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Considering it’s inherently a movie about mundane suburban life, Pitfall doesn’t hesitate to pull the rug out from under its characters as well as its audience. Jumping right in, it’s set in your run-of-the-mill post-war era, featuring a bored insurance man, his lovely wife, and the ins and outs of their days. Then comes a femme fatale and a covetous private eye who end up spurring a moral spiral heading for disaster. Directed by André de Toth, and starring the likes of Lizabeth Scott, Dick Powell, and Jane Wyatt, 1948’s Pitfall takes what should have been a typical tale of unfaithfulness and greed, and rolls and drenches it in drama.

For Kirk Douglas, "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" was a breath of fresh air amid military man roles in the likes of "Top Secret Affair" and Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory." Opposite Burt Lancaster's mythical lawman Wyatt Earp, gunslinger Doc Holliday was resolute but ill, a former dentist with a telltale cough that followed him throughout the 122-minutes of runtime. In his autobiography "The Ragman's Son," Douglas makes it clear that he was into Leon Uris' script not so much as a loose historical account but as "an interesting relationship between two men."

Both men –- Lancaster and Douglas –- had some history with "Gunfight" producer Hal Wallis, whose Best Picture Academy Award for "Casablanca" had been on his mantle for over a decade by this time. The pair previously starred in Lizabeth Scott's '47 noir classic "I Walk Alone," backed by Wallis. Wallis eventually parted ways...

The third ‘Essential’ noir collection is easily [Imprint]’s best, with two genuine classics of the style plus two excellent and equally entertaining thrillers. The directors are first-rank: Lewis Milestone, Mitchell Leisen, William Dieterle and William Wyler. Top stars are present too: Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Lisabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas, William Holden, Alexis Smith, Edmond O’Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Fredric March. The high-quality suspense and jeopardy are uniquely noir: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, No Man Of Her Own, The Turning Point and The Desperate Hours. [Imprint] taps bona fide experts for the xtras.

Essential Film Noir Collection 3

Blu-ray (Region-Free)

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, No Man Of Her Own, The Turning Point, The Desperate Hours

Viavision [Imprint] 148, 149, 150, 151

1946 – 1955 / B&w / 1:37 Academy (3), 1:78 widescreen (1) / 411 min. / Street Date August 31, 2022 / Available from Viavision [Imprint] / au 139.95 , Amazon / 136.64

Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Lisabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas; Barbara Stanwyck, John Lund, Lyle Bettger; William Holden, Alexis Smith,...

This grouping of Bogart’s Columbia output has one bona fide noir, a pair of exotic ‘romantic intrigue’ thrillers and three social issue pictures. It’s a good set, with films directed by John Cromwell, Nicholas Ray and Mark Robson, and with leading ladies Lizabeth Scott, Florence Marley, Marta Toren, Jody Lawrance and Jan Sterling. And the Powerhouse Indicator extras are especially well curated. Watch out — it’s Region B only.

Columbia Noir #5 Humphrey Bogart

Region B Blu-ray

Dead Reckoning, Knock on Any Door, Tokyo Joe,

Sirocco, The Family Secret, The Harder They Fall

Powerhouse Indicator

1947-1956 / B&w / 1:37 Academy & 1:85 widescreen

Street Date June 27, 2022 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £49.99

Starring or Executive Produced by Humphrey Bogart

For an established actor who really didn’t break through as a starring leading man until age 41, Humphrey Bogart sure gave us a legacy of prominent movies. As movie stars go he...

The Palm Springs area will live up to its reputation for seediness under the cover of never-ending nights — irony intended — as the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival returns to town for its 22nd annual marathon of vintage crime dramas this weekend. Leonard Maltin and TCM “Noir Alley” host Eddie Muller will be among the guest hosts joining festival curator Alan K. Rode for a four-day deep dive into the dark that kicks off Thursday night with the 1949 Nicholas Ray film whose title pretty much says it all about the genre being celebrated: “They Live by Night.”

That opening night will be preceded Wednesday by a fundraising performance by frequent festival guest Victoria Mature, daughter of Hollywood golden-age icon Victor Mature, dubbed “Victoria/Victor Mature Cabaret, an Evening of Memories and Music,” to be held, as with the festival proper, at the Palm Springs Cultural Center. Mature will also be on...

