ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1952) is a film noir directed by Nicholas Ray and produced by John Houseman. The screenplay was written by A. I. Bezzerides based on the novel Mad with Much Heart, by Gerald Butler. The drama features Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Ward Bond, and vivacious vixen Cleo Moore. Blonde, buxom, and bodacious, the 5’4″ Louisiana beauty made 18 movies during her ten year career. Discovered (according to legend) at Hollywood Legion Stadium, by an RKO talent scout, while watching a boxing match, she had been married briefly to the youngest son of Governor Huey Long, at the tender age of 15. She made mostly B-Westerns at first, with ‘stars’ like Tim Holt and Regis Toomey. Cleo played a Jungle Queen in the 1948 Columbia serial CONGO BILL, had a bit part as Cousin Louise in the Gary Cooper film BRIGHT LEAF (1950), appeared uncredited in the 1950 noir classic 711 OCEAN DRIVE, and had a small part in the Ted Tetlaff/Victor Mature film GAMBLING HOUSE (1951). GAMBLING HOUSE was a personal breakthrough. Instead of having, basically, unknowns as her co-stars, Cleo had Victor Mature and William Bendix. Then it was back to another potboiler called THIS SIDE OF THE LAW. Difficult as it was to break into films that really grabbed to public’s attention, the shapely blonde actress seemed to be destined to stay in B movie roles for the balance of her career. For an actress who had a unique talent, she seemed to be chosen for parts solely because of her physical attributes. But Cleo wanted them to look past that and see the talent she possessed. Her spectacular charms would not go unnoticed for long, however. Four years after her first film EMBRACABLE YOU (1948), she signed with Columbia, made a series of gritty, low-budget, noir-inspired melodramas with Czech-born actor-director Hugo Haas, and suddenly became one of the most publicized starlets of the decade. She made ONE GIRL’S CONFESSION in 1953, playing an unrepentant ex-con who can’t seem to stay out of trouble and barely even tries. In 1954, Cleo appeared in THE OTHER WOMAN and BAIT. The following year she made three more films, HOLD BACK TOMORROW, STRANGE FASCINATION, which was both strange and fascinating, and WOMEN’S PRISON, with Jan Sterling and Ida Lupino. Although a second-rate film, it did well at the box-office because of the subject matter and Cleo’s sensational performance. She made OVER-EXPOSED in 1956, with Richard Crenna, an entertaining tale of mob shenanigans in New York City. Then, in 1957, Cleo starred in her final film, along with her sister, Mari Lea, called HIT AND RUN. She shared star billing with handsome hunk Vice Edwards. Cleo then left films forever. She married a real estate tycoon in 1961 and settled down to domestic life. She began attracting a cult following in the 1980s with the airings of her bad girl movies on television and particularly in movie collectors circles via vintage posters and memorabilia issued for her films. In the 1990s she was dubbed by film historians as the “Queen of the B Movie Bad Girls” due to her rising popularity with buffs of the film noir genre. Sony Pictures released OVER-EXPOSED, ONE GIRL’S CONFESSION, and WOMEN’S PRISON in a DVD set entitled Bad Girls of Film Noir Volume II. Less than a week before her 45th birthday, Cleo died of a heart attack on October 25, 1973 in Inglewood, California. To her legions of admirers she remains the quintessential sex symbol of the 1950′s – a wonderful natural-born actress, who had an abundance of spark and sizzle. Her many fans agree that her talent was, with a few minor exceptions, wasted in minor roles in substandard B pictures.
