The Black Widow (1947) – Chapter 5: The Spider’s Lair

Previously on Serial Saturdays’ presentation of The Black Widow, our hearts were momentarily gladdened by the prospect that exasperating gal reporter Joyce Winters (Virginia Lindley) would meet her doom trapped in a luggage trunk hurtling many miles a minute into thin air after falling out of a cargo plane co-piloted by her pretend secret boyfriend, novelist-criminologist Steve Colt (Bruce Edwards).  I’m devastated to report, however, that such a delightful scenario does not take place.  Footage that we were not privy to in Chapter 4 shows that it was an empty trunk that exited the plane a bit early.

Boo hiss.  Also, too: in the cockpit, one of the Black Widow’s goons who commandeered the plane has managed to bring pilot Andy Baldwin (Harold Landon) around after pistol-whipping him in the previous chapter (I guess upon reflection, Goon Boy realized someone has to fly the plane).  After shoving the second thug out the plane door (without a parachute, I might add), Steve returns to the cockpit just in time to wrestle with First Goon for control of his gun…and then kill him in the struggle.

STEVE: What happened, Andy?!!

ANDY: Left motor’s conked out…we’re losin’ altitude!

STEVE: Want me to take over?

ANDY: No…I can handle it…

STEVE: Well, try and hold your altitude…I’ll unload all the cargo except for the rocket motors!

I think Steve’s a tiny bit upset he doesn’t get to be the hero that safely lands the plane in this scenario.  Anyway, he goes to the back of the aircraft to start tossing out unnecessary ballast…and that’s when he finds Joyce, who’s been pounding from inside the trunk to be let out.

STEVE: What in the name of all that’s idiotic are you doing here?

What a strange, strange line.  “Don’t stay there asking foolish questions—get me out of here!” whines Joyce.  Oh, if only Steve had read Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations” (though it would have been tricky, since it was published in 1954)—we’d all be the better for it.

The action shifts to the offices of Professor Henry Weston (Sam Flint), who’s getting the lowdown from Steve and Joyce regarding his precious rocket motors.

STEVE: After we unloaded all the excess cargo, we were able to make a landing…

WESTON: I’m glad you were able to get the motors to the testing field…however, it’s left you without a clue…

Joyce’s inner voice: “I may be talking out of turn here, Prof…but I think Steve was clueless long before he got involved with your motors and rocket fuel.”  (They make it awfully easy sometimes.)

STEVE: No…not quite…they were trying to force Andy to fly the plane on a new course over the ridge—I’ve had aerial photographs taken of the whole territory…

“Because that’s the kind of brilliance people have come to expect from me.”

WESTON: I can’t see how that will help…?

STEVE: I’m having a map made, from which I hope to spot a secret landing field…

JOYCE: They’ll never shake Steve off the trail, Mr. Weston…

Oh, Joycie…you’re so cute when you shake those pom-poms…

JOYCE: …and what a story I’ve got for the late edition!

STEVE: The only story your paper will publish is the one I dictate…

Jawohl, mein fuehrer!  Bossy Steve then issues his proclamation to Joyce: “Have the dateline read—Phoenix, Arizona: ‘Air transport overdue…privately-owned plane missing…and believed to have been forced down somewhere in the mountains…”

We pick up the rest of this patently phony news story inside the fortunetelling hideout of the deliciously diabolical Sombra (Carol Forman), who reads aloud to her minions Nick Ward (Anthony Warde) and Dr. Z.V. Jaffa (I. Stanford Jolley):

SOMBRA: “…a report from Bisbee states that the missing plane was seen passing over there…but this is discredited, as Bisbee is far off the course of the freighter…” (She sets the newspaper down on her desk)

WARD: So…we lose the rocket motors…

SOMBRA: Not necessarily…

I love how Sombra never admits defeat in any situation.  (“True, the motors are not in our possession…but I had planned for such contingencies…”)

JAFFA: But, Madame…the authorities will certainly find the wreckage before we can hope to do so…

SOMBRA: On the contrary…they’ll be searching the regular route of the ship…they do not know, as we do, that the plane was off her course and probably did pass over Bisbee…

WARD: Right!  I think…

SOMBRA (sharply): Let me do the thinking, Mr. Ward…

Those uppity henchmen…always forgetting their place.  Sombra instructs Ward to get with yet another faceless drone in the operation (who apparently can pilot a plane), and then he’s to report to her at the mine where a Dr. Godfrey (LeRoy Mason) is preparing the rocket fuel.  Nick walks out, kind of pissed—I hope Sombra’s organization isn’t one of those places where employees can retaliate with supervisor evaluations.

The action then shifts to The Daily Clarion, where ineffectual editor John M. Walker (Gene Stutenroth) is probably wondering just where in the narrative he lost control of his newspaper empire to the increasingly brusque dictatorship of Steve Colt, who’s studying a map with a magnifying glass.

STEVE: This is all rough and rugged territory…must be someplace where a plane can make a landing…uh-oh… (Bringing the map up closer to him and Walker) Here it is…

WALKER: That doesn’t mean much to me…

STEVE: That’s a flat field, with trees around it…an ideal place for a hidden landing field!

Joyce’s inner voice: “Or maybe the perfect plot of land for you and me to build a darling little cottage so we can be married and raise a family…oh, if only he would ask me!”

JOYCE: Pretty smart, Steve!  Do we go out there?

