Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

Figure 9. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
The moral ambiguity that exists in most noir protagonists is completely absent from
Ralph Cotter, despite his evil nature totally eclipsing the rest of the cast and making him a
vivid portrait of the noir villain. However, his fellow inmate, Jinx Raynor (Steve Brodie),
is much closer to the noir type as he shows signs of weakness and uncertainty and does not
know exactly where he stands between his criminal urges and fear of retribution, so
common in noir characters. Holiday Caldwell cannot be considered a classic femme fatale
of film noir as she is neither a predictable stereotype nor is she as calculating or
manipulative as other powerful portrayals of dominant women, as I will show in Part III.
In conclusion, Horace McCoy may not have been a most appreciated hard-boiled
writer in his own country (he actually gave up on Black Mask and stopped writing for the
magazine), but he certainly helped to define the hard-boiled style of the thirties. The same
happened about his experience in Hollywood – McCoy wrote various screenplays for the
big screen over two decades but they were by no means all praised. “These bastards never
give me a shot at the A pics” (Wilt 1991:38), as he once complained about the B-movies he
worked on. His two major books – No Pockets in a Shroud and I Should Have Stayed
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