SHADOW OF A DOUBT's "Ann Newton"...Today...

Edna and Hitch

While doing research for a blog on Shadow of a Doubt last year I unearthed information about Edna May Wonacott Green who portrayed Ann Newton, the younger sister in the 1943 film. I wrote a letter asking Edna if she'd be interested in being interviewed and a little while later received an email from her saying "yes." We had a lengthy telephone conversation soon after and on Edna's 78th birthday, February 6, 2010, the first part of our interview was posted at The Classic Film & TV Cafe as "Happy Birthday, Edna May." Part 2 posted a few days later (Part 1 link, Part 2 link). The blog also posted later at TCM's Classic Film Union fan site.

Edna Green today



Edna Green is a truly genuine, intelligent and warm woman whose childhood was extraordinary. It occurred to me that the local paper where she now lives might be interested so I emailed the paper's features editor suggesting a piece about her. I included a link to my interview so he could get an idea of Edna's story. He was interested but said he liked what I'd written and asked for permission to reprint it. It was my turn to say "yes"...and in March of last year, Edna got the front page of the features section of a Sunday edition of the Yuma Sun (the interview was also posted with the online edition). But wait, there's more...

I submitted our interview to Classic Images - and it was accepted - for the journal's glossier sister publication, Films of the Golden Age and appears in the new issue - #63, Winter 2010 - 2011. It's an eight-page spread with many pictures from Edna's personal collection (a few are shown here), several taken on the set of Shadow of a Doubt. According to Wikipedia, TCM's "Robert Osborne has gone on record proclaiming Films of the Golden Age is one of his favorite publications." 



Last weekend Edna and I, who have stayed in touch since our initial interview, talked about events in her life over the past year.

Edna with Martha O'Driscoll on Under Western Skies

Once our interview appeared Edna began to hear from fans all over the U.S., Canada and...the world (Belgium, England, France, Germany, Greece, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden). The letters she receives usually include a photo of her printed from the Internet and a request that she sign it. Edna still averages about three letters a week and reports that most are interested in Shadow of a Doubt, but some even mention Under Western Skies, a 1945 film that co-starred Noah Beery and Martha O'Driscoll. One young American girl wrote asking for advice on how to get into the movies. Edna responds to all who write her and in the girl's case emphasized that it's been nearly 70 years since she was "discovered," and that Hollywood has changed dramatically since then...Edna is a little surprised (and pleased) that so many of those who contact her are young people.

After Edna's interview appeared in the Sun she began to receive invitations from local community groups to speak about her years as a child actress. So far she has led two such programs and has a third coming up soon. She brings her memorabilia and scrapbooks and talks about her experiences on Shadow of a Doubt, The Bells of St. Mary's and the other films on which she worked during the 1940s.

Edna's life has also opened up over this last year in an arena unrelated to her Hollywood heyday. When her husband died of cancer a few years ago, Edna became interested in diet and nutrition. She attended Food for Life classes offered by The Cancer Project and was soon part of a small group of women who regularly met to share ideas and recipes. Eventually Edna was leading a class of 30+ men and women who still meet once a week on Mondays. Edna is committed to a plant-based diet and claims she feels better than she has in decades. She is now leading two additional classes a week and her crusade to promote healthy eating was recently covered by the Yuma Sun. Click here for link. Following this latest newspaper coverage, Edna was contacted by a local judge in charge of a rehab center who is interested in incorporating healthy eating into his program and has asked for her assistance.

Edna's childhood could be called magical, but she left the movie business while still young and led a normal life in the intervening years. It seems somehow fitting that she has come full circle and is once again in the spotlight - not only because of interest in her onetime movie career, but also because of the work she is doing to help others in her community.



Films of the Golden Age Winter 2010/2011, click here to go to site



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"Who's Crazy Now?" - Noir City 9, Opening Night

Stranger on the Third Floor

So…I paid my 10 bucks to park in the lot adjacent to Sullivan’s Funeral Home on Market Street in San Francisco and was heading for the Wells Fargo ATM near 16^th...I checked my phone and noticed a text message…my friend Dick, who I was to meet for dinner before attending opening night of San Francisco’s 9^th annual film noir festival.

I called him to find out where he was…on Castro St. between 18^th and 19^th - also on his way to an ATM. After we got our cash we met at Market and Castro and walked over to Café La Taza on 18^th to get a bite.

By the time I finished my meal, glass of wine and coconut ice cream-over-a-warm-cookie dessert, it was quarter to seven and time to get to the theater…the line, we knew, would be long…

It was, and with our print-your-own-tickets in hand we got on line and waited for the doors to open. An eclectic crowd, we agreed...a sprinkling of ladies dressed in ‘40’s finery but most in street wear staring into space or talking with friends. Dick and I talked about my godson Nicky who’s thinking of going to his first big music concert, Coachella in April. 

