The Spiral Staircase (1946)

Film Deets:

Director: Robert Siodmak
Screenplay: Mel Dinelli
Actresses: Dorothy McGuire, Ethel Barrymore
Category: Disability
Themes: Ableism, Eugenics

An early example of horror’s engagement with disability, Robert Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase (1946) leverages Gothic and slasher film conventions to deliver an effective feminist-laced denunciation of eugenics. Adapted from Ethel Line White’s novel Some Must Watch, the film follows Helen (Dorothy McGuire), a woman with traumatic mutism who works as a care aid for Mrs. Warren (Ethel Barrymore), the matriarchal figure whose infirmities limit her mobility. When a serial killer begins targeting women with disabilities, Helen is warned to vacate the Warren home lest she catch the attention of the killer. But when a storm prevents Helen from leaving, she is left to unravel a web of family secrets that leads her right to the killer.

In his review of the film, Bosley Crowther describes Helen as “one who senses a dread shadow hovering over her but is incapable of communicating her fears, is restrained and effectively pathetic” (35). But this framing of the character is less a reflection of the narrative and more an example of one reviewer’s inability to interrogate the constraints of patriarchy and ableism. Helen may be nonverbal but she is far from pathetic. Reflecting the era’s tension between eugenics and disability rights advocacy, the film captures both the reductive and progressive conversations around disability that were taking place on local and national levels. While the racism and ableism inherent in eugenics is obvious today, the scientific community of the 1920s embraced the practice as a means of “selective breeding” (Farber 243). In the United States, practices ranged from forced sterilization to genetic engineering to “better baby” contests held at state fairs and were framed as positive steps to ensure a healthy and fit population (Largent 99; Selden 205). And yet, the characteristics deemed to be desirable by eugenicists were almost completely informed by sexist, white supremacist, ableist thinking with people who fell outside of these narrow parameters at greater risk for abuse and deprivation of personal freedoms. For example, in North Carolina, 7,600 people from 1929 to 1973 were sterilized with women, particularly Black women, disproportionately affected (Stern). It is also worth noting that a great deal of the scholarship on eugenics being produced at this time in the United States formed the basis for the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, most notably the Nazi Euthanasia Movement, 1933–1945 (Mitchell and Snyder 857-859). It is this historical climate that informs the motivations of the film’s killer.

The reveal that Professor Albert Warren (George Brenet) is behind the murders and that his motivation is to purge the world of “imperfection” is a tidy espousing of eugenicist thinking that establishes both the killer and his mindset as deviant. We recognize Albert’s motivations as the product of a warped mind, a point underscored by Albert’s revelation of generational abuse and a desire to make his father proud by eliminating “the weak and imperfects” of the world. Yet, the women killed by Albert occupy neither of these classifications and in fact, are portrayed as independent working women with at least two women presented as sexually desirable to men. And while being able to capture the male gaze is thankfully no longer a gauge of perfection, it was to audiences of the time. Albert’s victims are fully contributing members of society, in short, who are not shown as being particularly limited by their disabilities. Nor is their sexuality cast as dangerously transgressive. It is a narrative choice that feels intentional given the socio-political conditions of when the film was released. Not only were veterans returning from the war with disabilities- a reality that no doubt fuels the film’s decision to show its characters with disabilities as necessary and functioning parts of the community- but the casting of women with disabilities as desirable and respectable challenges the era’s attempts to nationalize and militarize women’s bodies and sexuality (Hegarty 7). Because Helen is presented as capable of meeting her own needs via her employment with the Warrens and desirable based upon Dr. Parry’s romantic interest, she is not a threat to the heteronormative status quo. Rather, the limitations foisted upon her throughout the film as a result of her mutism are clearly demarcated as perceived rather than actual. The film very clearly expects the audience to align with the era’s progressive politics that saw an upswing in disability rights activism and which resulted in successes such as the founding of The American Federation of the Physically Handicapped (1940) and the codifying of National Employ the Handicapped Week (1946) by President Harry Truman. Helen inhabits the spaces created by these political successes and as such, never reads as the victim but as the heroine. Similarly, Mrs. Warren’s disability, while limiting her mobility and creating a need for caregivers, does little to impact the agency she is able to exert throughout the film. Her wealth ensures that her voice is still heard and prioritized within the household. Though it may be from her bed, it is made very clear that Mrs. Warren still calls the shots. This status is particularly evident in how Mrs. Warren bullies her nurse, emasculates her sons, and is the person the domestic staff most fears upsetting. Though she remains in bed, Mrs. Warren refuses to have her position within the household usurped. She understands her inherent power while also recognizing that Helen is still vulnerable to internalizing the judgements of those around her. So, when Mrs. Warren encourages Helen to leave the home believing Helen to be in danger, it is less a reflection of Mrs. Warren’s believing Helen vulnerable due to her mutism and more an understanding that Helen has not yet grasped that her disability does not connote weakness.

Despite multiple onscreen murders, the film’s only scream occurs during the climactic moment in which Helen attempts to flee a deranged Albert by running up a spiral staircase. Just as Albert gets Helen within his grasp, Mrs. Warren appears at the top of the staircase and shoots her son dead. 

