jones’ elderly aunt, the
busybody Hoyt, and the office manager, Seaver.
With brutal determination, Mannion sends
Jones to the bank with a deposit, calling the police to warn them of another
Mannion bank assault. The police fall into position within the bank, preparing
to kill Jones the moment he enters, and the comedy with which Ford has begun,
begins to look more like the final showdown between police and the central
figures of Bonnie and Clyde.
Fortunately, the profoundly confused Jones has left the check behind, and turns
back at the final moment to retrieve it.
Returning to the gangster’s liar, Jones
encounters Mannion’s henchman, now out to challenge the gangster’s control. In
expressing their decision, they inadvertanly reveal to Jones that he has been
the fall guy, and when Mannion unexpectedly returns, Jones orders them to shoot
the man they presume is a returned Jones. For perhaps the first time in his
life Jones has acted forcibly, accomplishing what no authorities have been
previously been able too, as well as freeing his imprisoned girl, his aunt,
fellow worker, and the busybody who has gotten him into this situation in the
first place—even though it all ends, once again, in his faint. Instead of
awarding the money to the ever-pleading Hoyt, the police award Jones, who uses
to money to travel, with his beloved Wilhelmina, to Shanghai, a dream world he
has long wished for. Comedy is restored, as the two wave away their fictional friends
and the audience, about to spin off toward their slightly delusional and
imaginary destination.
In many of the commentaries of the films
of John Ford, this movie, particularly since it has little of his western
issues, gets little or no discussion. But I might argue that in this comedy—a
genre which, Ford once argued, “is my forte”—his vision is far more revelatory,
far less sentimental, and intentionally subversive than are any of his films of
American history and, in particular, of the western culture. Along with this
film’s fast-talking heroine, I’ll take the rabbit over the rattler any day.
Los Angeles,
October 7, 2013
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