Noir City at San Francisco's Castro Theatre



Once inside we checked seating on the main floor and quickly headed up the steps to the balcony. The Castro has 1,400 seats, so if you get there reasonably on time it’s not hard to find decent seats.

The evening was obviously sold out - the theater filled quickly. Then the lights dimmed, music swelled and we were treated to an intoxicating 6-minute montage created by Serena Bramble featuring clips from the countless noir and neo-noir and crime-themed films set or shot in San Francisco…from The Maltese Falcon to Dark Passage to Vertigo to Basic Instinct and many others in between and beyond…the montage culminated with the greeting, “Welcome to Noir City” and the crowd erupted with cheers and applause…(watch the montage below!)



The Castro Theatre

Next, Eddie Muller, founder of the Film Noir Foundation, took the stage. After introducing this year’s young and slinky Ms. Noir City, he talked about film noir and about the work of preservation and his passion for it. The first screening of the night, High Wall (1947) is one of three newly restored films to premiere at the festival. The UCLA Film & Television Archive supervised the creation of preservation prints with funding provided by the FNF. Muller thanked everyone for coming - the evening’s proceeds, he said, paid for the restoration of the film we were about to see. Finally, he dedicated the event to his friend, mystery writer Joe Gores, who very recently passed away.

The theme of Noir City 9 is Who’s Crazy Now? and both opening night films reflected that premise in spades…High Wall is primarily set in a psychiatric institution, and Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) is about a reporter who suffers a paranoid episode (and fanastic dream) and features an out-and-out madman.

Robert Taylor, High Wall

High Wall stars Robert Taylor, still a major Hollywood star but slightly past his prime at the time this film was made. He and Herbert Marshall do the heavy lifting in this dark confection. Leading lady Audrey Totter was having a big year in 1947 with starring roles in this film as well as The Lady in the Lake, and a co-starring role in The Unsuspected. She’s a little stiff as Taylor’s psychiatrist, but the script doesn't give her much help.  Thankfully, Totter’s natural sex appeal manages to peek through from time to time. Herbert Marshall, who often played weak upstanding men, is the villain here. In a part that vaguely echoes his role in Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, he is one of the strengths in this flawed thriller. To enjoy High Wall, suspension of disbelief is mandatory…the film is an entertaining snapshot rather than a stark reflection of the dark subtext of the post-war late ‘40s.



Laura Ellis

 Intermission. The evening continued with a performance by chanteuse Laura Ellis who, clad in a gorgeous emerald green figure-hugging gown (think Gilda) crooned a luscious ballad that swept me back several decades to a time before my time. A protégé of The Manhattan Transfer’s Alan Paul, Ellis was a wonderful surprise. Would love to hear her version of “Green Eyes” or “Tangerine” and will be keeping an eye on her tour schedule.

The evening just kept getting better. Muller returned with the special guest of the night, Judy Wyler Sheldon, daughter of director William Wyler and actress Margaret Tallichet. Tallichet was leading lady of the night's second feature, Stranger on the Third Floor. Sheldon, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is on the board of the San Francisco Silent Film Society, recounted an anecdote about the first time she saw this film.

William Wyler and Margaret Tallichet


In the 1970s a small local film club advertised a screening of Stranger on the Third Floor and Sheldon decided to attend; she hadn't seen any of her mother's films up to that point. She decided to invite her dad and mom to come along - which they did. As it turned out, the screening was in the home of the club's president and when Judy showed up with not only her husband but her illustrious father and her mother, one of the film's stars, all jaws dropped. She mentioned to the rapt Noir City 9 audience that she hadn't been sure how her father would take not being the center of attention for once, but he turned out to be game and the evening was a big hit. Sometime later Judy Sheldon attended another of the film club's screenings and noticed that the check her father had written to cover admittance had never been cashed but was in a frame on the wall.

Scenes from Stranger on the Third Floor

Stranger on the Third Floor is a 64 minute "B" effort from RKO. BUT. It has been called America's first film noir for its stylistic elements - highlighted by one fabulous and surreal dream sequence. Art Director Van Nest Polglase was involved in just about every RKO film made from 1931 to 1942...including Citizen Kane (1941). Watch Stranger and Kane - a visual connection is unmistakable. The film also boasts cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca (Out of the Past). While there are recognizable faces in the film (Peter Lorre as "the stranger," Elisha Cook, Jr. as Briggs), the two leads are relatively unknown. Margaret Tallichet made few films and was more occupied with her marriage to William Wyler and their family. John McGuire, who plays the reporter, had bit parts in Shadow of a Doubt, White Heat and Sands of Iwo Jima but was off the big screen by 1952. Lorre doesn't have that much screen time, but his scenes are mesmerizing and chilling. Though essentially a "B" morality tale, Stranger on the Third Floor is a must-see for those interested in the evolution of film noir...and American cinema...

