NOIR NEWS

Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946) screens April 17th at Noir City: Hollywood

A presentation of the American Cinematheque and the Film Noir Foundation, Noir City: Hollywood, the 15th annual Los Angeles film noir festival, is in full swing now and runs through April 21. Films screen at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. For program and ticket information, click here.

The 14th Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival is set for May 16 - 19 in Palm Springs, California. This year's program features 12 films and many special guests:


Thurs. May 16
7:30 pm Three Strangers (1946), with special guest writer/director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, son of Geraldine Fitzgerald

Fri. May 17
10:00 am Alias Nick Beal (1949)
1:00 pm Mary Ryan Detective (1950), with special guest Marsha Hunt
4:00 pm Try and Get Me (1950)
7:30 pm Edge of Doom (1950), with special guest Joan Evans

Sat. May 18
10:00 am High Tide (1947)
1:00 pm Strange Illusion (1945), with special guest Jimmy Lydon
4:00 pm Champion (1949)
7:30 pm Murder Inc. (1960), with special guest Stuart Whitman

Sun. May 19
10:00 am The Suspect (1944)
1:00 pm Christmas Holiday (1944), with special guest Patricia Ward Kelly
4:00 pm The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

For more information, click here.

John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950) screens May 19 at the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival

Now available from the Film Noir Foundation is the stunning Spring 2013 edition of the organization's e-magazine, Noir City. The cover story, "Dark Mirrors" by Vince Keenan, takes a look at film noir remakes. Also inside, Imogen Sara Smith's in-depth (19 pages!) profile of France's legendary Jean Gabin, a look at director Richard Fleischer's RKO years and reflections on the careers of Frank Lovejoy and Julie London - click here to find out how to receive an e-copy of the latest Noir City.

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Beauty in Black and White - the Film Noir Art of Guy Budziak

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep

Guy Budziak is a woodcut artist whose striking high-contrast prints evoke dense and haunting images from classic noir, proto-noir and neo-noir films. My recent  Nightmare Alley blog entry featured Guy's rendering of a tantalizing moment from the film:

Tyrone Power, Ian Keith and Joan Blondell in Nightmare Alley

Guy studied painting and earned his BFA at Wayne State University in Detroit, his interest in printmaking confined to a class or two he’d taken along the way. After moving into a downtown Detroit neighborhood, Guy began checking out film noir rentals from a nearby public library with a sizable movie catalogue. His dedication to painting would wane, but his passion for film noir would lead to his move into woodcut printmaking; a friend urged him to create art inspired by his love of noir. His first piece, completed in 1999, was an image from Out of the Past. A few years later Roger Ebert, a great fan of the film, would buy (note: see Guy's comment below) a print. 

Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer in Out of the Past

In 2008, Guy’s image of Alain Delon in Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 neo-noir Le Samourai appeared on the cover of Ginette Vincendeau’s book, Les Stars et le Star-Systeme en France (The Stars and the Star-System in France), published by L'Harmattan.
  

In 2012, Giuseppina Magazine, a lavish art, entertainment and fashion quarterly ($48 per issue) published a six page spread spotlighting Guy’s work. In the interview that accompanied his images, Guy was asked what he found most intriguing about film noir. 

“…I think above all else it is mood, mood and atmosphere perhaps more than anything. Night and fog, and rain, of course. While I can appreciate those films inhabited by gumshoes garbed in trench coats and fedoras and femme fatales in slinky gowns, these components aren’t mandatory for me. What many don’t realize is that the real stars of noir aren’t necessarily writers, actors or directors, but rather cinematographers, directors of photography, those responsible for the overall LOOK of these films.”

Giuseppina Magazine #11

From now through April 21, Guy’s prints are for sale at significantly reduced prices. I’ll soon be framing and hanging the print of Nightmare Alley I just purchased and Iencourage those interested to click here to go to his website and view an entire gallery of his incredible art.  Guy can be contacted through his site for information on how to purchase prints. 

