It’s difficult to imagine Lucille Ball in anything other than comedy. One comedic half of the television show, I Love Lucy (the other the brilliant Desi Arnaz), Ball wasn’t just a comedienne—she was the quintessential clown, who turned every mishap into comedy that still transcends time. But Ball had other sides to her. Her irony and quick wit weren’t just funny but when prodded properly, they showed the depth of her acting.
Douglas Sirk’s Lured (1947) showcases Ball’s talent as a leading female capable of a serious role. Sirk’s film is a fascinating amalgam of styles. At once noir, crime, and comedy of errors, Lured signals what Sirk will explore later at the height of his career through his Technicolor melodramas. Lured carries the weight of multiple meanings as we’re asked to question every character’s motives and personalities.
The film’s focus is serial murders of beautiful women in London. It starts with a personal ad in the newspaper—a well-to-do man is seeking a beautiful woman as a companion. The woman in question responds and falls for the man only to go missing. The murderer has a habit of sending a warning letter to Scotland Yard that the new victim has emerged, and that the police are powerless in the face of the crime. He writes in verse, giving clues that prove to be unbreakable. His inspiration is Charles Baudelaire, a poet who found death more beautiful than life.
Caught in the storm of crimes is Sandra Carpenter (Lucille Ball), an aspiring American show girl who’s now just a taxi dancer. Her friend Lucy Barndard becomes one of the victims of the “Poet Killer,” and Sandra’s recruited by the Scotland Yard Inspector, Harley Temple (Charles Coburn) to go undercover and answer as many personal ads as possible to finally catch the killer.
Sandra accepts the position. After all, what is there to look forward to as a taxi dancer? Unlike Lucy, and other girls that have gone missing and were killed, Sandra’s intelligent, quick-witted, and has a sharp and cynical tongue. She’s supposed to lure the killer into her clutches as she moves between femme fatale and a secret agent. The question of who’s the lured in the title becomes a series of mysteries and revelations about several identities.
Sandra’s trying to audition for a famous London nightclub owner and producer, Robert Fleming (George Sanders). Fleming’s taken by Sandra, yet she keeps evading him. This makes the thrill of the chase more intense for someone like Fleming, who is used to “girls” flaunting themselves at him. He likes a good challenge, and Sandra’s wit and sarcastic bite are a perfect match to Fleming’s own charm and irresistible brevity of irony.
Sirk plays around with the mistaken identities throughout the film. Nobody’s really sure who the real person is. There’s a great pretense within not just social norms but social status, something that was cleverly explored by Oscar Wilde, among many others. This is why Lured transcends the categories. In Sirk’s own reflections, he noted that he wanted to hire actors that were known mainly in comedy circles to create more uneasiness and uncertainty about the movement of the plot.
One of the most unsettling and yet funniest sequences comes from Sandra’s encounter with Charles van Druten (Boris Karloff), a long-forgotten and disgraced fashion designer. Van Druten hires girls through the personal ads to try on his beautiful designs as he acts out his delusions of grandeur and the past. It turns out that Frankenstein’s monster isn’t much of a monster at all.
The interplay and chemistry between Lucille Ball and George Sanders is superb. There were speculations that the two had an affair during the filming but Ball and Sanders denied it. Either way, they responded well to the script. Sanders’ dignified and always “teetering on untrustworthy” charm is a match to Ball’s off the cuff, “listen, toots,” no-nonsense approach to men.
Lured is a cinematic oddity. It’s populated by the misfits (like the great Maltese actor, Joseph Calleia as Nicholas Moriyani), trying to find their way through the London fog. No matter what their social or economic status is, they’re all obsessed with being recognized. Is it love they’re after? Most turn out less shallow than suspected. Sirk was already beginning to sow the seeds of his great melodramas, and Lured not only achieves the Sirkian ironic brevity but comes alive through the impassioned souls of the actors.