Yasuzo Masumura amazes us with yet another sensual stunner. This period way-of-all-flesh tale is almost a horror film, but the supernatural shivers are far outpaced by the daily Evil that Men Do. Japanese superstar Ayako Wakao blazes across the screen as a self-decreed avenger of the female sex, who allows men to destroy themselves and uses them to destroy each other. The bloody killings orbit around the desire to possess the irresistible Spider Woman, an in an ‘annihilating noir.’ The screenplay is by the equally famous Kaneto Shindo, from a Japanese ‘amor fou’ novel by Junichiro Tanizaki.

Irezumi

Blu-ray

Arrow Video

1966 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 86 min. / Street Date June 22, 2021 / Spider Tattoo / Available from Amazon / 39.95

Starring: Ayako Wakao, Akio Hasegawa, Gaku Yamamoto, Kei Sato, Fujio Suga, Reiko Fujiwara, Asao Uchida, Kikue Mori.

Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa

Production Designers: Hiroaki Fujii, Shiro Kaga

Art Director: Yoshinobu Nishioka

Film Editor: Kanji Suganuma

Original Music: Hikaru...

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Vintage magazines make a great collector’s item (or gift idea) for movie lovers, and anyone looking to capture that Old Hollywood aesthetic. But you don’t even have to leave the house to get your hands on these collectibles. If you’re not in the mood to visit a garage sale or thrift store, we put together a list of rare magazines that you can buy online.

From Photoplay to Movieland magazine, you might not be familiar with some of the publications listed but if you’re a fan of Hollywood’s Golden Era, then you’re likely to recognize some (if not all) of the screen legends captured on the covers,...

Above: Easy LivingIn football, the American film industry found a setting to prattle its American platitudes—their -isms and -ivenesses that titivate the truth. By making a mill from America’s most popular sport, which was already riddled with truisms, Hollywood strove to insulate itself with lush banalities of American exceptionalism. They glommed to the mythology and readymade drama of the gridiron. Underdogs with long odds, inner crises, and familial strife—all seem to be absolved on the football field. Yet, as Don DeLillo writes in End Zone, the regnant work of fiction on football, “whatever complexities, whatever dark politics of the human mind, the heart—these are noted only within the chalked borders of the playing field. At times strange visions ripple across that turf; madness leaks out.” The tired tropes of the sport give way to something else, something unpolished but no less telling, all braced by...

The murky crimes of sordid characters come to the fore in the wide-open Nevada spaces… producer Hal Wallis’ Technicolor noir concentrates on the possessive and perverse competition for Lizabeth Scott’s luscious blonde — the mother that wants to corral her, the gangster who thinks she’s an escape and the local hunk who wears a badge. Robert Rossen’s edgy screenplay depicts its violent action on a psychological level.

Desert Fury

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1947 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 96 min. / Street Date Feb 26, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Lizabeth Scott, John Hodiak, Wendell Corey, Mary Astor, Kristine Miller, William Harrigan, James Flavin, Anna Camargo, Ray Teal.

Cinematography: Edward Cronjager, Charles Lang

Film Editor: Warren Low

Original Music: Miklos Rosza

Written by Robert Rossen from the novel by Ramona Stewart

Produced by Hal B. Wallis

Directed by Lewis Allen

As he was under contract to Hal Wallis, Burt Lancaster...

One of a number of Paramount noirs seemingly forever Mia on disc, Hal Wallis’ show reunites Burt Lancaster and Lizabeth Scott with promising newcomers Kirk Douglas and Wendell Corey. It’s light on action but strong on character — and it contains a key scene in the development of both the noir style and the gangster genre.

I Walk Alone

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1947 / B&W / flat Academy / 97 min. / Street Date July 24, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Lizabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas, Wendell Corey, Kristine Miller, George Rigaud, Marc Lawrence, Mike Mazurki, Mickey Knox, Gino Corrado.

Cinematography: Leo Tover

Film Editor: Arthur Schmidt

Original Music: Victor Young

Written by Charles Schnee, Robert Smith, John Bright from a play by Theodore Reeves

Produced by Hal B. Wallis

Directed by Byron Haskin

One reason we keep going to theatrical Noir festivals is that a substantial number of interesting classic-era features still haven’t surfaced on disc.

A spoof? A black comedy? Michael Hodges and Michael Caine’s hardboiled ‘foreign intrigue’ comedy lays on the movie references and clever dialogue, going the distance in the arcane, hipster-noir subgenre. Caine is always good in that mode, and Mickey Rooney gets a supporting role that can only be called bizarre.