Robert Ryan in On Dangerous Ground

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CMBA Blogathon: Nightmare Alley (1947)

Woodcut print by Guy Budziak

Coney Island's first so-called "freak show" opened in 1880, but the heyday of its sideshow attractions began nearly 25 years later when Samuel W. Gumpertz opened "Lilliputia" at Dreamland, one of the site's three major amusement parks. Wildly popular with tourists, "Lilliputia" was a miniature city scaled to accommodate its 300 midget and dwarf residents. When Dreamland burned in 1911, Gumpertz built the Dreamland Circus Sideshow and traveled the world constantly seeking "freaks" (usually those with congenital anomalies) and people from exotic lands (Filipino blowgun shooters, actual "wild men" from Borneo, Ubangi women with plated lips) for his shows. In no time Gumpertz would have competition from The World Circus Freak Show, Wonderland Circus Sideshow and other copy-cat venues large and small.

Geek show, Nightmare Alley

During Coney Island's peak, its bizarre sideshow attractions drew great crowds. Naturally, young people were especially awed by the incredible "human oddities" on display. One boy, whose family had recently moved to Brooklyn, became enthralled with these freak attractions. He haunted the sideshows and reportedly held a job on the midway for a while. His name was William Lindsay Gresham and he was born in Baltimore in 1909. His family had moved from Baltimore to Massachusetts in 1916 before coming to New York and, for most of his life, Gresham would live in New York. He worked as a reporter after high school and for a time made a living in Greenwich Village as a folk singer. In the late '30s he served in the Spanish Civil War, fighting the good fight against Franco. While in Spain he met a fellow American who regaled him with memories of life on the carnival circuit. It was through this man, 'Doc' Halliday, that William Lindsay Gresham learned all about 'carny culture' and first heard of the sideshow act known as 'the geek.' Halliday's description of this creature, a man who crawled around in filth and bit the heads from live chickens and snakes for booze money, revolted and intrigued Gresham. He could not get the image out of his head and later said, "to get rid of it, I had to write it out."
 

William Lindsay Gresham

After he returned to the states, Gresham found employment editing and contributing to pulp magazines. With a steady income providing some financial stability, he was able to begin work on his first novel. Nightmare Alley appeared in 1946. The novel was a soul blistering tour of third-rate Depression-era carnival life and the "spook racket." 'Protagonist' Stan Carlisle is a handsome young man in a low-level carny job who is driven at first by lust and then by the burning ambition to make it big. Coolly conning nearly everyone who crosses his path, Stan makes his way up, up, up as a bogus clairvoyant and on to the heights as a religious charlatan. But he meets his match in a high-end grifter even more cold-blooded than he is. Stan's fall is fast and far and horrific.

Author Gresham, a tormented man in search of peace of mind, had, by the time he was writing Nightmare Alley, already dabbled in Marxism and psychoanalysis and was now studying the Tarot (each chapter of the book is named for a Major Arcana card). He would go on to delve into and abandon Christianity, Zen Buddhism and Alcoholics Anonymous. None of these pursuits would alleviate his struggle with personal demons. The expanse of Gresham's own sense of desperation was revealed in his all-too-real depiction of human despair in Nightmare Alley; later in life he would claim in a letter, "Stan is the author."

Nightmare Alley was a success and the film rights were quickly snapped up by Tyrone Power, who'd read the book and saw in Stan Carlisle the role of a lifetime. He pressed his boss, 20th Century Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck, to produce the adaptation and allow him to star. The film Power badgered Zanuck to make would be directed by Edmund Goulding and co-star Joan Blondell, Helen Walker and Coleen Gray. It was released in 1947.

Tyrone Power makeup test for Nightmare Alley

If William Lindsay Gresham was a troubled misfit, Tyrone Power would seem his very opposite. Born into a legendary theatrical family and graced with good looks, onscreen charisma and talent, Power was a movie star by age 22 - a decade or more younger than most leading men of the late '30s. But, as the years passed, Power became frustrated with the too-often shallow roles Fox offered him and had begun to have misgivings about his career. He told a girlfriend, "Someday I'll show the @!&%!*s who say I was a success just because of my pretty face..." and famously commented on charismatic appeal, "The secret of charm is bullshit." By the time Nightmare Alley came along, Tyrone Power was ready to play Stan Carlisle.