Noir City 9 runs through January 30...if there's any chance you can attend - do! This is one of the premiere noir fests in the world and worth every penny of the $10 ticket price ($100 for a festival pass). I'll be back on Wednesday for Jean Renoir's legendary The Woman on the Beach (1947).

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CMBA Hitchcock Blogathon: THREE CLASSIC HITCHCOCK KILLERS

Alfred Hitchcock once remarked that, “in the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog.”  He resisted such clichés, preferring a different kind of heavy, the sort he called “an ordinary human being with failings.”  The director also said, referring to his own work, “the more successful the villain, the more successful the picture,” and though this was not always the case, it held true for some of his best films.

 Three villains who reflect his preferences and support his contention come quickly to mind:

• Charles Oakley, the “Merry Widow” killer in Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
• Bruno Anthony, the “Criss Cross” strangler of Strangers on a Train (1951)
• Norman Bates, the identity-challenged slayer in Psycho (1960)

Shadow of a Doubt: Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten

Shadow of a Doubt is the film Hitchcock sometimes claimed was his favorite. It was one in a string of hits he made during his first years in the U.S.; some call it his first truly "American" film. Joseph Cotten as Charles Oakley is spellbinding, beginning with the rich velvety rasp of his voice. Uncle Charlie’s suave veneer and practiced charm belie his homicidal impulses and he is welcomed with open arms into a wholesome small town.

Strangers on a Train was a major hit and responsible for reviving Hitchcock’s career after a series of mid-century flops. Robert Walker’s hypnotic performance as the bizarrely unbalanced Bruno is so powerful he dominates the entire film. Bruno, glib and witty, smoothly finagles his way into the lives of the unwary.

Psycho: Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh

Psycho was a sensation, the great groundbreaking masterpiece of Hitchcock’s later career.  The personality of Norman Bates is the crux of the plot and Anthony Perkins’s portrayal is both riveting and far-reaching. An engaging young fellow, Norman appears harmless and accommodating to those who stay at the Bates Motel.

Hitchcock cleverly selected actors for these roles who were not known for playing heavies; each was immensely talented as well as cast soundly against type.

Joseph Cotten, 37 when cast as Uncle Charlie, had made his screen debut in Citizen Kane (1941) as down-to-earth reporter Jedediah Leland. He had also portrayed the protagonist in Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and went on to play sympathetic leads in several films following Shadow of a Doubt.

Strangers on a Train: Farley Granger and Robert Walker

In his 2007 autobiography Farley Granger remembered that after he had been cast as Guy Haines, Hitchcock asked him what he would think if Robert Walker were to play Bruno Anthony in Strangers on a Train. Granger recalled Joseph Cotten in Shadow of a Doubt as “masterful surprise casting” and, thinking of Walker’s earlier roles, responded, “What a terrific idea!”

Walker, 31 when he portrayed Bruno, had been knocking around Hollywood for years, repeatedly cast in boy-next-door roles. He had played young servicemen throughout World War II – Bataan (1943), Since You Went Away (1944), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), The Clock (1945) and in the Private Hargrove films. Strangers on a Train, a testament to his remarkable versatility, was the last film he completed before his sudden death.

Anthony Perkins in Psycho

Anthony Perkins, 28 when he played Norman Bates, had been cast mostly as sensitive, sincere young men prior to becoming a Hitchcock killer:  Friendly Persuasion (1956), Fear Strikes Out (1957), The Tin Star (1957) Green Mansions (1959). Afterward, Perkins became synonymous with Psycho and critic Robin Wood spoke for many when he mused, “…the saddest casualty of Norman Bates’s murder spree was Perkins’s career.”

None of these three actors had been or would ever be a top star though David O. Selznick tried hard to make a leading man of Cotten.  It's no stretch to say that each actor’s greatest role was his turn as a Hitchcock killer.

The relationship between these villainous characters is as interesting as the similarities the three actors share.
 

Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train

In his Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, Robin Wood pondered Hitchcock’s avowed disinterest in actors with a grain of salt:  “…one needs to account for the numerous superb performances…” and specifically referenced Cotten, Walker and Perkins. Though he acknowledged that some actors, left to their own devices, might capably seize the moment, Wood believed there was “…more reason to deduce that there are certain performances – or more exactly, certain roles – which arouse in Hitchcock a particular creative interest.”

What these three personalities seem to most obviously have in common is a complex psychology rooted in family relationships.



Joseph Cotten in Shadow of a Doubt

Early in Shadow of a Doubt it is revealed that dapper Uncle Charlie was the youngest in his family, badly spoiled by mother and older sister. His attitude toward men suggests he is used to being top dog and his attentiveness to women implies his seductive powers. But Charlie, with his “spirit wounded and festering” (Lindsay Anderson), is deeply disdainful of everyone.

