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WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS (1950) ~ REVIEW by Matthias Merkelbach

Administrator — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:50:53 +0000

Detective Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews) of the 16th District Police station looks at New York’s underworld as ”a bunch of rats”. His interrogation methods are notorious, and in the name of justice Dixon’s pathologigal hatred of criminals has already gotten him into hot water several times in the past. His supervisor Lt.. Thomas (Karl Malden) has reasons to worry. As Dixon receives the order to solve the murder of a wealthy Texas gambler (Harry Von Zell) he gets the gangster Tommy Scalise (Gary Merrill) in his sights. However, in his zeal, the detective commits a fatal error. Trading punches with the suspect Ken Paine (Craig Stevens), he knocks him to the ground, unaware that he has a silver plate in his head due to a war injury. Paine dies and Dixon loses his nerve. He throws Paine’s body into the Hudson and schemes to frame Tommy Scalise for Paine’s death. But instead, an innocent taxi driver Jiggs Taylor (Tom Tully) is suspected of the murder. Ironically, Mark Dixon is in love with his daughter Morgan (Gene Tierney).

Character sketches far removed from the stereotypes of standard police drama, and the superb expressionistic night-time New York City cinematography of Joseph LaShelle make WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS a definitive classic of film noir. This is the third time Otto Preminger worked with Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney. Previously they had appeared to together in FALLEN ANGEL (1945) and in LAURA (1944). But while Preminger’s upper-class melodrama LAURA presented a handful of typical film noir scenes and noirish images, it appears rather mild compared to this uncompromising story of die-hard New York detective Mark Dixon. It is the brutality and realism of the street scenes – a pulse-quickening depiction of the laws of the concrete jungle – that make this a motion picture ahead of its time, a landmark film that anticipated the tenor of the sixties.

In style and content this Preminger masterpiece is everything that makes film noir so effective. Mark Dixon is fighting against himself – against his inner demons, deeply rooted in his psyche. This dramatic battle, and its successful presentation in form and content make WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS the gloomiest of all film noirs directed by Otto Preminger. And despite an ending that was clearly influenced by the Hays Code in those years – and the persecution of the Hollywood Ten filmmakers by Senator McCarthy, this film remains a classic. Struggling against these same political and moralistic restraints, two years later, Preminger directed ANGEL FACE (1952), which film critic Dave Kehr called an “intense Freudian melodrama by Otto Preminger (and) one of the forgotten masterworks of film noir.”

VISIT MATTHIAS MERKELBACH’S WEBSITE:http://der-film-noir.de/v1/

FOCUS ON: Andre DeToth

Administrator — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 03:10:39 +0000

André de Toth

The Guardian

October 31, 2002

Hard-working film director whose life was as eventful as his movies…

by: Ronald Bergan

Thursday October 31, 2002

If we are to believe even a fraction of what has been written by and about the film director André de Toth, who has died aged 89, then his life was even more exciting and varied than the plots of his movies. Having met him a few times in his 80s, I can only vouch for his extraordinary energy, passion and earthy humour, and the conviction with which he delivered his anecdotes.

These included stories of when he was taken for dead during a student riot in Vienna and woke up in the morgue; and how, when his girlfriend fell pregnant and her father whisked her away for an enforced abortion, de Toth saved her when he discovered her father visited male prostitutes and threatened blackmail. There was also the story of how during the war he fell in love with an anti-Nazi jewellery courier who had a passport made under the name of Mrs de Toth before embarking on a dangerous mission, and how the passport was returned to him covered in blood. Another told of how, while scouting for locations in 1973 in Egypt, he was kidnapped and interrogated by a group of young men who, because of his eye patch, thought he was Israeli minister of defence Moshe Dayan, until he revealed, literally, that he wasn’t Jewish.

Curiously, the one-eyed de Toth was married for eight years to Veronica Lake, whose “peekaboo” hairstyle gave the impression that she had only one eye, and he directed House Of Wax (1953), the first horror film in 3D, the effects of which he couldn’t have seen.

The last time I saw him was at the cinema centenary celebrations at Lyons in 1995. With his black eye patch, his shaven head and his neck in a brace (he broke it four times, first in a skiing accident), he made a striking, somewhat scary, impression. However, after proclaiming, “Lyons is to film-makers what Bethlehem is to Christians,” he presented the other famous guests with a statuette he had sculpted himself. He then announced that his favourite director was Satyajit Ray – a surprise because most of the films de Toth directed were incisive, small-scale Westerns, including six with Randolph Scott.

De Toth, who described himself as a “Hungarian-born, one-eyed American cowboy from Texas,” was born in Mako. After studying law in Budapest, he tried his hand at playwriting (becoming friendly with playwright Ferenc Molnar) and sculpture. He entered Hungarian films in 1931 as screenwriter, editor, second-unit director and sometime actor, billed variously as Endré Toth, Andreas Toth and, finally, André de Toth.

He directed five Hungarian films just before the outbreak of the war, and one of them, Wedding In Toprin (1939), won the Most Artistic Film Award from the Hungarian Ministry of Culture. Another was The Life Of Dr Semmelweiss (1940), based on the story of a doctor who found a cure for childbirth fever.