Helen Walker as Dr. Lilith Ritter

A 1947 film adaptation of Nightmare Alley could never have been entirely faithful to the novel - the book was just too raw, sexual and disturbing. So the story was streamlined and cleaned up. Noir veteran Jules Furthman's screenplay could only imply or allude to what was far more perverse and explicit in the novel. Furthman did manage to incorporate a good dose of Gresham's rich and authentic huckster jargon into the script and Goulding evokes, as much as he was allowed, the novel's underlying savagery. An A-budget noir, Nightmare Alley's ink-black look came courtesy of Lee Garmes, one of the developers of "Rembrandt lighting," with art direction by Lyle Wheeler, effects by Fred Sersen and makeup by Ben Nye. Joan Blondell is a natural cast as blowzy, pillowy Zeena, the mentalist, and Helen Walker as Dr. Lilith Ritter is razor-blade deadly. But it is Tyrone Power's portrayal of Stan Carlisle that is the eye-opener. Power's Stan evolves from opportunistic naif to oily hustler, slick headliner, relentless schemer, jumpy man-on-the-run and, finally, vulnerable rum-dum. The transformation is shattering.

It's no secret that Darryl Zanuck disliked Nightmare Alley. Power was his box office bonanza of a leading man and Zanuck hadn't wanted to risk casting him in so dark a film. But was it a risk? The post-war era brought stars like Joan Crawford (Mildred Pierce), Ray Milland (The Lost Weekend), Lana Turner (The Postman Always Rings Twice), Ronald Coleman (A Double Life) and others new success - and sometimes an Oscar - for less than sympathetic character portrayals in downbeat films. On release, Nightmare Alley received mixed reviews (a New York Times reviewer complained, "this film traverses distasteful dramatic ground") but Power's performance was widely acclaimed. That was not enough to reassure an already nervous studio and the film's run in theaters was brief. It was a commercial failure.

 Pete (Ian Keith) reads Stan (Tyrone Power)

Zanuck's reluctance to back Nightmare Alley is often blamed for its failure. But his caution makes sense given the times and his understanding of Tyrone Power's place in movie goers' hearts. Audiences could handle the handsome star as a skirt-chasing carnival Lothario sporting a cocky attitude and a tight tee-shirt. But once Stan's seamy nature begins to creep to the surface - a wad of chewing gum always in his cheek, a cigarette behind his ear, a spiel ever on his lips - the audience might start to get jittery. When he slips a bottle of hooch to Pete (Ian Keith), a carny alcoholic who is an obstacle to his dreams, there's no denying Stan's ruthlessness. It becomes clear soon enough that Stan is a nastier more cynical sort than Dion O'Leary, a romanticized Jesse James or Clive Briggs. By film's end, when an unhinged Stan runs through the midway, wild-eyed and vacant, swinging a club at anyone who comes near, Power's multitude of fans might well have stared in disbelief. How could Tyrone Power (Zorro, that Yank who joined the RAF, Jamie Waring!?!) possibly be the pathetic, disfigured wretch on the screen? They may not have realized or cared that they had just witnessed the performance of his career. Darryl Zanuck must have breathed a deep sigh of relief when Captain from Castile, a Technicolor swashbuckler Power finished just before Nightmare Alley, was released a few months later to blockbuster business.

Tyrone Power as Stan Carlisle

The publication and reception of Nightmare Alley was the one great success of William Lindsay Gresham's career. His second and final novel was a commercial flop. He went back to writing for pulp magazines and published only three more books, all non-fiction. With his health failing and low on cash, Gresham took his own life in a cheap New York hotel in September 1962. He is best remembered by some as a footnote in the life of C.S. Lewis; Gresham's second wife, Joy Davidman, married Lewis after her split from Gresham. Shadowlands, a TV movie, play and film, was based on the Lewis/Davidman relationship.  Others place Gresham in the pantheon of writers like Nathaniel West, James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. Nightmare Alley's reputation has grown steadily through the years and in 2010 New York Review Books published a new, uncensored edition. This publication boasts an introduction by Nick Tosches, who is at work on a Gresham biography. The NYRB edition of Nightmare Alley was hailed by critics; reviews were filled with glowing adjectives - and one constant noun: masterpiece.

