The Man Who Never Was |
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Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu: "Suppose I wanted to put a dead body in the sea, and let it float ashore, and have it accepted by the people who find it as the victim of an air crash at sea. What sort of body would I need?"
This film, based on a true story, tells of an elaborate plot set up by the British during World War II. Britain needs to gain control of Sicily, but it is under German control and the casualties would be enormous. Therefore, they must convince the Germans that they do not plan to land in Sicily but somewhere else instead. Lieutenant Commander Montagu (Clifton Webb) and Lieutenant Acresr (Robert Flemyng) create an elaborate, if somewhat unusual, plan to trick the Germans. They find a corpse and plant documents on it suggesting that the British plan to invade Greece, not Sicily. They dump the body off the coast of Spain, where it and the documents are discovered.
The librarian in the film is Lucy Sherwood (Gloria Grahame). Her roommate, Pam (Josephine Griffin), works for Lieutenant Commander Montagu. Pam is given the task of writing a love letter to plant on "Major William Martin", the body; Montagu thinks a personal letter will make the Major look more convincing to the Germans. But Pam is a practical, efficient sort of girl, whereas Lucy is the dreamer. Lucy dictates the letter, which is, in reality a letter to her own fiancé. For more, you'll have to watch the movie; part of the fun is watching the plan unfold.
| Cast List
Lt. Cmdr. Ewen Montagu ... (Clifton Webb) |
As you can see from the picture above, Lucy is not your stereotypical librarian. She's sultry, moody, blond, and red-lipped. If one were to be honest, Pam, her roommate fits the stereotype much better. Not because Pam is a spinster or middle-aged, but because she is efficient and conservative.
Lucy becomes engaged in the film to a young air force pilot, but his plane goes down at sea. Lucy, in fact, hears of his death in the library. She leaves the library in a daze, has an emotional break-down, and gets completely drunk. Given the circumstances, this is completely understandable.
What makes this scene unusual is that this is not the sort of behavior one usually expects from a librarian, in real-life or on film. The librarian in Wonder Man, for example, was also young and pretty but she never drank, she didn't smoke, and she certainly wasn't sultry. She was pretty but still efficient and controlled. We are not given any evidence that Lucy is particulary efficient and clearly she's not controlled. One rather gets the impression she's working in the library because it's a job, not because it's her true calling. One also rather suspects she'd happily leave once she married.