Want to see the prototype for Orange Is the New Black? In the 1950 Caged, Eleanor Parker played the naive young woman plunged into a harsh women’s prison filled with hard-bitten fellow prisoners and compassion-free guards. Parker was nominated for an acting Oscar, but her performance pales next to that of Hope Emerson, whose electric portrayal of a hulking guard also got an Oscar nod.
Caged is a Message Picture, editorializing that the prison experience unnecessarily molds inmates into criminals. Although its trailer, with its breathlessly sensationalistic narration, makes the film appear overwrought, Caged is edgy enough to have currency with modern sensibilities. Parker’s newbie is NOT innocent and wrongly convicted – as the movie opens, she’s one of the crew in a bank heist. She experiences hellish brutalization behind bars. There’s also behind-the-bars pregnancy, inmate suicide and implied lesbianism. The ending, when the protagonist is finally released and can choose between going straight or going bad, is filled with the cynicism and despair of film noir.
Eleanor Parker hit every note on her character’s slide from the Good Kid who made a dumb mistake all the way down to a Hard Case seasoned with hopelessness. (In a stunningly competitive year, she lost the Oscar to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday, along with Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard, and both Bette Davis and Anne Baxter for All About Eve.)
But this is Hope Emerson’s movie. Emerson draws the audience’s attention every moment that she’s on-screen. Her prison matron is not just harsh but sadistic. Emerson was able to radiate meanness with every glance, and took full advantage of her dominating physicality. It’s a performance that still works today.
This was the apex of Emerson’s career. She stood a big-boned 6″2″, and then as now, Hollywood didn’t have many parts for an actress with her appearance. She started on Broadway in her early 30s (as an Amazon in Lysistrata), was successful in radio voice-over work and managed 43 screen credits. She was 53 years old when she made Caged.
Caged also features the fine character actresses Agnes Moorehead, Jane Darwell (Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath) and Ellen Corby (Grandma Walton, here as a young woman).
Sixty-five years later, Caged might still be the best women’s prison movie ever. TCM often plays Caged, and it’s also available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Flixster.