Fear And Noir, Near And Far Pt. 4

One last Detour as we wrap up Detour. As we discussed, Detour is a shining example of one of the great tenets of noir, the hapless loser dude done in by the wiles of a scheming femme fatale. This was a part of men’s reaction to the changing role of women in the workplace and society after World War II. It’s not a very mature reaction, but hey. Why start now?

It certainly is true of Al Roberts in Edgar Ulmer’s Detour. Now don’t get me wrong, Roberts, played by actor Tom Neal, is an idiot. He accepts a ride from a guy while hitchhiking, taking a shift at the wheel later in the ride so his benefactor can grab some sleep. Somewhere in the middle of his nap, the guy dies, most probably of a heart attack. Al pulls over and tries to rouse him, but when he opens the car door the man’s body slumps out onto the road and his head smashes against a rock. Extenuating circumstances to be sure, but what does Al do? He convinces himself that the police would think he murdered the guy no matter what he told them, so they only smart move would be to act as if he DID murder the guy. He then hides his body in the scrub off the highway, trades clothes, swaps ID’s and assumes the guy’s identity, faking his own death in the process.

Genius!

It was an orgasm of bad decision making that could not have ended well under any circumstance. Certainly not when, on the first day of life under his new identity, he meets someone who knew the owner of said identity. Before you can say Jack Robinson, Al is ensnared in a blackmail trap. I suppose the conceit of Detour is, had Al not encountered the treacherous Vera, all would have been hunky dory. I'm not sure sure. What if he ran over a dog? What would he do? Assume its identity and hope the family wouldn’t notice?

That is the story of Detour. Sadly, Detour star Tom Neal didn’t have to look too far when it came to researching a guy who made a lot of bad decisions. Born in Evanston, Illinois in 1914, Neal attended Northwestern where he was a star athlete, specifically football and boxing, and also excelled in theater, After graduation, he worked in stock, and diligently worked his way to Broadway. Film work followed, but his muscular frame relegated him to brainless beefcake roles. But the point is he did work. And slowly, he made a name for himself. Work lead to fame but his behavior lead to notoriety.

Tom was quite the laides man, having been linked to actresses Ava Gardner, Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell among others. It was his affair with actress Barbara Peyton that would land him in the papers. Peyton had been dating French matinee idol Franchot Tone when she met Neal. Matinee Minx Links Naughty Neal For Torrid Tryst! Peyton and Neal became an item. But then, apparently, Peyton rekindled her relationship with Tone. Indecisive Ingenue Topsy Turvies Toward Flirtatious Frenchman! One night Peyton and Tone returned from a night on the town to find Neal waiting for them. According to Neal, in a newspaper story of the day reprinted in David Houston’s excellent article Two Tom Neals: A Legacy in Filmfax magazine, “I hit him very hard.”

The end result? Peyton announced she was marrying Tone, who had suffered a concussion, and Neal was portrayed in the press as a lunkhead bully. Studios took notice and his offers for film work started drying up. Actress Ankles As Hard-Hitting Hothead Exits To Rear Of Eightball!

Without film work, Neal relocated to Palm Springs where he started a landscaping business (again, curtesy of Houston’s Two Tom Neals article). He got married, had a son, but when his wife died prematurely of cancer, young Tom Neal Jr was sent to Illinois to live with Neal’s sister. Neal married again, this time to a young women named Gail Kloke. Neal and Kloke’s relationship was contentious and violent, marked by suspicion, jealousy and what therapists now term, “insecure actor bullshit.” Although the exact story of what happened will never be known, one night Gail turned up dead with a bullet from Neal's gun in her chest. Neal claimed it was an accident, but prosecutors convinced a jury otherwise and Neal ended up spending six years of a fifteen year sentence for, “involuntary manslaughter,” or, as legal scholars call it, “murder, sorta.”

Neal was released from prison in 1971 but lived only a year and half after his release, succumbing to heart failure in the summer of 1972. Trigger-Happy Thesp Cashiered By Tricky Ticker!

Tom Neal. He took a Detour, alright.

Barbara Peyton on Mysteries and Scandals!