We all know Lucille Ball as a brilliant comedienne and one of the minds behind I Love Lucy, but what isn’t as readily known about her is that she dabbled in film noir during the nineteen-forties. One of these is 1947’s Lured, a cautionary tale about opportunity and deception.
Lucille plays Sandra Carpenter, an actress who works at a London dance hall for sixpence a dance because she needs the work and the producers in town don’t seem to be biting. All the ladies she works with are sick of dancing with hands-y men who dish out the same lines over and over and are therefore on the watch for their ticket out of the dance hall life.
One night Sandra’s friend, Lucy is all starry-eyed because she’s going to run off with some man she’s met, and while Sandra is happy for her, she’s got her own sights set on an audition she has at nine o’clock that night. She feels pretty good about it all until she spies a newspaper story that says Lucy is missing.
Sandra heads straight to Scotland Yard, where she finds out about what is basically a human trafficking ring, targeting women who are without family and in need of funds, answering the women who reply to them with romantically specific poetry. These women think they’re going to be models or dancers but end up either murdered or shipped overseas as domestic servants. If they say anything about how they got there, they disappear permanently.
Our heroine agrees to work as a plant for Scotland Yard. She answers the ads and the police lie in wait, pouncing when the predator shows his or her true colors. She has an expense account and is allowed to carry a gun. It’s a good thing, too, because the rabbit hole she goes down is pretty deep, like one guy who has her dress up like a doll and then pretend to play to a packed house, even though the only audience members are mannequins and a very sedate bulldog.
Sandra does find love amidst all of this intrigue, though, as a nice man named Robert saves her from being mugged one night, and the two of them become engaged. She might be all set…or is she?
Lured is a masterful bait-and-switch that leads the viewer along and keeps them guessing who the killer is, with plenty of red herrings and macguffins. It’s like something Hitchcock would do, only not.
Lucille Ball is great fun as Sandra. She was a very competent actress with great, flexible delivery, and in some of the lighter scenes shows the teensiest bit of her comedienne abilities. That’s also her weakness, but only slightly, as we can’t look at Lucille Ball without thinking of Lucy Ricardo. It doesn’t matter what her character’s name is; she’s always Lucy.
The other thing about the movie is the romance between Sandra and Robert seemed a little tacked on. These two just met, had barely interacted and knew very little about each other, but they’re already getting married? What with Sandra’s work as an undercover agent this seems like a foolish conflict of interest. The least she could have done is tail the guy for a few days or maybe have the two of them spend some actual time together. Or maybe she could have met Robert after certain events had transpired and things quieted down.
I’d say more but I really don’t want to ruin anything. Lured is full of surprises, it’s a satisfying cerebral movie, and the great performances by Lucille Ball and the cast really sweeten the whole deal.
Lured is currently streaming on Tubi. Not rated.
My grade: A-
Principal cast: Lucille Ball, George Sanders, Charles Coburn, Cedric Hardwicke, Boris Karloff, Alan Napier, Tanis Chandler
Directed by Douglas Sirk
Written by Leo Rosten, Jacques Companeez, Ernst Neubach