Many scholars have read Helen’s scream as reductive and advancing the trope that women with disabilities must be “cured” in order to survive. In her excellent essay deconstructing the film, Anne Golden argues, “The diseased mind of the killer… renders the world a psychic projection of his own victimization by a hegemonic masculinity that figures sensitivity and disability as weakness. And, in the female Gothic tradition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), Helen’s release is dependent on her securing a voice to ensure her agency in the outcome of her plight” (88). But this analysis does not account for the way the film leverages silence as a means of suggesting it’s not disability that is limiting but cultural structures that prioritize patriarchal social norms. From the outset, the film is interested in using silence as a means of conveying how frequently women are not heard. Our initial introduction to Helen comes as she sits in a crowded auditorium watching a silent film as a live pianist plays. Her emotional reaction to the movie suggests that silence can be just as powerful as sound and grounds Helen in normalcy as she looks and acts just like those around her. Meanwhile, above the theater, a woman is murdered as her screams are replaced by the foreboding sounds of the piano. In both scenarios, silence is used as a way to demonstrate thwarted agency. For the murder victim, her inability to be heard by the audience suggests a disposability that is used to fuel the killer’s motivations instead of giving the character her own identity. For Helen, the silence of the theater is extended when the detective tells her that she shouldn’t be alone and instructs her to find someone, presumably a man, to accompany her home. It is telling that neither the detective nor the audience understands at this point that Helen is unable to speak. The exchange is framed in such a way that there is no expectation that she will respond. Rather, her silence in the presence of a male authority figure speaking at her is presented as the norm. The audience only learns of her mutism as she is driven back to her home by her would be suitor, Dr. Parry (Kent Smith). But this scene too underscores Helen’s limited agency as he makes assumptions that Helen is never given space to validate or reject. It is only once Helen returns home to the Warren estate that we understand that the roadblocks Helen faces stem not from her mutism but from the patriarchal and ableist structures that surround her. Helen’s various interactions with the other male and female domestic workers, as well as her interactions with her wealthy employers, demonstrate that Helen is more than capable of being understood by those around her. This knowledge reframes her earlier interactions and suggests that Helen’s silence was more a result of both men’s being more interested in hearing themselves speak than as a natural consequence of Helen’s mutism. This narrative beat is an important one because it sets up disability in the film as neither inherently limiting nor negative. And it asks the audience to adopt that view rather than the harmful and infantilizing views on disability adopted by the killer.

Helen’s survival is not tied to her becoming verbal. Indeed, she only becomes verbal once the threat has been eradicated. Her scream, which occurs after Albert is killed, serves as a denouement to the violence she has endured but it is not a necessary part of her survival. Indeed, she is shown throughout the film being unable to scream for help but is still able to evade Albert at every turn. As for Mrs. Warren, her mobility issues are always framed as potentially dangerous to her health but not impossible. In other words, she can move, it’s just painful and advisable that she doesn’t. So, in making her way to the top of the staircase, Mrs. Warren isn’t overcoming her disability as much as she is making the conscious decision to potentially sacrifice her own health to save Helen. It is also not a coincidence that this scene finds Helen on the staircase in the same position as when she looked in the mirror and experienced a disturbing daydream in which her silence restricted her ability to marry and achieve the life she desires. During this daydream, Helen sees herself without a mouth and it is clear that she is subconsciously echoing a script forced onto her by the men in her life, a point underscored by Albert’s presence behind her on the staircase. But here, Helen ignores the mirror and instead looks up to the top of the staircase where Mrs. Warren stands with a gun. But rather than seeing the limits of her disability imposed on her by others, she now sees possibility in the form of another woman with disabilities who rejects the limits imposed on her by others. Within this context, Helen’s scream isn’t about overcoming a disability to achieve “normalcy” but is instead a recognition of the patriarchal limits she now understands and is prepared to reject.

Works Cited

Farber, Steven A. “US Scientists’ Role in the Eugenics Movement (1907–1939): A Contemporary Biologist’s Perspective.” Zebrafish, vol. 5, no. 4, 2008, pp. 243-245.

Golden, Anne. “Robert Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase: Horror Genre Hybridity, Vertical Alterity, and the Avant-Garde.” Recovering 1940s Horror Cinema: Traces of a Lost Decade, edited by Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare, Charlie Ellbé, and Kristopher Woofter, Lexington Books, 2015, pp. 89-108.

Haworth, Catherine. “‘Something beneath the Flesh’: Music, Gender, and Medical Discourse in the 1940s Female Gothic Film.” Journal of the Society for American Music, vol. 8, no. 3, 2014, pp. 338–370.

Hegarty, Marilyn E. Victory Girls, Khaki-Wackies, and Patriotutes: The Regulation of Female Sexuality During World War II. NYU Press, 2008.

Largent, Mark A. Breeding Contempt: The History of Coerced Sterilization in the United States. Rutgers University Press, 2011.

Mitchell, David, and Sharon Snyder. “The Eugenic Atlantic: Race, Disability, and the Making of an International Eugenic Science, 1800–1945.” Disability & Society vol. 18, no. 7, 2003, pp. 843-864.

Selden, Steven. “Transforming Better Babies into Fitter Families: Archival Resources and the History of the American Eugenics Movement, 1908-1930.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 2005, pp. 199-225.

Stern, Alexandra. “Forced sterilization policies in the US targeted minorities and those with disabilities – and lasted into the 21st century.” Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. University of Michigan, 23 September 2020.

The Spiral Staircase. Directed by Robert Siodmak, performances by Dorothy McGuire, Ethel Barrymore, George Brent and Rhonda Fleming, RKO Radio Pictures, 1946.