STEVE: I do…you stay here and beat the typewriter…

JOYCE: If you go, I go!  After all, I have some standing on this newspaper!

STEVE (to Walker): Either I go alone, or you get a new man in my place!

“Girls, girls…you’re both pretty.”  So I guess it’s up to the Solomonic wisdom of Walker to ameliorate this disagreement.  “Now hold on!  I can’t have you two fighting!  You’ll have to compromise…there must be some other way…”

We then shift to a scene showing Steve and Joyce hurriedly racing to their destination.  Needless to say, the silence is awkward.  Nice compromise, John J.!

The squabbling couple eventually arrive at the landing field…and even in this brief moment of respite and solitude, Steve has to continually prove that it’s “Colt Uber Alles.”  “Keep back under the trees,” he snaps at Joyce.

JOYCE: Would you think it impertinent if I asked just what you expect to accomplish in this…cow pasture?

STEVE: I expect a visit from some of the Black Widow Gang…and I don’t want you cavorting about to let them know I’m here…

(“You’re not the boss of me!”)  “Perhaps if you’d not be so secretive…” Joyce’s voice trails off at the sound of an airplane overhead.  “All right, I’ll be the goat,” Joyce remarks, “what’s the answer?”  Steve can hardly contain his pleasure at his own cleverness: “This is the payoff on that newspaper story you had printed…and that should be some of the Black Widow Gang looking for a wrecked freighter.”

Indeed it is!  An unnamed pilot and Nick Ward are in the cockpit of the plane.  “Not a sign of it yet,” observes Ward.  “I’ll hop out and report to Sombra at the mine.”  I should say his stuntman hits the old silk, and as “Ward” plummets toward Earth an elated Steve tells Joyce: “Now we can follow him…and maybe to the Black Widow herself!”

After landing on terra cotta, Ward sheds his parachute and runs toward this cave…

…where inside, not-so-kindly Doc Godfrey demonstrates to his mistress that he has successfully whipped up a piping-hot batch of Weston’s fuel formula.

GODFREY: These two liquids, when combined, will give us the rocket fuel perfected by Professor Weston…the combination forms a highly flammable gas—a thousand times more powerful than gasoline…step back a little, please…

“I wouldn’t want you to risk scarring your intoxicating beauty with the special effects magic of Howard & Theodore Lydecker, your Malevolence…”

SOMBRA: You have done well, Godfrey…but I should think that there would be a danger of the accidental mixing of the liquids…

GODFREY: Oh, I’ve taken that precaution…a pipe extends from each of the tanks into the tunnel…

GODFREY: …in case an accident threatens, both tanks will be emptied into the tunnel under pressure…and the flames will burn themselves out…

“Excellent, my man…Godfrey…” A quick cut establishes that Ward is making his way into the cave, which triggers a warning buzzer in Godfrey’s lab.  Sombra and her pet doctor are able to watch Nick through this primitive viewer:

SOMBRA: It’s Ward…coming to report on his search for the rocket motors…open the door…

A panel in the tunnel slides open, and then Nick gets on a little vehicle similar to the kind they use to ferry old people through crowded airports.  He travels down the track in the tunnel, and eventually reaches the lab.

SOMBRA: You found nothing of the wreck, did you?

WARD: Not a trace…but how could you know?

SOMBRA: Because there is no wreck…we’ve been tricked…

WARD: The newspaper said that the plane was reported flying over Bisbee!

SOMBRA: The Daily Clarion is the only paper that carried that story…Steven Colt works for the Clarion…

“Then why didn’t you tell me before I flew out here, you cloth-eared bint?”

GODFREY: But he couldn’t trace us here…

SOMBRA: I’m not too sure about that…

You don’t sound too sure about a lot of things, your Most Gracious Dominatrix of Doom…but, hey—even cold, calculating villainesses have an off-day.  The warning buzzer sounds after Sombra’s statement, and the three of them go over to the viewer to see…

…oh, botheration—it’s Steve and Joyce, looking to break up the party.  “We’ll settle with Colt and that meddling reporter once and for all,” declares Sombra.  She commands Godfrey to open the door, then instructs the doc and Ward and to take up stations on opposite sides of the laboratory.  “Don’t fire until I give the word,” she tells them sharply as she pulls a veil over her face to conceal her identity.

STEVE: A nice setting…though a bit theatrical…the Black Widow, huh?

SOMBRA: Clever of you to deduce that…and you, the innocent fly who’s walked into her parlor…did you hope that an insignificant storybook detective could block the plans of the greatest scientist of all time—the future ruler of the world?

Sombra, kiddo…don’t forget you kinda sorta stole that formula from another great scientist of our times who isn’t your dad.  Just sayin’.

STEVE: I don’t know the gentleman…but he sounds unpleasant…and I don’t think he’ll conquer the world—it’s been tried…

SOMBRA: Drop that gun, Mr. Colt…you’re covered from both sides!

Yes, in an unusual embarkation from the same-old-same-old Republic Studio fistfight, Godfrey and Ward emerge from their hiding places and start firing at Steve, and he returns the favor.  For some odd reason, Colt runs out of ammo before they do—so he yells at Joyce to jump on the airport car.  As they make their way down the track in the tunnel, Sombra tells her henchies not to bother shooting—“Open the tanks and we’ll cremate them!”

Holy Disco Inferno, Batman!  As they get to tunnel’s end, Joyce sees that the door is closed…and she screams!