Tyrone Power would never have another film role quite equal to Stan Carlisle, but his last onscreen performance, in Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution (1957), was as a character not unlike Stan. Once more he received critical praise, something he'd nearly given up on ("They still don't take me seriously," he complained a year or so earlier). Power had spent the intervening years making movies of varying quality, working successfully in the theater, traveling the world - and going through a succession of women and a lot of money. His death at age 44 occurred in Spain where he was filming Solomon and Sheba. Perhaps fate thought it better to spare him that biblical swashbuckler. Of all the films he made, Nightmare Alley would remain Power's favorite, the one he screened at home for friends.

Nightmare Alley developed a cult following that continued to grow over the decades. Because of legal wrangling between the estate of its producer, George Jessel, and 20th Century Fox, it was kept out of the home video market for years. Finally released on DVD in 2005, the film was greeted with a new wave of enthusiasm from critics, film buffs and film noir fans. Once overlooked and undervalued, Nightmare Alley is now considered a noir classic, one of the bleakest films in a bleak genre, singular for its carny setting and absence of thugs-with-guns and outright murder.


This piece is my contribution to the Classic Movie Blog Association's Fabulous Films of the 1940s Blogathon. Click here for links to all participating blogs.

Notes:
Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham, Introduction by Nick Tosches, New York Review Books (2010)
Noir Fiction: Dark Highways by Paul Duncan, Oldcastle Books (2000)
Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir by Eddie Muller, St. Martin's Press (1998)
All Those Tomorrows by Mai Zetterling, Grove Press (1985)
The Films of Tyrone Power by Dennis Belafonte with Alvin H. Marill, Citadel Press (1979)

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A Noir Year Begins...

January 2013 brings, at last, the much-anticipated Noir City XI, San Francisco's 11^th annual film noir festival. Presented by the Film Noir Foundation at the city’s landmark movie palace, the Castro Theatre, the festival runs from January 25 – February 3 and will showcase 27 films!

Noir City XI begins with an opening night tribute to genre legend Peggy Cummins. Following Film Noir Foundation founder/author/film historian Eddie Muller’s onstage interview with Miss Cummins, Gun Crazy (1950), the noir classic that made her an icon, will screen. Other festival highlights include three world premiere restorations along with the U.S. premiere of 4K digital restorations of Sunset Blvd. (1950) and Experiment in Terror (1962). Also premiering will be 4K digital restorations of two of 1953’s first 3-D films, Inferno and Man in the Dark.

But wait, there’s more…

Returning with the 2013 festival will be the Noir City Nightclub event, set for Saturday night, February 2, at San Francisco's Regency Lodge. There'll be music - from jazz to noir-pop to the torch stylings of songstress Laura Ellis - and dancing and cocktails and a walk on the wild side courtesy of "international striptease sensation" Evie Lovelle.

Czar of Noir Eddie Muller, who not only founded the FNF in 2002 but also emcees the San Francisco festival (and nightclub), is also about to appear on Turner Classic Movies. Beginning at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific on Thursday, January 17, Muller will co-host "A Night in Noir City" with Robert Osborne. On the schedule are five films: Cry Danger (1951) starring Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming, Phil Karlson's 99 River Street (1953) with John Payne and Evelyn Keyes, Tomorrow is Another Day (1951) with Steve Cochran and Ruth Roman, Michael Curtiz's The Breaking Point (1950) starring John Garfield and Patricia Neal and The Prowler (1951), directed by Joseph Losey and starring Van Heflin and Evelyn Keyes.

