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Movie star John Wayne had dedicated fans who hated seeing any deaths surrounding the characters he played. He held an image that represented America to many moviegoers, making it hard for some to stomach watching his characters die. Nevertheless, Wayne had 8 character deaths out of his large filmography totaling over 200 motion pictures, not including 1955’s The Sea Chase, which left his character’s fate unknown.

‘Reap the Wild Wind’ (1942) L-r: Paulette Goddard as Loxi Claiborne and John Wayne as Captain Jack Stuart | FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty Images

Cecil B. DeMille’s Reap the Wild Wind is set in the 1840s, when a group of salvagers go from profiting off shipwrecks to to causing them. All those in the American South consider King Cutler (Raymond Massey) the most dangerous, who sets his eyes on the ships of the wealthy Devereaux Company, Captain Jack Stuart (Wayne), and the company’s lawyer,...

John Wayne was one of the most dependable stars in Hollywood when he formed Wayne/Fellows Productions with producer Robert Fellows in 1952. When Fellows parted ways with the star a few years later, Wayne changed the company's name to Batjac Productions (a misspelled reference to the Batjak trading company in Edward Ludwig's "Wake of the Red Witch"). Given that just about every Wayne film was a guaranteed money maker, it was smart business to ensure he had a personal financial stake in the movies he top-lined.

Still, Wayne listened to offers for films developed outside of Batjac (particularly those from his longtime collaborators John Ford and Howard Hawks). This meant Mike couldn't just find any old script and expect his dad to make the movie. He had to be diligent about locating projects of quality, or the old man might just give him the heave-ho.

A Company As Successful...

Verily, Blu-ray 3-D is better than most theatrical 3-D! Paramount’s fourth and last 3-D production went out to theaters only in 2-D, so for all practical terms this Kino/3D Archive restoration is a depth-format premiere. Expect a kissing scene or two: lusty Fernando (¿Quién es más macho?) Lamas and demure Rhonda Fleming succumb to the sweaty allure of the tropics. He pushes the sex appeal more than she does! Together they take a 3-D trek to where the headhunters roam, into a jungle to secure a golden treasure.

Jivaro

3-D Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1954 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 92 min. / Street Date March 26, 2019 / 34.95

Starring: Fernando Lamas, Rhonda Fleming, Brian Keith, Lon Chaney Jr., Richard Denning, Rita Moreno, Marvin Miller, Morgan Farley, Pascual García Peña, Nestor Paiva, Gregg Barton.

Cinematography: Lionel Lindon

Film Editor: Howard Smith

Original Music: Gregory Stone

Written by Winston Miller, story by David Duncan

Produced by William H. Pine,...

‘3rd Dimension!’ ‘Technicolor!’ Paramount underwent a difficult post-production learning curve getting this early entry in the 3-D craze out the door and into waiting theaters. Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl decorate the colonial-era costume drama, injecting some heat into their frisky wrestling match meet-cute love scene. Rip those bodices!

Sangaree

3-D Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1953 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 94 min. / Street Date October 16, 2018 / 34.95

Starring: Fernando Lamas, Arlene Dahl, Patricia Medina, Francis L. Sullivan, Charles Korvin, Tom Drake, John Sutton, Willard Parker.

Cinematography: W. Wallace Kelley, Lionel Lindon

Film Editor: Howard A. Smith

3-D Blu-ray restoration: 3-D Film Archive

Original Music: Lucien Cailliet

Written by David Duncan, Frank L. Moss, from the novel by Frank Slaughter

Produced by William H. Pine, William C. Thomas

Directed by Edward Ludwig

Producers William H. Pine and William C. Thomas turned out profitable Paramount product for fifteen years, although few of their shows were accorded artistic accolades.

'The Magnificent Ambersons': Directed by Orson Welles, and starring Tim Holt (pictured), Dolores Costello (in the background), Joseph Cotten, Anne Baxter, and Agnes Moorehead, this Academy Award-nominated adaptation of Booth Tarkington's novel earned Ricardo Cortez's brother Stanley Cortez an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White. He lost to Joseph Ruttenberg for William Wyler's blockbuster 'Mrs. Miniver.' Two years later, Cortez – along with Lee Garmes – would win Oscar statuettes for their evocative black-and-white work on John Cromwell's homefront drama 'Since You Went Away,' starring Ricardo Cortez's 'Torch Singer' leading lady, Claudette Colbert. In all, Stanley Cortez would receive cinematography credit in more than 80 films, ranging from B fare such as 'The Lady in the Morgue' and the 1940 'Margie' to Fritz Lang's 'Secret Beyond the Door,' Charles Laughton's 'The Night of the Hunter,' and Nunnally Johnson's 'The Three Faces...

A few years ago the editors of Shadowlocked asked me to compile a list of what was initially to be, the ten greatest movie matte paintings of all time. A mere ten selections was too slim by a long shot, so my list stretched considerably to twenty, then thirty and finally a nice round fifty entries. Even with that number I found it wasn’t easy to narrow down a suitably wide ranging showcase of motion picture matte art that best represented the artform. So with that in mind, and due to the surprising popularity of that 2012 Shadowlocked list (which is well worth a visit, here Ed), I’ve assembled a further fifty wonderful examples of this vast, vital and more extensively utilised than you’d imagine – though now sadly ‘dead and buried’ – movie magic.

It would of course be so easy to simply concentrate on the well known, iconic,...

