Fante and Mingo from THE BIG COMBO (1955)

Film noir and its losers...

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Every post on this Substack has firmly established two things in my mind. That the streets of film noir should only be walked if you’re lost and looking for directions out of town, and that any character from any noir could easily get a slot on here. In the case of The Big Combo (1955, dir. Joseph H. Lewis), that is certainly true. The gangster who has everyone on his payroll? Yeah. The gangster’s girlfriend who can’t seem to get away from him? Uh-huh. The detective in love with the gangster’s girlfriend? Sure. The two henchmen in love who are met with a Shakespearean-type demise? Yap!

‘The name of a man who will pick the phone and call Chicago and New Orleans and say ‘Hey Bill, Joe is coming down for the weekend. Advance him fifty thousand’, and he hangs up the phone and the money’s advanced, protection money […]’ Diamond

Brown. Mr Brown to you. That’s the name. Richard Conte’s gangster goes up against Cornell Wilde’s Lieutenant Diamond, who has been ordered to stop investigating his many, many crimes throughout the city and beyond. He doesn’t, of course, and decides to go to Brown’s girlfriend, Susan, played by Jean Wallace, Wilde’s real-life wife at the time, whom he is love with, to try and get some information. Nothing too complicated. Now, a man like Brown can’t possibly act alone: McClure, Brian Donlevy at his most pitiful, used to be his boss and now works for him. And Fante (Lee Van Cleef) and Mingo (Earl Holliman) are Brown’s henchmen. Mean, brutal and ruthless, they go after anyone and everyone at Brown’s request. They think they’re invincible, that Brown will never turn against them, and that they’ll get out of this town scot-free. They are also in love.

‘A hundred. For Mingo too.’
’What?’
A hundred. Each.’ Fante and McClure

The Hays Code loomed large during Hollywood’s Golden Age. The rules were as conservative as you’d imagine and Joseph Breen could not have been happier about that. So filmmakers had to do what they could to go around them. Hitchcock had to make Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman break their kiss a million times during the famous balcony scene in Notorious (1946). Michael Curtiz had to make sure Jimmy Cagney got his punishment in Angels With Dirty Faces (1938). And in The Big Combo, Joseph H. Lewis tried his best to get the censors not to realize that Brown performs an… act of sorts on Susan. Off-camera, of course. You read that right, it’s on YouTube, go check it out. Between that and Fante and Mingo’s relationship, I can’t work out which one I’m more surprised made it past the censors. Now, logically, none of this was explicit. But there are obviously many hints: in the film’s opening sequence, we see Fante and Mingo running after Susan to get her to go back to the boxing match as requested by Brown. They catch her but eventually let her go, after which she slaps Mingo. Fante’s reaction, as well as Susan’s glance at him to see said reaction, is certainly eyebrow-raising. After this, Fante and Mingo are never onscreen without each other and all of their scenes have moments that leave no doubt as to their inclusion in the many essays, blog posts and articles about LGBTQ+ in Hollywood’s classic movies. They bicker, they are protective of each other, and the way Mingo looks at Fante… wowza! On top of that, they sleep shirtless next to each other. And the lines… I mean:

‘When we get out, let’s never come back, huh?’ Mingo

Mingo touches Fante’s arm… Fante looks down at it… before declaring that the cops will be looking for them in every closet. And that’s not all, but I don’t want to spoil the fun. If one were to analyze it even further, one could say that their ending perhaps falls into the ‘Bury Your Gays’ trope, though it might just be an indictment of film noir and all that goes with it. Their demise as well as their general characterization could also indicate a contemptuous look at gay characters: they’re ruthless criminals who need to be punished. But having fleshed out characters who don’t necessarily fall into stereotypes and who are just as mean and horrible as everyone else in this doomed genre, not to mention significant to the plot, is refreshing, in my opinion.

I’ve watched The Big Combo countless times. It is one of my favorite noirs, and I’m talking top 10 here. I love how flawed the characters are, the music is jazzy and cool, the action is fast-paced and exciting and the cinematography is second to none and it’s John Alton at his finest – that last shot is nothing short of visual poetry. This is actually one of my comfort noirs, if such a thing exists. And it always amazes me that, for a 1955 film, it managed to get away with so much. Granted, queer characters in classic movies have always been a thing and I’ve written about many of them over the years, especially during Pride Month. Monty Clift and John Ireland in Red River (1948), Lauren Bacall in Young Man With A Horn (1950), Marlene Dietrich in Morocco (1930) and Edward Everett Horton in pretty much everything. But two tough gangsters? And they’re sort of affectionate with each other? Well, ain’t that something!

We bid farewell to Fante and Mingo and The Big Combo. Next week’s loser couldn’t keep his unresolved resentment for his father from getting in the way of his job. The actor is Dana Andrews, the movie is Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) and the loser… is Mark Dixon.

See you on the sunny side of the street.