Welcome to the 3rd installment of Drag City Raceway’s Theatre of the Less Obvious, a series of posts taking a look at some of the cool car and racing-themed movies of the past that have slipped through the cracks. This time around I’ve got one that I bet even a lot of die-hards have never seen, and I say that because I am a die-hard, and I had never even heard of this movie until about 2 months ago, when I came across it while doing research for this very series of blog posts! Talk about unearthing a rare gem!
While it is true that the racing sequence is rear-loaded and the best part of the film is the last few minutes, there’s still plenty to look at and plenty to enjoy on the journey to get there, including one of two screen appearances by a very interesting historic racing car that has ties to both Europe and America. While not offering anything new or different in the drama department, this is a well-made film with a solid cast, and one that clearly deserves a lot more recognition than it has received!
Racer Nick Jargin (Cornell Wilde) couldn’t be beat, but despite his successful career, he is a man with a demon in his past: he retired from racing after nearly causing the death of his younger brother at a hairpin bend on a circuit. Now the owner of a hipster restaurant and night-club where he trades on his fame as a driver to draw patrons, his brother, now partially brain-damaged, works part time at said night club as a waiter and bartender, but he’s also moonlighting on the side. Jargin is the target of vicious “sports writer” Mike Houston (Gerald Milton), who seems a lot more like a modern day muckraking paparazzi, who has a history of harassing Nick and attempting to get him to return to to the track to challenge the new golden boy of racing, Tony Botari (Jack Kosslyn). Botari is racing for Jargin’s old team owner Danny Rhinegold (Arthur Franz), and although on the surface Jargin and Rhinegold seem cordial, there is clearly bad blood between them, because Rhinegold had eyes for Jargin’s girlfriend Kelly James (Jean Wallace). He introduced Nick and Kelly, and when sparks flew between them, Danny was frozen out, a sort of “final straw” in what he saw as Jargin’s almost effortless winning streak.
An altercation occurs between Jargin and Rhinegold when Jargin finds that his little brother Johnny is working part time as a mechanic in Rhinegold’s racing shop, who runs a squadron of D-Type Jaguars. Johnny is helping to tune the car of none other than Tony Botari. Rhinegold and Botari decide to cook up a scheme to finally beat Jargin on the track in order to cut him down to size, and they work with Houston to goad him into agreeing to come out of retirement for one final race…on the very track where his brother wiped out years ago.
In order to do this, Nick is going to have to have a good car, and true to his indomitable form, he decides to build his own, with the help of his mechanic friend “Doc” Addams (Paul Fix), his brother Johnny, and a small team of other experts, most of whom work with Nick at his night club.
So that’s the basic plot outline; there is additional drama, such as Jean insisting that Nick marry her because she’s tired of being a mere “fiancé,” and there is a lot of tension between Nick and his mother (Mary Astor in an excellent performance), who blames Nick for the accident that left her other son damaged. In this, we learn a lot about Nick’s personality: that he always had to win, and he almost always did, but that he did some damage to his friends and family on his way to the top that, perhaps, he himself couldn’t see. But where things get really interesting is when Nick and his team of mechanics start designing and building the car he intends to use to beat Botari…
The 300SL(S) “Porter Special”
My reaction to this film was just what you would expect from a gear head: “What is that awesome car?” When Jargin’s new rig appears on the track for testing, I couldn’t identify it, so naturally I had to go digging, and found out the story of a fascinating historic race car! The car featured as Jargin’s racer in this film is the “Porter Special,” a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL cloaked with a custom-made aluminum body that was fabricated by Southern California body technician and racer Chuck Porter after the car was wrecked when it was nearly new!
Porter initially installed a Buick V8 in the chassis, but after a short time switched this over to a small block Chevy, and as such, the “Porter Special” became a celebrity at local area tracks for years, being raced by the likes of Bob Edmison, Bill Krause, and Ken Miles, among others. Porter dubbed his car the “300SLS” and joked that the second “S” stood for “scrap.” Often referred to as the “Porter Special” or as the “Mercedes-Corvette,” the car was initially painted in the same metallic silver as the original gullwing coupe it was based on. For its inclusion in “The Devil’s Hairpin,” it was repainted white and a new grille was installed, giving it a slightly different appearance, and this is the car we see in the movie!
In one of the early test scenes, you can clearly see the Rudge knock-off wheels, and a very brief interior shot shows the steering wheel, shift lever, and gauges, which are the giveaway: even without the 3-pointed star logo on the center of the wheel, those parts are unmistakable: it is clearly a 300SL!
