Black & White and Chic All Over
Frank Sinatra and Edward G. Robinson star in 1959’s “A Hole in the Head,” directed by Frank Capra.
Frank Sinatra and Edward G. Robinson were both born Dec. 12. So, on Friday, TCM is running a b’day tribute to EGR. And getTV is celebrating Sinatra’s 99th birthday with a programming marathon and Twitter party.
By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington
The Film Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). All movies below are from the schedule of TCM, which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).
Pick of the Week
“The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1946, Tay Garnett). Sunday, Dec. 14; 6 a.m. (3 a.m.). With Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway and Hume Cronyn.
Lana Turner, John Garfield and Cecil Kellaway are the players in the “Postman” love triangle.
In the opening of “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” a sign reading “MAN WANTED” flashes at us twice. This man, John Garfield as it happens, is really wanted. But you wouldn’t know it from Lana Turner’s imperious entrance.
She drops a tube of lipstick, then deigns to let him pick it up and return it to her. He decides to let her get it herself. She’s unruffled and he’s hooked. In a way, these first few minutes of the film foreshadow the sexual power play between Garfield’s Frank and Turner’s Cora.
Read the full review here.
Friday, Dec. 12
4:15 p.m. (1:15 p.m.): “Kid Galahad” (1937, Michael Curtiz). In this archetypal boxing-gangsters crime drama, a bumpkin bellhop (Wayne Morris) with big natural prize-fighting talent, tangles with a wily promoter (Edward G. Robinson), a mean mobster (Humphrey Bogart) and a true-blue dame (Bette Davis). One of those ’30s movies that late-night TV audiences loved. Later remade by Phil Karlson as an Elvis Presley vehicle, “Kid Galahad” was a major prize winner at the 1937 Venice Film Festival.
Saturday, Dec. 13
12 p.m. (9 a.m.): “Gaslight” (1944, George Cukor). Set in foggy Victorian gas-lit London, this is the best of all the melodramas and noirs where a bad husband tries to drive his wife insane. With Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten, Angela Lansbury and Dame May Whitty.
A distraught Tippi Hedren confronts a wary Sean Connery in “Marnie.”
2 p.m. (11 a.m.): “Marnie” (1964, Alfred Hitchcock). With Sean Connery, Tippi Hedren, Diane Baker and Bruce Dern.
Sunday, Dec. 14
3:30 a.m. (12:30 a.m.): “Blowup” (1966, Michelangelo Antonioni). With David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles and The Yardbirds. Reviewed in FNB on June 19, 2014.
Tuesday, Dec. 16
4:15 a.m. (1:15 a.m.): “The Sea Wolf” (1941, Michael Curtiz). Jack London’s philosophical sea-going melodrama about vicious cargo-ship captain Wolf Larsen (Edward G. Robinson). Larsen is an egghead fascist and brutal autodidact who’s going blind and crazy as he toys with his crew and his passengers (John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Barry Fitzgerald and Alexander Knox).
With its noirish cast, writer (Robert Rossen) and director, this is probably the best of many film versions of London’s dark tale. The movie seethes with gangsterish menace and obvious parallels to then-contemporary WWII conflicts.
Wednesday, Dec. 17
“Side Street” was the second noir to feature young lovers played by Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell.
7:15 a.m. (4:15 a.m.): “Dial 1119” (1950, Gerald Mayer). Crisp little B-thriller about a barful of New York City types held captive by a maniac. With Marshall Thompson, Andrea King, Sam Levene and Keefe Brasselle.
1 p.m. (10 a.m.): “Mystery Street” (1950, John Sturges). A good, smart police procedural, set partly at Harvard University, with a homicide cop and forensic scientist (Ricardo Montalban and Bruce Bennett), trying to crack a murder with sexual overtones. Co-starring Elsa Lanchester, Sally Forrest, Jan Sterling and Marshall Thompson. Written by Sydney Boehm (“The Big Heat”).