Coleen Gray in 'The Sleeping City' with Richard Conte. Coleen Gray after Fox: B Westerns and films noirs (See previous post: “Coleen Gray Actress: From Red River to Film Noir 'Good Girls'.”) Regarding the demise of her Fox career (the year after her divorce from Rod Amateau), Coleen Gray would recall for Confessions of a Scream Queen author Matt Beckoff: I thought that was the end of the world and that I was a total failure. I was a mass of insecurity and depended on agents. … Whether it was an 'A' picture or a 'B' picture didn't bother me. It could be a Western movie, a sci-fi film. A job was a job. You did the best with the script that you had. Fox had dropped Gray at a time of dramatic upheavals in the American film industry: fast-dwindling box office receipts as a result of competition from television,...

Billy Wilder directed Sunset Blvd. with Gloria Swanson and William Holden. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett movies Below is a list of movies on which Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder worked together as screenwriters, including efforts for which they did not receive screen credit. The Wilder-Brackett screenwriting partnership lasted from 1938 to 1949. During that time, they shared two Academy Awards for their work on The Lost Weekend (1945) and, with D.M. Marshman Jr., Sunset Blvd. (1950). More detailed information further below. Post-split years Billy Wilder would later join forces with screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond in movies such as the classic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), the Best Picture Oscar winner The Apartment (1960), and One Two Three (1961), notable as James Cagney's last film (until a brief comeback in Milos Forman's Ragtime two decades later). Although some of these movies were quite well received, Wilder's later efforts – which also included The Seven Year Itch...

Coleen Gray ca. 1950. Coleen Gray dead at 92: Leading lady in early Stanley Kubrick film noir classic Actress Coleen Gray, best known for Stanley Kubrick's crime drama The Killing, has died. Her death was announced by Classic Images contributor Laura Wagner on Facebook's “Film Noir” group. Wagner's source was David Schecter, who had been friends with the actress for quite some time. Via private message, he has confirmed Gray's death of natural causes earlier today, Aug. 3, '15, at her home in Bel Air, on the Los Angeles Westside. Gray (born on Oct. 23, 1922, in Staplehurst, Nebraska) was 92. Coleen Gray movies As found on the IMDb, Coleen Gray made her film debut as an extra in the 20th Century Fox musical State Fair (1945), starring Jeanne Crain and Dana Andrews. Her association with film noir began in 1947, with the release of Henry Hathaway's Kiss of Death (1947), notable for showing Richard Widmark...

Issue 6 of The Cine-Files, on "Film Acting", is now online and features a dialogue between Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore. In the latest Hello Cinema podcast, the first of a two-parter, Tina Hassannia and Amir Soltani talk to film critic Godfrey Cheshire about Abbas Kiarostami's early cinema.

Above: the trailer for Paul Clipson's Hypnosis Display, currently touring in the UK with musical artist Grouper. Check out Dummy's interview with Clipson and Grouper. For Film Comment, Fernando F. Croce writes on Agnès Varda: From Here to There:

"Varda’s curiosity about human beings is bottomless and unpredictable. (I can personally attest: I briefly met her at a screening of The Beaches of Agnès, and a question about my accent somehow led to a conversation about my grandmother’s days in Czechoslovakia and my brother’s passion for tubas.) From Here to There is an unabashed self-portrait in...

Catherine Grant's retweeted an intriguing find from Alternative Takes, the January/February 1980 issue of Radical America (Pdf). From the "Introduction": "Lynn Garafola's article, 'Hollywood and the Myth of the Working Class,' discusses such box office successes as Rocky, The Deer Hunter, Saturday Night Fever and Norma Rae, as well as some commercial productions that didn't do so well, such as Blue Collar and F.I.S.T. John Demeter's article, on the other hand, looks at two examples of a new class of technically advanced non-Hollywood left-wing movies: The Wobblies and Northern Lights. In a curious way, the Hollywood films that Garafola writes about are more political than the left-wing films."

For Bookforum, John Domini reviews Paolo Sorrentino's first novel, Everybody's Right, and finds that "this filmmaker's energetic wallow in prose does seem best appreciated as a cry for the beloved country, resonating off touchstones from...

Lee Remick, Eve Arden, James Stewart in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder James Stewart on TCM: The Stratton Story, No Highway In The Sky Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am The Last Gangster (1937) When a notorious gangster gets out of prison, he vows revenge on the wife who left him. Dir: Edward Ludwig. Cast: Edward G. Robinson, James Stewart, Rose Stradner. Bw-81 mins. 7:30 Am The Shopworn Angel (1938) A showgirl gives up life in the fast lane for a young soldier on his way to fight World War I. Dir: H. C. Potter. Cast: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Walter Pidgeon. Bw-85 mins. 9:00 Am Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939) An idealistic Senate replacement takes on political corruption. Dir: Frank Capra. Cast: Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Claude Rains. Bw-130 mins. 11:15 Am Wife Vs. Secretary (1936) A secretary becomes so valuable to her boss that it jeopardizes his marriage.

Bette Davis, Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, Three on a Match Ann Dvorak on TCM Part I: Scarface, I Was An American Spy Another cool Ann Dvorak performance is her drug addict in Mervyn LeRoy's Three on a Match (1932), which features a great cast that includes Warren William, Joan Blondell, and a pre-stardom Bette Davis. Never, ever light three cigarettes using the same match, or you'll end up like Ann Dvorak, delivering a harrowing performance without getting an Academy Award nomination for your efforts. As Three on a Match's young Ann Dvorak, future Oscar nominee Anne Shirley is billed as Dawn O'Day. (And for those who believe that remakes is something new: Three on a Mach was remade a mere six years later as Broadway Musketeers: John Farrow directed; Ann Sheridan, Marie Wilson, and Margaret Lindsay starred.) I've never watched David Miller's family drama Our Very Own...