October is a
month for ghosts and goblins, bats and jack-o’-lanterns, black cats and
skeletons. Not necessarily the characteristics that come to mind when one
thinks of film noir.
But there’s one
thing that’s common to both October and noir – scary characters.
In the spirit
of the month, I’m taking a look at four of my favorite scary folks from the
classic film noir era – men and women who embody the concept of “looking out
for number one.” They have no arc, as they possess no redeeming qualities; it’s
their sociopathic self-absorption, their mercenary self-indulgence, and their unyielding
sense of self-preservation that makes them so darn scary.
…..
Mr. Brown
(Richard Conte) in The Big Combo (1955)
Richard Conte, The Big Combo
The Big
Combo stars Cornel Wilde as police lieutenant Richard Diamond, who has a
single-minded determination to bring to justice a mobster by the name of Mr.
Brown. He also happens to be obsessed with Mr. Brown’s troubled girlfriend
(played by Wilde’s real-life wife, Jean Wallace).
Mr. Brown is
one of the most ruthless dudes you’ll ever want (or don’t want) to encounter – we
see him methodically arranging the elimination of anyone possessing information
that might lead to his downfall, and that includes his right-hand man (Brian
Donlevy) and his two devoted underlings, Mingo (Earl Holliman) and Fante (Lee
Van Cleef). They’re all completely disposable. And Mr. Brown has even less
regard for Lt. Diamond; in a typical demonstration, he has his minions abduct
Brown, then proceeds to torture him by blasting music in his ear and pouring
hair tonic down his throat. He’s not a nice guy.
…..
Margot
Shelby (Jean Gillie) in Decoy (1946)
Jean Gillie, Decoy
The plot of Decoy
is one of noir’s most unique: convicted criminal Frankie Olins (Robert
Armstrong) is sentenced to death for knocking off an armored car and making off
with a cool $400,000. He refuses to divulge where he’s hidden the money, but
his devoted (and I use the word loosely) lover, Margot, has a plan – to team up
with a local doctor, arrange for Frankie to be resuscitated after his execution
. . . and then get her hands on that money.
Margot is a
classic femme fatale; she’s an expert at employing her wiles to get her way.
She applies a combination of sweet talk, promises of favors (you know the
kind), and hard-boiled street smarts to ensnare and juggle three men at the
same time: Frankie; his henchman, Jim Vincent (Edward Norris); and the hapless
doctor (Herbert Rudley), using each of them and then, like Mr. Brown,
discarding of them when they’ve served their purpose. She even manages to wrap
the local detective (Sheldon Leonard) around her finger – no male is safe with
her around.
…..
Charlie
Oakley (Joseph Cotten) in Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Joseph Cotten, Shadow Of A Doubt
Young Charlie
Newton (Teresa Wright) is bored with her humdrum life in picturesque Santa
Rosa, California, but she’s delighted when her family gets a visit from her
beloved uncle, after whom she was named. Unfortunately, before long, Young
Charlie’s jubilance turns to dread as she begins to suspect that her uncle is
the “Merry Widow” serial killer being sought by police.
Uncle Charlie
is charming, affable, sophisticated – everything admirable to a young girl. But
it doesn’t take long for us to see that there’s something very wrong with Uncle
Charlie; there are numerous clues, like when he roughly grabs his niece after
she discovers a newspaper article he’s tried to hide, or when he starts talking
about wealthy widows, calling them “horrible, faded, fat, greedy women.” It
soon becomes apparent that Uncle Charlie views the entire world with contempt –
and his namesake is no different.
…..
Vera (Ann
Savage) in Detour (1945)
Ann Savage, Detour
Tom Neal stars
as Al Roberts, a piano player who gets more than he bargained for when he
hitchhikes from New York to California to join his singer-girlfriend. First,
Roberts catches a ride with a well-heeled gambler, Charles Haskell (Edmund
MacDonald), but when the man winds up dead, Al panics, leaves Haskell on the
side of the road, and takes his car. And when Al picks up a hitchhiker of his
own – Vera – things really kick into high gear.
Unlike Margot, Vera
isn’t your typical femme fatale. When we first meet her, she’s dusty from
travel, with an unkempt hairdo and a simple pencil skirt and blouse, and she
falls asleep soon after she and Al get back on the road. But when she wakes up,
she’s got fire in her eyes and accusations on her lips. She knows Al’s car
belongs to Charles Haskell and she suspects that Al “kissed him with a wrench.”
From that moment on, Vera is in charge; she doesn’t utilize feminine charms,
but aggression and threats, forcing Al into a series of actions that he’s too
afraid to challenge. And we don’t blame him. Vera is one scary dame.
Who are some of your scariest noir characters? Leave a comment and let me know!
…
– Karen Burroughs Hannsberry for Classic Movie Hub
Karen Burroughs Hannsberry is the author of the Shadows and Satin blog, which focuses on movies and performers from the film noir and pre-Code eras, and the editor-in-chief of The Dark Pages, a bimonthly newsletter devoted to all things film noir. Karen is also the author of two books on film noir – Femme Noir: The Bad Girls of Film and Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir. You can follow Karen on Twitter at @TheDarkPages. If you’re interested in learning more about Karen’s books, you can read more about them on amazon here:
It’s probably the most
famous, most sought-after lost silent film of all time: London After Midnight (1927), starring the screen legend Lon Chaney
and directed by the macabre-minded Tod Browning. Despite constant attempts to
track it down, it remains stubbornly elusive–in spite of the classic film
community’s annual April Fool’s Day gags claiming, “It’s resurfaced at last!”
But even though no footage currently exists, you might be
surprised to know that the original 1927
continuity script survives in full–giving us a shot-by-shot view
of precisely what the film is like.
When we examine this script along with surviving stills and reviews, we find
that London After Midnight was
perhaps less of a horror film and more of a convoluted murder mystery drama.
Still, it remains tantalizing to imagine the Gothic atmosphere and imagery that
we might never get to experience.
Lon Chaney
Nicknamed the “Edgar Allan Poe” of classic cinema, Tod Browning was certainly the right fit for this ghoulish story. A veteran of carnivals and circuses, he started performing in films in the mid-1910s and soon became a director. Specializing in crime films and mystery stories, he had a deep interest in the macabre and enjoyed revolving his plots around “freakish” characters. Happily, the multi-talented Lon Chaney had both the acting and the makeup skills to bring such twisted characters to life, and he would make a number of classic dramas with Browning.
After the release of The
Unknown (1927), Browning worked with scenario writer Waldemar Young to
craft an original murder mystery story revolving around vampires. The cast
would include Chaney, the beautiful Marceline Day (who would soon costar with
Buster Keaton in 1929’s The Cameraman),
the dignified Henry B. Walthall, clean-cut Conrad Nagel and slapstick
comedienne Polly Moran. It was filmed at MGM Studios and Culver City for the
approximate cost of $152,000.00.
Apparently, a lot of creativity went into the spooky atmosphere. Scenes in and around the Balfour mansion included owls and armadillos–much like Browning would use in Dracula (1931)–as well as bats. Chaney’s eye-popping makeup was achieved by holding back his eyelids with wires fitted around his eye sockets. The mouthpiece he wore with its signature sharp teeth was painfully uncomfortable and he only kept it in a few minutes at a time. His character’s long-ish hair, beaver hat, and lantern-carrying evidently made such an impression that similar-looking “crypt keeper” costumes are common around Halloween today.
Lon Chaney (Man in the Beaver Hat) and Edna Tichenor (Bat Girl)
So, what was the plot
of London After Midnight?A rough summary: Roger Balfour is
found dead in his London mansion of a gunshot wound, and Inspector Burke of
Scotland Yard investigates the death and declares it a suicide. But Sir James
Hamlin, the executor of Balfour’s estate who lives next door, says the man
wasn’t suicidal. Hamlin takes in Balfour’s teenaged daughter Lucille, who grows
up to be a lovely young woman.
The Balfour house sits
abandoned for five years and then two strange renters move in: the freakish
“Man in the Beaver Hat,” and his ghoul-like companion the “Bat Girl.” Hamlin
suspects the two were involved in Balfour’s death and brings Inspector Burke back
on the case. Soon creepy events start happening: Balfour’s body disappears from
its tomb, the maid is frightened by the Man in the Beaver Hat, Burke sees a
ghoulish figure trying to enter his room and wounds it with a gunshot, and the
undead Balfour himself is somehow spotted inside the mansion.
