While watching The Hard Way, I kept thinking about another film, All About Eve – a movie about the complicated relationship of a rising Broadway star and one whose fame is fading away. The Hard Way focuses on the complicated relationship between Katie (Joan Leslie), a rising Broadway star, and her sister Helen (Ida Lupino), who is laser-focused on her sister’s career to the detriment of Katie’s romantic relationships, and even her own desires.
Buy The Hard Way Blu-rayAll About Eve is by far the greater film, as it has a much tighter script that pits the two actresses as both friends and rivals. The Hard Way never feels quite sure what to do with its two leads. Helen doesn’t seem interested in being an actress, so there is no rivalry, and Katie very much wants to be a star and is willing to make great sacrifices to achieve fame.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We begin in a poor steel town where our sisters grew up. Helen hates it there. She hates the grime and filth that covers everything due to the smokestacks. She hates being poor. She hates that she married a simple man with no real ambitions, thinking he’d somehow lead her to a better life. She hates the thought of Katie being destined for a similar life. She promises to do something, anything, to get her out.
She finds her chance when a couple of vaudevillian performers – Paul (Dennis Morgan) and Albert (Jack Carson) – roll into town. Katie loves the act and mimics them afterward in a restaurant with her friends. The men walk in right then and catch her performance. Albert thinks she’s cute and talented. He flirts with her, and Katie is flattered, but Helen spies an opportunity. She manipulates them both into a relationship and ultimately marriage. Paul pretty quickly understands the cutthroat nature of Helen’s personality and tries to stop Albert from getting in too deep, but he’s too late.
It is the relationship between Paul and Helen that really becomes the core of the film. He hates her and her willingness to destroy everything to secure Katie the life she thinks she deserves. But he’s also drawn to her. That power is seductive. She hates him and his ability to see right through her, but she also loves him for it.
Meanwhile, Helen continues to manipulate every situation to increase Katie’s exposure. She joins Paul and Albert’s act, at first as a chorus girl, but soon enough she’s singing a lead. Then she’s partnering with Albert, forcing Paul to go out on his own. Then she’s performing in bigger shows and becoming a star, leaving Albert all on his own.
Katie enjoys her success a little too much and starts losing parts due to her constant partying. But she also starts to realize what she’s losing in her climb to bigger fame. She never really wanted to make it all the way to the top. She just wanted out of that dingy, dirty town. Show business is fun, and she likes the success, but she also loves Albert and could be happy with him.
There is tension between all of these things. Between Helen and Paul. Between Katie’s desire to be on stage and her love for Albert. And between Helen’s incessant need to push Katie to higher and greater success and her own self-loathing for destroying everything in order to achieve that goal.
It is here I should probably mention the film begins with Helen jumping off a bridge into the river, attempting suicide. The rest of the movie is a flashback letting us know why she did that. For all her drive and ambition, for every move she makes that destroys something in order to achieve her goals, she feels pain and guilt. This isn’t the person she wanted to be, but the cruelty and poverty of her former life burned her insides out, leaving nothing but the desire to escape left in her.
I wish I loved this film more than I did. All that I’ve just described has the makings of something truly incredible, but it never quite got there for me. Going back to All About Eve, that film has such a tight script full of incredible dialogue and memorable lines. The characters have bite and, by the end, are happy to destroy each other. That makes it endlessly entertaining.
In The Hard Way, the characters are more balanced, more nuanced. They each care for each other in their own way, and so the cruelty that is spread has less bite, is somehow more real. And that makes it less enjoyable to watch. There is still plenty to enjoy here. The leads are all terrifically good. Lupino especially is tearing it up.
Warner Archive presents The Hard Way with a new 1080p transfer from the original negatives. It looks spectacular. It was shot by James Wong Howe who was a master of dramatic lighting and deep focus and all of that is on full display here. In the end, it is worth watching, especially for fans of Lupino. I just wish it had a slightly harder edge, or a script with sharper lines.
