The Red Herring Exposed - A Clue Analysis (Part 10)

Loose Thread #1 - Who is Mr. Green?

One of the stranger aspects of the movie that gets lost in the shuffle of multiple endings and slightly different scenes is the true circumstances of our hero, Mr. Green.

What we are told: Green is a State Department employee that is being blackmailed because he is secretly gay and would lose his top secret clearance, and job, if it was exposed.

What we find out: He's a gun toting, super macho, married FBI Agent working to bring down Mr. Boddy and his ring of informants.

This setup doesn't make much sense. If we accept the scenario at face value, one of Mr. Boddy's spies (Yvette, the Cook, Cop, Butler, etc.) found out that Mr. Green was gay, got enough incriminating evidence on him that it would allow for blackmail, then informed Mr. Boddy who initiated the long term blackmail. But how could that happen? To get ironclad enough evidence to blackmail someone, you would think visual proof, probably photographic but maybe a honeypot scenario, would be needed. If Green is straight then that didn't happen. Secondly, how does Green impersonate a State Department agent if he works for the FBI? Presumably the evidence against Green would have been collected before he was aware it was happening, he would have had no reason to believe he needed an undercover job at the State Department to cover his FBI roots.

One scenario that seems to be hinted at in the film is that maybe Green is a stand in. When Wadsworth is answering doors he says something to the effect of "You must be Mr. Green" after seeing Green bumbling about. We know from the end that Green is not the awkward, uncoordinated dolt he portrays himself to be for most of the movie. Is it possible that some other State Department Agent is in fact gay, has in fact been blackmailed, and is in fact a doofus and that the Mr. Green we see on the screen is simply an FBI Agent impersonating a victim to bring down Boddy? It seems highly unlikely. Mr. Boddy simply has to know what the real Mr. Green looks like. The evidence for blackmail has to be physical and incontrovertible to be effective. If you couldn't tell who it was it wouldn't work. This movie takes place in 1954 too, there was no computer trickery that could create the evidence and its doubtful that Mr. Green was willing to go to Cruising levels of undercover to create it. 

So if the proof of blackmail couldn't be faked and Mr. Green couldn't be impersonating a real victim, how did he get pulled in close enough to Mr. Boddy's group to infiltrate the dinner? Remember, in theory, Mr. Boddy is so sure of his evidence against the dinner guests he thinks he can get them to murder people, then replace them as his spies.

The Answer:

One of Mr. Boddy's spies has to have turned against him and is working for the government. Mr. Green could not have instigated the blackmail against himself on his own. That would involve faking a gay lifestyle just hoping that one of Boddy's spies notice and try and exploit it. That may never happen. But if the Cook, Cop, Butler, Yvette, etc. turned informant for the government and started bringing false info on FBI Agent Green undercover as State Department Agent Green to Boddy, then it becomes much more plausible. While photographic evidence would still not exist, other plausible, first-person information could be created by Green and the informant that would convince Boddy's and bring Green into the fold.

So which informant could it be? Who knows. Given Yvette and Mrs. Scarlett's proximity to the sex trade, its possible that Yvette could be a first person witness to some faked gay prostitute and fake Green. The movie provides no Clue that I can see however.

Up Next: The J. Edgar Hoover Call