Jeanne Bates

            I spent a lot of time on Sunday writing about my latest Food Bank Adventure.
            That night I just had one piece of toast with my egg and my beer and I flipped the egg in the pan. For all of my life I’ve loved runny egg yolk but lately for some unknown reason I’ve found it seems to turn my stomach a bit. So I fried my egg on both sides and since there was less runny yolk I only needed one piece of toast.
            I watched an episode of Peter Gunn. The newly renovated Mother’s is about to re-open, but of course Gunn still uses it as his office. An old man named Victor comes to hire Gunn to find his daughter Ellen. She’s just been released from prison after serving four years but hasn’t come home. Gunn goes to ask if Lieutenant Jacoby knows anything about Ellen. He tells him that she had worked as a companion for a rich old lady but had let her boyfriend in to rob the woman’s safe. She could have served much less time if she’d only turned in her boyfriend but she refused. The implication for what motivated Ellen to be so blindly in love with her boyfriend was that she was of below average attractiveness. It was mentioned earlier by her father when he'd first approached Gunn that Ellen “is not a pretty girl”. Gunn looked at the police file for Ellen’s arrest and in response to the picture, Gunn said, “I see what you mean!” What Ellen had was a dark scar that ran from the corner of her right lip to halfway between her eye and ear. On the street Gunn approaches a woman banging a drum in front of a Christian mission and chanting "Don't pass by friend, keep the call / Drop a coin in the drum there's food for all / Give till it hurts friend, do what‘s right / Drop a coin in the drum, you’ll sleep tonight!” He puts a bill in the drum and says, “Hello Leather!” He says, "It beats liberating wallets eh?" She answers, "I get real weary for the old scam sometimes!” "Fight it Leather!" "It's a lot to fight handsome! A lot of shivers! The minute just before you make the snatch ... it's a kick every time!” Gunn asks Leather if she remembers Ellen from prison. Leather tells him he’ll have a hard time finding her now because the state paid for her to get plastic surgery while she was inside. She tells him it was a Dr Snyder that worked her over. Gunn goes for his wallet to give Leather something extra for the information but finds it missing. She hands it to him and says, “Just tryin to keep the fingers limber!” Gunn goes to see Dr Snyder and finds two hoods working him over. Gunn fights them off. Later Snyder explains his work at the prison. He claims that it's a solid medical theory that physical unattractiveness is a definite factor in crime and criminals. It’s probably more about how society and the cops treat less unattractive people.
            I’m pretty sure the Hippocratic oath applies to the relation between plastic surgeons and their patients but Snyder had no qualms at all about telling Gunn about Ellen or even showing him her medical file. He showed Gunn the before and after picture of Ellen. Really it was Ellen without the made up scar and with make-up on. He said Ellen was his only failure because she still refused to turn in her boyfriend. He said that she would say under the anaesthetic that she would be "at Guidos". Gunn knows a pizzeria named Guidos and he goes there, where of course Guido knows him well. Ellen is there every night getting drunk by herself. He tells her that her father is going crazy waiting for her. She starts to laugh and says that her father died when she was four. Gunn immediately knows that he’s been duped. He goes to Victor and forces him to tell him why he posed as Ellen’s father. He confesses that it was Ellen's boyfriend Marty. He couldn't find her because of her new face but he wanted to still be sure that she wouldn’t rat on him. Gunn finds Marty working as a mechanic. They fight and knock stuff over as usual until Marty gets hold of a Gunn and tells Gunn about how he had control over Ellen because she was so ugly. At that point there’s a shot and we see Ellen has followed Gunn there. She shoots Marty several times until he's dead.
            Ellen was played by Jeanne Bates, who was not unattractive at all and had in fact started out as a model. She started acting in radio and on the “Whodunit” mystery show her scream was the signature opening. She played The Phantom’s girlfriend in the 1943 film serial. She played Mrs. X in David Lynch’s classic “Eraserhead".