Mini Biography By: Natasha DeVille
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From award-winning biographer Patrick McGilligan comes an eye-opening life of the troubled filmmaker behind Rebel Without a Cause, Nicholas Ray spent the glory years of his career creating films that were dark, emotionally charged, and haunted by social misfits and bruised young people consumed by private anguish—from his career-defining debut, They Live by Night (1948), to his enduring masterwork, Rebel Without a Cause (1955); from the noir thriller In a Lonely Place (1950), pairing his second wife, the blond bombshell Gloria Grahame, with Humphrey Bogart, to cult pictures like Johnny Guitar (1954) and Bigger Than Life (1956). Yet his work on-screen is more than matched by the passions and struggles of his personal story—one of the most dramatic lives of any major Hollywood filmmaker.In Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director, Patrick McGilligan offers a revelatory biography of Ray, a man whose troubled life was marked by creative peaks and valleys alike. As a young man, Ray personified the rambling spirit of twentieth-century America, learning from luminaries like Thornton Wilder and Frank Lloyd Wright; mingling with future legends like Elia Kazan, Joseph Losey, and John Houseman; and carousing with musicians like Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie. Notoriously self-destructive but irresistibly alluring—to men and women alike—Ray empathized with the broken and misunderstood, a talent that allowed him to create characters of true complexity on-screen.His youthful association with radical politics nearly killed his nascent film career—until a secret agreement to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities saved him. His tumultuous second marriage, to Grahame, was shattered after Ray found her in bed with his teenage son from his first marriage. He romanced stars and starlets, including Marilyn Monroe, Shelley Winters, Joan Crawford, and the teenage Natalie Wood, but never enjoyed a stable home life.The triumph of Rebel Without a Cause, his masterpiece of teenage angst, led to a burgeoning partnership with James Dean, but Dean’s untimely death devastated the filmmaker, who fell into a spiral of drinking and drug addiction. Less than a decade later, Ray’s career was effectively over . . . until the adoration of European critics, and a frantic last-ditch burst of creativity, nearly restored him to glory before his tragic early death in 1979. Meticulously detailed and compulsively readable, this new biography reconstructs the tortuous journey of one of the most enduringly fascinating figures in American film.
REVIEW by GUEST CONTRIBUTOR Ben Burgraff
Fabulous Tongue-in-Cheek Film Adventure!
HIS KIND OF WOMAN, the first of two pairings of RKO’s resident ‘tough guy’, Robert Mitchum, and it’s major sex symbol, Jane Russell (the near-classic MACAO would follow, a year later), is such a wonderful, convoluted ‘film noir’ spoof that it is amazing that it has never appeared on video. Broadly funny, and a more than a bit surreal, the tale of down-and-out gambler Dan Milner (Mitchum) ‘hired’ to travel to a remote Mexican resort to provide a ‘body’ so that a notorious gangster (Raymond Burr, sleekly villainous) can feign his death and return to the U.S., is action-packed, and has been described as “Bogie and Bacall on Steroids’!
A great deal of the success of the John Farrow-directed film is due to the inspired casting of Vincent Price as a ham actor who gets to ‘live out’ his celluloid life, aiding Mitchum. Price quotes Shakespeare, critiques his performance, and is amazed by his own heroics, and he has never been funnier, on screen.
An excellent supporting cast, including Tim Holt, Charles McGraw, Marjorie Reynolds, Paul Frees (the famous Hollywood ‘voice’ actor, actually seen, for a change), and Jim Backus contribute to the on screen mayhem, and Russell sings “Five Little Miles From San Berdoo”, one of her more memorable 50s numbers.
From the opening scene, as Burr, exiled in Italy, listens to a short-wave radio broadcast of his successful career as an American crime kingpin (“Where is my money?” he demands, as an estimate of his revenue is quoted), to the brawling climax with Mitchum, aboard his yacht, as Price attempts a rescue, HIS KIND OF WOMAN is pure escapism, at it’s best.
“Gold isn’t money — it’s a religion!”