Burke believes hypnosis
can make murder suspects relive past events, and tries putting the suspects
into a trance. Then Lucy is kidnapped and whisked off to the spooky mansion.
Burke sends Hamlin to the house and the mysterious Man in the Beaver Hat puts
him into a trance. This turn of events actually winds up solving the mystery of
Balfour’s death–and we learn just who the spooky tenants are, too.
This doesn’t cover all
the details of the confusing plot, which was frequently criticized at the time.
In their review, the New Yorker
wrote: “…It strives too hard to create effect. Mr. Browning can create
pictorial terrors and Lon Chaney can get himself up in a completely repulsive
manner, but both their efforts are wasted when the story makes no sense.” Variety wrote similarly: “Young,
Browning and Chaney have made a good combination in the past but the story on
which this production is based is not of the quality that results in broken
house records.” However, not all the reviews were lukewarm. TheFilm
Daily’s review just might make your longing for this film to turn up even
stronger: “If [sensitive patrons] don’t get the creeps from flashes of grimy
bats swooping around, cobweb-bedecked mystery chambers and the grotesque
inhabitants of the haunted house, then they’ve passed the third degree.”
LondonAfter Midnight was clearly part of the “eerie mansion” mystery
movie trend of the 1920s, other examples being The Bat (1926), The Gorilla
(1927) and The Cat and the Canary (1927).
These types of films abound with murder mysteries and mansions haunted by
ghouls. Interestingly enough, in the U.S. silent films supernatural
explanations were never involved. Maybe this served to keep from offending
religious groups, or maybe “actual” ghosts were deemed too scary.
London
After Midnight’s box office is
thought to be over $1,000,000–not bad for its budget. And then it seemed to
drop out of sight. One print was known to have existed in the MGM vaults until
1965. The last people who viewed it were likely historians David Bradley and
William K. Everson, who watched it in the early 1950s (they said that much of
the film revolved around Burke’s detective scenes and Polly Moran’s comic
relief). Sadly, in August of 1965 the storage vault caught on fire, completely
annihilating the print and many others.
But in spite of that
abrupt end the memory of this strange Browning film stayed alive, mainly
through the efforts of Forrest J. Ackerman, the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland. Ackerman featured stills from London After Midnight in several issues,
helping it to achieve the status of the Holy Grail of Lost Silents ever since.
In more recent years, books on silent horror have covered the film and Turner
Classic Movies featured a reconstructed version using the existing continuity
and surviving stills. And fans and historians continue to hold onto hope that
in the not-too-distant future, footage of Chaney in that startling makeup will
somehow, someday make it back to the big screen.
Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.
I fell in love with the wacky low-budget horror films
of the 1950s and 60s as a kid, when public domain chillers aired late at night
and I secretly stayed up to watch them on the tiny black-and-white TV in my
room. I didn’t pay much attention to the filmmakers behind them then, but by
the time Matinee (1993) hit theaters I was in college and knew enough to
recognize a tribute to horror king William Castle, who never met a gimmick he
didn’t like. House on Haunted Hill (1959) is probably the most famous
and widely available of Castle’s horror pictures, and it’s a great favorite at
my house, especially around Halloween. What could be more fun than Vincent
Price and Elisha Cook, Jr. in a spooky house full of possible ghosts and at
least one very real murderer? It’s not particularly scary by modern horror
standards, but House on Haunted Hill has all the charm of an old school
haunted house ride, with jump scares, skeletons, bleeding ceilings, and lots of
macabre humor.
Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) is unhappily married to Annabelle (Carol Ohmart), who returns his hatred in equal measure.
Vincent Price takes the lead as wealthy Frederick
Loren, who invites a select group of guests to spend the night at a supposedly
haunted house. Although his wife, Annabelle (Carol Ohmart), dislikes Frederick’s
plans, the rest of the party agree to attend because Frederick promises to pay
each of them $10,000 if they stay until morning. The owner of the house, Watson
Pritchard (Elisha Cook, Jr.), warns the others that the ghosts are eager to add
to their number, and soon enough strange happenings set everyone on edge,
especially young Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig). When Annabelle is found hanged
in the middle of the night, the guests realize that a murderer must be hiding
among them.
Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook, Jr.) tours the house with Ruth (Julie Mitchum), Nora (Carolyn Craig), and Lance (Richard Long).
House on Haunted Hill
boasts a surprisingly good cast for a low-budget horror movie, with Price in
fine form as the sardonic party host. Carol Ohmart radiates ice cold beauty and
malice as Annabelle; she and Price have some delightfully scathing scenes
together early in the picture, and it’s great fun to see how much they loathe
one another as they trade pet names and barbed remarks. Elisha Cook, Jr. cracks
up brilliantly as the traumatized Watson, who serves as the keeper of the
house’s gruesome history and a true believer in its supernatural residents.
Julie Mitchum, sister of the more famous Robert, drinks her way through a
series of scotches as Ruth Bridges, while Alan Marshal frequently opines about
hysteria as the psychiatrist David Trent. There’s a budding romance between
Carolyn Craig’s Nora and Lance, a dashing pilot played by Richard Long,
although their all-American normalcy is threatened by the weird things that
keep happening to an increasingly terrified Nora. While Castle even credits the
skeleton for playing itself, I have to give props to silent film veteran Leona
Anderson, here making her final screen appearance as the aptly named Mrs.
Slydes. She has no lines, but she sure can make an entrance.
Mrs. Slydes (Leona Anderson) might be the scariest thing in the whole movie.
The solid cast and Castle’s trademark gimmicks breathe
new life into the familiar “old dark house” genre that springs from classic
Gothic tales of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In its original
theatrical run, Castle rigged “Emergo” effects that flew a skeleton over the
audience at key moments (feel free to have a friend throw a plastic skeleton
over the couch if you need to recreate this effect at home). House on
Haunted Hill continues the tradition of films like The Cat and the
Canary (1927), The Old Dark House (1932), The Ghost Walks
(1934), and many others that depict a group of people spending the night in a
spooky mansion, although the crowning achievement of the genre would come a few
years later with The Haunting (1963). Without spoiling too much of the
plot, I’ll point out that House on Haunted Hill is also an example of a
type of Gothic first mastered by the novelist Ann Radcliffe, in which the
appearance of the supernatural is eventually explained to the reader/audience. Radcliffe’s
1794 novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho, is still a great read if you want
to dive deep into the genre’s history.For the original old dark house
in Gothic fiction, you have to go even farther back to Horace Walpole’s 1764
novel, The Castle of Otranto, which involves such spectacular
supernatural events that I wish William Castle had made a film adaptation of
it. Walpole and Castle would have been a match made in spooky Gothic heaven,
and Vincent Price could even have played the villain.
A menacing skeleton confronts Annabelle in the basement.
Castle actually directed his own version of The Old
Dark House in 1963, but of his other films I especially enjoy The
Tingler (1959), which also stars Vincent Price, and 13 Ghosts
(1960), just because it’s bonkers. If you want even more, try Mr. Sardonicus
(1961) and Strait-Jacket (1964). Several of Castle’s pictures have been
remade, but I much prefer the originals, even if the 1999 House on Haunted
Hill features Geoffrey Rush looking a lot like Vincent Price. If you love
campy classic horror but haven’t yet seen it, I absolutely recommend tracking
down Matinee, in which John Goodman plays the showman inspired by
William Castle.
Turning 80 is a big deal for anyone – or anything for that matter and that includes movies.
We’ve lost thousands of films through the decades and never for a good reason. Some because they were shot on highly combustible nitrate film, others from neglect, because of old age or even because they were thrown out.
That’s reason to celebrate when we are able to watch films old enough to have their own AARP card. Movies from 1944 turned 80 in 2024 and we shouldn’t take it for granted that we can still watch them today. Yes, some may look their age, but then there’s a restored gem like the atmospheric ghost story The Uninvited that looks as beautiful as it did 80 years ago (at least in my eyes).
Eight of the horror films that turned 80 in 2024.
Among other horror films turning the Big 8-0 are two Mummy films released within months of each other, a fun Universal monster mash-up and a well regarded take on Jack the Ripper. You’ll notice the names of Chaney, Carradine and Zucco show up multiple times.
Here’s a quick look at just eight films from 1944. All deserve their own story, and all deserve to be watched. Have fun.
Nina Foch suffers from a family curse in Cry of the Werewolf.
