Main Cast: Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, Helen Walker, Taylor Holmes, Ian Keith
Release Year: 1947
Country: US
Run Time: 111 minutes
Plot
Nightmare Alley is the sordid tale of a conniving young man who, in the words of one of the film's supporting characters, ends up low because he aimed so high. Drifter Tyrone Power sweet-talks his way into a job as barker for a rundown carnival. He is fascinated by an illegal side-show attraction called "The Geek," a near-lunatic who bites the heads off live chickens and then is "paid off" with a cheap bottle of rotgut and a warm place to sleep it off. Otherwise, Power's attention is focussed on a beautiful if slightly stupid carnival performer (Coleen Gray) who works in an "electricity" act with an equally dense strongman (Mike Mazurki). Power also befriends an alcoholic mentalist (Ian Keith), who demonstrates how easy it is to fool an audience into thinking that his mind reading is genuine. When the mentalist dies after accidentally drinking wood alcohol, Power works his way into the confidence of the performer's widow (Joan Blondell), who teaches Power all the tricks and code words of the mind-reading racket. Power walks out on Blondell in favor of Cathy Downs, who marries him and becomes his partner in a classy nightclub mentalist act. But Power is dissatisfied with show business, and with the help of a beautiful but shifty psychiatrist (Helen Walker) he convinces several wealthy people that he can communicate with their dead loved ones...for a price. One elderly millionaire (Taylor Holmes) offers Power a fortune if he can conjure up the spirit of the millionaire's dead daughter. Power enlists his wife to impersonate the deceased girl, but at the crucial moment she has an attack of conscience and exposes the fraud. His career ruined, Power goes to the crooked psychiatrist for help, but she laughs in his face and calls the cops. He escapes the law by going on the bum, and before long is a drunken derelict. When he approaches a carnival for work, he is told that there is only one job open...as a "geek." When asked if he wants the job, the defeated Power replies "Mister, I was born for it." Based on a lurid bestseller by William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley was Tyrone Power's attempt to break away from romantic leads in favor of roles with more substance. The picture wasn't a success, but it proved that Power was more than just a pretty face. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Aiming to prove his acting ability and stretch his image, leading man Tyrone Power pushed to star as a tragically ambitious spiritualist/con man in Edmund Goulding's film noir melodrama Nightmare Alley (1947). In Jules Furthman's adaptation of a William Lindsay Gresham novel, Power's conniving Stan rises from carny barker to renowned "psychic" only to be done in by a woman and his own guilt. Though Stan's eventual fate may be clear from the moment that he first lays eyes on the sideshow's debased "geek," the bleak story is unusually (and fascinatingly) squalid for a Hollywood studio production, even given the obligatory final moment of redemption. Swathing Stan's spiritual corruption in a somber yet dream-like atmosphere, Lee Garmes's expressive cinematography reaches a surreal apex of light and shadow when Stan pretends to conjure the spirit of a dead woman in a wealthy client's garden amid the obliquely lit trees and bushes. Bolstered by an excellent supporting cast including Joan Blondell as a used and abandoned sideshow soothsayer and Helen Walker as a criminal who actually gets away with it, Power gave one of the best performances of his career, but Nightmare Alley failed at the box office. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Mike Mazurki - Bruno; Julia Dean - Mrs. Peabody; Roy Roberts - McGraw; James Burke - Town Marshal; Florence Auer - Housekeeper; Oliver Blake; George Chandler; Harry V. Cheshire - Mr. Prescott; Edward Clark - Farmer; Clancy Cooper - Stage Manager; James Flavin - Clem Hoatley; Robert Karnes - Hotel Bellboy; George Lloyd; Emmett Lynn; George Mathews - Knife Thrower; Jerry Miley - Friend in Spode Room; Harry Hays Morgan Jr. - Headwaiter; Maurice Navarro - Fire Eater; Gene Roth - Masseur; Laura Treadwell - Woman; Eddy Waller - Old Farmer; Marjorie Wood - Mrs. Prescott; Henry Hall - Man; Jerry Wald - Radio Announcer; George Andre Beranger - Geek; Michael Lally - Charlie; Charles Flickinger - Bellboy; Nina Gilbert - Worried Mother; Hollis Jewell - Delivery Boy; Albin Robeling - Captain; Gilbert Wilson - Husband in Spode Room; Al Herman - Cab Driver; George Davis - Waiter; Jack Raymond - Hobo