REVIEW:A crazed prospector (Hugo Haas) uses his beautiful new wife (Cleo Moore) as “bait” in order to lure his partner (John Agar) into a compromising situation. Czechoslovakian emigre Hugo Haas made a string of low-budget noir-style films in the 1950s, usually telling tales of lust, greed, and romantic entanglements. Although Haas’s films are often cited as simply tawdry melodramas, they’re actually well-crafted, funny, and entertaining . Haas takes a traditional love triangle and turns it inside-out, with the older husband (Haas) of sexy Cleo Moore encouraging his wife to get it on with Agar – who (surprisingly) resists as much as possible. Indeed, although we expect Moore to be a no-good femme fatale, it turns out she’s a “decent” woman simply hoping to do the right thing for herself and her baby. Moore — who starred in no less than seven of Haas’s films in the 1950s — makes it all work. A better actress than the sassy Beverly Michaels (star of Haas’s first American film, PICKUP), she has more spark than a Zippo lighter, and more sizzle than a $2 steak. John Agar is boringly insipid as her would-be lover. Hugo Haas is the most charismatic character, and it’s hard not to root for him despite his devious nature and diabolical plans. A strangely fascinating low-budget tale of greed, lust, and seduction.
WICKED WOMAN (1954) Directed by Russell Rouse
In typical femme fatale fashion, Billie Nash (Beverly Michaels) drifts into town and sets her sights on the one man who can fulfill her every need, economic and otherwise. Billie is the quintessential trashy blonde who lures men into her web and takes them for all they’re worth. The object of Billie’s affection is bar owner Matt Bannister (Richard Egan) who embarks on a torrid affair with her to spite his alcoholic wife. Fully taken in by Billie, Matt agrees to swindle the bar away from his wife and skip town to Mexico. But Billie’s involvement with her seamy neighbor Charlie (Percy Helton) threatens to compromise her plan. WICKED WOMAN separates itself from the B-movie pack by pushing the boundaries of luridness and sexuality, as well as by giving Billie’s character a complexity worthy of Michaels’ talent.
CLICK PHOTO link to Amazon.com Winner of Best Non-Fiction for 2002 Award from the Los Angeles Times Book Review!Samuel Fuller was one of the most prolific and independent writer-director-producers in Hollywood. His 29 tough, gritty films made from 1949 to 1989 set out to capture the truth of war, racism and human frailties, and incorporate some of his own experiences. His film Park Row was inspired by his years in the New York newspaper business, where his beat included murders, suicides, state executions and race riots. He writes about hitchhiking across the country at the height of the Great Depression. His years in the army in World War II are captured in his hugely successful pictures The Big Red One, The Steel Helmet and Merrill’s Marauders. Fuller’s other films include Pickup on South Street; Underworld U.S.A., a movie that shows how gangsters in the 1960s were seen as “respected” tax-paying executives; Shock Corridor, which exposed the conditions in mental institutions; and White Dog, written in collaboration with Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential), a film so controversial that Paramount’s then studio heads Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner refused to release it. ORDER THIS BOOK DIRECT from sheetmusicdigital.com
The Big Sleep (TBS)
REVIEW by GUEST CONTRIBUTOR DORIAN TB
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BIG SLEEP Poster by Bunny Dojo Design 
REVIEW: Ah, Howard Hawks! Was there any genre he couldn’t tackle with what seemed to be the greatest of ease? And with all due respect to Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, Robert Mitchum, and James Garner (I haven’t had a chance to catch up with George Montgomery in The Brasher Doubloon yet), was there ever a more perfect cinematic portrayal of Raymond Chandler’s private investigator hero Philip Marlowe than Humphrey Bogart in TBS? Or a more perfect leading lady for him than Lauren Bacall, playing Vivian Sternwood, who in 1945 happily became Mrs. Bogart for the rest of Bogie’s life? Admittedly, the kind of perfection I mean has nothing to do with such trifles as linear, crystal-clear plotting. (Clarity? We don’t need no stinkin’ clarity!) No, the elements that made the 1946 film version of TBS such a perfect entertainment include Hawks’ zesty direction; the film’s great cast, including those sleek, smart, sassy Hawks women, almost all of whom try to seduce him to one degree or another (I want to be a Howard Hawks kind of woman when I grow up!); and the tangy, moody yet cheeky atmosphere that Hawks and his screenwriters William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett (as far as I’m concerned, she’s a Hawks kind of woman, too), and Jules Furthman created with sharp dialogue, humor, and suspense. The memorable characters Marlowe meets along the way range from colorful lowlifes to people of integrity staring down corruption and destruction. In my opinion, TBS is one of the most perfect thrillers about decidedly imperfect people in big trouble!