De Toth then went to England, where he worked for Alexander Korda as second-unit director on The Thief Of Bagdad (1940), and on to Hollywood for Jungle Book (1942). The following year he made his American debut as director with a quickie from the Lone Wolf detective series – Passport To Suez (1943). This was followed by a number of unconvincing, but economically directed, melodramas – Dark Waters, a psychological thriller with Merle Oberon; None Shall Escape, a vigorous anti-Nazi tract (both 1944); and The Other Love (1947), a soppy soap opera starring Barbara Stanwyck as a concert pianist dying of TB. They were all indistinguishable from much other studio fare of the decade. Luckily John Ford, who was set to make Ramrod (1947), was busy shooting My Darling Clementine, thus giving de Toth the chance to demonstrate that he had an eye for powerful action stuff. Ramrod, his first Western, was as straight and solid as its hero, Joel McCrea, who helps tough ranch-owner Veronica Lake avenge herself on a baddie. Most of the Westerns which followed, no matter the budget, were tense and moody allegories of good and evil, especially those with Randolph Scott. Springfield Rifle (1952), starring the ageing Gary Cooper, and Day Of The Outlaw (1959), a bleak and powerful Western set against a wintry Wyoming landscape, were also notable. He turned his hand to films noirs such as Pitfall (1948), which exploited Dick Powell’s glum, craggy 40s persona in a tale of a happily married man caught in the tentacles of a fashion model (Lizabeth Scott); and Crime Wave (1954), a realistic story of an ex-con’s problems that influenced the policiers of French director Jean Pierre Melville.

Monkey On My Back (1957) was a stark drug-addiction movie, based on the story of boxing champ Barney Ross’s addiction to morphine after being wounded in the war. This was shown in lurid detail, although a brief scene showing Ross injecting himself was cut to obtain a Code Seal. The subject was close to de Toth’s heart because of Veronica Lake’s drug problems. De Toth sustained the action well throughout The Indian Fighter (1955), featuring a dynamic buckskinned Kirk Douglas, and filmed in CinemaScope and Technicolor on location in the magnificent mountain country of Oregon. But with the changes in the cinema in the 60s, during which Westerns became rarer, de Toth was offered fewer pictures. However, he was credited as supervising director on a number of Italian epics (the law required an Italian director on the films). He was uncredited on David Lean’s Lawrence Of Arabia (1962), though he directed the train crash for the second unit. Play Dirty (1968), with Michael Caine and Nigel Davenport as antagonistic officers in command of a unit made up entirely of ex-cons, had a screenplay, co-written by Melvyn Bragg, that stated rather crudely that only the insane or criminals make good soldiers. It was the last film de Toth directed. After this he had more time for his hobbies – flying, driving racing cars, playing polo, skiing, painting, sculpting and his large family. He was married seven times and had 19 children; his seventh wife, Ann Green, survives him.

In 1994, he published his lively memoirs, Fragments: Portraits From The Inside, and was honoured with a retrospective at the Edinburgh Film Festival, although he insisted: “I don’t want to be judged by yesterday’s junk.” Of most of the younger directors, he commented: “I wouldn’t let them direct the goddamn traffic.” André de Toth certainly lived up to his motto: “Don’t be careful. Have fun. I did.”

André de Toth (Sasvrai Farkasfawi Tothfalusi Toth Endre Antai Mihaly), Film Director, born May 15 1913; died October 27 2002 – VISIT : Ronald Bergan’s amazon.com Page:

Film Noir FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About Hollywood’s Golden Age of Dames, Detectives, and Danger By David J. Hogan

Administrator — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 05:09:28 +0000

Book Description:
Publication Date: April 15, 2013 | Series: Film Noir
Film Noir FAQ celebrates and reappraises some 200 noir thrillers representing 20 years of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Noir pulls us close to brutal cops and scheming dames, desperate heist men and hardboiled private eyes, and the unlucky innocent citizens that get in their way. These are exciting movies with tough guys in trench coats and hot tomatoes in form-fitting gowns. The moon is a streetlamp and the narrow streets are prowled by squad cars and long black limousines. Lives are often small but peoples plans are big.

Sometimes too big. Robbery, murder, gambling; the gun and the fist; the grift and the con game; the hard kiss and the brutal brush-off. Film Noir FAQ brings lively attention to story, mood, themes, and technical detail, plus behind-the-scenes stories of the production of individual films. Featuring numerous stills and postersmany never before published in book formhighlighting key moments of great noir movies. Film Noir FAQ serves up insights into many of the most popular and revered names in Hollywood history, including noirs greatest stars, supporting players, directors, writers, and cinematographers. Pour a Scotch, light up a smoke, and lean back with your private guide to film noir. VISIT: http://www.amazon.com

THE CHASE (1946) ~ Review by William Ahearn

Administrator — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:04:10 +0000

The Following Review was written by SPECIAL GUEST

CONTRIBUTOR William Ahearn -

VISIT williamahearn.com

Filmmakers just never get Cornell Woolrich, one of my favorite writers and one who has never translated well to the screen. There are scores of films based on Woolrich’s stories and novels and every one of them fails to truly render Woolrich’s nightmare world. Based on Woolrich’s novel The Black Path of Fear – and loosely adapted by Philip Yordan – Arthur Ripley’s “The Chase” is – according to critics quoted in Francis M. Nevins Jr’s biography of Woolrich, First You Dream, Then You Die – either a “cinematic equivalent of the dark oppressive atmosphere” of Woolrich or, “a chaotic botch, full of unintentional blunders.”

The basic gist of the film is that Chuck Scott (Robert Cummings) is an ex-Navy man who is out of the service not for being shell-shocked as some reviewers claim but for having had a near-fatal case of malaria that still causes fever dreams. Broke and hungry and looking for work he finds a wallet that – after treating himself to a nice breakfast – he returns to its owner, a gangster, Eddie Roman (Steve Cochran), who has a sardonic sidekick, Gino (Peter Lorre). Eddie Roman is married to Lorna (Michèle Morgan) and she and Chuck fall unconvincingly in love and plan to escape to Cuba together. Needless to say, that if there is an ex-GI in the story, he will do no wrong and a happy ending is a given.

That’s a pretty standard post-war crime film setup and it even includes – as Nevins put it – “film noir’s favorite disease, amnesia.” In the book the hero – called Bill Scott – isn’t an ex-GI, doesn’t have malaria or amnesia and the woman’s death and the events in Cuba are not a dream. Plus, the heroine of the story – La Media Noche – is a prostitute and thief and Bill Scott savagely strangles Roman before going back to Cuba and having a farewell drink with the thief who saved him from the police. That is “noir.” “The Chase” is just another faux Hollywood nightmare on the way to a happy ending.