Nina Foch was only 20 at the time she made this film about a young woman plagued by a curse. It deserves high marks stylistically and for spinning a good old-fashioned monster yarn. It makes great use of the creature being a woman, especially in a closeup that shows female legs in high heels that become the feet of an animal as her human shadow turns into a beast.
The film opens like we’re listening to a ghost story around a campfire but we’re inside the LaTour Museum in New Orleans where our tour guide is weaving tales about “werewolfism, vampirism and voodoism.” One story is of the former mistress of the house, Marie LaTour, thought to be a werewolf who disappeared after killing her husband. Young Celeste LaTour is their daughter who was raised by gypsys and finally learns about her “matriarchal inheritance” (i.e. curse) that is her destiny.
Destiny yes, but it also keeps poor Celeste from the man she loves, and we can’t help but empathize with her even as she wants his fiancée to suffer, like she is. “Since I am forbidden to love him, so shall you be. You will learn to live as I must live – apart – beyond the reach of men and mortals.” Yes, the movie is fun that way.
Simone Simon returns in ghostly form as Irena who looks over young Amy (Ann Carter) in The Curse of the Cat People.
This “sequel” to Cat People has three of the same characters and producer Val Lewton, yet it’s often said that the two films don’t have much in common. I disagree. It picks up the story of Oliver (Kent Smith) and Alice (Jane Randolph), carries the same dreamlike beauty of the original and has the specter of the late Irena (Simone Simon) hanging over the film.
Now married, Oliver and Alice have a 6-year-old daughter named Amy (Ann Carter), a sweet, withdrawn child who would rather play with butterflies than her school mates, and loses herself in a world of imaginary friends. Amy is a “sensitive” girl, which worries Oliver who sees similarities with Irena whose belief that cats were her friends led to her tragic death. He blames himself and won’t let the same thing happen to his daughter.
Amy is gifted a ring from a strange old actress named Julia (Julia Dean) and, believing it to be a wishing ring, asks for a friend and Irena appears. We don’t know if Irena is really there, but there is a peaceful feeling to these scenes with Irena often appearing in rays of light like an angel. Darkness comes at Julia’s garish Victorian home, especially when her stern daughter Barbara (Elizabeth Russell) appears covered in shadows. Here’s the rub: Julia believes her daughter died at age 6 – yes, the same age as Amy – and calls Barbara an imposter. Questions like how the child died and what it has to do with Amy are never answered, but this subplot does add a sense of danger for young Amy.
“Curse of the Cat People” is an intriguing psychological thriller that asks what is real, what is imagined and what is supernatural. It’s up to viewers to decide and I always believe the supernatural choice.
Boris Karloff resurrects Frankenstein’s monster (Glenn Strange) in House of Frankenstein.
Three monsters – and four favorite actors – all in in one film! Frankenstein’s monster (Glenn Strange), Dracula (John Carradine) and the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.) are linked together by the nefarious Dr. Gustav Niemann (Boris Karloff) who continues the work of Victor Frankenstein after he breaks out of prison and seeks revenge.
To do that, he uses other people who tend to suffer tragic outcomes like Professor Lampini (George Zucco) whose traveling Chamber of Horrors includes Dracula’s skeleton with dirt from Transylvania and a stake in the heart. (Hmm, what happens if you remove the stake?). There’s the sad hunchback Daniel (J. Carrol Naish) who he promises to cure. And finally, the saddest of the sad, poor Lawrence Talbot (Chaney), our wolfman. Each character has something Niemann wants in his quest to resurrect Frankenstein’s monster who he has found in an icy grave. (See the 1943 film, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man for how that happened.)
Throw in some pathos as our heartbreaking werewolf and hunchback both fall in love with the same woman, a young gypsy dancer played by Elena Dervugo who later would star in Marcus Welby, M.D. Bonus: There’s a return to Frankenstein’s castle with angry villagers.
Is he or isn’t he? You won’t know until the end of The Lodger if Laird Creager is Jack the Ripper.
This taut thriller is a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 silent film of the same name, that was based off the 1913 novel by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes about Jack the Ripper. The story focuses on a landlady who fears her new boarder could be the man behind the Whitechaple murders.
It has a great cast starting with Laird Creager as the title character. The actor’s naturally imposing stature – he stood 6′ 3″ and weighed more than 300 pounds – would seem to take away the mystery of whether he is or isn’t the Ripper, but Creager does well in keeping us guessing. Merle Oberon plays Kitty, the landlord’s niece who is a music hall performer. (Shame on her – we know how Jack the Ripper feels about women who show their body!). George Sanders is the elegant inspector on the case who, of course, will fall for Kitty.
The Lodger is one of multiple films in this list that benefits from great cinematography. Lucien Ballard (whose later work included The Wild Bunch), gave the movie a noirish look that added to the tension-filled drama. Ballard and Oberon married after meeting on this film and would go on to make four more films together.
Lon Chaney Jr. returns as Kharis the mummy who searches for his princess in The Mummy’s Ghost.
The Universal Mummy films began in 1932 with the Boris Karloff classic and spawned multiple sequels in the 1940s. The sequels all carry on the story of Imhotep who was cruelly mummified alive after attempting to resuscitate his beloved Princess Anck-es-en-Amo. He will spend eternity searching for her if he must. Each subsequent film starts with yet another discovery of the mummy, his search for his princess, and a race between scholars and devoted Egyptian high priests to find him for their own reasons.
The plots are really that simple. Sometimes the names change – Imhotep becomes Kharis and the princess is Ananka – but the story remains formulaic, easy to digest and quick to move (each film is only about an hour long).
The Mummy’s Ghostis set in Mapleton, Mass. where the events of the 1942 film The Mummy’s Tomb took place, leaving the town in terror. Professor Norman (Frank Reicher) is sharing the background of the mummy with his students (and the film viewers so we know what’s going on), which of course they don’t believe. Tom, one of his students, visits his girlfriend Amina who is of Egyptian descent and goes into an almost trance-like state at talk of Egypt or the mummy. Hmm, wonder where Ananka’s soul has been reincarnated? Lon Chaney Jr. returns as Kharis for the second time, John Carradine is Yousef Bey and George Zucco is High Priest Andoheb.
The Mummy’s Curse comes 25 years later and is “set” again in Mapleton. If it feels more like Louisiana to you, it’s OK. That’s what French accents, talk of bayous and a character named Cajun Joe will do. An engineering company is trying to drain the swamp that was the setting of the end scene in The Mummy’s Ghost. Terrified workers believe the mummy and his princess haunt the area, leaving bodies in their wake. When bodies do start to appear, it confirms their worst fears. What sets this film apart from the others is an unsettling and effective sequence involving the resurrection of Anaka (Virginia Christine) who rises from underground and stumbles while her body jerks to life. It’s an exceptional performance that was ahead of its time (see the TV series The Walking Dead). An interesting note about the exotic looking Virginia Christine: she is best remembered for her role as Mrs. Olson in a series of Folgers coffee commercials.
The haunting – and hauntingly beautiful – supernatural film The Uninvited stars Ruth Hussey and Ray Milland.
The Uninvited is the most unexpected of ghost stories, one with grace and beauty along with chills. Though there are scary moments, it haunts me most with its gorgeous score that uses the song Stella by Starlight to great effect and the moody, atmospheric cinematography by Charles Lang.
The plot is a brilliant mix of ghost story, mystery and romance. Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey are siblings who buy an house on a seaside cliff in Cornwall that they will learn comes with an inhabitant or two. Unusual sounds and sobbing will be heard, there is a strange draft on the stairs, and other odd things happen. The new owners meet some of this with fascination and wonder, but even so, they know what it means when pets won’t go in certain areas of a house.
But it’s not until young Stella (Gail Russell) visits and her strong connection to the house plays out that the film takes some terrifying turns. Her grandfather (Donald Crisp) will finally share why he wants her to stay away. There will be a séance, a ghostly possession and a sanatorium.
I never tired of watching The Uninvited. It hasn’t aged for me since
the first time I saw it and looks stunning on the restored Criterion Blu-ray
release. I suggest putting it on and curling up on the couch with the lights
off. Then be prepared to want to watch it again.
George Zucco, background, works his voodoo magic to try and bring the wife of a doctor (Bela Lugosi) back to life.
