Wake Up Screaming

By Audrey Stallsmith

They called it “the shooting of the century” back in the ‘50s when a woman gunned down her wealthy husband after supposedly mistaking him for a burglar in a dark hallway. Although a coroner’s jury exonerated her of any guilt in the matter, the public remained suspicious, since the husband had been threatening to divorce the wife he called a “gold digger.”

After I read a recent book about the killing, my conclusion was that the shooting probably had been an accident. After all, a thief was haunting the neighborhood at the time, keeping the local homeowners on edge, and admitted that he actually had been upstairs in the wealthy couples’ house at the time the wife fired her gun downstairs.

So, she really could have heard the suspicious noises which caused her to do so. A person who had gone hunting with her testified that she always had a bad habit of firing too quickly and blindly without knowing what she was shooting at.

However, years later, a famous author would write a thinly disguised fictional story on the subject, which caused the widow to take her own life. After a childhood spent watching her mother struggle to make a living, this woman had made it her ultimate goal to get into high society but had been shunned by that upper crust ever since the shooting. She also had been forced to relinquish custody of her children to her husband’s family, so I’m guessing that story was just the last straw.

In what could only be called poetic justice, the also social-climbing writer would be booted out of high society as well. Some other people there recognized themselves in his supposedly fictional characters—and didn’t like what he had to say about them. He would end up drinking himself to death. So, although I read the book for the mystery, I ended up feeling depressed about the mysteries of human nature instead.

Shortly after that, we watched a ‘40s film noir movie called I Wake Up Screaming, where the murder victim very much reminded me of the widow in the above case. That victim too was an attractive blonde using her good looks to work her way up in the world and hoping to become a famous actress through her new social connections. 

On her way to Hollywood, she intended to leave behind both the promoter and his friends who had made her popular as well as her more conscientious sister. She was murdered before she could do so.

What struck me in both the old crime and the old movie was that, even in the supposedly male-dominated ‘40s and ‘50s, women still had ambitions. Unfortunately, some of those ambitions weren’t the type to provide any real fulfillment.

Timothy Keller, in Judges for You, writes about people who are hollow because—just as the wealthy widow had fired her gun blindly—they shoot off their decisions without thinking. “They may have reason (represented by the head) or visceral feelings and drives (represented by the gut),” he notes, “but they don’t have hearts. They are not really choosing, but rather are being driven by their desires for powers and gain, by their fears and anger.”

He also refers to The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis, which speaks of “men without chests.” Lewis notes that “in a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. “

In other words, a society which has ceased to teach its children morals is shocked to discover that many of them have none. In fact, I’m guessing that the highest ambition for many young people today is to be trending online. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the chief motive behind many of the mass killings with which we are afflicted.

But the need for acknowledgement common to all of us is nothing new. In fact, it probably fed that ‘50s widow’s desire to be somebody, to make a name for herself even if she had to marry a wealthy man to get that name. A heartbreaking postscript to that tale, is the fact that the widow’s two sons, who were shipped off to boarding schools overseas by their grandmother, eventually both would commit suicide themselves.

In what may at first seem a complete sea change, let me add that we also watched the maritime movie The Caine Mutiny recently. In it, the other officers began to suspect the sanity of their captain and had to relieve him of his command when they thought his erratic actions were endangering the ship during a storm.

Fortunately, those officers had an intelligent attorney who was able to prove their case by making the captain fall apart on the witness stand. But, once they had been exonerated, that lawyer turned on his own clients with a searing accusation.

It had been their failure to support their captain as they should have which had caused the problem, he pointed out. Once they began to suspect he was suffering from battle fatigue and increasing paranoia, they should have done everything they could to help him hold things together. Instead, they had made his paranoia worse since, in his case, people really were plotting against him.

These days, we in the Christian church also appear to be failing the people who need our help the most. In fact, we are the ones who seem to have become paranoid and defensive about some shadowy faction being out to get us. I say, “So what?” and “Tough cookies!” Ever since the lions of Rome, that always has been the case.

The Christians back then didn’t let that keep them from spreading their good news. They had the secret of the only One who can provide true fulfillment to the hollow, by “fillment” with his Spirit. And they knew that the rest of the world needed to hear it. Granted, those first Christians weren’t any more perfect than we are, so the apostles had to constantly remind them that it was their responsibility to bear other people up rather than tearing them down.

We also should help those still insanely pursuing empty goals to see where they are going wrong rather than fighting them as if they were an enemy. Or joining in that unthinking pursuit, as those who promote a prosperity gospel seem to do, which James points out makes us adulterers—unfaithful to God.

After all, as Paul advises in Galatians 5:26, once we are confident of Christ’s love for us and have his spirit within us, “we won’t need to look for honors and popularity, which lead to jealousy and hard feelings.” Instead, we can concentrate on lifting others instead of ourselves.

As for the actress in the noir movie, it turned out that she hadn’t been killed by the promoter or his friends as one might have expected, but by the manager in her apartment building house who had appeared to treat her with contempt while she still was a waitress. It apparently only was after she became somebody that he decided he had to have her and couldn’t tolerate her rejection of him.

The kind of hollowness exhibited by both the perpetrator and victim in that film, as well as by the previously mentioned widow and those with whom she was associated, is all too familiar today. And it should be enough to cause all of us to wake up, not screaming, but scrambling to do something about it.