10 Things I Learned: Nightmare Alley

By Jason Altman

Production Notes—

May 25, 2021

10 Things I Learned: Nightmare Alley

By Jason Altman

Production Notes—

May 25, 2021

1.

William Lindsay Gresham’s first book—the sordid carnival-sideshow noir Nightmare Alley—was the author’s only considerable literary success. A controversial best seller upon its publication in 1946, the novel was quickly followed by a film adaptation the next year. Gresham would go on to publish four more books—the novel Limbo Tower (1949), the carnival-world exposé Monster Midway (1953), the biography Houdini (1959), and the bodybuilding guide The Book of Strength (1961)—before, in declining health, he took his own life in 1962, at the age of fifty-three.

2.

Nightmare Alley producer George Jessel was a popular comedian and host who earned the nickname the Toastmaster General of the United States for his ubiquity as a professional master of ceremonies. As a film producer at Twentieth Century-Fox, he made mostly musicals, but it was Jessel who first brought Gresham’s novel to studio production chief Darryl F. Zanuck (despite not having read it himself).

3.

Zanuck initially pronounced the material—which tracks the rise and fall of Stanton Carlisle, an ambitious carny and phony spiritualist who preys upon the tragedies and hopes of the pious (and most vulnerable)—to be unfilmable. However, Jessel and star Tyrone Power, who saw in the project an opportunity to showcase his range beyond the swashbuckling epics that had made him famous, finally convinced Zanuck to give the project the green light.

Tyrone Power (left) and Darryl F. Zanuck

4.

As it did for Jessel, the film noir Nightmare Alley represented a departure for veteran British director Edmund Goulding, known primarily (then as now) for melodramas like Grand Hotel (1932) and Dark Victory (1939). It was Power who urged Zanuck to hire Goulding, with whom Power had just worked on The Razor’s Edge (1946).

5.

Despite three of his films being nominated for best picture—Grand Hotel (which took home the Oscar), Dark Victory, and The Razor’s Edge—Goulding himself was never nominated for best director. He is tied with Jack Conway, director of A Tale of Two Cities (1935), for having made the most best picture nominees without garnering a best director nomination.

6.

To give the film added realism, Twentieth Century-Fox built a full working carnival on ten acres of the studio’s back lot. In addition, real sideshow performers were hired to populate the fairground.

7.

Alarmed upon viewing the film—particularly by seeing the superstar Power in the role of a low-life grifter—Zanuck insisted on a new ending that, unlike the novel’s, would leave the audience with some sense of redemption and hope. Even then, the studio still neglected to put any muscle behind the marketing of the film.

8.

The film’s eventual failure at the box office resulted in Power returning to the matinee-idol roles he had been so desperate to leave behind. Nonetheless, he often cited his turn in the film as his favorite of his performances.

Jean Peters and Power in *Captain from Castile* (1947)

9.

Nightmare Alley has something of a reputation for being a “cursed” film for those involved in its making—particularly Goulding and actor Helen Walker, who plays the devious psychologist Dr. Lilith Ritter. Goulding’s career rapidly declined afterward, and his last films were fairly inconsequential musicals and comedies; he died in 1959. A few months before filming began on Nightmare Alley, Walker picked up three hitchhikers and had a horrible accident in which one of them was killed. She was eventually acquitted of drunk and reckless driving, as well as on a later manslaughter charge, but her reputation was badly damaged just as her career was taking off. Her house burned to the ground in 1960, and she died at forty-seven in 1968.

10.

A long-standing legal battle between Jessel and the studio—the details of which remain murky—held the film up from hitting the home-video market until 2005, when Fox finally released it on DVD. Prior to that, the film had steadily gained a reputation over the years, playing once in a great while on TV, and screening at colleges and film clubs when the 16 mm rental market was active. The film is sure to see a whole new level of attention later this year, when a remake by Guillermo del Toro (cowritten by Kim Morgan, who wrote the liner notes for our edition of the original) is slated to be released.

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Jason Altman is a producer at the Criterion Collection.

10 Things I Learned: Nightmare Alley

10 Things I Learned: Nightmare Alley

1.

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