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his cigarette before pledging his undying love, “I wanna marry you more
than anything else in the world only . . Dorrie says. “It doesn’t matter,”
but Bud is quietly adamant, “He’s your father . . . What he thinks is
important.” Although it’s not immediately clear why Bud cares so much
about what Dorrie’s father thinks, it’s obvious from the framed highschool article — the headline reads “Taft HS’s Triple Threat/Best
Dancer/Most Ambitious/Most Likely to Succeed” — that, unlike the redjacketed Jim Stark (James Dean) in Rebel without a Cause (1955), Bud’s
no rebel — he’s a go-getter.
Later, when Bud returns home, he tells his mother, who’s busy
ironing, that he doesn’t want any dinner before picking up a piece of mail
and going straight to his room. Mrs. Corliss —played by Mary Astor, the
treacherous femme fatale to Bogart’s private detective Sam Spade in The
Maltese Falcon (1941) — is a redhead like June (Rhonda Fleming) and
Dorothy Lyons (Arlene Dahl) in Slightly Scarlet and her skirt is copper,
the same color as the convertible Dorrie drove off in at the end of the
previous sequence. (Bud and Dorrie stopped by a drugstore to get some
pills for her upset stomach). 5