Dissipated playboy Bruno Anthony of Strangers on a Train still lives at home in the family mansion. He is an only child, coddled by an addled mother and dismissed by a powerful father. Bruno seems to have little interest in women though, like Charlie, he manipulates them easily. While his behavior hints at sexual identity issues, he desperately schemes to dethrone his hated father.

Norman Bates in Psycho is also an only child. Norman appears to be the hapless victim of a domineering mother. Whatever the actual dynamics of the mother/son relationship, Norman never matured or successfully transitioned to manhood. He is awkward and twitchy, if sometimes boyishly charming, as he navigates the dark and chaotic world he shares with his mother.

Uncle Charlie visits Santa Rosa

Hitchcock additionally bestowed upon each of these villains one of his favorite motifs, a "double"…all three have one. Uncle Charlie and his namesake niece/twin, “Young Charlie,” engage in a fierce battle to the death. Bruno proposes to his less sinister double, Guy, that they “trade murders,” but later perceives a “double-cross”…and Norman, well, with Norman Hitchcock takes his fascination with alter-egos to the extreme; Norman has two personas.

In essence, each character is a progressive reworking of a character type and it strikes me how each also fits neatly into the era in which he "lives."



On the surface, Uncle Charlie is the most civilized of the three killers. He is courtly and chivalrous, very polished – and entitled. Shadow of a Doubt is set during the early days of WWII. As eventually in the war, good triumphs over evil, but much innocence is lost in the fight. David Sterritt commented on the turbulence of the early 1940s and saw Uncle Charlie as a depiction of  “a seemingly genuine (albeit very evil) mortal who indeed personifies the worst tendencies of that moment.”

Bruno in Washington, D.C.

Like Charlie, Bruno is also entitled and fairly polished, but his behavior is more erratic, his inconsistencies more visible. Strangers on a Train takes place during the post-war era in Washington, D.C., seat of power of newly affluent and upwardly mobile America. Bruno and Guy both have aspirations - Guy desires a new well-connected wife and a political career and Bruno plots for his father’s money and clout. Guy’s dreams appear to be within reach by the end, but he also seems destined for the conformity of a “gray flannel suit" (something Bruno would never have worn).

Norman has a naive sort of charm and is not at all sophisticated or polished. But like Bruno, his psychological conflicts are obvious early on. In Psycho just about everyone is nervous and on edge – it’s the Cold War era - but no one is more agitated than Norman Bates with his split-like-an-atom personality. The climax is an A-bomb, the ending an interlude on a psychiatrist’s couch…

Norman Bates at home

 

Uncle Charlie was the original prototype. Updated and fine-tuned he became the more baroque Bruno Anthony who evolved into shattered nowhere-man Norman Bates. All three are singularly conjured variants of what David Thomson has called the "smiling psychopath" - and legendary among Alfred Hitchcock's "successful villains." Strangers  on a Train, Shadow  of a Doubt and Psycho are all regularly cited on "top ten Hitchcock" lists...

For links to blogs participating in CMBA's HITCHCOCK BLOGATHON click here! 

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Focus on Film Noir: Barbara Stanwyck

Three films of legendary star to be screened at Noir City 9

Her childhood has been called Dickensian and the rags-to-riches trajectory of her life could easily have provided material for one of her films…

• She was the youngest of a hard-drinking Irish American bricklayer’s five children
• She lost her mother at age three when the woman was pushed, while pregnant, from a streetcar
• Her father abandoned his children (for the second time) and went to sea
• She lived in a series of foster homes
• She began working at age 13

Ruby Catherine Stevens, born in 1907 in Brooklyn, New York, grew up fast – and tough. There was one bright spot in an otherwise dreary life - her older sister Mildred was a dancer and, during the summer months, Mildred took Ruby on the road with her. Ruby loved to dance and began learning steps, determined to be a dancer herself.  While still in her early teens she got a job as a chorus girl at the Strand Theater on New York’s Times Square, moved on to the “Keep Kool” Revue and before long was in the Ziegfeld chorus.

Ruby’s big break came in 1926 when a friend introduced her to Willard Mack who was casting “The Noose,” a play headed for Broadway. Mack was impressed with her but felt that she needed a name that implied class and distinction. He found the right name on a playbill: “Barbara Frietchie” with Joan Stanwyck.

Barbara Stanwyck made her first film in 1927 with Broadway Nights. And though she became one of the legends of Hollywood, film success did not come overnight. It wasn’t until the early ‘30s, when she moved west with then-husband Frank Fay that she began to make her mark. Frank Capra saw a screen test and cast her in Ladies of Leisure (1930). A contract with Columbia Pictures followed and her career began to take off. It was during this period that some of her early classics were made and her image as a determined working girl evolved: Night Nurse (1931), Baby Face (1933) and Ladies They Talk About, (1933).

