The Big Night is a relatively minor noir by Joseph Losey, shaded in that same year by his excellent remake of Fritz Lang’s M, and The Prowler, a thoroughly nasty noir that remains woefully underrated. Nevertheless, it has a charm all of its own, not least John Drew Barrymore’s awkward performance as the haunted adolescent, ‘George La Main’, and Maurie Lynn’s terribly affecting bit-part turn as a beleaguered jazz singer. ‘Georgie’ is introduced as a geeky kid being pushed around by his peers on the street and treated with derision inside his father’s bar when he hints that he may need a razor. The theme of frustrated masculinity looms large as he has to stand aside and watch his father Andy La Main (Preston Foster), who has just baked a birthday cake for him, submit to ‘Al Judge’ (Howard St. John)––a sports columnist coming off like a gangster––stripping down to the waist and going down on all fours to be lashed by Judge’s walking cane before the local barflies. Georgie is naïve and doesn’t understand anything; he can only ask despairingly why his father let himself be humiliated. With his father recovering upstairs, he finds a gun, dons ‘adult’ clothes in the form of a blazer and a sombrero, and sets off into the long night with the bitter taste of birthday cake in his mouth.
Where is Mauri Lynn in all this? Her brief but heart-breaking role only makes sense when we grasp the trajectory of Georgie’s night, so that must wait. Losey hammers home the discrepancy between how Georgie views himself and how he is viewed by others at a neighbouring drugstore. Asked to babysit for a moment in the backroom, he ‘performs’ himself as a hardman in front of the mirror with his gun (à la Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver) until he backs into the cot and wakes the baby, which he coddles to sleep with gun in hand. At a boxing match he is ripped-off by a grifter posing as a cop after flogging his father’s spare ticket to a passer-by, before spotting Judge ringside. The man sitting next to him is the guy he sold the spare ticket to; a journalist, Dr. Lloyd Cooper (Philip Bourneuf), with a drink habit. Cooper knows where Judge is going next. They follow and for a moment Georgie has him in his sights but isn’t sure or quick enough. By now, Cooper is blazing drunk and has lost his charm. He takes Georgie to The Florida Jazz Club, where he introduces his pleasant but harassed girlfriend, Julie Rostina (Dorothy Comingore). Julie takes Georgie dancing and he starts to like it. She strokes his face and now it seems like he might be a man after all, before Cooper takes her back with a wag of the finger. What comes next is remarkable.
Georgie is left adrift, but starts riffing on the music, nodding his head enthusiastically to the clattering drum solo. The reprieve only lasts a moment before torment returns with the memory of Judge whacking his father repeatedly superimposed on alternating images of the drummer and Georgie in ever-increasing close-up. Georgie winces and slumps onto the table. But then a change of pace, the twinkle of a piano and the gorgeous voice of Maurie Leighton (credited as ‘Maurie Lynn’), a beautiful black torch singer. For a moment, Georgie’s reverie is haunted by dark visions again, but he is soothed by the song and the singer herself. Outside, he bumps into Lynn and with the best of intentions lets her know that she’s “the most wonderful singer in the whole world”. She thanks him with a warm and appreciative smile. But this rapidly turns to shock, weary resignation and a tinge of contempt when he continues, “you’re so beautiful, even if you are…”. Georgie’s face crumbles, mumbling over and again, “I didn’t mean to say it”, and it seems he really didn’t, but it’s too late now. He’s pulled away by Cooper into a taxi declaiming his apologies while Lynn is left leaning against a lamp post, stoic and dignified against a cruel world.
Some consider the scene superfluous: the race issue never returns in the film. But it’s a truly heart-rending scene, with Lynn’s poised and controlled response to Georgie’s confused utterances acting as a mirror to his immaturity, and perhaps the immaturity and grasping masculinity of American society in general. It would be easy to render this meeting in more unsympathetic terms, but Losey stays with Georgie recognising that he didn’t know any better, isn’t ready for this moment, and we see that racism (conscious or unconscious) is a tragedy for everyone––although of course more so for Lynn. She had little to play with in this role but just a few nuanced facial gestures convey the awful stain of racial discrimination, the emotional shield necessary to defend oneself against it, and the weariness of its continuing presence in American society. Lynn was positioned as a replacement for popular black performers and actresses Lena Horne and Hazel Scott, who had become disillusioned with racism in Hollywood. She would feel this disillusionment too, and this makes the role especially devastating––more so in the knowledge that she was murdered with her stepdaughter in 1969.
Georgie finally arrives at Judge’s home, but the name on the door is Frances Sedziasky, the woman his father had been seeing, who turns out to be Judge’s sister. Judge tells Georgie that Frances killed herself because Georgie’s father wouldn’t marry her, hence the beating. In the confused fall out, Georgie accidentally shoots Judge (non-fatally) in a tussle over the gun. He remains a child caught up in an adult world he doesn’t yet understand; one where good and bad are not so easily discerned. But this night could be his coming-of-age. The film is really John Drew Barrymore’s, but his encounter with Lynn adds an altogether different dimension in his troubled odyssey towards manhood and this is made possible by the remarkable subtlety and economy of Lynn’s performance. Decent minor roles for women in film noir are relatively rare, even more so for black women. All the more reason to celebrate rare gems like Maurie Lynn in The Big Night.
Neil Gray.