Robert Osborne and Eddie Muller, A Night in Noir City, January 17

In his 1998 book Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, Muller contended that among the many film varieties to come out of the studio era, film noir held up best: "Film noir pointed toward the black core of corruption in our "civilized" society and our primitive essence. The struggle of the individual to transcend or escape provided the emotional tension. That's the theme that makes noir so compelling for the contemporary crowd." Muller was onto something, for over time film noir has proven to be a genre of lasting appeal. With each successive year, the popularity of Noir City has grown, its program schedule has expanded and the Film Noir Foundation has been able to restore ever more films. Today, San Francisco's noir-fest is the kick off point for other film noir festivals around the country, with Noir City events following in Seattle in February, Los Angeles in April, Chicago in August and Washington, DC, in October.

Click here to learn more about Noir City
Click here to learn more about the Film Noir Foundation

Peggy Cummins and Eddie Muller backstage at TCM's 2012 Classic Film Festival

 

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Noir City X...and a look at upcoming classics festivals

Noir City X, San Francisco

January was a busy, busy month in my reel and real lives this year, but I still managed to squeeze in one night of lust and murder thanks to Noir City X, San Francisco's 10th annual film noir festival, a ten day event that ran from the 20th through 29th.


Noir City, presented by the locally headquartered Film Noir Foundation and masterminded by the organization's founder, Eddie Muller, is the one festival I'll never miss...even in the midst of a serious case of Vertigo. The line up for Noir City X featured many well-known classics: Dark Passage (1947) with Bogart and Bacall, Otto Preminger's genre defining Laura (1944), Gilda (1946) - wherein Rita Hayworth sizzled her way to film immortality, Preston Sturges' dark and hilarious Unfaithfully Yours (1948), The Glass Key (1942) based on a Hammett novel and starring the other iconic noir couple of the '40s, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Two adaptations of The Maltese Falcon screened, the original Roy Del Ruth 1931 version with Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels, and John Huston's 1941 Bogart-Astor-Greenstreet-Lorre masterpiece. In addition, on January 21, festival guest of honor Angie Dickinson was interviewed by Muller on stage between screenings of two of her crime thrillers, The Killers (1964) directed by Don Siegal and John Boorman's Point Blank (1967).

As always, the festival also presented many not-so-well-known, even obscure films noir. And it was to see one of these rough-cut little gems that a friend and I met at San Francisco's enduring movie palace, The Castro Theatre, on Thursday night, January 26.

Naked Alibi (1954) was a film unknown to me until I saw it listed on the festival program and the names of those top-billed got my attention. Sterling Hayden plays a cop out for vengeance, Gloria Grahame is the "border town bad girl" who gets under his skin and Gene (Bat Masterson, Burke's Law) Barry is a murder suspect released from custody for lack of evidence. Billed as an "ultra-rare potboiler," we chose Naked Alibi based on curiosity (the stars, that title) and its spot on the festival schedule (a good movie night for both of us).

It may be ultra-rare, but Naked Alibi is also pretty slight stuff, even for a '50s B-movie. Hayden and Grahame deserve most of the credit for keeping things interesting - though Barry is an entertaining eyeful as an upstanding citizen/psycho with a hair-trigger temper. These three and the border town setting - plus an enthusiastic full-house audience - made Naked Alibi worth the price of admission.

Being in a festival frame of mind, I thought it timely to survey a few upcoming classics fests...

A Trip to the Moon (1902) in color

The Kansas Silent Film Festival, Topeka, KS

The 16th annual Kansas Silent Film Festival begins this Friday, Feb. 24, and runs through Saturday, the 25th, at Washburn University in Topeka - and it's free to the public!

This year the festival will screen the newly restored hand-colored version of George  Méliès' classic short, A Trip to the Moon (1902) on Saturday night. It is believed this color version, featured during the opening of the 2011 Cannes film festival as well as in  Martin Scorsese's Hugo (2011), was not seen by the public for more than 80 years.

