The Life That Late He Led

It was on my second viewing of RKO ‘s 1947 film noir They Won’t Believe Me that one scene stood out. A brief one, of the film’s protagonist, Larry Ballantine (Robert Young), waiting at a roadside stop for the bus bringing his girlfriend. It’s almost a throwaway; a setup for a squalid meeting between two conspiring lovers—one of whom (that being Larry) is married—who plan on absconding to Reno with stolen dough. But on this viewing I saw in this scene something…different, something meaningful. I think it’s how Young performs it: Smoking and strolling, with a loose-louche stride, forehead wrinkling in sunlight (it’s filmed outdoors) as he peers down the road. Young’s body language here says a lot about Larry, about his careless, dance-on-the-edge-of-a-dime outlook. Larry smokes and strolls as if his whole life is still ahead of him. Yet it’s really slipping away, in what is a tawdry, last-ditch attempt to gain what he wants—an Easeful Life. That being one of no effort, no consequences,…