Bela Lugosi gives a surprisingly touching performance as a doctor trying to bring his beloved wife back from the dead – although death in her case looks like she’s sleeping with her eyes open. (She’s been dead for 22 years, yet barely looks 22.) But Lugosi isn’t the Voodoo Man of the title: That would be George Zucco as filling station owner Nicholas who dons a black cape and speaks gibberish as he attempts to draw the life essence out of young women and into the doctor’s wife.
He gets his test subjects by pointing unsuspecting innocents asking for directions toward the doctor’s house where they’ll hit a “detour” and be kidnapped. Three times he’s tried, but it hasn’t worked, so the women, all in flowing long dresses, are kept in a catatonic state in strange phone booth-like rooms to await the next try. Up next is Betty (Wanda McKay) who is on her way to her best friend’s wedding. Before reaching the staged detour, she comes upon a man who has run out of gas. Surprise – he’s the groom. (You never know who you’ll meet on lonely country roads.) Mr. Clueless doesn’t help her from being kidnapped but now that there’s a witness to her disappearance, a search is set in motion that will lead to the truth. Whether our bereft doctor will get his cherished wife back in time is part of the film’s climatic tension. (I’m rooting for him.)
Toni Ruberto, born and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., is an editor
and writer at The Buffalo News. She shares her love for classic movies in her
blog, Watching Forever
and is a member of the Classic
Movie Blog Association. Toni was the president of the former Buffalo
chapter of TCM Backlot and now leads the offshoot group, Buffalo Classic Movie
Buffs. She is proud to have put Buffalo and its glorious old movie palaces in
the spotlight as the inaugural winner of the TCM in Your Hometown contest. You
can find Toni on Twitter at @toniruberto.
Audrey Cotter was born on February 8, 1922, in New York, New
York, as the youngest of four children (two girls and two boys). Her parents
were Reverend Francis James Meadows Cotter and Ida Miller Taylor, who worked as
Episcopal missionaries in Wuchang, Hubei, China. While she spent her early
years in China, the family returned to the United States.
There, she attended the Barrington School for Girls in Great
Barrington, Massachusetts. After her high school years, Cotter expressed an
interest in performing and sang in the Broadway musical Top Banana. She regularly appeared on The Bob and Ray Show on television. She would also take on the
stage name of Audrey Meadows by this point.
Ultimately, her claim to fame would be playing Alice Kramden
on The Jackie Gleason Show after Pert
Kelton, who originated the role, was forced to leave the show due to the
blacklist. By far, the biggest success of The
Jackie Gleason Show was its “Honeymooners” sketches.
Interestingly, the part of Alice was a role that Meadows
wanted very much; however, she was initially dismissed because she was deemed
too pretty to play Alice. In response, she arranged for an “ugly” photo shoot
and changed her look drastically, resubmitting photos of herself to Gleason.
Gleason was interested and ultimately baffled that this was the same gorgeous
actress who had previously auditioned for him. As a result, the part became hers.
Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows, The Honeymooners
Eventually, The
Honeymooners became its own half-hour situation comedy on CBS. Even after a
hiatus, Meadows would return to the role when Gleason produced Honeymooners specials during the 1970s. She
also reprised the role on The Steve Allen
Show, as Allen was her brother-in-law; Allen was married to her sister,
Jayne Meadows. Additionally, she appeared as Alice on The Jack Benny Program during a parody sketch.
During the course of The
Honeymooners’ run, Meadows was married to Randolph Rouse, a real-estate
businessman. They were married in 1956 and divorced in 1958. In 1961, she
married Robert F. Six, who was president of Continental Airlines, in Honolulu,
Hawaii. They were married until his passing in 1986.
In addition to her work in entertainment, Meadows was
director of the First National Bank of Denver for 11 years and was the first
woman to secure the distinction. She was also an advisory director of
Continental Airlines from 1961 to 1981, working in marketing programs that
dealt with flight attendant and customer service agent uniform designs, in
addition to aircraft interior design, and the designs of Continental’s airport
lounges.
Of the core Honeymooners
cast members from the classic 39 episodes, Meadows was the only one to earn
residuals from the show when it began airing in syndication. Her brother,
Edward, was a lawyer and added a clause to her contract calling for her to be
paid if the shows were ever rebroadcast, leading her to earn millions over the
years.
Audrey Meadows, Take Her She’s Mine, 1963, (c) 20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved.
Beyond The Honeymooners, Meadows made guest appearances on other shows, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents; The Red Skelton Show; and Murder, She Wrote. She also voiced a character named Bea Simmons, girlfriend to Grampa Simpson, on an episode of The Simpsons. Additionally,Meadows published a memoir in 1994, entitled Love, Alice: My Life as a Honeymooner.
Meadows smoked and developed lung cancer in 1995. She was
given one year to live and declined all but palliative treatments. She passed
away on February 3, 1996, in Los Angeles, California. She is at rest at Holy
Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California, next to her second husband. She was
73 years old.
Today, there are some places of relevance tied to Meadows’
life. Her family’s 1930s home at 70 Barnes St., Providence, Rhode Island,
stands today.
70 Barnes St., Providence, Rhode Island
In 1948, she resided at 615 Hauser St., Los Angeles,
California, which also remains.
615 Hauser St., Los Angeles
She also had a property at 50 E. 72nd St., New
York, New York. This building still exists.
50 E. 72nd St., New York City
In 1962, she lived at 1009 Park Ave., New York, New York,
which stands.
1009 Park Ave., New York City
Her 1973 home at 350 Trousdale Pl., Beverly Hills,
California, has since been razed.
Finally, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
honoring her work in television. It is located at 6100 Hollywood Blvd., Los
Angeles, California.
Annette Bochenek, Ph.D., is a film historian, professor, and avid scholar of Hollywood’s Golden Age. She manages the “Hometowns to Hollywood” blog, in which she profiles her trips to the hometowns of classic Hollywood stars. She has also been featured on the popular classic film-oriented television network, Turner Classic Movies. A regular columnist for Classic Movie Hub, her articles have appeared in TCM Backlot, Silent Film Quarterly, Nostalgia Digest, The Dark Pages Film Noir Newsletter, and Chicago Art Deco Society Magazine.
In 2022 and 2023 I shared reviews of short “B” Westerns I watched while traveling. Once again my portable DVD player and “B” Western discs accompanied me on this year’s summer vacation, the only difference being that this year, instead of a road trip, I went on an Alaskan cruise!
The movies were perfect short viewing for down time,
especially on a foggy sea day without any scenery to be enjoyed.
All four of these films were released by Lippert Pictures; one of them, Outlaw Women, was originally produced by Howco, while the other three were original Lippert productions. All four movies are readily available thanks to DVD sets from VCI Entertainment.
…..
Deputy Marshal (William Berke,
1949)
The first film I watched during my trip, Deputy
Marshal, was also the one I liked best. Jon Hall, known for his adventure
films opposite Maria Montez earlier in the decade, plays the title role, Deputy
Marshal Ed Garry.
Garry witnesses the shooting of a railroad employee, Harley
Masters (Wheaton Chambers), and is entrusted by Masters with a secret map.
Everyone wants the map, including baddie Joel Benton (longtime “B”
Western hero Dick Foran) and his henchman, Eli (Joe Sawyer).
This 60-minute film, cowritten by Charles Heckelmann and
director William Berke, is somewhat confusing yet provides genial company. I
wasn’t quite clear how Ed switched his romantic interest so quickly from Claire
Benton (Julie Bishop) to Janet Masters (Frances Langford), but maybe I missed
something!
Joe Sawyer, Dick Foran, and Jon Hall in Deputy Marshal
Hall has a pleasant voice and demeanor as the deputy, and
it’s fun to note that leading lady Langford was actually Hall’s wife for many
years, from 1938 to 1955. Langford singing a couple of tunes adds to the
movie’s appeal.
Russell Hayden, Frances Langford, and Jon Hall in Deputy Marshal
The deep cast of familiar faces is another plus, with the
cast including Russell Hayden, Clem Bevans, Mary Gordon, and Forrest Taylor.
The movie was shot in black and white by Carl Bergner. Like a couple other films on this list, much of the location filming was done at the Iverson Movie Ranch. There’s much more about Iverson in a column I wrote here in 2022.
…..
Colorado Ranger (Thomas Carr, 1950)
Colorado Ranger is one of a series
of six films shot simultaneously starring Jimmy Ellison, Russell Hayden, and
Betty Adams, later known as Julia or Julie Adams.