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FOCUS ON: Lizabeth Scott

Administrator — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 23:07:59 +0000

Born Emma Matzo in 1922 to English-Russian parents, Scott studied at Alvienne School of Drama (NY), and was discovered by Hal Wallis in 1945. She appeared in 21 films between 1945 and 1957, mostly for Wallis and Paramount, and was marketed by the studio as a Lauren Bacall or Veronica Lake-type. Like Veronica Lake – Scott was never given the type of role that would rocket her to stardom. Many of her films are long-forgotten, but her characters often linger in memory long after the final scene.

In 1944 after an impressive run as the production head at Warners, Hal Wallis resigned and formed his own production company, releasing films primarily through Paramount. Soon after Wallis set up shop at Paramount, she was signed to a contract. Her film debut was in YOU CAME ALONG (1945) opposite Robert Cummings. Scott’s smoky sensuality and husky voice lent itself to the film noir genre and, the studio cast her in a series of noir thrillers. Scott performed with a combination of beauty, sensitivity, and vulnerability that made her one of the most popular actresses of the 40′s and 50′s.
On the strength of her performance in You Came Along, Wallis cast Scott in a supporting role in the film noir classic THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS (1946, dir: Lewis Milestone). The film is really a showcase for Barbara Stanwcyk and Kirk Douglas (his film debut).THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS was a critical and financial success in its day, and remains a fascinating and entertaining example of film noir at its finest. In only her second film Scott holds her own against the likes of Stanwyck and Douglas, evidence indeed of the depth of her talent. In fact Variety claimed she out-acted them both!

In 1947 Scott was paired with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in I WALK ALONE (dir: Byron Haskin), a noirish story of betrayal and vengeance. Scott plays a nightclub singer who provides sympathy and support to Lancaster, recently released from prison. The material is not worthy of the cast, and on the whole the film disappoints. But Scott rises above it all and is totally convincing in her portrayal. Scott’s character provides a degree of romance and humanity often lacking in film noir. Scott was again paired with Lancaster in 1947′s Desert Fury (dir: Lewis Allen), a story of love, deception and corruption written by Robert Rossen. Scott looks glorious in Technicolor, but the screenplay is lame, and the film is ultimately stolen by Mary Astor who plays Scott’s mother.
1947 also finds Scott opposite Humphrey Bogart in DEAD RECKONING (dir: John Cromwell). It’s Scott’s first crack as the archetypal femme fatale and she doesn’t disappoint. In prior films, Scott was often a victim of circumstance, an innocent bystander who is trapped by words of deeds of others. In DEAD RECKONING the tables are turned, as she lures Bogart into a web of lies, deceit, and ultimately death. As is typical in the noir genre, her power is rooted in her sexual allure. In a departure from his tough guy roles, Bogart plays an average joe, who struggles to learn the fate of a missing army buddy. Scott is the ex-girlfriend who knows more than she is telling. To keep Bogart from learning the truth about his lost buddy and his mysterious double life, Scott seduces him into believing she loves him. After Bogart takes the bait he learns that Scott is responsible for his buddy’s death. In a scene reminiscent of his final confrontation with Mary Astor in THE MALTESE FALCON, Bogart tells Scott that he plans on turning her over to the authorities. The noir conventions are followed smoothly, and in spite of a few implausibilities. Scott and Bogart are both superb in their only film together.

Scott’s next role was in a terrific little noir gem called The PITFALL (1948, dir: Andre de Toth). The film details the fall from grace of a straight-laced suburban husband and family man at the hands of a sensual femme fatale played by Scott. Dick Powell plays a successful insurance agent, married to his high school sweetheart (Jane Wyatt), living out a comfortable but boring existence in a Los Angeles suburb. Powell is restless and unfulfilled (“I feel like a wheel within a wheel within a wheel”) when he receives what at first seems like a routine assignment to recover goods that have been bought with stolen money, a claim paid off by Powell’s firm. The items are traced to Mona Stevens (Scott), an attractive model living in swanky Marina Del Rey. Powell is smitten by her charms, and their mild flirtations soon become a torrid love affair. Powell’s journey into a daydream ends in tragedy as he becomes a prisoner in his own home and slays an assailant who has been set on his trail by a jealous private investigator (Raymond Burr, excellent as a pathetic thug who also covets Scott’s sexual favors). Scott kills Burr when he tries to force himself upon her. Powell is exonerated, but Scott is arrested. Powell’s wife learns the truth about the affair and with some hesitation forgives him. He is grateful, but knows he must somehow find a way to redeem himself…

In TOO LATE FOR TEARS (1949; dir: Byron Haskin), aka KILLER BAIT, Liz plays the mercenary Jane Palmer, a mousy housewife who murders her husband for money. Scott’s portrayal stands out in this well-written low-budget thriller, and her chilling performance helped to solidify her standing as one of the top actresses in the noir canon. It’s one of Scott’s finest roles and a favorite film of many of her fans.
By the end of 1949 Scott appeared in nine films, but hadn’t achieved the level of stardom and clout that was needed in the studio system to influence the direction of her own career. From 1950 on she was never given a chance to stretch beyond the usual good girl gone wrong or femme fatale roles she had become known for. She continued to make films for Paramount – DARK CITY (1950; dir: William Dieterle), RED MOUNTAIN (1951; dir: William Dieterle), and SCARED STIFF (1953; dir: George Marshall)) and Columbia TWO OF A KIND (1951; dir: Henry Levin) and BAD FOR EACH OTHER (1953; dir: Irving Rapper)), few of which are particularly compelling. Perhaps the best of these is THE RACKET (1951; dir: Lewis Milestone). Scott’s role as a hard-boiled nightclub singer is small, but her performance is powerful. The film is stagy and theatrical, but worth watching.
In 1957 Scott’s film career came to an end with her role in LOVING YOU (dir: Hal Kanter), Elvis Presley’s second movie (although she had a small role in PULP – a 1972 British comedy thriller film, directed by Mike Hodges starring Michael Caine.) After 1957, she went incognito – except for a few rare television appearances. Her legacy lives on, however, in the growing popularity of classic film noir movies – and a natural interest in the alluring, enticing femme fatales of the Golden Age of Cinema.