TBS opens with the famous greenhouse scene, where Marlowe meets his wealthy new client, General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), an elderly, ailing, wheelchair-bound widower who describes himself thus: “You are looking, sir, at a very dull survival of a very gaudy life.” General Sternwood wants Marlowe to help him keep an eye on Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers), the youngest and wildest of the two beautiful young Sternwood sisters, who’s being blackmailed over gambling debts. While Marlowe is at it, the General also wants him to see if he can find his friend Sean Regan, who Marlowe knew back in their rum-running days in Mexico: “I (Marlowe) was on the other side. We used to swap shots between drinks, or drinks between shots, whichever you like.” Sternwood has come to regard Sean as the son he never had. Sean, usually the family enforcer, always took care of anyone who tried to make trouble for the Sternwoods. However, Sean apparently drove off about a month ago and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. It’s clear that Sternwood misses him terribly, which touched my heart and got my suspicions aroused. Marlowe agrees to take the case. Carmen is the kind of sexy, spoiled flirt who can’t say no, and won’t take no for an answer, either. She’s not shy about approaching men; in fact, Carmen gets to the point pronto when she meets Marlowe, deliberately falling into his arms—lucky for her that Marlowe’s a good catcher! Still, Marlowe makes it clear she’s not his baby as he tells butler Norris (Charles D. Brown, who makes a great straight-faced foil for Marlowe), “You ought to wean her. She’s old enough.” Between Carmen’s bedroom eyes and her gambling debts, is it any wonder she keeps getting herself into more hot water than a tea bag factory? But this time, Carmen gets in a jam it won’t be easy to get out of: Marlowe tails her to the home of book dealer and blackmailer Arthur Gwynn Geiger (the uncredited Theodore Von Eltz), only to find Geiger murdered and Carmen in a dazed, giggling stupor. Even worse, the Asian statue in Geiger’s house has a hidden film camera inside, and somebody’s already made off with the photographic evidence. Soon Marlowe is up to his fedora in colorful and dangerous characters, including gambler/gangster Eddie Mars (John Ridgely), whose wife supposedly ran off with the missing Sean. By all accounts, Mrs. Mars isn’t the kind of wife a guy wants to lose, so what’s up with that? (Fun Fact: According to the TCM Web site, Eddie’s henchmen Sid and Pete were named for Bogart’s frequent co-stars and off-screen pals Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.)
The strong, spirited, beautiful women in any Hawks film are always worth watching. TBS provides a veritable smorgasbord of fabulous females, all rushing in and out of the story like it was Grand Central Terminal at rush hour! One of my favorites was a young, pre-Oscar (for Written on the Wind) Dorothy Malone, proving guys do make passes at girls who wear glasses, especially when they let their hair down. Then there’s the uncredited but nevertheless captivating Sonia Darrin as Agnes Lowzier, another sulky, gorgeous, dangerous dame who may not get tons of screen time, but what she gets is, as Spencer Tracy would say, “cherce.” Agnes’ fool for love, Harry Jones, is played by Elisha Cook Jr. and he almost steals the show when he puts himself on the line for Agnes. The sacrifice that “Jonesy” makes on Agnes’ behalf really made me feel for the little guy.