Pulp

DVD

Arrow Video USA

1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 96 min. / Street Date , 2017 / Available from Arrow Video

Starring: Michael Caine, Mickey Rooney, Lionel Stander, Lizabeth Scott, Nadia Cassini, Leopoldo Trieste, Al Lettieri, Robert Sacchi, Luciano Pigozzi.

Cinematography: Ousama Rawi

Film Editor: Patrick Downing

Original Music: George Martin

Produced by Michael Klinger

Written and Directed by Mike Hodges

Mickey King writes Pulp, lives Pulp, very soon could be Pulp!

After their success with the brutal, now-classic gangster thriller Get Carter, the ‘three Michaels’ Caine, Hodges and Klinger came up with this precociously spoofy takeoff on cheap pulp mysteries, appropriately titled Pulp. Filmed in sunny Malta,...

Trouble Is My Business with Brittney Powell. Co-written by actor/voice actor Tom Konkle, who also directed, and Xena: Warrior Princess actress Brittney Powell, Trouble Is My Business is a humorous homage to film noirs of the 1940s and 1950s, among them John Huston's The Maltese Falcon and Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. Konkle stars in the sort of role that back in the '40s and '50s belonged to the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Dick Powell, and Alan Ladd. As the femme fatale, Brittney Powell is supposed to evoke memories of Jane Greer, Lizabeth Scott, Lauren Bacall, and Claire Trevor. 'Trouble Is My Business': Humorous film noir homage evokes memories of 'The Maltese Falcon' & 'Touch of Evil' A crunchy, witty, and often just plain funny mash-up of classic noir tropes, from hard-boiled private dicks to the easy-on-the-eyes femme fatales – in addition to dialogue worthy of Dashiell Hammett and, occasionally...

Or, “Never on Sunday with Your Stepson.” Director Jules Dassin’s monument to his beloved Melina Mercouri transposes a Greek tragedy to a modern setting. The pampered wife of a shipping magnate is like a queen of old — she can fling a priceless gem into the Thames on just a whim, and she goes in whatever direction her heart takes her. When her attractive stepson Anthony Perkins enters the picture, there will be Hell to Pay.

Phaedra

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1962 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 116 min. / Street Date March 21, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.95

Starring: Melina Mercouri, Anthony Perkins, Raf Vallone, Elisabeth Ercy.

Cinematography: Jacquest Natteau

Film Editor: Roger Dwyre

Original Music: Mikis Theodorakis

Written by Jules Dassin, Margarita Lymberaki from the play Hippolytus by Euripides

Produced and Directed by Jules Dassin

Anyone into amour fou, the romantic notion of a love without limits, beyond the harsh constraints of reality?...

There are two major sides to the film noir coin, as I see it – the psychological and the practical. Now, the practical noir is fairly straightforward; maybe a detective has to solve a crime, or someone gets themselves in over their head with some scheme gone wrong. There’s a problem to be solved, and the protagonist either overcomes or becomes consumed by it. Double Indemnity, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Night and the City, The Killing, and The Maltese Falcon fit into this section rather well. The psychological noir uses genre tropes to investigate someone’s soul, usually stemming from their nearness to sin and death. Scarlet Street, Laura, Female on the Beach, The Chase, Sunset Boulevard, and Kiss Me Deadly fit the bill. Obviously films in each use elements of the other to shade the characters or move the story along, but the texture and flavor is notably distinct,...

By Tim Greaves

(The following reviews pertain to the UK Region 2 releases)

When I'm in the right mood I adore bit of film noir. I admire the diversity of its storytelling, I love every facet, from the hardboiled private eyes, duplicitous dames and characters that seldom turn out to be what they first appear, to the alleyways bathed in inky shadows, ramshackle apartments and half-lit street corners they inhabit. How can you not get drawn in by the sheer delight of Edward G Robinson playing a second rate psychic trying to convince the authorities he can see the future in The Night Has a Thousand Eyes? Or amnesiac John Hodiak on a mission to discover his own identity, in the process getting embroiled in a 3-year-old murder case and the search for a missing $2 million in Somewhere in the Night? Yes, indeed, there's nothing quite like a hearty serving of...