SPOTLIGHT ON: Phil Karlson

Administrator — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:53:59 +0000

Two-fisted director Phil Karlson made some of the roughest, toughest crime films of the forties and fifties, and stands among the finest directors of gritty, violent, realistic, noir cinema during his thirty-five year career.

Born in Chicago as Philip Karlstein, he moved to Loyola Marymount University in California in search of a law degree, and landed a job at Universal Pictures . He worked his way up from prop man to assistant director, and eventually to director at “Poverty Row” studios that cranked out cheapie movies like hamburgers during the dawn of the Hollywood sound era. His first film was a low-budget comedy for Monogram called A WAVE, A WAC, AND A MARINE. Released by Monogram, A WAVE, a WAC and a Marine was packaged by Biltmore Productions, a partnership consisting of Abbott and Costello’s agent Eddie Sherman and Lou Costello’s father Sebastian Cristillo. Though Elyse Knox, Sally Eilers and Ann Gillis head the cast, the film is a showcase for nightclub comedian Henny Youngman, here cast as a Hollywood agent. Sent out by his studio to sign up a pair of gorgeous Broadway stars (Ramsay Ames and Marjorie Woodworth) Henny signs the stars’ understudies (Knox and Gillis) by mistake. Fortunately, the “substitutes” are every bit as talented as the real stars, and as a result are contracted to appear in a big-budget film, cast as the aforementioned WAVE and WAC. Henny Youngman’s delivery was as sharp then as it is now, but he was undermined by substandard sound recording. More impressive was the first-time direction of former Universal production assistant Philip Karlstein, who went on to auteur fame as Phil Karlson (1944). Karlstein was finally a director.

After his first few films, he changed his name to Karlson and settled down at his new job, making hard-edged movies, quickly and cheaply. In 1945, he cranked out three films. The following year, he shot seven, most of which were crime pictures (including one Charlie Chan mystery and two Lamont Cranston “Shadow” adventures). For the rest of the forties, he did it all: crime flicks, comedies, romances, westerns, whatever.

1952 was a memorable year. He directed KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL, a brass-knuckle heist film starring John Payne as an ex-con who infiltrates an armored car gang and has to contend with Grade-A thugs like Preston Foster, Lee Van Cleef, Jack Elam and Neville Brand. This was the first of three collaborations between Payne and Karlson, and arguably the best. The picture was lensed by seasoned noir cinematographer George Diskant who had done superb work on a series of films noir including THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1949), PORT OF NEW YORK (1949), THE RACKET (1951), ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1952), THE NARROW MARGIN (1952), BEWARE, MY LOVELY (1952).

During that same year, Karlson directed SCANDAL SHEET. Based on the novel The Dark Page by revered noir director Samuel Fuller - who himself was a newspaper reporter before his career in Hollywood. This film was made memorable by the great Broderick Crawford, who turned in an excellent portrayal of the tough, amoral, self-centered newspaper publisher. An ambitious editor accidentally kills his ex-wife, then finds his ace reporters investigating the story. Even though we know from the start who the murderer is, the progression of the plot, and especially Crawford’s gritty execution of the murderer role, kept the audience in suspense. Critic Dennis Schwartz called SCANDAL SHEET a “hard-hitting film noir thriller” and especially liked the cinematography. He wrote, “Burnett Guffey’s splashy black-and-white photography is filled with New York City atmosphere and the whirlwind energy buzzing around a press room.”

Next came Karlson’s key work, 99 RIVER STREET. John Payne stars as Ernie Driscoll, an ex-boxer turned taxi driver who spends a long, horrendous night of often absurd complications when his wife (the delicious Peggy Castle) leaves him for a smarmy jewelry thief. Film Critic Dave Kehr calls 99 RIVER STREET “an example of the kind of humble brilliance that often emerged from the American genre cinema.” 99 RIVER STREET keeps adding twists and turns to its plot until the viewer is not sure who’s who and what’s what. Of course, no self-respecting noir would be complete without the participation of some great character actors, including Brad Dexter, Frank Faylen, Peggy Castle, Jay Adler, Jack Lambert, Glenn Langan, Eddy Waller, Ian Wolfe, Peter Leeds and Gene Reynolds.

Ernie Driscoll is a noir hero you can’t help but root for; it’s like his world has caved in on him all at once, and even though he has some anger management issues – he’s a likeable, straight-arrow guy. This is a film, about grit, determination, integrity and retribution. A low-budget masterpiece, and one of the best film noirs of the Golden Age.

Karlson continued cranking out pulp movies throughout the fifties: TIGHT SPOT with Ginger Rogers and Brian Keith; HELL’S ISLAND; a tepid noirish melodrama that unravels scene by scene like a cheap suit; 5 AGAINST THE HOUSE, a disappointing

heist film – generally unwatchable except for the presence of scrumptous Kim Novak; THE BROTHERS RICO, with Richard Conte. The Rico brothers are mobsters in the employ of syndicate head Sid Kubick. Richard Conte plays the one Rico brother who has forsaken crime. But the other Ricos (James Darren and Paul Picerni) haven’t yet seen the light, Conte gets word that his brothers have been marked for murder, and tries to warn them. Perhaps his best of this period was THE PHENIX CITY STORY, a seedy, real-life story about corruption in the notorious town of Phenix City, Alabama.