I’ve always liked General Sternwood, and how he calls a spade a spade (not to be confused with Dashiell Hammett’s detective Sam Spade, another iconic Bogart character). Indeed, I like the way Sternwood and Marlowe get along immediately, with their “insubordination” in common. Like so many parents, Sternwood has trouble keeping his two gorgeous young daughters out of trouble; as Marlowe says, “Both pretty, and both pretty wild.” Still, I’d say that even with her penchant for gambling, Vivian is the soul of sensibility and practicality compared to out-of-control Carmen. This isn’t the first time she’s been blackmailed, either. Oy! Some kids never learn! To further complicate matters, Marlowe and Vivian are starting to fall for each other. Even so, the clever, loyal Vivian makes it clear to Marlowe that she’ll stop at nothing to protect her sister and father as, separately and together, they work to solve this dizzy, violent, but gleefully entertaining mystery.
If you’re a stickler for clear, linear plotting, don’t look for it in TBS, or any other Chandler novel based on one. Chandler’s strengths are in his witty, sardonic dialogue, his memorable characters, and the moody atmosphere he weaves with words. The ever-versatile Hawks evokes this atmosphere with his great cast and production values, including Max Steiner’s score combining suspense and playfulness, working beautifully with the delightfully insolent banter between Bogart and Bacall. In both TBS and Lady in the Lake (indeed, in almost all Chandler/Marlowe movies to one degree or another), at some point Marlowe gets fed up with the leading lady playing it cagey, and he almost always takes her to task, whereupon she hotly responds with a line like, “People don’t talk to me like that!” I always think of these scenes as “The Taming of the Hottie,” because here as in other Chandler/Marlowe movies, Marlowe and the heroine each give as good as they get. It’s especially fun in TBS with the evenly-matched Marlowe and Vivian. Hawks’ leading ladies always have (or quickly develop) spunk to go with their sexiness and strength! Hawks’ films had a reputation of being fun to make, and TBS was no exception. According to Lauren Bacall in her memoir By Myself, Hawks and company got a memo from studio head Jack Warner: “Word has reached me that you are having fun on the set. This must stop.” No word on whether or not anyone did so (my money’s on “no”)!
Vivian sure can sling those obligatos on “And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine”! Although TBS was actually completed and in the can by March 1945, Warner Bros. sat on it for about a year and a half. Robert Gitt, the Preservation Officer at UCLA Film and Television Archives, explains it all in the DVD’s Special Features. For starters, World War 2 was ending around that time, and movie studios were scrambling to get their remaining war movies into theaters before they started to feel dated; as a result, Warner Bros figured their detective thriller could wait for the nonce. But even more importantly, despite Lauren Bacall’s star-making role in To Have and Have Not, the movie that had brought her and Bogart together, her star was plummeting after her dreadful reviews as an upper-class Brit in the 1945 film adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel Confidential Agent. In The New York Times, Bosley Crowther didn’t sugarcoat poor miscast Bacall’s performance: “The noise she makes in this picture is that of a bubble going ‘poof!’” Ouch! Happily, a knight in executive’s shining armor saved the film and Bacall’s career: Charles K. Feldman, the producer who also brought us 1967’s wild-and-crazy comedy version of Casino Royale. Feldman was Howard Hawks’ production partner, and his confidential advice really turned things around for TBS. In addition to shuffling some scenes and eliminating others, Feldman implemented other suggestions which really made the magic happen for the new-and-improved 1946 version:1.) Bacall wore a none-too-flattering veil in the 1945 version. What was the costume department thinking? Moviegoers wanted see Bacall’s beautiful kisser, so they ditched that veil and reshot the scene. 2.) Hawks shot more scenes between Bogart and Bacall, encouraging their sexy, insolent attitudes. To borrow a line from the TBS trailer, audiences loved seeing That Man Bogart and That Woman Bacall that way! 3.) Mrs. Eddie Mars was played by Pat Clark in the 1945 version, but apparently she wasn’t available for re-shoots in 1946. Clark’s footage was scrapped for scrappier Peggy Knudson. Personally, my perfect version of The Big Sleep would be the 1946 version as is, except that I’d love to put in the D.A. scene from the 1945 version (it’s in the double-sided version of the TBS DVD) to clarify at least that part of the plot! In any case, TBS may not always make sense, but it brims with so much suspense, desire, wit, and riveting personalities that I didn’t mind a bit!