4:15 p.m. (1:15 p.m.): “Side Street” (1950, Anthony Mann). The postman rings too often here too, as Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell, the two tenderly romantic, stunningly photogenic stars of Nick Ray’s love-on-the-run noir classic “They Live by Night,” are rematched for one of Anthony Mann’s best B-noirs. Granger is a financially strapped postal delivery guy who makes one slip and swipes money that turns out to be the property of some particularly murderous criminals. O’Donnell is his lovely and loyal wife. The stellar gallery of crooks, cops and bystanders lurking around them includes James Craig, Paul Kelly, Jean Hagen and Charles McGraw. The cast, Sydney Boehm’s taut script, the evocative New York City location photography (by Joseph Ruttenberg) and the full-throttle, exciting action set-pieces make this “B” special. (Also see our FNB Farley Granger piece on April 4, 2011.)
By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington
The Film Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). All movies below are from the schedule of TCM, which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).
Pick of the Week
Happy Birthday, Otto Preminger (1905-1986)
Friday, Dec. 5
During the filming of “Angel Face,” Robert Mitchum bonded with Jean Simmons when he came to her defense against Preminger’s mistreatment.
His nickname was “Otto the Ogre.” He was one of the most colorful and feisty of all the star Golden Age Hollywood directors. His verbal abuse of actors, including beautiful actresses and children, was legendary.
But Otto Preminger – known for his hot temper, thick German accent, bald bullet head, defiance of taboos and long camera takes – was also one of the czars of film noir in the 1940s and early ’50s, when he directed classics like “Laura,” “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and “Angel Face.” Later on, he made one of the best of all trial dramas, 1959’s “Anatomy of a Murder,” and directed the neglected 1965 British thriller “Bunny Lake is Missing.”
Read the rest of the story here.
Gene Tierney and Vincent Price size each other up in Otto Preminger’s “Laura.”
6:15 a.m. (3:15 a.m.): “The Human Factor” (1970). Preminger’s last film – a faithful adaptation of Graham Greene’s dark, knowing novel about a British defector/putative spy (Nicol Williamson) – has a good, smart script, inspired by the Kim Philby case, written by playwright Tom Stoppard. The top cast includes Derek Jacobi, Richard Attenborough, Iman, John Gielgud and Robert Morley. But it suffers from a parsimonious budget and Otto’s declining film fortunes.
8:15 a.m. (5:15 a.m.) “Advise and Consent” (1962). With Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Don Murray, Walter Pidgeon, Gene Tierney, Burgess Meredith and Franchot Tone. Reviewed in FNB on Dec. 4, 2013.
12:45 p.m.: (9:45 a.m.): “The Man with the Golden Arm” (1955) As a man struggling to give up his heroin habit, Frank Sinatra leads a superb cast in this riveting adaptation of Nelson Algren’s novel. Kim Novak plays his ex-girlfriend. Sinatra earned a Best Actor Oscar nom; the film’s music (by Elmer Bernstein) and art direction-set decoration also were considered for Oscars. With Eleanor Parker and Darren McGavin.
4:45 p.m. (1:45 p.m.): “Angel Face” (1953). With Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons and Herbert Marshall.
6:30 p.m. (3:30 p.m.): “Laura” (1944). With Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Judith Anderson and Vincent Price.
Other non-noir Premingers shown on his birthday are his two well-made stage adaptations: George Bernard Shaw’s historical drama “Saint Joan” (1957), scripted by Greene, with Jean Seberg, Richard Widmark and Anton Walbrook at 10:45 a.m. (7:45 a.m.) and F. Hugh Herbert’s controversial sex comedy “The Moon is Blue” (1953), with William Holden, Maggie McNamara and David Niven, at 3 p.m. (12 p.m.). Both are worth a look.
Sunday, Dec. 7
8 a.m. (5 a.m.): “The Lady Vanishes” (1938, Alfred Hitchcock). With Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood, Dame May Whitty and Paul Lukas.
“Mildred Pierce” (1945, Michael Curtiz). Shown: Joan Crawford and Ann Blyth. Photo © Warner Bros.
Who doesn’t admire the polish and panache of ’40s fashion, particularly as worn by the leading ladies of film noir?