What in the world -- an A + top-rank film noir gem hiding under the radar, and rescued (most literally) by the Film Noir Foundation. Ann Sheridan and Dennis O'Keefe trade dialogue as good as any in a film from 1950 -- it's a thriller with a cynical worldview yet a sentimental personal outlook. Woman on the Run Blu-ray + DVD Flicker Alley / FIlm Noir Foundation 1950 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 79 min. / Street Date May 17, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Ann Sheridan, Dennis O'Keefe, Robert Keith, John Qualen, Frank Jenks, Ross Elliott, Jane Liddell, Joan Fulton, J. Farrell MacDonald, Steven Geray, Victor Sen Yung, Reiko Sato. Cinematography Hal Mohr Art Direction Boris Leven Film Editor Otto Ludwig Original Music Arthur Lange, Emil Newman Written by Alan Campbell, Norman Foster, Sylvia Tate Produced by Howard Welsch, Ann Sheridan Directed by Norman Foster

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Amazing! Just when one thinks one won't see another top-rank film noir, the...

Noir if I can help it! Sultry Lizabeth Scott out-'fatals' every femme we know in this wickedly ruthless tale of unadulterated female venality. Rough creep Dan Duryea meets his match, as do other unfortunate males that get between Liz and a plump bag of blackmail loot. The Film Noir Foundation's restoration is a valiant rescue job, for a worthy 'annihilating melodrama.' Too Late for Tears Blu-ray + DVD Flicker Alley / FIlm Noir Foundation 1949 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 102 min. / Street Date May 17, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Lizabeth Scott, Don DeFore, Dan Duryea, Arthur Kennedy, Kristine Miller, Barry Kelley Cinematography William Mellor Art Direction James Sullivan Film Editor Harry Keller Original Music Dale Butts Written by Roy Huggins from his story Produced by Hunt Stromberg Directed by Byron Haskin

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Who's doing good work for film preservation? The Film Noir Foundation has racked up some impressive rescues and restorations in the last fifteen years or so,...

The fine folks at Flicker Alley have just announced two new Blu-rays coming in April 2016:

Flicker Alley, the Film Noir Foundation, and UCLA Film & Television Archive are proud to present two rediscovered gems of film noir, Too Late for Tears and Woman on the Run, both brilliantly restored in brand-new Blu-ray/DVD dual-format editions.

Here is a preview of Noir City, included in the supplements.

Here is the press release they’ve sent out:

Flicker Alley, the Film Noir Foundation, and UCLA Film & Television Archive are proud to present two rediscovered gems of film noir, Too Late for Tears and Woman on the Run, both brilliantly restored in brand-new Blu-ray/DVD dual-format editions.

Too Late For Tears

Finally! One of the great missing films of the classic noir era-resurrected! Rescued and preserved after a five-year crusade by the Film Noir Foundation, this 1949 classic is at long last available in a clean digital version,...

or, Savant picks The Most Impressive Discs of 2015

This is the actual view from Savant Central, looking due North.

What a year! I was able to take one very nice trip back East too see Washington D.C. for the first time, or at least as much as two days' walking in the hot sun and then cool rain would allow. Back home in Los Angeles, we've had a year of extreme drought -- my lawn is looking patriotically ratty -- and we're expecting something called El Niño, that's supposed to be just shy of Old-Testament build-me-an-ark intensity. We withstood heat waves like those in Day the Earth Caught Fire, and now we'll get the storms part. This has been a wild year for DVD Savant, which is still a little unsettled. DVDtalk has been very patient and generous, and so have Stuart Galbraith & Joe Dante; so far everything...

“Who Wouldn’T Fall For Lizabeth Scott?”

By Raymond Benson

The year 1948 was the pinnacle for film noir in America, although this style of crime picture would continue for at least another decade. Yes, it’s a style, not a genre. For the most part it was also an unconscious style, for the filmmakers who brought us film noir had no idea they were making “film noir”—it wasn’t until the late 1950s that a bunch of French critics coined the term after looking back at this strange, cynical, dark breed of crime stories.

Pitfall is a corker, and while it’s certainly a movie about a crime and contains many of the film noir trademarks such as a femme fatale, a jaded protagonist, brutal violence (for the time), high contrast photography of light and shadow, an urban setting, and unstable alliances, it’s really a movie about the hazards of adultery.

This is a Great film noir. A straying husband's 'innocent' dalliance wrecks lives and puts his marriage in jeopardy. Been there, done that?   Dick Powell and Lizabeth Scott are menaced by Raymond Burr, while wife Jane Wyatt is kept in the dark. Andre de Toth's direction puts everyone through the wringer, with a very adult look at the realities of the American marriage contract, circa 1948. Pitfall Blu-ray Kino Lorber Studio Classics 1948 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 86 min. / Street Date November 17, 2015 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, Jane Wyatt, Raymond Burr, John Litel, Byron Barr, Jimmy Hunt. Cinematography Harry Wild Art Direction Arthur Lonergan Film Editor Walter Thompson Written by Karl Kamb from the novel by Jay Dratler Produced by Samuel Bischoff Directed by André De Toth

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Is 'domestic noir' even a category? I think so. Some of the creepiest late- '40s noir pictures take intrigue,...