I wrote about another film in the series, Crooked River (1950), here in 2022. As I shared then, Julie Adams wrote in her memoir that it was both challenging and educational to have to remember which of the six characters she was playing at any given moment! The productions saved money by shooting scenes for each film in a particular location before moving on to the next stop.
Shamrock Clark (Ellison) and his pals Lucky (Hayden) and
the Colonel (Raymond Hatton) are on the trail of outlaws harassing
homesteaders. One such homesteader, Ann (Adams), eventually comes to think the
men are outlaws themselves and locks them in her cellar.
More confusion abounds when Ann babysits her nephew and
Shamrock, who’s attracted to the young woman, mistakenly thinks she’s married.
The chief charm of this brisk 59-minute Western is its cast
of appealing leads. Ellison and Hayden were familiar to Westerns fans as
Hopalong Cassidy sidekicks, and it’s great fun to watch the young Adams, who
occasionally has a bit of her native Southern accent slip out.
The movie was written by Ron Ormand and Maurice Tombragel, based on a story by E.B. Mann. It was filmed in black and white by Ernest Miller, with Iverson Ranch one again appearing onscreen. I highly recommend visiting the Iverson Movie Ranch site to learn more about the filming of the half-dozen films with this cast and crew, which were shot in just five weeks!
…..
Three Desperate Men (Sam
Newfield, 1951)
Three Desperate Men, written by Orville
Hampton, was the only real disappointment from this quartet of films. I’ll
insert a spoiler alert here, as I’m necessarily going to
reveal the entire plot in order to explain my dissatisfaction.
I’m a big fan of this movie’s leads, Preston Foster and
Virginia Grey, and I’ve also enjoyed Jim Davis (later of TV’s Dallas)
in many a Western, but this story went so far sideways it left me sputtering
with disappointment. Indeed, a book on the Lippert films, written by Mark
Thomas McGee, quotes a contemporary reviewer: “The film’s weakness lies in
scripting.” The reviewer was correct.
As the movie begins, deputies Tom Denton (Foster) and his
brother Fred (Davis) are law-abiding citizens working for Marshal Pete Coleman
(Monte Blue) in Texas.
Jim Davis, Preston Foster, Virgnia Grey, and Ross Latimer in Three Desperate Men
When the Dentons learn their youngest brother Matt (Ross
Latimer, also known as Kim Spalding), has been arrested and framed for murder
in California, they leave their mother (Margaret Seddon) and Fred’s sweetheart
Laura (Grey) behind in Texas to go rescue Matt.
The Dentons succeed in saving Matt from being railroaded
into a hangman’s noose, but things go from bad to worse. A guard is killed as
they escape, and Ed Larkin (Rory Mallinson) frames them for numerous crimes.
The Dentons initially commit a robbery just to get by, but
before long they end up pursuing a life of crime. Laura, dismayed by Tom’s
behavior, breaks off their engagement and leaves town. As the movie concludes,
the brothers are killed or arrested when committing yet another robbery.
Preston Foster and Virginia Grey in Three Desperate Men
For some reason I believed the story would depict the
brothers bringing justice to bad guy Larkin and reclaiming their lives as
honorable marshals. I didn’t realize they were going to turn into stone-cold
villains themselves, and I have to say the final scene with bodies strewn
across a street left me in open-mouthed disbelief.
Perhaps if the film were better scripted and followed a
clearer trajectory from marshals to bank robbers I would have been more
accepting of the outcome, but this is one I’ll skip rewatching.
The movie was filmed in black and white by Jack Greenhalgh
– and yes, it was filmed at Iverson Ranch!
…..
Outlaw Women (Sam Newfield and
Ron Ormond, 1952)
Outlaw Women, on the other hand, was
an entertaining 75 minutes from the very same writer as Three Desperate
Men, Orville Hampton.
The movie has some overtones of the later Woman
They Almost Lynched (1953) and Johnny Guitar (1954);
it’s not in the same league as those “woman power” films, but I liked
it.
Outlaw Women, shot in Cinecolor by
Ellis Carter and and Harry Neumann, was also the lone color film among the four
films I watched on my trip. It’s interesting to note that the reason there were
two directors and two cinematographers on this movie was that it was made at
breakneck pace by two units working simultaneously!
Marie Windsor was later quoted by Western film historian
Mike Fitzgerald as saying it was an “exciting picture,” though she
was “annoyed” by special privileges accorded supporting actress
Jacqueline Fontaine.
Windsor is as fun as always as saloon owner “Iron
Mae” McLeod. She also runs the town of Las Mujeres (“the
women”), where women do indeed run the place. The saloon bouncer is even a
woman, played by Maria Hart. The aforementioned Fontaine plays one of Iron
Mae’s “girls,” Ellen Larabee.
Marie Windsor
Gambler Woody Callaway (Richard Rober) and Dr. Bob Ridgeway
(Allan Dixon) arrive in Las Mujeres, and are soon romancing Iron Mae and pretty
Beth Larabee (Carla Balenda) – who had forced the good doctor to come to Las
Mujeres at the point of a gun!
There’s doings with bad guys, not to mention a catfight,
and it all manages to be an enjoyable watch. Veterans like Tom Tyler, Jackie
Coogan, and Lyle Talbot plus up the cast.
Carla Balenda and Jacqueline Fontaine in Outlaw Women
A couple interesting Outlaw Women cast
notes: Leading man Richard Rober tragically died in a car accident in May 1952,
just a month after the movie’s release.
Actress Carla Balenda, on the other hand, lived until age
98, passing away in the spring of 2024. She was long married to publisher
William Rutter of The Rutter Group, a name well known to those in the legal
profession.
Finally, for those who might have missed it when first published, I’d like to point readers to my 2023 column with a photograph of Marie Windsor’s final resting place in Marysvale, Utah. It was a privilege to visit.
…
– Laura Grieve for Classic Movie Hub
Laura can be found at her blog, Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, where she’s been writing about movies since 2005, and on Twitter at @LaurasMiscMovie. A lifelong film fan, Laura loves the classics including Disney, Film Noir, Musicals, and Westerns. She regularly covers Southern California classic film festivals. Laura will scribe on all things western at the ‘Western RoundUp’ for CMH.
“When the movies were young,” as the saying
went, filmmakers’ heads were swimming with possibilities. Motion pictures
cameras could take footage anywhere a tripod could rest, so why not take
advantage of it? Outside the usual confines of the stage, anything was
possible: immense battle scenes, staged floods and fires, sweeping landscape
shots, breathtaking horseback riding stunts…at long last, the sky was truly the
limit.
Thomas H. Ince
One such visionary filmmaker was Thomas H.
Ince, a former stock company actor. After breaking into film acting at the
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in NYC, by 1910 he was working as a
coordinator at Carl Laemmle’s nearby IMP Company and quickly proved himself
capable of directing. Soon Ince was thinking bigger than the ramshackle east
coast studios, where the stages tended to be open air and at the mercy of wind,
rain and winter cold. Reportedly he was also concerned about the battles
between the monopolizing Motion Picture Patents Company trust and independent
companies like IMP. Heading to the west coast just might be a prudent move.
In September 1911 Ince met with Adam Kessel
and Charles Baumann of the New York Motion Picture Company, who had recently
opened a studio called Bison in a hilly neighborhood of Los Angeles (the same
location would soon be reused for the famed Keystone studio). Bison specialized
in making westerns, and Ince loved westerns. Playing it cool as he talked to
the two executives, to his pleasant surprise he managed to cut a deal to make
films on the west coast for $150 a week.
Ince arrived in the Edendale district Los
Angeles with his wife Elinor, his lead actress Ethel Grandin, a cameraman and a
property man. He was dismayed to find the studio consisted of a small house and
a barn, with hardly enough space for the western epics he’d been imagining. He
soon scouted out a more favorable location: 460 acres of land by Sunset
Boulevard and the Pacific Coast highway, where rolling desert hills overlooked
the ocean.
Getting to work on western dramas with titles
like The Deserter (1912) and War on the Plains (1912), Ince was soon
bringing in enough cash to lease even more open land: a full 18,000 acres owned
by the Miller Brothers, who had a 100,000 acre ranch and their own Wild West
show. Ince could finally bring his visions to life–and not just epic films, but
his vision of having a sprawling, one-stop shop kind of studio with its own
dressing rooms, indoor and outdoor sets, prop buildings, corrals, film printing
laboratories, cafeterias, carpentry shops, offices, film vaults–everything a
studio could need all in one handy location. It was an ambitious idea at the
time. The Millers–who were happy to lend their Wild West performers to Ince’s
productions–dubbed the complex Inceville.