Kimberly Truhler will discuss the era’s influences and evolution in a lecture at 1 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7, at the Skirball Cultural Center in West Los Angeles.
During World War II, the film industry was affected by shortages of fashion materials. Truhler will examine how in spite of these restrictions – and sometimes in response to them – costume designers managed to create some of the most iconic looks of the time, worn by stars such as Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. These innovations not only defined much of 1940s style, but also continue to influence our fashion today.
Truhler is a historian, educator and founder of GlamAmor, a website dedicated to preserving the history of fashion in film.
Following the program, Gabriela Hernandez, founder of Bésame Cosmetics, will talk about the history of makeup and show how to achieve that film noir look.
***
Jeanne Carmen
At 3 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6, at the West Hollywood Library, Brandon James (author and son of Jeanne Carmen) will discuss his book Jeanne Carmen: My Wild Wild Life as a New York Pin Up Queen, Trick Shot Golfer & Hollywood Actress.
James documents his mother’s encounters and friendships with Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, Lenny Bruce, Howard Hughes, Bob Hope, Joe DiMaggio, Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli and many more.
We wrote about Jeanne Carmen’s legacy here and Brandon James kindly shared copies of his mom’s movie posters, which we displayed here.
This program will take place in the library’s community meeting room and parking validation will be provided. The library is at 625 N. San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood, CA, 90069. 310-652-5340.
By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington
The Film Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). All movies below are from the schedule of TCM, which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).
Pick of the Week
A Day With Alfred Hitchcock (Friday, Nov. 28)
Robert Cummings, Ray Milland and Grace Kelly form the love triangle in “Dial M for Murder.”
When it came to making movie thrillers, manufacturing chills, and squeezing the last drop of tension out of every thrill-packed scene and breath-catching set piece, Alfred Hitchcock was, by common consent, the Master of Suspense — king of the genre in the cinema’s Golden Age. Born in London, an émigré who moved to Hollywood in the ’40s, “Hitch,” as he was called by most movie folk, could plan and plot a suspense scene like no one else — riveting his audiences almost from his opening minutes, and building his unforgettable sequences and his little gems of nerve-racking tension with a meticulous expertise and vivid imagination that all thriller-makes envied and all tried (usually unsuccessfully) to emulate.
Hitchcock liked his heroines to be blonde and in distress, his villains to be charming and deadly, and his heroes to be fallible or accused of something they didn’t do. And he liked his movies (like those villains) to be devilishly seductive and watchable. Of all his contemporaries, he is still the film director most known, most watched and most imitated. And when his 1958 masterpiece “Vertigo” — that eerie romantic chiller starring James Stewart as a detective afraid of heights and Kim Novak as the beautiful mystery woman for whom he falls — was recently voted the best movie of all time, finally beating out runner-up “Citizen Kane” in the Sight and Sound film poll, it was a recognition that was probably as much for Hitchcock’s entire oeuvre.
Tippi Hedren gets direction from Hitch.
Today’s Hitchcock mini-festival gives us five of his acknowledged classics, from the ’30s (“The Lady vanishes”), the ’40s (“Shadow of a Doubt,” which Hitchcock often named as his personal favorite), the ’50s (”Dial M for Murder”), to the ’60s (“Psycho” and “The Birds“), as well as the underrated 1942 “Saboteur” and 1964 “Marnie.” His constant, though often uncredited, collaborator on all these pictures, and on most of his others, was his one-time script woman, wife and life-long partner Alma Reville Hitchcock. If you’re a movie aficionado, you’ve probably seen them all, but they always repay a return visit. After all, life and love may fail you, but a thriller by Hitch will almost always get you on the hook.
5:30 a.m. (2:30 a.m.): “The Lady Vanishes” (1938, Alfred Hitchcock). With Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood, Paul Lukas and Dame May Whitty. Reviewed in FNB on March 12, 2012.
7:30 a.m. (4:30 a.m.): “Saboteur” (1942, Alfred Hitchcock). With Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane, Otto Kruger and Norman Lloyd. Reviewed in FNB on Oct. 18, 2014.