In the 1960s he directed KID GALAHAD (1962) with Elvis Presley and two Matt Helm spy films starring Dean Martin- THE SILENCERS (1966) and THE WRECKING CREW (1969). He finally struck gold, in 1973, with WALKING TALL, a hillbilly neo-noir about a redneck lawman (Joe Don Baker) in the most corrupt county in Tennessee. It was a major domestic and international hit that also made him a fortune, due to the fact that he owned a large percentage of it.

SPOTLIGHT ON: Percy Helton By Alan K. Rode

Administrator — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 03:33:02 +0000

Percy Helton in WICKED WOMAN (1954)

This article was written by Special GUEST CONTRIBUTOR film historian ALAN K. RODE – VISIT Alan’s Web-Site: http://alankrode.com/

No actor exemplified the downtrodden film noir schlemiel better than Percy Helton. If his hunched frame and marsupial-like features weren’t enough to convince audiences of his servile timidity, there was always the unique Helton voice which made his screen characterizations permanently distinctive. Never was a vocal inflection more perfectly suited to a performer.

Percy Helton uttered his lines with a breathy vocal lilt akin to the sigh of an exhausted calliope. When alarmed or threatened- a frequent occurrence- he reached a higher octave reminiscent of a damaged ukulele. Even though the diminutive performer seemed to be specifically constructed as a mid-century urban whipping boy, Helton’s thespian roots dated back to the nineteenth century.

He made his stage debut in 1896 with his vaudevillian father, Alf Helton, at the Tony Pastor Theatre on 14^th Street in New York City. Percy Helton was two years old. At age eleven, he appeared with David Belasco on Broadway in Return of Peter Grimm. The adolescent thespian had a long speech in the play that he recited verbatim over six decades later during a guest appearance on the Merv Griffin television show. In addition to his early stage work, he also appeared in several silent pictures filmed in New York.

During his career along the Great White Way, Helton worked for George M. Cohan for five years and appeared in a variety of productions opposite notables such as Lloyd Nolan, Helen Hayes and Peggy Woods. As he retained his youthful appearance and played adolescent roles into his twenties, Helton earned the nickname of “Dype”, short for the diapers that he appeared to belong in.

Helton worked exclusively in his native New York, treading the boards and appearing in several musical short films during the late 1930’s. Moving into middle age and acquiring a curved spine alternately ascribed to either late growth or osteoporosis, Helton’s career began to falter a bit as he finally outgrew playing juveniles. A Gotham film location shoot in early 1947 changed everything. Director-writer George Seaton cast the actor as a drunken Santa Claus in Miracle on 34^th Street. Helton was uproariously perfect as an inebriated St. Nick who passes out while rehearsing “Jingle Bells” for the Macy’s holiday parade and is replaced by the “real” Santa, Edmund Gwenn. Percy’s comedic turn in what would be a perennial holiday classic resulted in his continual employment as a film actor during the next quarter century. He was summoned to Hollywood by Twentieth Century Fox to play a bit part in Call Northside 777 (1948) and remained in L.A. for the rest of his life.

Percy Helton racked up an impressive string of film noir credits over the next several years, beginning with the seldom-seen Larceny (1948) starring John Payne, Dan Duryea and a boisterously brassy Shelley Winters. Helton plays a servile hotel manager who searches for his registration book that he misplaced under, “…my jiu-jitsu manual.” In Robert Siodmak’s superbly-crafted Criss Cross, (1949), Helton essays a memorable turn as a Bunker Hill barkeep. When a cuckolded Burt Lancaster returns to his former nocturnal haunt in search of femme muse Yvonne De Carlo, he encounters Percy tending bar. Burt gets cute with his inquiries, not wanting to own up to the Statue-of-Liberty-sized torch he is resolutely carrying for Yvonne. Helton quickly tags Lancaster as an undercover liquor “checker” before having to apologize for the oversight. Later on, the perpetually regretful bartender has to “take the liberty” of breaking Lancaster’s heart. He informs him that Yvonne has eloped with lowlife crook Dan Duryea and double-crossed him once again. Helton neatly summarizes the age-old bartenders’ credo about personal entanglements in a mournful tone to a female lush whose posterior polishes a barstool every evening: “I don’t get involved. Nowadays, it doesn’t pay.”

The Set-up (1949) features a classic Helton portrayal of a beaten-down boxing trainer who works in ham-and-egger Robert Ryan’s corner. Percy vainly warns Ryan’s obtusely corrupt manager (George Tobias) that he had better let their fighter know that the fix is in and a dive to the canvas is in order: “Stoker can still punch… you gotta tell him!” Treading in a sea of bottom feeders, Percy is just another minnow, getting ripped off for a miniscule slice of the crooked payoff and literally running away from the ring after Ryan scores an upset knockout, abandoning the helpless palooka to face the wrath of the crossed gamblers.

The Crooked Way (1949) included a memorable Helton portrayal of a pitiful loser. A flunky mired in servitude to a nut-job gang boss (a near-drooling Sonny Tufts), Helton constantly totes his only friend, a pet cat named Hector, around with him while intermittently sneezing because of an allergy to feline dander! He attempts to protect his pet when a gangster firefight erupts, but ends up getting a bullet in the back for his trouble. Not that the actor was unfamiliar with gunfire.

Percy Helton went “over there” to Europe with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) during World War I, experiencing battlefield combat for nineteen months. The diminutive actor was reportedly awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s 2nd highest military decoration for extraordinary heroism in battle. Settling quietly in a Hollywood apartment, Helton became the first vice-president of the noted thespian club, the Masquers, and enjoyed a long, successful marriage with his wife Edna, a former Ziegfeld dancer.

Before film noir began to disappear from theatre marquees and morphed into televised crime dramas, Helton continued to make an indelible imprint in dark cinema: Never Trust a Gambler (1951), The Tall Target (1951), Vice Squad (1953) Crashout (1955), No Man’s Woman (1955) and Terror at Midnight (1956). Although he appeared in hundreds of television shows and films of different genres, the actor’s most unforgettable turns proved to be a bookend set of seminal film noirs.