The the big race day finally comes, and Jargin is up against a field of the world’s best sports cars of the day: Jaguar XKs, Ferrari Monzas, Porsche Spyders, AC Ace-Bristols, and Aston Martins all appear on the track, but it’s Botari’s dark blue #133 D-Type that Nick is gunning for. It’s a clash of titans, and as the racers approach the dangerous bend of the title, we get to see who has nerves of steel and who will back down at the last second!
The Connection to “On The Beach” (1959)
The same car was used in another, far better-known film following the conclusion of the filming of “The Devil’s Hairpin.” The Porter Special also appears in the harrowing racing sequence of the 1959 film “On The Beach.” Though filmed in Australia, the racing sequence was actually filmed at Riverside Raceway in California in 1958. It is an intense race which features the sad destruction of several interesting cars, but although the focus is on the Ferrari 750 Monza driven by the main character played by Fred Astaire, you can see the Porter Spl in the race, painted white and looking very similar to the way it appears in “The Devil’s Hairpin.”
“On The Beach” is a very depressing film; I’ve tried watching it twice and never been able to get through it, which is odd, since your humble blogger is rarely so sensitive, and I tend to like the “post-apocalyptic” genre, but there’s something about the hopelessness of the situation in this movie that’s really a downer, even though it features an A+ cast and is beautifully made. Although several cool cars lose their lives in what is presented as “humanity’s last sports car race,” the Portal Special survives, and it went on to have many more years on the track in California. You can see the race sequence in its entirety on YT.
The Continuing history of The Porter Special
Shortly after the two movies were made, the car was repainted bright yellow and was raced by driver Bob Edmison in 1961, and then by Peter Culkin, who took it up to NorCal in 1962.
The car was reportedly capable of doing better than 180 MPH on a long straightaway with the full-race Chevy V8 engine, which had to have made it one of the world’s fastest cars in its day! Sometime around the turn of the century the car was purchased by a German enthusiast and “taken home”, as it were, and underwent an extensive years-long restoration, including the installation of an original-style Mercedes 3-liter inline 6 just as it originally had. While I suppose that’s “kosher,” I personally have some mixed feelings about it, as I would have preferred the car stay in the States and kept its Chevy powerplant as an artifact of California racing history. Regardless, there’s no faulting the quality of the work that was done on it. The car began appearing regularly at vintage racing events all over the world in the early 2000’s.
There is a somewhat sad postscript from 2015, as the car made headlines at the historic races at Goodwood that year when it crashed into the rear of an equally priceless Lister Jaguar, badly damaging both cars. Fortunately the damaged machine was taken back to Germany and more years were devoted to bringing it back to health, and as of 2022 it has been seen on vintage racing circuits again, although its appearances since that event appear to be much fewer and farther between.
An unforgettable theme!
And so, in the end? Well of course Nick Jargin proposes to Kelly James, and of course she accepts! He re-enters retirement as a married man who has faced some of his demons. More than that I won’t say-I don’t want to spoil everything for you!-but one last thing about this film deserves a mention, and that is its very unusual opening theme music, a piece written by known Hollywood musician Van Cleave. Appropriately called “Music of Motors,” this seems like an early example of industrial music, as it features the modulated sounds of roaring engines to make a tune. This may not seem like such a big deal now, but back in 1957 it must have seemed extremely avant garde, and was likely difficult to make with the analog equipment of the time!
SO, where can you see it?
“The Devil’s Hairpin” is not an easy movie to find! As far as I can tell it has never been released on home video, not on VHS or DVD, which is a real shame; it must have been fairly well regarded at the time, being presented in color and written, produced and directed by Cornell Wilde, who was a major star in the post-war years. Why it has been so forgotten is a mystery, but its going to take some effort to track it down. I am going to risk pasting a link here to where I watched the movie, but beware! This site is merely a viewer which plays the video from a server geo-located in the Russian Federation, so view this at your own risk, and I would strongly advise that you do NOT click on the link at the bottom of the resultant page inviting you to “download this film!”
Even if it is served from a sketchy source, the quality of the transfer is pretty good; it shows some age-expected film damage and the color is not as vibrant as it probably once was, but it is complete and clear. This may be the only way you’re going to get to see it, and it is worth a look for fans of vintage racing, which, dear readers, I strongly suspect, you are!
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