Stanwyck’s personal life remained rocky. Her romance with Broadway actor Rex Cherryman had been cut short when he died suddenly in 1928 at age 30. Her marriage to Fay collapsed in the mid-‘30s as her star rose and his fell. The pair had adopted a baby boy, but Stanwyck and the child developed a strained and then estranged relationship that never healed. She began living with Hollywood heartthrob Robert Taylor in the late ‘30s and her studio, wary of potential scandal, insisted that they marry in 1939.

In 1937 Stanwyck starred in Stella Dallas, a memorable melodrama for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. In 1938 she starred in Golden Boy with young William Holden, who years later declared he owed his career to her.

Stanwyck proved that she was a capable comedienne with two hit 1941 comedies, Preston Sturges’s The Lady Eve and Howard Hawks’s Ball of Fire. That same year she co-starred in the Capra classic Meet John Doe with Gary Cooper and earned her second Best Actress Oscar nomination.

The 1940s would be the apex of Barbara Stanwyck’s movie career and included her crowning performance, femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson in Billy Wilder’s film noir supreme, Double Indemnity (1944). Stanwyck garnered her third Best Actress nod for the role.

The decade contained several more popular Stanwyck films: Christmas in Connecticut (1945), The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947), B.F.’s Daughter (1948) and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), for which she received her final Best Actress nomination.

It was at around this time that Stanwyck's marriage to Robert Taylor began to fall apart. Taylor had been dallying with some of the celebrated beauties of the time, Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, along with others of less stature, such as the bit actress on Quo Vadis (1951) who created a scandal when she went public with their affair. When Stanwyck gave Taylor an ultimatum he resisted and the pair soon divorced.

Stanwyck never remarried but continued, as she always had, to work hard. She went on to make several more popular films and starred on television in series and mini-series into the mid-1980s.  She was awarded an honorary Academy Award in 1982 for her career achievements.

Barbara Stanwyck died in 1990.

San Francisco’s Noir City 9 will screen three Stanwyck films at this year’s festival:

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) and The Lady Gambles (1949) on Mon. Jan. 24

The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) on Thurs. Jan. 27

Also of note, The High Wall  (1947) starring Robert Taylor (with Audrey Totter) will be shown on opening night, Fri. Jan. 21

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Focus on Film Noir: Warner Home Video's Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 5

Released by Warner Home Video in 2010, Film Noir Classic Collection, Volume 5  is a four-disc showcase of eight double-featured films, a sampling of thrillers ranging from the acclaimed to the all-but-forgotten.

Disc one is a strong pairing of Edward Dmytryk's Cornered (1945) with Anthony Mann's Desperate (1947). Cornered was the second hit teaming of star Dick Powell with director Dmytryk, and it followed their private-eye noir masterpiece, Murder, My Sweet, by a year. In this outing, Powell is a Royal Canadian Air Force vet doggedly tracking his wife's killer across the globe.

Steve Brodie in Desperate

Desperate was a breakout film for director Anthony Mann, the first in the series of late-'40s noirs that launched his career. Mann's signature is his strong visual style, and this fast-paced story of an innocent man on the run is boosted by stylish set-pieces (including the classic of a fierce back room beating that sets an overhead light swaying, see clip below), a smart script and George Diskant's cinematography. Steve Brodie, a powerhouse as the honest truck driver turned fall guy, delivers a stand-out performance. With creamy Audrey Long as his bride, menacing Raymond Burr as his nemesis and Jason Robards, Sr., as the cynical/genial police lieutenant. Desperate, a staple at noir festivals and Mann retrospectives, is one of the gems of this collection.

Disc two is more eclectic and opens with a fact-based crime expose, The Phenix City Story (1955), directed by Phil Karlson. Veteran LA newsman Clete Roberts kicks it off with a 13+ minute segment of news report/interviews. Then the dramatized story of the 1954 assassination of an Alabama politician begins. It's a brutal (with a capital 'B') piece of history. With John McIntyre, Richard Kiley and the future Mrs. Bing Crosby, Kathryn Grant. Next up, Dial 1119 (1950), a mad-killer-on-the-loose tale directed by Gerald (Louis B's nephew) Mayer. The crazed killer (Marshall Thompson) holes up in a neighborhood bar and holds staff and patrons hostage during a police stand-off. Virginia Field takes a nifty turn as a barfly/seductress and William Conrad appears briefly as "Chuckles," the bartender. Otherwise, this one's mostly interesting for its depiction of the era's bar culture and attitudes toward the "insanity defense."