Helton was memorably repellent as a corrupt coroner who gets too greedy for his own good while trying to shake down private eye “Mike Hammer” in the iconic Kiss Me Deadly (1955). Instead of being filled with greenbacks, Percy’s extended hand is memorably slammed in a desk drawer by a grinning Ralph Meeker as a dubbed (and fake sounding) shriek gradually subsides to an actual Helton whimper.

There is no doubt that Percy Helton’s most compelling screen performance was in Russell Rouse’s uniquely perverse Wicked Woman (1953). The rangy Beverly Michaels stars as a weirdly moist tramp with blown-out, peroxide hair and an attitude to match. Her saga begins when she gets off a bus in a Bo hunk town and moves into cold water flat. Third-billed Percy Helton is “Charlie Borg”, a perpetually horny tailor who resides directly across the hall. Helton’s jaw hits the floor as he becomes immediately transfixed with the six foot tall blonde. After landing a job as a cocktail waitress, Beverly occupies her time seducing married saloon owner Richard Egan, convincing him to unload the gin mill by forging his wife’s signature so the star-crossed pair can lam off to Mexico. At the same time, the greedy Michaels strings Percy along, titillating his over-active libido in order to borrow money from him. After dodging his direct advances, an increasingly pressured Beverly ends up being blackmailed by Helton who discovers her chicanery to fleece Egan’s alcoholic wife and skip town. The audience is led to believe that a grotesque coupling occurs. The entire situation finally explodes when an enraged, scantily clad Beverly Michaels cuffs a whining Helton around like an errant Chihuahua after she is caught by Richard Egan being lasciviously pawed by her ardent neighbor. With a total absence of morality amid bizarre characterizations, Wicked Woman remains a highlight reel of mid-20th century camp.

The “Charlie Borg” performance was a personal highlight for Percy Helton who continued working steadily until he passed away in 1971 at the age of seventy-seven. While visiting San Francisco with his wife shortly before his death, Percy was complimented about his work in Wicked Woman. The slight thespian replied with a breathy sigh that it was his favorite movie. Edna Helton immediately chimed in, revealing that her “Perc” had the one sheet poster of Wicked Woman hanging on the wall above their bed back home in Hollywood! Alan’s latest book, “Michael Curtiz: A Man for All Movies,” is set for a 2013 release from the University Press of Kentucky.

ONE WAY STREET - http://www.alankrode.com

TENSION (1949) ~ Review by Natasha DeVille

Administrator — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 20:18:09 +0000

TENSION (1949)

A bitter post-war American Dream frayed into Nightmare

TENSION is a powerful film noir with an engaging story and some terrifc performances. Mild-mannered pharamacist Warren Quimby is married to a an over-sexed, unfaithful, dissatisfied tramp – mercenary man-trap Claire (Audrey Totter). After disparaging his manhood, and his paltry efforts to make her happy, she leaves him for hunky, brutal liquor salesman Barney Deager (Lloyd Gough). Warren plans his revenge, and the movie keeps tossing in unexpected plot twists until the very last frame….. This film does not conform to any strict formula of noir construction, but is a genuine noir classic by breaking so many of the rules.

Audrey Totter is brilliant as the unfaithful bitch of a wife. She burns up the screen and makes a minor B picture look like a masterpiece. Lloyd Gough is perfect as her flashy, insensitive lover. Tom D’andrea is marvelous as Basehart’s friend and colleague – Freddie. William Conrad is terrific in a small role. He walks a fine line between humor and violence as a smartass Mexican cop. John Berry’s taut direction is fast-paced and assured, and Previn’s energetic score is sultry and provocative. Lovely Cyd Charisse as Paul’s object of affection plays nice-girl Mary Chanler - and therefore, not the most interesting character in such a gritty film.

Sure, the plot has holes you could drive a steamroller through. Still, it’s worth watching to see one of the most underrated actresses of all-time – Audrey Totter - chew the scenery. Her pouty baby face could go from fierce to lustful to innocent and back within the blink of an eye. She purrs her lines in a feline contalto, a canine growl and a sultry whisper. She is sensual, strong, and, seductive. Her superb performance as the floozie Claire is chilling and memorable. Totter is the glue that holds this film together. For once you can believe that the female lead in a noir could be the cause of all this trouble.

Audrey was great in movies like LADY IN THE LAKE (1947) and THE SET UP (1949). Her thirty seconds of screen time in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946) as the mystery girl who steals John Garfield away from Lana Turner are enough to melt the butter on your popcorn. She is one of the truly talented actresses of her era, and a genuine Film Noir Icon. Here she is the quintessential noir bad girl – described in lurid detail in every pulp crime novel ever written. Dripping with sex and cheap perfume and bad ideas and still somehow likeable, or at least irresistible. She earns her musical theme in the movie- a sultry, teasing clarinet roll- as no femme fatale ever has. TENSION is well-worth watching for her performance alone.

Kudos to Richard Basehart as the husband. Baseheart was not afraid to play Warren as a wimpy loser, and he displays the fear and insecurity that most male leads would never reveal. The locations are perfect – the all-night drugstore, the seedy bowling alley, the Malibu beach house…..all photographed in a crisp, timeless black and white that’s as fresh today as it was over 60 years ago.

The film has some flaws, of course – most notably the character of Lt. Collier Bonnabel (Barry Sullivan), the detective/narrator who plays it a little too darn cute with the lead characters instead of simply doing his job and arresting the killer. (It’s sorta tough to remain an impartial investigator after you’ve french-kissed

one of the suspects.) And then there’s the unbelievable coincidences: Warren devotes his life to killing Barney Deager then has a sudden change of heart – all on the same night that someone else decides to kill him. Very convenient.