9:30 a.m. (6:30 a.m.): “Shadow of a Doubt” (1943, Alfred Hitchcock). With Joseph Cotten, Teresa Wright, Macdonald Carey and Hume Cronyn. Reviewed in FNB on Oct. 9, 2014.
11:30 a.m. (8:30 a.m.): “Dial M for Murder” (1954, Alfred Hitchcock). With Grace Kelly, Ray Milland and Cummings. Reviewed in FNB on Sept. 11, 2012.
1:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m.): “Marnie” (1964, Alfred Hitchcock). With Sean Connery, Tippi Hedren and Diane Baker. Reviewed in FNB on Jan. 30, 2012.
3:45 p.m. (12:45 p.m.): “The Birds” (1963, Alfred Hitchcock). With Rod Taylor, Hedren and Jessica Tandy. Reviewed in FNB on Oct. 23, 2014.
6 p.m. (3 p.m.): “Psycho’ (1960, Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). With Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles and Martin Balsam. Reviewed in FNB on July 7, 2011.
![NC13_Teaser[1]](http://www.filmnoirblonde.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/NC13_Teaser1.jpg)
The Film Noir Foundation has announced that Noir City 13 in San Francisco will run Jan. 16-25, 2015. The fest comes to Los Angeles in the spring and travels to several other cities around the country. We’re eagerly awaiting the announcement of the movies that will screen.
SF fans don’t have to wait until the new year to get a big-screen noir fix. Noir City Xmas, featuring “O. Henry’s Full House” and “The Curse of the Cat People,” is on Dec. 17.
Earlier this month, Noir City made its first trip to Kansas City. To promote the fest, the foundation’s Eddie Muller talked on the radio with “Gun Crazy” actress Peggy Cummins and other guests.
We loved this snippet from the chat. Muller told listeners: “I’ve always said that in film noir, women were allowed to be, for once, completely the equal of men. By which I mean equally tempted, equally compromised and equally guilty.”
Exactly!
Meanwhile, if you are lucky enough to be in London during the holidays, there’s a must-see stop for photography lovers. The definitive retrospective of the work of Horst P. Horst (1906-99), one of the 20th century’s master photographers, continues through Jan. 4 at London’s V&A Museum.
![Dark-crimes-film-noir-thrillers-volume-2-dvd_360[1]](http://www.filmnoirblonde.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Dark-crimes-film-noir-thrillers-volume-2-dvd_3601.jpg)
Just in time for next week’s Black Friday shopping binge is Dark Crimes: Film Noir Thrillers Vol. 2, a DVD collection from TCM and Universal released earlier this year.
The set includes two Fritz Lang films. “You and Me” (1938) is an offbeat gangster comedy/romance starring George Raft and Sylvia Sydney, with music by Kurt Weill of “The 3 Penny Opera” fame.
The always delightful Ray Milland plays a man desperately trying to stop a Nazi spy ring in Lang’s “Ministry of Fear” (1944). Graham Greene wrote the source novel.
Two William Castle movies complete the set. “Undertow” (1949) tells the story of a fall guy framed for murder (Scott Brady) who pursues the real culprits. “Undertow” also stars Bruce Bennett.
Castle’s “Hollywood Story” (1951) stars Richard Conte and Julie Adams. In this backstage murder mystery, a producer makes a movie about an old crime, hoping to uncover the perp.
Dark Crimes Vol. 2 contains multiple digital bonus features, including an introduction by TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, behind-the-scenes photos, production stills, poster and lobby card galleries, an original essay by Film Noir Foundation founder and president Eddie Muller, and interviews with Muller and actress Julie Adams.
The collection is available exclusively through TCM’s online store: shop.tcm.com.
By Film Noir Blonde and Mike Wilmington
The Film Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir and pre-noir on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). All movies below are from the schedule of TCM, which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).
Pick of the Week
Van Heflin is immune to Joan Crawford’s charm in “Possessed.” What nerve!
(1947, Curtis Bernhardt). Thursday, Nov. 20. 4:15 p.m. (1:15 p.m.) With Joan Crawford, Van Heflin and Raymond Massey. Read the full review here.
