The Lonely Heart
Jared Leto, Salma Hayek

In Lonely Hearts, Salma Hayek plays overweight nurse Martha Beck, a woman who along with her boyfriend Raymond Fernandez (Jared Leto), was possibly responsible for murdering up to17 women in the late 1940s. While not a rotund as the 250-pound Beck, Salma gives a deadpan performance of what it must be like for a woman to be so needy that she is willing to go along with her boyfriend’s crimes. The press dubbed them The Lonely Heart Killers, and the only thing that is surprising is that it took Hollywood five decades to get their story on the big screen. Sex, voodoo, personal ads, and murder, a Jerry Springer fantasy show and they were all present in the lives of Fernandez and Beck.
Martha, due to a glandular problem, looked and had the sexual of drive of an adult by the age of ten. This condition also made her extremely overweight and the recipient of classmates’ taunts and jokes. This treatment, along with an abusive mother, caused her to withdraw into herself. Still, she was bright enough to graduate first in her class in nursing school, but the only work she could find was in a Florida nursing home. After a few months, Martha, trying to recreate herself, moved to California in 1942. She worked at an army hospital during the day and was a bar hound at night, one of those lonely girls found in almost every dive that thinks they will be a little less lonely by going home with some man. One of these ships in the night left her pregnant. Confronting the soldier, the young man tried to kill himself rather than spend a lifetime with her. So, she returned to Florida, very pregnant and alone. She told her family and friends that she had married a naval officer and even wore a wedding ring as proof. To cover up her lie, she had a telegram sent to herself announcing that her husband had been killed in action. That spring, her daughter Willa Dean was born. A few months later she was pregnant again. This time the father, a bus driver named Alfred Beck, married her. It lasted six months. Unemployed and with two kids to support, Martha dove into a fantasy world of glossy magazines, romance novels, and afternoon movies. She dreamed that some day her prince would come and save her from her loneliness and condition in life. In 1946, she finally got a job at the Pensacola Hospital for children. It was a co-workers joke, a gag ad in the lonely hearts column, that brought Fernandez into her life.
Raymond Fernandez spent the first two decades of his life in Hawaii until World War II broke out. Leaving behind a wife and son, Fernandez served with Spain’s merchant marines and was even a spy for the British government. Returning home on a freighter in 1945, he suffered an accident that changed his life forever. While trying to climb up on deck, the hatch door he was climbing through came crashing down on his head resulting in severe brain damage. He spent the next four months in the hospital. When he was released, everyone who knew him claimed he was a different person – moody and distant. Making his way to Alabama, Fernandez was arrested for stealing clothes from the ship’s storeroom, a crime that did not even make sense to him. He did one year in the federal pen in Tallahassee for it. While in prison, he was introduced to the world of voodoo and the occult. Convinced that this magic gave him a power over women, he read everything he could about the religion, especially the book Black Republic which gave descriptions of human sacrifices and tortures as part of the practices. He believed that with just his mind he could make love with women over a great distance and numerous female pen pals believed him. Moving in with his sister in Brooklyn, the young man spent days in his room writing to women who had placed lonely hearts ads. Once he gained a woman’s trust, he would steal whatever he could and then disappear. One of the women he wrote was Jane Thompson, a woman newly separated from her husband and ripe for the pickings. They even took a European cruise together on her dime. Things were going so well that he even took her to meet the woman he was still legally married to. Something happened on the trip, nobody knows for sure, but Jane was found dead of unknown causes in her hotel room. Raymond showed up in New York a short time later with a forged last will and testament and moved into Jane’s apartment. The whole time he continued to correspond with dozens of women. One of them was Martha Beck.
Martha had got only one reply from her lonely hearts ad and it was Raymond. He informed her that he was a successful businessman from Europe who had recently come to America. He fretted about how his apartment was much too big and that he hoped to share it with a wife someday. Martha carried his letter everywhere and read it to almost everyone she knew. Thus began the whirlwind correspondence. After awhile, Fernandez asked for a lock of her hair to perform his sexual voodoo ritual. She was thrilled. Finally, he arranged to meet her at a nearby Florida train station. Martha, extremely insecure about her weight, was relieved that her white knight seemed not to notice. Raymond, had her wrapped around his finger. As Fernandez continued to scheme, Martha was head over heels, walking in the clouds in love, especially because he fulfilled her sexually for the first time in her life. He left to return to New York and she began telling everyone she was going to marry him. Her friends even prepared a shower for her. Not wanting to get married, Fernandez sent her a dear Jane letter. She responded by trying to kill herself and Fernandez agreed to let her visit him in New York. They spent 2 glorious weeks together. When informed that he did not want kids in his life, she packed her children up and dropped them off at the Salvation Army. Having Jane’s apartment to themselves, Raymond told Martha all about his lonely hearts scams. In for a penny, in for a pound, she agreed to help him fleece his next victim. That victim was retired teacher, Esther Henne. With Martha in tow as his sister-in-law, Raymond traveled to Pennsylvania and married Esther. The new couple, and Martha, returned to their New York apartment where he tried to get her to sign over her pension and life insurance. A short time later, Esther returned to New York, minus a car and several hundred dollars. After Esther came Myrtle Young of Arkansas. A drugged up Myrtle, who had to be assisted by police off the bus, returned to Little Rock. She died the next day in a Little Rock Hospital. With the funds dwindling, they found their next victim in 66-year-old widow Janet Fay. The religious Fay, agreed to meet Raymond. Soon he proposed marriage and Janet accepted. Janet cleaned out her bank accounts of more than $6000. The newlyweds took up residence in the new apartment in Long Island, along with his “sister” Martha. What happened their first evening together is not clear, what is clear is Martha killed the newest Mrs. Fernandez. She was killed with a ball-peen hammer and choked with a scarf. Her body was put in a large truck and later buried in the cellar of a house they rented.
Next on their radar was a young widow named Delphine Downing of Grand Rapids, Michigan and her child. After a fight, they doped up the widow with sleeping pills. The child, sensing something was wrong, began to cry. Fernandez strangled the child into unconsciousness. He then got a pistol and shot the mother in the head. Looting the house, Martha then drowned the child. Instead of leaving town, they decided to go to the movies. Returning to the house, they were just getting ready to leave when the police knocked on the door. Suspicious neighbors had called the police. What followed was a 73-page confession and a few decades later, this movie.  While the movie departs from the story I detailed above, making it more a detective/police Law & Order drama, this is one of three or four great true crime dramas coming out this holiday season.  Salma, should get a nomination for best actress for the thing.

Verdict: A Solid Drama