Man To Man In Road HouseIn Road House, (1948), Jefty (Richard Widmark) and Pete (Cornell Wilde) are tight. Longtime pals and working partners who own a roadside nightclub/bowling alley together. When Lily (Ida Lupino) enters the picture as the new nightclub canary, their friendship is threatened and a crazy triangle is formed.
The interesting thing is that the girl is not the cause this time, but the catalyst to the friendship's undoing, which ends in tragic violence.
Jefty is "sweet" to her while Pete is a big grouch, but it's Pete she falls for. He assumes she's just another of Jefty's cheap conquests, so he's not interested. Later, he realizes she's "different", and so he falls for her too. What goes wrong? Lily notices early on that there's something amiss with the friendship between these two men. At the bowling alley, when Jefty asks Pete to give Lily bowling lessons, Pete grumbles and protests. Then Jefty goes a bit bulldog on him until he succumbs. When Lily later points this strange "friendship" behavior out to Pete, he just laughs it off. And when the two finally do get together, only Lily is scared how Jefty will take it. She doesn't understand why Pete can't see the psychosis bubbling under Jefty's likeable surface. Pete feels bad about betraying his friend with the girl Jefty wants, yet he really isn't too concerned. He believes his friend will get past it soon enough. So why does Lily seem to know Jefty better than his best friend does? Why does she see this pathology in their friendship when Pete doesn't? Maybe it's her past experience with men, maybe it's women's intuition, or maybe it's just the objectivity of being a third party. Whatever it is, her worst fears are realized when he does go psycho on them, first with insidious revenge, and later with bloody violence. The major problem between the characters in Road House seems to lie in reading the signs. How often does this happen in many relationships between friends, lovers and strangers? Jefty wooed Lily over and over, but she gave every indication of a cold shoulder. Yet he pressed on, ignoring or failing to read the signs. Body language, facial expressions and even words had no effect. But Pete, too, was blind to "reading" the signs his long time friend and road house business partner was giving out. He was subjecting himself to ill treatment on the pretext that the other "needs" him. Almost everyone knows someone who does this. Almost all of us also knows someone who, like Jefty, obsessively pursues someone, interpreting even his or her brush-offs as a sign of encouragement. My favorite scene in Road House (and the most touching) was when Jefty brings Lily breakfast in bed, and a flower, when all she wants to do is sleep, smoke and/or be alone. She's very annoyed at his misguided attentions, but as he goes to leave, she suddenly goes tender, and thanks him for the flower. Unfortunately, he interprets this as her wanting to marry him.
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