REVIEW by GUEST CONTRIBUTOR DORIAN TB
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Sterling Hayden as Detective Lieutenant Sims
Gene Nelson as Steve Lacey
Phyllis Kirk as Ellen Lacey
Ted de Corsia as ‘Doc’ Penny
Charles Bronson as Ben Hastings (credited as Charles Buchinsky onscreen)
Timothy Carey as Johnny Haslett
‘Doc’ Penny (Ted de Corsia) and his gang rob a gasoline station and in the process a police officer is killed and one of the gang members is wounded. The wounded thug imposes himself on Steve Lacey (Gene Nelson), an ex-con trying to start a new life, and demands he call a disreputable doctor for help. The doctor arrives, but too late. The gang member is dead. After his death, Lacey calls his parole officer who involves a hard-nosed cop, Detective Lieutenant Sims (Sterling Hayden), who doesn’t think Lacey can reform.
Later, the remaining gang members show up at Lacey’s apartment. Fearing for his wife’s (Phyllis Kirk) safety, he decides to let the men stay. Subsequently, Penny forces Lacey to rob a bank with them, but Lacey alerts the police (by planting a note in his medicine cabinet) who staff the entire bank with police officers and ambush the robbers. In the end, most of the gang is killed, but Lacey and his wife are safe.
Much of CRIME WAVE was shot on location in Los Angeles and in nearby Burbank and Glendale. At least one 1952 location, Sawyer’s Pet Hospital at the corner of San Fernando Road and Alma Street in Glendale, is still standing and still a pet hospital, with a different name. Several locations seen onscreen, like the Bank of America on the southwest corner of Brand Boulevard and Broadway in Glendale (where the film’s big robbery attempt takes place), as well as the distinctive dental building across Brand Boulevard, have been torn down and replaced. The final chase scene from the bank in Glendale to Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles follows the actual route, including Brand Boulevard and the Glendale Boulevard fork on the Hyperion Viaduct, until Steve Lacey reaches the house (possibly on Maple Street, just east of Los Angeles Street in the Chinatown district) where the crazed Johnny Haslett (Timothy Carey) is holding Lacey’s wife. The gas station in the film’s opening scene on Wall Street just south of East 3rd Street, near Boyd Street has since been demolished. Other specific downtown Los Angeles locations include Los Angeles Union Station and the L.A. City Hall Building (including interiors of the Homicide Bureau). The final scene, where Lt. Sims sends Steve and Ellen home, was shot on the 200 block of North Main Street, with Sterling Hayden leaning against the side of the City Hall Building. This film’s cinematography may have influenced Robert Aldrich to shoot KISS ME DEADLY on location all over L.A. in 1954. It certainly had an effect on Stanley Kubrick, who hired Hayden, Carey and de Corsia for THE KILLING and used locations to capture the same realism. Shooting was completed December 3, 1952, but the film was not released until 1954.
Timothy Carey had one of the most unusual careers of all Hollywood character actors, obtaining full cult status for his portrayals of the doomed, the psychotic and the plain crazy. As a 22-year-old acting school graduate, he made his film debut in 1951 as a corpse in a Clark Gable western, but it was his brief, uncredited part as Chino, a member of Lee Marvin’s motorcycle gang The Beetles in The Wild One (1953) that made an impression and was a harbinger of the unsavory things to come. Prone to improvising, it was the fearless Carey who came up with the idea of squirting beer in Marlon Brando’s face, even though the Great Method Actor himself had expressed reservations about what Carey was up to. He also registered that year as the bordello bouncer who threatens James Dean in East of Eden (1955), making his face, if not his name (he was uncredited in both parts), known to the mass audience.