But still, TENSION is a suspenseful, intelligent, quirky, and intriguing little film. Superb atmosphere, solid performances, and excellent cinematography combine to create an engaging mystery. This film is highly recommended and a must for lovers of film noir.

SPOTLIGHT ON Claire Trevor ~ Article by Moira Finnie

Administrator — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 23:02:25 +0000

SPOTLIGHT ON Claire Trevor ~ Article by Moira Finnie – Unraveling the “ribbon of dreams” in Classic Films & More

The Christmas Album: Claire Trevor

Our third foray into Yuletides past, Hollywood-style, takes us back to the early ’30s when a twenty-something girl from Brooklyn had recently begun climbing the Hollywood tree. That’s Claire Trevor (1909-2000) brandishing a mischievous grin and what appears to be a plushly upholstered heart–all while showing the expected bit of leg. This sort of still was de rigueur for the studio period, especially when a young contract player was an unknown quantity. It’s a good thing that the actress kept her own appraisal of her assets to herself back then. “The only thing I knew how to do was act,” Trevor later said bluntly, “and at that point, I didn’t even know much about that.”

At the time, Claire Wemlinger, aka Claire Trevor, needed the work. During the Depression, her father’s Fifth Avenue clothing store went under, and a regular paycheck was most appealing, even though her proper family was somewhat taken aback by her decision to pursue the stage and screen. After training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the neophyte actress appeared in some Broadway plays, earning some critical praise, catching the eye of Fox Studios, but learning that a brief run in a few plays rarely paid the rent for long.

Eventually the beautiful, possibly talented girl with satin and smoke in her voice evolved into a clear-eyed realist. An ability to project haughtiness and toughness as well as a gift for versatility enabled Trevor to build a film career that spanned six decades. ”I always thought of the movies as a temporary arrangement,” she reflected in the late ’40s. “I had always thought of myself as a stage actress. But I had a few flings at the stage and I decided I like pictures better.” During five years at 20th Century Fox, studio head Darryl Zanuck seemed unenthusiastic about her potential, only loaning her out for some decent parts while relegating Claire to a flurry of programmers at her home studio. On the up-side of this situation, the actress did have a chance to play opposite and learn from a vast number of actors, including Spencer Tracy, from whom she said she “stole” his naturalistic way of “throwing away a line” after appearing with him in The Mad Game (1933) and Dante’s Inferno (1935).

The majority of pictures were most often flicks that “nobody knows about,” according to the actress. “I don’t even know how many pictures I made. It must have been 150! I played every kind of girl you could name: newspaper reporter, nurse, a Navy wife.” [For the record, IMDb credits Claire Trevor with 87 acting appearances in movies and on television]. In her own succinct take on this early phase of her career: ”I either played the dashing girl reporter who cleaned up the town or the leader of a pack of gangsters.” After that experience, she became one of those rare screen actors in the studio era who generally kept her independence, playing occasional leads but more often nailing juicy supporting parts in a seamlessly skilled manner.

This shift came after she “played fallen women in Dead End (1937) and Stagecoach (1939). That did it,” Trevor claimed in an interview in the 1980s. Working with fine directors such as William Wyler and John Ford and being part of a skilled ensemble cast, Claire Trevor had discovered that she could “get more dimension into the role when you’re not playing the lead. The censors don’t care so much about character parts, but they’re strict about the hero and heroine.”

These roles enabled her to move to a higher branch on the path to success in the film colony, bringing her a well-deserved Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her brief, searing moments as a diseased prostitute, “Francey,” on screen in Dead End. [Trevor would be nominated twice more, for Key Largo (1948) and The High and the Mighty (1954). She won an Oscar for her turn as the painfully anguished alcoholic in Key Largo].

Despite this insight into this aspect of a career, the status of “featured actress” was not always entirely comfortable for her. While she never brooded openly about “the parts that got away,” Claire acknowledged that she lost out many parts to more high profile actresses, particularly Barbara Stanwyck, whose roles in Double Indemnity (1944) and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) were both ones thatTrevor ached to play.

Trevor felt particularly awkward in a supporting role at MGM in 1941, when she appeared in Honky Tonk opposite Clark Gable. “I was his old girl,” Claire explained, ” then Lana [Turner] came along and that was the end of me. I remember I went to the preview and I started to cry. Lana and I looked a lot alike then, and they made me put brown powder in my hair so I wouldn’t be as blonde as she. I thought my hair looked awful, and I thought that was the end of my career. I really felt stepped on in that.” Seeing the film on television years later, the veteran actress then wondered why she had been bothered since she found her role considerably more interesting than the leading lady’s innocent role.

Perhaps that gradual realization on her part is one reason why the actress was increasingly drawn to steely characters whose beauty and sharp-eyed perceptions seemed to make them ideal for her noir-tinged gifts. Murder, My Sweet (1944), Born to Kill (1947), and Raw Deal (1948) gave her a chance to play women coping with power, sex, money, and men in frank ways that suggested a ferocious id and a lively if amoral mind in one well-dressed package. These unapologetic women she portrayed never seemed particularly hemmed in by Production Code strictures either. As her character in Murder, My Sweet sighed wearily when grilled by someone with the hubris to think he could truly understand her POV, “It’s a long story, and not very pretty.”

As she matured, Trevor created a series of characters who blended poignancy with a self-revelation that was without vanity. She was particularly adept at portraying vividly individuals whose bitter sense of life’s injustices ran just beneath the surface–until events caused emotions to boil over. In the melodramatic tale of the theater, The Velvet Touch (1948), Trevor played a rival/victim of Rosalind Russell’s narcissistic leading lady in a nuanced manner. Creating a believable woman hopelessly in love with a man that Russell has dallied with in the past, Claire reveals her character’s vulnerability and strength in a series of confrontations with the star (and steals every scene in my book). Another complex portrayal enlivened by Trevor’s talent was the lonely, bitter wife of a farmer she played in William Wellman’s My Man and I (1952). Fancying herself attracted to a hired migrant laborer played by Ricardo Montalban, the actress could have drawn a caricature of lust and frustration with a few broad strokes. Instead, Trevor’s loneliness, racism, self-loathing and caustic manner jockey uneasily to create something readily true-to-life.