A panoramic shot of Inceville
Life at busy Inceville had adventure, romance,
and a bit of surrealism. At the time, the Wild West Ince sought to capture
onscreen was still very much alive and well. The Millers’ performers consisted
of hundreds of real-life cowboys and cowgirls and a Sioux tribe who set up
their own teepee village on the property. Cattle and bison herds and 600 horses
grazed the rolling hills. The studio was alway swarming with cowboys, who
considered themselves superior to the “lowly” actors, with more heading in from
ranches in Wyoming and Montana regularly to earn some quick cash. The streets
were lined with an eclectic assortment of buildings representing Puritan
settlements, Scottish cottages, European villages, modern mansions, frontier
towns–a bit of everything a director could need. Actors who traveled out from
Los Angeles–taking a succession of streetcars to Santa Monica and then
horse-drawn wagons that carried them past the broad Pacific beaches and up the
road to remote Inceville–probably felt they were entering a different world.
William S. Hart at work
A number of stars like John Gilbert got their
starts as extras at Inceville, and it also boasted such talents as Louise
Glaum, an early “vamp,” William S. Hart, the silent era’s biggest cowboy star.
Key directors such as John Ford and his brother Francis, William Desmond
Taylor, Frank Borzage and Henry King all worked for Ince. As for Ince himself,
he was passionately involved in his many productions, writing and tweaking
scenarios, writing dialogue for the actors (not the norm in that era),
suggesting locations and camera angles to cameramen, and discussing tints and
toning with editors. He would also accept feedback, making improvements such as
building cabins for his actors when they complained about snakes and insects
getting into tents they used as dressing rooms.
Still from War on the Plains (1912)
Thanks to his hands-on approach Ince was happy
to claim the lion’s share of credit, famously opening his films with titles
proclaiming: “Thomas H. Ince presents a Thomas H. Ince productions, supervised
by Thomas H. Ince…” etc. The producer’s mania became a well-known joke to the
rest of Hollywood. Buster Keaton’s short The
Playhouse (1921), where the straight-faced comedian played all the roles in
a stage show, took a jab at Ince in a scene where an audience member marvels:
“This fellow Keaton seems to be the whole show.”
The studio had its share of hardships,
experiencing wildfires in 1915 and 1923, a cutting room fire in 1916,
landslides in 1916 and 1917–the latter claiming the lives of three employees
when their scaffolding collapsed. But Inceville’s films managed to be
profoundly influential, having a sweeping authenticity thanks to its
rough-and-ready actors and natural locations.
As it turned out, Inceville’s heyday was
relatively brief. Ince would form the Triangle Motion Picture Company with Mack
Sennett and D.W. Griffith in 1916, moving his main base of operations to Culver
City. In time he went back to operating his own studio, building a Mount
Vernon-like administration building dubbed “The Mansion” which still stands
today. William S. Hart continued to film at the old Inceville locations, but by
the early 1920s it was largely abandoned, turning into a real-life ghost town.
The structures that were left would burn in a 1923 wildfire–only a church set
remained.
Glimpses of old Inceville
In 1924 Thomas H. Ince himself also suffered
an unfortunate end. A dinner he had aboard William Randolph Hearst’s yacht the Oneida aggravated his peptic ulcers and
angina, which had been lingering problems for him since the 1910s. Despite
medical care, the resulting heart attack claimed his life. While his time as a
filmmaker and producer had been brief–only 14 years–Ince was undeniably a key
figure in early cinema. And the romance of long-gone Inceville, with its
rolling hills and rough cowboys, lingers on in his early surviving films.
Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.
Rhonda Fleming
was known as “The Queen of Technicolor.” As such, she’s not necessarily the
first femme who comes to mind when you’re talking noir. With her titian locks,
she was a standout in films like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
(1949), Tropic Zone (1953), and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
(1957), but she also lent her talents to the dark side of the screen, with
roles in five features from the noir era. This month’s Noir Nook shines the
spotlight on the life of Rhonda Fleming and her memorable contributions to those
shadowy films.
Born in 1923,
the actress with the flaming red hair entered the world as Marilyn Louise Louis
in Hollywood, California, the second of two daughters born to an insurance broker
and his musical comedy actress wife. Marilyn was a bit of a tomboy as a child
and loved sports as she got older; she was the captain of both the basketball
and volleyball teams at Beverly Hills High School, and competed in sandlot
baseball and bowling. She also harbored dreams of becoming a singer of light
opera and took lessons for 10 years.
In 1943, Marilyn
signed a six-month contract with 20th Century-Fox under the name of Marilyn
Lane, making her big screen debut as a dance-hall girl in a John Wayne feature
called In Old Oklahoma. Fox didn’t do much with her, but a chance
meeting with Henry Willson, David O. Selznick’s talent scout, led to bigger and
better things. After a luncheon date with Selznick, the young actress was
signed to a seven-year contract without a screen test, and her name was changed
to Rhonda Fleming. “It was a Cinderella story, but those things could happen in
those days,” Fleming recalled years later.
After small parts in Since You Went Away (1944) and When Strangers Marry (1944), Fleming was introduced by Selznick to director Alfred Hitchcock, who cast her as a mental patient in Spellbound (1945), starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman. Her small but showy role was singled out by famed columnist Hedda Hopper. “That was the biggest thrill I had during those first few years,” Fleming said. Her next few pictures were a mixture of first-rate offerings like The Spiral Staircase (1946) and more mediocre fare, including Adventure Island, an actioner with Rory Calhoun. But her career took a turn in 1947 when she stepped into the shadows of film noir.
…..
Out of the Past (1947)
Rhonda Fleming, Out of the Past
Considered by many to be the quintessential noir, Out of the Past tells the often-complicated story of Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum), a former private dick turned filling station owner, who finds himself plunged into his previous life after a chance encounter. Fleming was in only two scenes, but she made an impact as Meta Carson, who works with mobster Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) in an effort to set Jeff up for murder.
…..
Cry Danger (1951)
Rhonda Fleming and Dick Powell, Cry Danger
This feature stars Dick Powell as Rocky Malloy, who has been recently released from prison after serving a five-year stretch for a murder and robbery that he didn’t commit. Fleming co-stars as Nancy Morgan, the wife of the man who was framed along with Rocky. Nancy appears to be a dutiful spouse, but it doesn’t take long before she’s making eyes at Rocky and discouraging his efforts to free her husband. Not so dutiful, after all.
…..
The Killer Is Loose (1956)
Rhonda Fleming and Joseph Cotten, The Killer Is Loose
Here, Fleming plays Lila Wagner, the wife of a police detective (Joseph Cotten) who, years earlier, accidentally shot and killed the innocent-bystander spouse of bank robber Leon Poole (Wendell Corey). The film’s action kicks off when Poole escapes from prison and heads for the Wagner home, determined to exact his tit-for-tat revenge by murdering Lila.
…..
Slightly Scarlet (1956)
Rhonda Fleming and Arlene Dahl, Slightly Scarlet
This rare color noir stars Fleming and Arlene Dahl as red-headed sisters June and Dorothy. June is the upstanding, level-headed sibling, while Dorothy is a kleptomaniac who’s no stranger to spending time behind bars. Between trying to keep tabs on her troubled sister, and supporting her politician fiancé (Kent Taylor), June finds herself involved with a ruthless (but handsome) hood, played by John Payne.
…..
While the City Sleeps (1956)
Ida Lupino, Sally Forrest, Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, While the City
Set in the world of a multi-media conglomerate, this film serves up a star-packed cast that includes Ida Lupino, Dana Andrews, Thomas Mitchell, Vincent Price, George Sanders, and Howard Duff. The plot centers on the efforts of the conglomerate’s employees to land the head job at the company after the owner’s death; the coveted position will be given to the first man (or woman) who can solve the case of the “Lipstick Killer” that is plaguing the area. Fleming plays the ex-Vegas showgirl wife of the company’s current owner (Price) – and the mistress of one of the competitors for the job of head honcho, photo service editor Harry Kritzer (James Craig).
…..