Also on the schedule:

Maurice Tourneur's The Wishing Ring (1914) accompanied by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

The Clinging Vine (1926) starring Leatrice Joy, with organ music by Marvin Faulwell

The Cure (1917) starring Charlie Chaplin and Edna Purviance, with music by Greg Foreman

Alice in the Jungle (1925), a Walt Disney cartoon - with music by Phil Figgs

Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926) starring Harry Langdon, with music by Jeff Rapsis

Way Down East (1920) starring Lillian Gish, accompanied by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

Sugar Daddies (1927) starring Laurel & Hardy, with piano music by Marvin Faulwell

Fritz Lang's Spies (1928) - with music by Greg Foreman

He Did and He Didn't (1916) starring Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, accompanied by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

Monte Cristo (1922) starring John Gilbert, with organ music by Marvin Faulwell and percussion by Bob Keckeisen

Cinefest 32, Syracuse, NY

Coming up March 15 - 18 is Cinefest 32 in Syracuse, New York. The schedule promises a variety of screenings and much more for the dedicated classics buff.

A small sampling of the vintage motion pictures to be shown: Douglas Fairbanks in a film thought to be long-lost, Mr. Fix-it (1918), Clara Bow in Get Your Man (1927), Carole Lombard in Matchmaking Mama (1928), Sylvia Sydney in Confessions of a Co-ed (1931), Barbara Stanwyck in Red Salute (1936), Jack Benny and Fred Allen in Love Thy Neighbor (1940).

Also on the bill: Eileen Bowser, former curator of the film department of the Museum of Modern Art, archivist/preservationists David Shepard and Ron Hutchinson of the Vitaphone Project and film historian Leonard Maltin, who will host a 'Sunday Morning Auction.'

TCM Classic Film Festival, Hollywood, CA

The third annual TCM festival will run from April 12 - 15 this year - the setting is Hollywood and the mood glamorous...some schedule highlights:

Audrey Hepburn will be saluted as a style icon with screenings of Funny Face (1957), Sabrina (1954) and Two for the Road (1967). Film noir will get a nod with Cry Danger (1951), Gun Crazy (1950) and Raw Deal (1948). The legendary costumes of iconic Paramount designer Travis Banton will be spotlighted with Nothing Sacred (1937) on the star he loved to dress most, Carole Lombard. Deco design will be highlighted with screenings of Our Dancing Daughters (1928), Swing Time (1936) and The Women (1939). The breathtaking list goes on: Cabaret (1972), Casablanca (1942), the two great American films of 1974 - Chinatown and The Godfather Pt. II, Grand Illusion (1937), Singin' in the Rain (1952), Wings (1927). Guests will include Liza Minnelli, Rhonda Fleming, Debbie Reynolds, Marsha Hunt, Peggy Cummins, Joel Grey, producer Robert Evans, the Film Noir Foundation's Eddie Muller and others yet to be announced, plus TCM hosts Robert Osborne and Ben Mankiewicz.

Meanwhile, beginning March 1, The Road to Hollywood will get under way and bring the TCM Festival to 10 cities around the U.S. and north of the border - New York, Minneapolis, Houston, Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Toronto, Denver and Portland. I hope you live near one of them!

Crashout (1955) - Kennedy, Bendix and Talman

The Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival, Palm Springs, CA

The 12th annual Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival is set for May 10 - 13 in sunny Palm Springs. The schedule and guest roster aren't up yet, but in past years, the Lyons festival has featured such films as the ultimate Joan Crawford noir vehicle, The Damned Don't Cry (1950) with genre heavy and hunk-o'-man Steve Cochran,  Loophole (1954) with Dorothy Malone, Barry Sullivan and the sublime Charles McGraw, Crashout (1955) with Arthur Kennedy, William Bendix and another noir favorite, William Talman, and The Underworld Story (1950) with Dan Duryea and Herbert Marshall.

The festival is a Palm Springs Cultural Center presentation and was founded by Arthur Lyons, mystery writer, film historian and author of Death on the Cheap: The Lost B-Movies of Film Noir. Lyons died suddenly in 2008 at age 62, but the festival that bears his name continues on.

~

More classics festivals loom in the future - in places like Columbus, OH, El Paso, TX, Chicago, San Francisco and, of course, Hollywood. I'll try to post updates from time to time and if there's a festival coming to your area that you'd like mentioned, just let me know: ladyevesidwich@gmail.com ...

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