William Talman and Adele Jergans in Armored Car Robbery

Disc three features the formidable down-and-dirty Armored Car Robbery (1950). It runs a very fast and intense 68 minutes - that's no surpise with action/suspense master Richard Fleischer directing. Gravel-voiced noir stalwart Charles McGraw stars as a grimly determined LAPD lieutenant bent on avenging the murder of his partner during an armored car robbery. William Talman, a few years before he became D.A. Hamilton Burger on TV's "Perry Mason," is chillingly reptilian as the heist mastermind; hard-boiled, slightly worn femme fatale Adele Jergens isn't quite Virginia Mayo, but she's not bad at all. With solid Steve Brodie, this time as the getaway car driver. Armored Car Robbery is ferocious and works from start to finish; the film ends with buddy moment as the jaded lieutenant shares a cynical laugh with his new (and newly manned-up) partner. I imagine Jean-Pierre Melville must've watched this a couple of times before he made Bob le flambeur (1955).

Also included on disc three is Crime in the Streets (1956), a juvenile delinquent drama directed by Don Siegel, starring John Cassavetes. The story originally aired as a teleplay and the film looks, sounds and feels like Golden Age TV. Cassavetes' performance as an overheated teenage gang leader on the verge of mayhem is the main reason to watch this one. He's spellbinding. With Sal Mineo and James Whitmore. Crime in the Streets airs today, Jan. 10, on TCM at 4:15pm Eastern/1:15 Pacific.

Disc four offers the final double feature, Deadline at Dawn (1946) and Backfire (1950).

Deadline at Dawn, adapted from a novel by Cornell Woolrich/aka/William Irish (Rear Window), boasts a screenplay by Clifford Odets and is the only film New York theater legend Harold Clurman ever directed. It got my attention with an opening shot of a sleeping woman's face...and the fly crawling over it...Bill Williams stars as a sailor on shore leave who may be guilty of murder and has only till dawn to clear himself. Susan Hayward plays the taxi dancer who helps him out and Paul Lukas is their cabbie sidekick. While quirky dialogue and various red herrings pique interest, it's primarily the evocative cinematography (Nicholas Musuraca) and Susan Hayward's vibrant performance that keep things moving.

Virginia Mayo

Backfire stars Gordon MacRae before he rose to film stardom in a pair of Rogers and Hammerstein musicals. It features two future Oscar winners, Edmond O'Brien and Ed Begley, plus Virginia Mayo - this time as a good girl, MacRae's nurse. Vincent Sherman directed and, though the film is erratic, it's enjoyable...like a fun-house ride. MacRae is well-cast as a recovering war veteran who dreams of a farm of his own. When his Army buddy (O'Brien) disappears and is implicated in a murder, he sets out to clear his pal's name. The flashback-driven story twists and turns and, oddly, the final plot twist may be given away by images on the product package and DVD disc. Also starring Viveca Lindfors and Dane Clark. Noteworthy original music by Daniele Amfitheatrof who scored Max Ophuls' Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948). Backfire will air Monday, Jan. 24, on TCM at 4:00pm Eastern/1:00pm Pacific.

From 2004 - 2007, Warner Home Video released a film noir collection every July, like clockwork. Then nothing...for three years. It's not surprising, then, that Film Noir Classic Collection, Volume 5 was greeted with much fanfare.

The must-see films in this collection are Anthony Mann's Desperate and Richard Fleischer's Armored Car Robbery. Also worthwhile are Edward Dmytryk's Cornered and Harold Clurman's Deadline at Dawn. Vincent Sherman's Backfire goes off the rails but has enough B-star power and plot packed into it to keep it entertaining. Once the news story and interviews end, Phil Karlson's The Phenix City Story begins to build. It's violent, but fascinating. A historical footnote adds interest: After the candidate (John McIntyre) was murdered, his son (Richard Kiley) ran for Attorney General of Alabama in his place. The son, John Patterson, won and went on to become Alabama's youngest governor.



 (available on DVD and Blu-ray)

When Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol 5 was released, Warner Home Video provided me with a review copy of the DVD set

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NOIR CITY 9 - Schedule announced for 9th annual San Francisco festival

The ninth annual San Francisco film noir festival, Noir City 9, will run from Friday, January 21, through Sunday, January 30, at the historic Castro Theatre; 24 films noir, both celebrated and obscure, will screen.

A presentation of the Film Noir Foundation, this festival is the centerpiece of the organization's effort to find and preserve films in danger of irreparable damage. The foundation's advisory council includes best selling novelists James Ellroy and Dennis Lehane, actress Marsha Hunt and film historian/critic Leonard Maltin.

Film Noir Foundation founder and president Eddie Muller, known as "the czar of noir," is a writer and filmmaker who frequently speaks at noir screenings. Earlier this year he was a special guest at Robert Osborne's 2010 classic film festival in Athens, GA, where he introduced the screening of Double Indmenity. Muller has also provided commentary on noir DVDs (Fallen Angel, The Lineup, They Live by Night and many others).

The Film Noir Foundation also produces festivals in Chicago and Washington, DC.

Click here for screening times and pricing.

The Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)

Friday Jan. 21

High Wall (1947), with Robert Taylor and Audrey Totter

The Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), starring Peter Lorre, considered "the first American film noir"

Saturday Jan. 22

Strangers in the Night (1944), directed by Anthony Mann
Gaslight (1944), with Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and Joseph Cotten

They Won’t Believe Me (1947), with Robert Young, Susan Hayward and Jane Greer

Don’t Bother to Knock (1952), with Richard Widmark and Marilyn Monroe

Sunday Jan. 23

A Double Life (1947), directed by George Cukor, with Ronald Colman (watch a clip featuring Colman's Oscar-winning performance below)
Among the Living (1941), with Albert Dekker, Susan Hayward and Frances Farmer

Monday Jan. 24

The Lady Gambles (1949), with Barbara Stanwyck

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) directed by Anatole Litvak, with Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster

Tuesday Jan. 25

The Dark Mirror (1948) directed by Robert Siodmak , with Olivia de Havilland and Lew Ayres

Crack-Up (1947), with Pat O’Brien, Herbert Marshall and Claire Trevor

Wednesday Jan. 26

The Woman on the Beach (1947)

The Woman on the Beach (1947), directed by Jean Renoir, with Robert Ryan and Joan Bennett

Beware My Lovely (1952), with Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan

Thursday Jan. 27

The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947), with Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck

My Name is Julia Ross (1945), with Nina Foch and George Macready

Friday Jan. 28

Crashout (1955), with William Bendix, Arthur Kennedy and William Talman

Loophole (1953), with Barry Sullivan and Charles McGraw

Saturday Jan. 29

Blind Alley (1939) directed by Charles Vidor, with Chester Morris, Ann Dvorak and Ralph Bellamy

Secret Beyond the Door (1948) directed by Fritz Lang,  with Joan Bennett and Michael Redgrave (this year’s “incomprehensible” film)

The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945) directed by Robert Siodmak, with George Sanders, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Ella Raines

So Evil My Love (1948), with Ann Todd, Ray Milland and Geraldine Fitzgerald

Sunday Jan. 30
Angel Face (1952), directed by Otto Preminger, with Jean Simmons and Robert Mitchum
The Hunted (1948), with Preston Foster and Belita

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Break out the champagne (the '55 Hitchcock)...

Sometime just after Labor Day it began to seem that 2010 suddenly accelerated and was careening headlong toward Halloween…Thanksgiving…Christmas.  Each holiday quickly came and went and, what seems like moments later, 2011 is here.

In my life, 2010 was a year highlighted by reconnecting with old friends and making new ones…so today I celebrate the old year along with the new.

Traditionally, of course, champagne is the drink du jour at New Year’s, and so champagne it shall be now. A bottle of ‘96 Dom Pérignon Rosé would be great, but I’m in the mood for something really special…an old favorite… Hitchcock’s distinctive ’55 vintage from the Cote d'Azur. To Catch a Thief (1955), or “Hitchcock champagne,” boasts a rare combination of elegance and flair. Light-bodied with a smooth finish that lingers, it remains unmatched, though it has been imitated far and wide for decades.

A jaunty score sets the tone as the opening credits roll over a shot of an international travel service with a poster in its window, “If you like life, you’ll love France.” The tinkling keys of a grand piano hint at continental sophistication and adventure long before the first scream bemoaning stolen jewelry issues from a Riviera hotel balcony.


John Robie's Sainte-Jeannet villa

Quickly enough the action takes off with a colorful cruise through the Cote d'Azur as the French police speed to the village of Sainte-Jeannet and the hillside villa of retired jewel thief and prime suspect, John Robie (Cary Grant). The film has just begun and cinematographer Robert Burks has already heralded Hitchcock's first film in VistaVision/Technicolor.

Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Burks had initially worked together five years earlier, following the director's return to the U.S. after making two films in England. Hitchcock was beginning production on Strangers on a Train for Warner Bros. and the studio cinematographer assigned to the project was 40-year-old Robert Burks. This would be the beginning of a fabled partnership.



Cinematographer Robert Burks

Burks began his career in the Warner Bros. special effects lab at 19 when Hal Wallis, who liked shadows and high contrast from his cinematographers, was in charge of production. Burks, who apprenticed under James Wong Howe, worked his way up, becoming a DP and then a cinematographer by 1948.

The early influence of German expressionism on Hitchcock corresponded nicely with the influences Burks absorbed at Warner Bros. and the two collaborated on twelve films from 1951 – 1964, every picture Hitchcock made during that period except Psycho. Like Burks, Hitchcock had detailed knowledge of special effects and tended to devise scenes featuring complex imagery. One of the most memorable scenes in all of Hitchcock came in Strangers on a Train, the scene in which Robert Walker’s strangulation of Laura Elliott is reflected in the lens of a pair of fallen glasses.