Away
from the big screen, Fleming was married six times – the first was at the
tender age of 16 and her fifth (and longest-lasting) was to millionaire
theater-chain magnate Ted Mann, who owned (and renamed) the former Grauman’s
Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Career-wise, Fleming used her training as a
singer in several venues, including a stint at Las Vegas’s Tropicana Hotel, a
tour with musician Skitch Henderson, and a one-woman concert at the Hollywood
Bowl. She was also seen in a number of productions on the small screen, from Wagon
Train to Kung Fu; her final acting appearance, after an 11-year
absence. was in the 1991 television drama called Waiting for the Wind.
In that feature, she played the world-weary wife of a farmer dying of cancer –
Fleming later said that it was her younger sister’s death from cancer that had
prompted her to take the role. She also established the Rhonda Fleming Mann Resource
Center for Women with Cancer at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, and
worked for many years with such humanitarian causes as Childhelp USA, City of
Hope, and the Olive Crest Treatment Centers for Abused Children.
Fleming died in 2020 at the age of 97. Of her appearances in her film noir features, she said in a 2012 interview with film historian Rhett Bartlett: “I loved playing those parts. They were naughty gals, and I was such a sweet little nice girl!”
…
– Karen Burroughs Hannsberry for Classic Movie Hub
Karen Burroughs Hannsberry is the author of the Shadows and Satin blog, which focuses on movies and performers from the film noir and pre-Code eras, and the editor-in-chief of The Dark Pages, a bimonthly newsletter devoted to all things film noir. Karen is also the author of two books on film noir – Femme Noir: The Bad Girls of Film and Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir. You can follow Karen on Twitter at @TheDarkPages. If you’re interested in learning more about Karen’s books, you can read more about them on amazon here:
Supernatural comedy is one of my favorite movie genres
any time of year, but I’m especially drawn to it once the first Halloween
decorations start to materialize. After a recent viewing of The Ghost and
Mrs. Muir (1947), I remembered that its leading man, Rex Harrison, also
experiences a haunting from the other side of the veil in the 1945 adaptation
of Noël Coward’s hit play, Blithe Spirit. In addition to Harrison,
director David Lean’s British film version boasts a quintessential performance
from one of my favorite character actresses, Margaret Rutherford, and visual
effects that won the Oscar in 1947. While it’s neither a perfect movie nor a
completely faithful adaptation of the play, Blithe Spirit offers plenty
of fun if you’re in the right mood to appreciate its dark comedy and unlikable
characters.
Kay Hammond is ghostly in green as the spectral Elvira.
Harrison plays author Charles Condomine, a widower who
seems happy enough with his second wife, Ruth (Constance Cummings), until he
decides to research a new book by inviting a medium to give a séance in his
home. Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford) accidentally conjures the spirit of
Charles’ first wife, Elvira (Kay Hammond), who initially charms Charles with
her amusing conversation but upsets the territorial Ruth. Marital bliss among
the living is soon shattered, and Elvira’s interference makes matters even
worse. When Madame Arcati returns to perform an exorcism, Charles discovers
that getting rid of either of his wives is a lot more trouble than he expected.
Ruth (Constance Cummings) feels that three is definitely a crowd when Elvira comes between her and Charles (Rex Harrison).
If you’re looking for truly sympathetic characters
here you won’t find them, although I rather like the goofy and free-spirited
Madame Arcati, especially as she’s played by Rutherford. Hers is the plum role
of the piece, which Rutherford originated in 1941 on the London stage. In later
versions Madame Arcati has been played by great performers like Mildred
Natwick, Angela Lansbury, and Judi Dench, but Rutherford has a unique physical
energy that gives her version a lot of appeal. Charles and both of his wives
are shallow, selfish creatures, witty at best but never wise, which ensures
that we don’t much care what happens to them. The film ending, which I won’t
spoil, is markedly different from the original play and infuriated Coward with
its alterations, but I think the movie ending has a better sense of poetic
justice. Some of the elements that remain faithful to Coward’s original haven’t
aged well, including persistent misogyny passed off as comedy and some racist
dialogue no actor would want to repeat today.
Margaret Rutherford steals her scenes as Madame Arcati, a role she originated in the stage production.
What still works to great effect is the presentation
of the ghostly Elvira, whom Kay Hammond invests with fey gaiety. The
Technicolor cinematography allows her to appear an otherworldly shade of green
from head to toe, and unseen breezes blow her clothing in the stillness of the
house. Her red lips and nails stand out against her eerie green skin, making
her look even stranger. Stage productions of the play have represented Elvira’s
ghostly nature in different ways, but the film’s method makes her absolutely
mesmerizing to behold. The film is able to include scenes where Elvira is
invisible but active, and these are also delightful. Because Elvira can only be
seen by Charles, scenes alternate between showing both of them and showing only
what other characters would see. These are especially amusing when Elvira takes
the wheel on a country drive, so that it looks like Charles is riding in a
self-driving car. Most ghost comedies use these tricks to varying degrees, but
it’s always a pleasure to see them so well done in movies that predate CGI
effects by many decades.
The invisible Elvira convinces Madame Arcati of her presence.
Most classic movie fans already know to look for Rex Harrison in Cleopatra (1963), My Fair Lady (1964), and Doctor Doolittle (1967), and Margaret Rutherford is best remembered today for her role as Miss Marple in films like Murder, She Said (1961), Murder at the Gallop (1963), and Murder Most Foul (1964). David Lean won Academy Awards for his direction of The Bridge on the River Kwai (1958) and Lawrence of Arabia (1963), but if you want another comedy I’m particularly fond of Hobson’s Choice (1954). Like Rutherford, Kay Hammond originated her role in Blithe Spirit, and she was primarily a stage actress. Constance Cummings also spent most of her career on the stage, but you’ll find her dealing with more mysterious business in The Mind Reader (1933) and Haunted Honeymoon (1940). I haven’t seen the 2020 film adaptation of Blithe Spirit that stars Judi Dench as Madame Arcati, but it only has a 27% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so be forewarned if you decide to see it for yourself.
When Flying Things Sting in Real Life, 1970s Bee Films Come to the Rescue
They were cute little honey bees – just one or two fluttering
around the walkway by my back stairs. Not an unexpected sight on a warm summer
day and, knowing the importance of the pollinators, I left them alone.
I should have looked closer.
A few weeks later there was a swarm – OK, maybe just 6 flying creatures around the same spot – that had me running away like a scared toddler. Texting a photo to a bee expert, it turns out my cute bees were yellow jackets – AKA wasps – and they had been building a home. Not good.
Could this have been the yellow jacket that viciously attacked me? I fear so.
Here’s the thing about yellow jackets: They don’t let go. They are aggressive little buggers that don’t usually lose their stinger like a bee, so they can keep zapping you like one did when it latched on to my foot.
When the attack was over, it hurt – and not only that night, but the next day. When the pain subsided, it turned into an uncomfortable itch.
Whining to myself for days about how my “attack” by one
yellow jacket could cause such pain, I realized I was lucky that I wasn’t stung
by two of them.
Or attacked by a swarm.
Worse yet, what if they were the dreaded African killer
bees?
This could all happen – I’ve seen the movies.
To feel better about my yellow jacket attack, I watched some
classic movies about “flying things that sting” to see just how much worse it
could have been.
I started with the giant wasp in Monster from Green Hell(1957) which sounded like a great idea but it wasn’t. The title creature in this lower-than-B-movie film had great potential but was underused.
Instead, we were subjected to long scenes of guys walking and walking on an expedition through Africa. The running time was only 71 minutes, but it felt like three hours. The nondescript white leaders who made the natives carry their gear were so ineffectual that when they finally met the giant wasp, nature had to save them.
I could have kept on a supersize route with the giant honey bee in the fantastic Mysterious Island(1961), but that bee had every right to be angry at the trespassing young lovers. Besides, it didn’t sting them, just built a honeycomb around them. They eventually escaped, so no harm, no foul.
Clearly, I would need to watch the dreaded African killer bees to get some closure.
Posters for three of the killer bee movies from the 1970s.
First, the real story
Often referred to as killer bees, the truth behind the Africanized honey bee started with the type of researcher found in many sci-fi movies: the altruistic scientist trying to do good before things go bad. The hybrid bee was introduced in 1956 in Brazil (hence the link to Brazil in these films) to help produce more honey, especially in hotter climates. When about 26 swarms reportedly escaped, it led to all sorts of doomsday-type scenarios and the misleading moniker of “killer bees.”
