Crane Wilbur - Film Noir Foundation

passenger in Dark Passage and a merry-go-round bystander in Strangers
on a Train).
Far more interesting, however, was the unorthodox career path
taken by the man who played Harry Marvin, the stalwart hero in
The Perils of Pauline—Crane Wilbur. As he rescued Pearl White each
week from one dangerous predicament after another, Wilbur could
scarcely have imagined that his labyrinthine career would one day
see him reap a reputation as Hollywood’s potentate of prison movies.
Yet, over a 25 year period, Crane Wilbur wrote no less than a
dozen movies all or partially set in the Big House (five of which he
also directed): Alcatraz Island (1937), Over the Wall (1938), Crime
School (1938), Blackwell’s Island (1939), Hell’s Kitchen (1939),
Roger Touhy, Gangster (1944), Cañon City (1948), The Story of
Molly X (1949), Outside the Wall (1950), Inside the Walls of Folsom
Prison (1951), Women’s Prison (1955), and House of Women
(1962), along with several others dealing with parole and probation.
Other writers soared to arguably more exalted heights with movies
set behind bars: among them Frances Marion (The Big House
[1930], Academy Award winner for Best Adapted Screenplay), Seton
I. Miller (Oscar-nominated for The Criminal Code [1931], also
adapted The Last Mile [1932]), Brown Holmes (I Am a Fugitive
From a Chain Gang [1932], 20,000 Years in Sing Sing [1933], Ladies
They Talk About [1933]), Richard Brooks (Brute Force [1947])
and Virginia Kellogg (Caged [1950]). However, none of them produced
the volume of prison pictures, nor put in the personal up-theriver
legwork, as did Crane Wilbur—who is deserving of his place as
the true Shakespeare of the Slammer, the Hemingway of the Hoosegow,
the Joyce of the Joint, or (at the very least) the (Erle Stanley)
Gardner of the Greybar Hotel.
It was the Wilbur-written and -directed Inside the Walls of Folsom
Prison which, when screened at an Air Force base in West Germany
in 1952, had a profound impact on a 20-year-old Arkansasborn
Morse code intercept officer named J. R. Cash. Inspired by
the movie, Johnny Cash penned what became an immortal country
song, “Folsom Prison Blues.” Sixteen years later, Cash recorded a
hit album live at the same Northern California prison depicted in
Crane Wilbur’s film.
But Crane Wilbur was about more than just prison movies. In
fact, his best contributions to crime cinema, as a screenwriter, may
be three films set on the “outside:” He Walked by Night, Crime
Wave, and The Phenix City Story. In addition, Wilbur also wrote
House of Wax, which transformed Vincent Price from a supercilious
cad into a horror movie star. Assessing Crane Wilbur’s degree
of artistry and precise contributions to his films is difficult, since
the majority of his work from the mid-1930s forward was made in
tandem with producer Bryan Foy. However, Hollywood’s “golden
age” was, more than anything else, an era of collaborating craftsmen—and
Foy and Wilbur worked together as well as any producer
and writer (and sometimes director) ever did.
Theatrical Roots
Erwin Crane Wilber (he changed the spelling later) was born November
17, 1886, in Athens, New York—a small farming community
on the western banks of the Hudson River about 30 miles south of
Albany. His father Henry Wilber made his living building and repairing
yachts for the well-to-do families who resided in tony mansions
along the banks of the Hudson. Crane’s mother Carrie Crane was a
former actress who came from a theatrical family. Crane’s aunt was
stage actress Edith Crane, wife of the well-known actor Tyrone Power,
Sr. (Edith indirectly contributed to noir by dying prematurely in 1912,
which led her husband to remarry and produce a son by his second
wife. Tyrone Power, Jr.’s later success as a Fox box office star enabled
him to make a vanity piece entitled Nightmare Alley.)
At age six, Crane experienced the first of several personal traumas
when his father Henry committed suicide by hanging. Wilbur later
recalled that the conservative farming community never looked at his
family—already under suspicion because of their theatrical connections—the
same way again. Crane made his stage debut as an actor
in 1902, and steadily progressed into larger and larger parts. Despite
this, Wilbur always had more passion for writing than acting.
Wilbur wrote his first play at age 15 or 16. It was called Willie
Live, and told of a young man who investigates a gang of grave robbers
who are stealing bodies at night and ferrying them to their hideout,
where the cadavers are rolled from a truck down a coal chute.
The hero takes the place of one of the corpses. He then tumbles
down the chute and is accosted by the thieves, who demand his identity.
“I am Willie Live!” comes the reply. Though he produced better
works in later years, it is obvious that the teenage Crane Wilbur
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