Thursday, Nov. 20
2:15 p.m. (11:15 a.m.): “A Stolen Life” (1946, Curtis Bernhardt). Two Bette Davises, both in love with Glenn Ford, create mass confusion when one of them (his wife) dies and the other (her sister) substitutes herself. A double-role tour-de-force, which two-faced Bette tried again in 1964‘s “Dead Ringer.” With Walter Brennan, Dane Clark and Charlie Ruggles.
8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “The Birds” (1963, Alfred Hitchcock). With Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Suzanne Pleshette and Jessica Tandy. Reviewed in FNB on Oct. 23, 2014.
Friday, Nov. 21
Dennis Weaver goes from frustrated to freaked out in “Duel.”
8 p.m. (5 p.m.): “Duel” (1971, Steven Spielberg). “Jaws” made Steven Spielberg famous, but it was the earlier made-for-TV movie “Duel” that first showed he could scare the pants off any decently susceptible audience. Based on a Richard Matheson story, this brilliantly made, terrifying action movie pits an increasingly exasperated and then frightened motorist (Dennis Weaver) against an oncoming truck driven by a faceless trucker. A huge smoke-belching behemoth of a truck keeps pursuing him, apparently trying, for no reason he can fathom, to run him off the road and kill him. A real shocker.
12 a.m. (9 p.m.): “Scarecrow” (1973, Jerry Schatzberg). With Al Pacino, Gene Hackman and Dorothy Tristan). Reviewed in FNB on May 6, 2013.
2 a.m. (11 p.m.): “The Last Detail” (1973, Hal Ashby). With Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid and Otis Young. Reviewed in FNB on Feb. 20, 2013.
Sunday, Nov. 23
9:45 a.m. (6:45 a.m.): “Citizen Kane” (1941, Orson Welles). With Welles, Joseph Cotten, Everett Sloane, Dorothy Comingore and the Mercury Players. Reviewed in FNB on July 13, 2012.
2 p.m. (11 a.m.): “The Big Sleep” (1946, Howard Hawks). With Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Dorothy Malone and Elisha Cook, Jr.
The Shining/1980/Warner Bros./144 min.
By Mike Wilmington
“Heeeere’s JOHNNNY!!!!” screams the ferociously demented-looking hotel caretaker Jack Torrance as he axes open a door to get at his terrified wife Wendy and their child Danny, in the frightening final scenes of “The Shining“ – Stanley Kubrick’s flawed yet unforgettable 1980 film of what may be Stephen King’s best novel.
“The Shining” is revived on Saturday, Nov. 22, at the American Cinematheque’s Aero Theatre.
In the movie, Jack (played to the hilt by Jack Nicholson) is snowbound with his family (played by Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd) in the mountainous and isolated Overlook Lodge. It’s a vast spooky place, decorated with somber Native American motifs and infested with a creepy set of ghosts, including a sardonic bartender and a lecherous nude old lady and the previous caretaker who murdered his own family long ago in these same eerie corridors and rooms.
Wendy and Danny have watched Jack going crazier and crazier. Now, Mad Jack has hit his frenzied peak and there‘s no one at Overlook to stop his axe-swinging rampage.
“The Shining” is not only based on King‘s best novel; it‘s probably the best movie ever adapted from any of King’s books. Even so, it’s flawed, and King was right to be somewhat disappointed with it. Here’s the problem: Kubrick and his fellow screenwriter, novelist Diane Johnson (“Le Divorce”) wrote Jack as crazy as a loon the moment he stepped into the Overlook (and even before).
King, more movingly, wrote his main character as a sympathetic but haunted alcoholic and failed novelist who loved his family and gradually sank into madness, fighting, as the ghosts and demons took over. In retrospect, Kubrick probably should have hired King as his co-writer rather than Johnson. The original story would have made a better movie and an even better role for Nicholson.
That said, “The Shining” is still one hell of a show, noir as they come, and one of the most horrifyingly visual of all classic American horror movies.
The Aero Theatre is at 1328 Montana Ave. in Santa Monica.
From FNB readers