Despite her memorable way with these dark dames, the roles that first garnered this movie lover’s attention were more conventional, yet forceful women. Claire Trevor’s mothers, are really unusual for the period: in Ida Lupino’s Hard, Fast, and Beautiful (1951) she is antsy with roiling ambition for her daughter, a tennis star played by Sally Forrest. In Marjorie Morningstar (1958), the actress’s ‘Rose Morgenstern’ at first seems to be a nagging, interfering Jewish mother, fretting endlessly over her daughter’s choices in life. Gradually, the fear and love the mother feels for her daughter emerges. At a dinner with the girl and her glamorous ne’er do well, Noel Airman (Gene Kelly), Mrs. Morgenstern’s sometimes blunt ambition and protectiveness of her daughter clearly comes out of a lifetime of concern and past experience.

The way that Trevor plays this scene, it becomes clear that this controlling woman has seen the world’s harshness, absorbing some of it into her own personality and made even more astringent because on some level, ‘Rose Morgenstern’ knows that it will not deter her daughter for even a moment. Perhaps the honesty of these portrayals came out of her own experiences. Married twice for a few years before settling down happily with real estate man and producer Milton H. Bren from 1948 until his death in 1979, the actress, who was the mother of one boy and stepmother of two boys, learned that life didn’t begin or end on a movie set. ”I have always been careless about my career,” she later claimed. “I never worked hard with the publicity department which, I realized later, I should have. I loved working, loved that part of it. All the other thing, I sort of let slide.”

In his memoirs, her friend, actor Robert Wagner recalled fondly how Claire Trevor helped him learn to live outside of the Hollywood bubble. At one time, he believed that if “I lost a gig it was the end of the world.” After getting to know people like Trevor and her husband, he realized that “I could always stand in a river with a fishing rod or play golf. My life now is not show business; it was when I was young, but the deeper I got into it, the more time I spent with people like David Niven, Claire Trevor, and Sterling Hayden, the more I realized how important it is to have something else in your life, something that can fuel your acting.”

When Trevor died in 2000 at the age of ninety, she left several friends a gift of money in her will. Robert Wagner was one of those friends who received such a legacy, ”what she called ‘a hug and a kiss’ that she was unable to deliver in person. Since Claire was partially responsible for my appreciation of art,” Wagner wrote, “I used some of the money to buy two sculptures from nature: a bear, which I have in my bedroom, and a pair of owls. With what was left over, the next time I was in Paris I went to a caviar bar that she had introduced me to, ordered some fine caviar and a bottle of champagne, and drank a toast to a great, great lady.”

For the rest of us, who only knew her from her movies, Claire Trevor left a lifetime of highly entertaining, no-nonsense, portrayals laced with an honest intelligence and considerable insight into human behavior.

VISIT: http://moirasthread.blogspot.com/

BEAT THE DEVIL (1953) ~ REVIEW by Natasha DeVille

Administrator — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:20:04 +0000

Like Hemingway and Joseph Conrad, Huston regarded civilization as a false surface which thinly veiled a hostile nature. Only those who lived at the edge, on the margins of society were regarded by Huston as fellow travellers. BEAT THE DEVIL (director/writer: John Huston; screenwriters: Truman Capote/based on a novel by James Helvick; cinematographer: Oswald Morris; editor: Ralph Kemplen; music: Franco Mannino; cast: Humphrey Bogart (Billy Dannreuther), Jennifer Jones (Gwendolen Chelm), Gina Lollobrigida (Maria Dannreuther), Robert Morley (Petersen), Peter Lorre (O’Hara), Edward Underdown (Harry Chelm), Ivor Barnard (Major Ross), Marco Tulli (Ravello), Bernard Lee (C.I.D. Inspector), Mario Perrone (Purser on SS Nyanga), Saro Urzì (Captain of SS Nyanga), Juan de Landa (Hispano-Suiza Driver), Manuel Serano (Ahmed – Arab Inquisitor); Runtime: 92; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: John Huston; Columbia TriStar Home Video; 1953

REVIEW by Natasha DeVille:

BEAT THE DEVIL is a 1953 film directed by John Huston. The screenplay was written by Huston and Truman Capote, and loosely based upon a novel of the same name by British journalist and critic Claud Cockburn, writing under the pseudonym James Helvick. It was intended by Huston as a light-hearted spoof of THE MALTESE FALCON (1941) – also directed by Huston, and other motion pictures made in the style of what has become known as “film noir”.
The script, which was written on a day-to-day basis as the film was being made, relates the adventures of an eccentric group of swindlers and confidence men trying to lay claim to a parcel of uranium-rich land in Kenya as they wait in a small Italian port to travel aboard a barely sea-worthy tramp steamer en route to Mombasa. The stellar cast includes Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre and Bernard Lee.
This odd, enchanting movie does not easily fit into any specific film category; it has been classified as a “thriller,” a “black comedy,” a “crime melodrama “, and a “romance” movie. It is above all else a parody of the Film Noir style that Huston himself had helped create. BEAT THE DEVIL has developed cult status since its original lukewarm reception in the early 50′s.
A crew of devious international crooks — Peterson, O’Hara, Ross and Ravello — are stranded in Italy while their broken-down steamer is being fixed. With them are the Dannreuthers. The six are headed for Africa, presumably to sell vacuum cleaners but actually to buy land supposedly loaded with uranium. They are joined by others who, despite outward appearances, have similar agendas…It’s nearly incomprehensible at times, and yet it has a captivating vibe that makes it compulsively watchable.