Robert Burks was Oscar-nominated for Strangers and again for Rear Window. With To Catch a Thief, he won the Academy Award for Best Color Cinematography. From 1955 – 1958, Burks shot five Hitchcock films in VistaVision/Technicolor; four of the five were for Paramount Pictures.

Hitchcock on the set with VistaVision camera

Paramount had been the only major studio to balk at the widescreen CinemaScope system when it came into use in 1953, and set out to develop a process of its own. The studio worked with Eastman Kodak and came up with VistaVision, a method that delivered a higher resolution, widescreen version of 35 mm. The VistaVision process printed down large format negatives to standard 35 mm, creating a finer-grained print and improved image. The use of Technicolor's dye transfer process was key to VistaVision image quality.

For his first VistaVision/Technicolor excursion, Hitchcock contrived a stylish romantic thriller fueled by dazzling starpower.



Cary Grant and Grace Kelly

Robert Osborne remarked, when he introduced TCM's most recent screening of To Catch a Thief, that it had “the best asset any film could have...Cary Grant.” Good point. This was the third of Cary Grant’s four Hitchcock pictures and it came nearly ten years after their last collaboration, Notorious (1946), one of the best films in either man’s illustrious filmography. In the interim, Hitchcock’s career had gone into and dramatically come out of a slump. During the same period, Grant had continued to make popular films, but had increasingly moved away from the kind of part he had trademarked – the dapper, self-effacing man of the world. Following Dream Wife (1953), Grant retired, dissatisfied with the films he was being offered. But then he was approached by Alfred Hitchcock who had a project in mind with the requisite amount of elegance and comedy to attract him. With To Catch a Thief Cary Grant returned to type; John Robie, “The Cat,” is a dashing charmer, “a man of obvious good taste” very few could or would want to resist. Grant seldom departed from type for the remainder of his career.

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly

To Catch a Thief was the third and final film Grace Kelly made with Hitchcock, who would have worked with her for the rest of his career had she not left movies at the height of her stardom to marry Prince Rainier. Hitchcock’s breathtaking onscreen vision of Kelly brings to mind Josef von Sternberg’s cinematic exaltation of Marlene Dietrich 20 years earlier. Kelly was a beautiful woman but among the handful of films she made, her image as a screen goddess achieved perfection only in her films with Hitchcock. In To Catch a Thief she plays a spoiled rich girl, the ultimate "snow covered volcano" and "Hitchcock blonde."

Jessie Royce Landis

The pairing of Grant and Kelly is irresistible. The two are perfect for the roles of debonair thief/innocent man and haughty/hot debutante, and they literally generate fireworks together.

In her first Hitchcock outing, Jessie Royce Landis portrayed Kelly’s jovial, down-to-earth, bourbon-sipping mother. Hitchcock liked to include colorful women as supporting characters in his films, ranging from the silly (Florence Bates in Rebecca, Patricia Collinge in Shadow of a Doubt) to the clever and wisecracking (Thelma Ritter in Rear Window,  Barbara bel Geddes in Vertigo). Royce Landis portrayed two of the most appealing of the latter type in this film and North by Northwest.

Actor John Williams appeared in his third Hitchcock film with To Catch a Thief, this time as an insurance agent helping Robie track down the real jewel thief. His H.H. Hughson is a fine foil for Grant’s Robie. Their early scenes provide Hitchcock the opportunity to have some fun with a favorite theme, the ambiguity of guilt and innocence...Robie tells Hughson flatly that though he “only stole from those who wouldn’t go hungry,” he “kept everything myself.” Chiding Hughson for stealing hotel sundries and cheating on his expense account, Robie comments, “I was an out and out thief…like you.” Robie emphasizes his point with the throwaway line, “I wish I’d known someone in the insurance racket when I went into the burglary business.”

Cary Grant, John Williams, Georgette Anys

Hitchcock toys with guilt and innocence again when Robie refers to the sensitive hands and gentle touch of his cook and housekeeper, Germaine, who bakes a quiche as "light as air" and who, during the war, “strangled a German general once…without a sound.” 


Some have dismissed To Catch a Thief for its lack of weight, however, it is a strong reflection of Hitchcock’s meticulous craftsmanship, lightly touches on some of the director’s pet themes, and is a solid film of its genre.  Hitchcock delivered exactly what he intended, an exciting, lighthearted, romantic thriller. All elements click into place…from the John Michael Hayes screenplay to Robert Burks's VistaVision/ Technicolor photography, Lyn Murray’s score, Edith Head’s eyeball-popping costumes, two scintillating stars and the Cote d’Azur setting.

To Catch a Thief was successful and influential, and many later films bear its earmarks... most prominently Stanley Donen’s Charade, as well as his Arabesque, William Wyler's How to Steal a Million, Blake Edwards's The Pink Panther and countless romantic romps ever since.

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