If any doubts linger about the star power that Marilyn Monroe could generate, Don't Bother To Knock should allay them. Her performance as Nell, the hotel babysitter with the badly scrambled psyche, is utterly riveting, so strong and eerily accurate it overwhelms everything else about the movie. While she for the most part persists in her breathy, Betty-Boop delivery, her posture and visage express unimaginable hurt.
Admittedly, this begs the question of whether it was a performance, or whether the part drew out of Monroe foreshocks of malaise which, we know with benefit of hindsight, would culminate, 10 years later, in her death by her own hand. (Another portrayal of an unstable woman the year before drew its power from an actress whose own personality would come to be fragmented as well: Vivian Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire).
The movie keeps its action within the confines of the McKinley, a Not-So-Grand Hotel in Manhattan whose lounge curiously sports a Wild-West theme. Amid the painted cowboys and cacti, chanteuse Ann Bancroft waits for airline pilot beau Richard Widmark, to whom she's just sent a Dear John letter.
But upstairs the real action commences. A couple in town for an awards banquet engages Monroe as baby-sitter through her uncle, self-important elevator operator Elisha Cook, Jr. Following their departure, it becomes clear that she may not have been the most prudent choice for watching over their young daughter. She starts nibbling the chocolates she lied about never eating and playing dress-up in the mother's gowns, perfume (`Liaison') and jewelry.
Through the open window, Widmark, on rebound, spots her vamping around and initiates a courtship of telephone calls and Venetian-blind signals. Finally, he shows up with a bottle of rye. Monroe enters into a psychic time-warm and mistakes him for the fiancé with whom she spent one night in a hotel (presumably reminiscent of the McKinley), the night before his plane went down in the Pacific. Soon the little girl is bound and gagged, and all hell breaks loose....
Don't Bother To Knock gets marginalized as a minor film even a minor noir but Daniel Taradash's script, facile in some of its microcosmic doings (like the side-story of Bancroft and Widmark), creates a strong and touching central character in Monroe. Though she was enjoyable in many of the funny/sexy roles that made her a legend, she may never have been more affecting than in her early roles in noir, also-starring in Clash by Night and starring in Niagara. But in Don't Bother To Knock she's unforgettable a sad waif who kindles chaos wherever she walks.
Admittedly, this begs the question of whether it was a performance, or whether the part drew out of Monroe foreshocks of malaise which, we know with benefit of hindsight, would culminate, 10 years later, in her death by her own hand. (Another portrayal of an unstable woman the year before drew its power from an actress whose own personality would come to be fragmented as well: Vivian Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire).
The movie keeps its action within the confines of the McKinley, a Not-So-Grand Hotel in Manhattan whose lounge curiously sports a Wild-West theme. Amid the painted cowboys and cacti, chanteuse Ann Bancroft waits for airline pilot beau Richard Widmark, to whom she's just sent a Dear John letter.
But upstairs the real action commences. A couple in town for an awards banquet engages Monroe as baby-sitter through her uncle, self-important elevator operator Elisha Cook, Jr. Following their departure, it becomes clear that she may not have been the most prudent choice for watching over their young daughter. She starts nibbling the chocolates she lied about never eating and playing dress-up in the mother's gowns, perfume (`Liaison') and jewelry.
Through the open window, Widmark, on rebound, spots her vamping around and initiates a courtship of telephone calls and Venetian-blind signals. Finally, he shows up with a bottle of rye. Monroe enters into a psychic time-warm and mistakes him for the fiancé with whom she spent one night in a hotel (presumably reminiscent of the McKinley), the night before his plane went down in the Pacific. Soon the little girl is bound and gagged, and all hell breaks loose....
Don't Bother To Knock gets marginalized as a minor film even a minor noir but Daniel Taradash's script, facile in some of its microcosmic doings (like the side-story of Bancroft and Widmark), creates a strong and touching central character in Monroe. Though she was enjoyable in many of the funny/sexy roles that made her a legend, she may never have been more affecting than in her early roles in noir, also-starring in Clash by Night and starring in Niagara. But in Don't Bother To Knock she's unforgettable a sad waif who kindles chaos wherever she walks.