One wig. Many heads.
Same chair, same perfume, same anklet.
“There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.”
“How fast was I going, officer?”
“I’d say around ninety.”
“Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.”
“Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.”
“Suppose it doesn’t take.”
“Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.”
“Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.”
“Suppose you try putting it on my husband’s shoulder.”
“That tears it.”
She was a tramp from a long line of tramps.
“I want you to be nice to me, like the first time you came to the house.”
“What if they did hang me? It’s better than going on this way.”
“I suppose you have to think of everything in your business.”
“Straight down the line.”
“I hope I’ve got my face on straight.”
I was thinking about that dame upstairs, and the way she had looked at me, and I wanted to see her again, close, without that silly staircase between us.
“It’ll be the train, Walter, just the way you want it. Straight down the line.”
“Yes, I’m afraid. But not of Keyes. I’m afraid of us. We’re not the same anymore. We did it so we could be together but instead of that, it’s pulling us apart, isn’t it, Walter?”
“We’re both rotten. Only you’re a little more rotten.”
“It’s me I’m talking about. I don’t want to be left out of it. We have gone through with it, Walter. The tough part is all behind us. We just have to hold on now and not go soft inside. Stick close together the way we started out…I loved you, Walter, and I hated him. But I wasn’t going to do anything about it. Not until I met you. You planned the whole thing. I only wanted him dead.”
“This is it, Walter. I’m shaking like a leaf. But it’s straight down the line for both of us.”
“I’m not asking you to buy anything. Just hold me close.”
Barton Keyes gives this the max payout
“We’re both rotten. Only you’re a little more rotten.”
could they work some CGI movie magic and replace Fred MacMurray with that goldfish? I know you shouldn’t tamper with art from History but I think it would help
give Barbara Stanwyck a little something more to work with and all
oh COME ON he was perfect as Neff you’re just trying to get me to fight with you
This is hilarious. What a fantastic tribute to the wiggiest wig to ever wig its way across the silver screen.
When I introduced my partner to Double Indemnity I had to give him the Wig Talk beforehand. Like, okay there WILL BE a Wig. It is a terrible Wig. An obvious Wig. You need to accept this Wig, embrace it and make your peace with it, so you can fully enjoy everything else this film has to offer. He still made a shocked face when he first made the acquaintance of the Wig, but thanks to my expert coaching, was still able to enjoy the film.
All of these spoiled, rich, be-wigged youths have the BEST stuck-up faces, but the last youth is giving me a haughty look that penetrates my very SOUL.
When your mom’s the first professional female painter in England you can afford to look that stuck up. (Mary Beale fan 4 life.)
Is there a name for that general style? A googling for “Little Lord Fauntleroy” seems promising.
Little Lord Fauntleroy was one of the tapes we owned on Betamax.
That’s right, we had Betamax. And we watched Little Lord Fauntleroy over and over and over. That and the Star Wars trilogy, and Urban Cowboy. Then cable TV was invented, and we could finally rewatch whatever was on HBO incessantly instead.
(Goddamn but my parents had odd purchasing criteria, for all that they were total early adopters of everything.)
Double Indemnity is never far from my mind, nor is that patently false blonde wig that I love so much. I literally just tweeted this: “Never forget that #DoubleIndemnity’s femme fatale was originally named Phyllis Nirdlinger. ‘Your bra bomb better work…'”
[Johnny from “Airplane!” voice] It happened to Barbara Stanwyck!!
One is not born, but rather becomes, a wig.
I quite like the kid leaning jauntily in the satin three-piece suit (those three pieces being jacket, cape, and coulottes, of course).
*swoons*
She’s fucking perfect.
I feel a last minute Halloween costume coming on!! http://wigs.stagesupply.com/the-1940s/40s-barbara…
Well, now I know that the most terrifying part of Double Indemnity is the knowledge that they’ve been dyeing and re-dyeing that wig for centuries.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: Babs Stanwyck was one fierce dame.
Barbara Stanwyg