From the real world into the reel world, killer bees joined the “nature gone wrong” and environmental disaster movie trend of the 1970s in such films asKiller Bees, Savage Bees (and its sequel Terror Out of the Skies), The Bees and Irwin Allen’s all-star epic The Swarm.
The films do have some basis in reality. The insects will go
after noise, so stop screaming. They will swarm victims and aggressively chase
them at great distances (just like the yellow jacket that nabbed me). And whatever
you do, don’t jump in the water thinking you’ll escape – they will keep
attacking and you will drown.
Katharine Ross and Michael Caine are terrified to see a swarm of killer bees is ready to attack the quaint town of Marysville in The Swarm.
In the movies, the insects have an uncanny ability to arrive
in town around a big event like the Rose Bowl Parade in The Bees, Mardi
Gras in Savage Bees and a flower festival in The Swarm.
Swarms of bees often will overtake the skies as ominous
black clouds. Victims may die by the shear mass of bees covering their body (always
an effective sight) or their extra-lethal venom could kill with as little as
three bee stings. This is where we must add a reality check: the venom in Africanized
bees is no more potent than in other honey bees, but where’s the movie fun in
that?
Here’s a quick look at a few of the films.
Gloria Swanson has a unique relationship with bees at her vineyard in Killer Bees.
Killer Bees (1974)
I’m starting here, but this film is not like the others. The bees traveled with the Van Bohlen family from Europe to California decades earlier and have a psychic bond to the matriarch. This “queen of the hive” is played by legendary film actress Gloria Swanson who is referred to as “Madame” by everyone including her family. Edward Albert is the prodigal son who returns home with his fiancée (Kate Jackson) who insists on meeting them despite warnings that they are “European” and reclusive, with their own rules and laws. She should talk to the townsfolk who stay clear of the Van Bohlen family and don’t become involved even when, say, a stranger passing through is killed after his car is engulfed by bees.
It’s one strange family and it’s funny to watch the men who are clearly afraid of Madam who can send a bee to sit on your face with a simple furrow of her brow. A heads-up that Killer Bees, an ABC movie of the week, is clearly a film of the era right down to that frustrating ‘70s ending.
Savage Bees (1976)
Premiering as an NBC movie of the week, Savage Bees was released the year after Jaws and that’s obvious in the plot. A dangerous element (killer bees) is threatening a town at the most inopportune time (Mardi Gras) and officials refused to call off festivities and lose tourist dollars.
A small-town sheriff (Ben Johnson), bereft at finding his dog dead, takes the animal into New Orleans to have an autopsy done. An assistant medical examiner (Michael Parks) discovers the dog’s stomach is filled with bees. The poor dog isn’t the only one: There are two crew members off a boat from Brazil and a child also dead from stings. (This film did not adhere to the cinematic idea that you never kill dogs and children.) Our assistant M.E. calls in a friend from Tulane University (“special guest star” Gretchen Corbett) to help. She has her own set of insect expert friends including Horst Bucholz who has created a newfangled suit that looks like it’s made from cheap aluminum foil.
Gretchen Corbett is trapped in a Volkswagen Beetle by killer bees in Savage Bees.
Bees will arrive, people will scream and make themselves targets and attempts to quell the attacks will fail. It leads to an odd, yet strangely interesting denouement of a bee-covered Volkswagen Beetle slowly driven to the Louisiana Superdome as a last hope. As strange as that sounds, the sequence builds tension, even if it is undercut by the overwrought sobbing inside the Beetle.
Its sequel, Terror Out of the Skies (78) features two bee experts played by Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Tovah Feldshuh and a pilot (Dan Haggerty) who face the vengeance of the savage bees.
The Bees(1978)
To call The Bees uneven is an understatement. We open in a genetic research station in Brazil where a desperate father and his young son try to steal honey bees to make honey and money for the family. Of course, they stumble into the wrong place and are attacked by a nasty swarm that gets loose. In retribution, an angry mob descends on the facility to kill the “devil bees,” and well, you know who wins that battle.
Cut to the United States, where a dashing John Saxon is addressing a group of important men about the development of hybrid bees that create more honey yet are less aggressive. In a scene recalling Roger Corman’s 1959 film The Wasp Woman (The Bees was financed by Corman’s New World Picture), one business is interested but not for charitable reasons. A cosmetic company wants to create money-making beauty treatments from the queen bee’s “royal jelly” and will go to extremes – including hiring hit men – to get it.
In a terrifying scene from The Bees, John Saxon and Angel Tompkins awaken to find themselves surrounded by killer bees.
The man they hire to sneak bees into the United States via a “bee belt” around his waist is stung to death on a flight to California. Welcome to the U.S., killer bees.
Leading the charge to save the world are Saxon plus a wheelchair-bound scientist called Uncle Ziggy (played by an elderly John Carradine) who talks to the bees, and his lovely and smart niece (Angel Tompkins).
There is an incredibly effective scene – perhaps one of the best in all the bee films – with the bees are covering every surface of a bedroom quickly shared by Saxon and the niece. It becomes even more horrifying as the bees cover the couple as they try to get out of the room.
Unfortunately, things go off the deep end when Saxon, channeling Uncle Ziggy, starts talking to the bees and then communicates their message to the United Nations that humans need to share the world – or else. I can’t help thinking that ultimatum was meant to be the plot of a sequel that was never made.
The Swarm (1978)
Film folklore has it that the release of The Bees was
delayed a few months (money may have exchanged hands) so The Swarm could
hit the big screen first with its all-star cast that includes five Oscar
winners.
In short: bees attack a military installation in Texas right
before the big flower show in a nearby small town, but the insects have their
stingers set for a much bigger quarry in Houston and beyond.
Now I’m not going to sugar coat The Swarm. With a big budget, a major studio behind it and A-list stars, there was a lot expected from this film that was a follow-up to Irwin Allen’s blockbuster disaster films The Poseidon Adventureand The Towering Inferno. Instead, it was universally maligned by critics and was a box-office failure.
Olivia de Havilland looks out in horror as bees attack her school in Irwin Allen’s The Swarm.
The main problem – outside of bad dialogue – is that The Swarm is overly long. It has three distinct segments – an attack on the military base, an attack on the town and the surge on greater Texas and perhaps the world – that each could have stood as their own film. I watched the original 116-minute release (not the 155-minute home video version), and at least 25% of the film could have been trimmed without losing anything.
The film opens with music by Jerry Goldsmith resembling buzzing bees lending a nice tension as the military arrives at a Texas bunker to discover soldiers mysteriously dead. There’s also a doctor (Katharine Ross) who saved six others and a stranger with a shaky reason for being at the base. That’s Michael Caine as a world-renowned etymologist who has been predicting – and preparing for – a bee invasion. The military guys (led by Richard Widmark as the general) and Bradford Dillon (as a major) won’t believe him despite the fact that helicopters are downed by swarms and people die while they bicker.
By the time the warning comes over the loudspeaker, it’s too late for the school in The Swarm.
As the nearby town of Marysville is preparing for its annual flower festival (bee swarms and flowers – what could go wrong?), a husband and wife are engulfed by bees and killed when picnicking with their young son who escapes. While these bees cover their victims from head to toe, they don’t leave any marks, but if you survive, you will hallucinate giant bees.
To add a human element is the odd golden years triangle of the
school principal played by Olivia de Havilland, the bowtie wearing town mayor/pharmacist
(Fred MacMurray) and a retired newcomer (Ben Johnson). It’s sweet, but kind of sad,
too.
Meanwhile, the military and scientists continue to shout over who gets to kill the bees and how. But nothing helps for long, even the highly destructive military alternatives that are far more dangerous to people and the planet than bees. (Those bees are laughing at the guys with flame throwers who burn down buildings and leave the bees unscathed.)
We know they’ll figure something out, but it takes so long to get there. Still, watching bees cover people like a blanket, swarm military officers and blow up a nuclear reactor did the trick for me. The next time I get stung by a single yellow jacket, I’ll think of those scenes from The Swarm and remember how lucky I was with my one sting.
Toni Ruberto, born and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., is an editor and writer at
The Buffalo News. She shares her love for classic movies in her blog, Watching Forever and is a writer
and board member of the Classic
Movie Blog Association. Toni was the president of the former Buffalo
chapter of TCM Backlot and led the offshoot group, Buffalo Classic Movie Buffs.
She is proud to have put Buffalo and its glorious old movie palaces in the
spotlight as the inaugural winner of the TCM in Your Hometown contest. You can
find Toni on Twitter at @toniruberto.