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,...

Michael Caine young. Michael Caine movies: From Irwin Allen bombs to Woody Allen classic It's hard to believe that Michael Caine has been around making movies for nearly six decades. No wonder he's had time to appear – in roles big and small and tiny – in more than 120 films, ranging from unwatchable stuff like the Sylvester Stallone soccer flick Victory and Michael Ritchie's adventure flick The Island to Brian G. Hutton's X, Y and Zee, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Sleuth (a duel of wits and acting styles with Laurence Olivier), and Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men. (See TCM's Michael Caine movie schedule further below.) Throughout his long, long career, Caine has played heroes and villains and everything in between. Sometimes, in his worst vehicles, he has floundered along with everybody else. At other times, he was the best element in otherwise disappointing fare, e.g., Philip Kaufman's Quills.

'Being Julia' movie: Annette Bening and Shaun Evans 'Being Julia' movie review: Annette Bening showcase tells us a little about Avice A little Being Julia movie background: In Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1950 Oscar-winning classic All About Eve, Bette Davis plays Margo Channing, a major Broadway star who, despite her talent, wit, and some forty-odd years on this planet, falls prey to the youthful, ambitious wannabe Eve Harrington: sweet, soft-spoken Anne Baxter on the outside; ruthless, poisonous gargoyle on the inside.* More than a decade earlier, in 1937 to be exact, W. Somerset Maugham had written Theatre, a novel about West End diva Julia Lambert. In Maugham's tale, Julia, despite her talent, wit, and some forty-odd years on this planet, succumbs to her vanity when she falls madly in love with Tom Fennel, a handsome – and deceptively innocent-looking – American half her age. Through Tom's "special friendship" with the renowned Julia, an ambitious young actress,...

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

Written by Robert Rossen, Robert Riskin

Directed by Lewis Milestone

U.S.A., 1946

As a teenager, Martha Ivers (Janis Wilson) was a petulant rebel who regularly struck the ire of her caretaking aunt, a wicked woman prone to sucking the joy out of Martha’s life even though she offers the youngling a home in her plush Pennsylvania estate. One of the teen’s attempts to run away with street smart Sam Masterson (Darryl Hickman) changes the rest of her life in ways she could never have anticipated. Caught by the police once again and sent back home, Martha unleashes her frustrations on her aunt, murdering her in the process. The only witness to the killing is young Walter O’Neil (Mickey Kuhn), son of Martha’s tutor. Martha claims an intruder killed the vile old creature amidst a frantic escape. Flash forward years...

Too Late For Tears: Shai Plumbs the Depths of B-Noir Devices for Punchy Debut

A brunette with bloody fingers shakily inhales the fumes of a cigarette in the opening sequences of Oren Shai’s directorial debut, The Frontier, a title that evokes the desolation of a vintage Western. But this musty, dusty period narrative concerning shady folks doing very bad things in an isolated outpost in the middle of nowhere is a snug throwback to the B film-noirs that used to be spackled into double feature zingers at the local matinee. Not one of Shai’s motley, if generally entertaining crew, qualifies as the proverbial ‘good person,’ but he manages to instill the same sense of investment in a beautiful but morally compromised femme fatale as those films from a bygone era. Though its production value sometimes belies a stingy budget with amateurish sting, Shai manages to distract from...

Dark City

Written by John Meredyth Lucas and Larry Marcus

Directed by William Dieterle

U.S.A. 1950

Danny Haley (Charlton Heston) calmly walks along the big city sidewalk towards an as of yet unknown destination as the opening credits role. His serious gaze surveys the surrounding area. Moments later the viewer discovers what might have been troubling him as a police convoy raids a nearby building, smashing an illegal betting operation in the process. Danny successfully found refuge across the street, but he and his partners in crime Barney (Ed Begley) and Augie (Jack Webb) are out for the count as far as making quick cash is concerned. Down and out, that is, until they make the acquaintance of army veteran Arthur Winant (Don DeFore) who looks to be loaded and ready to spend big bucks while in town. A fixed card game sees the unsuspecting Arthur hand over a sizable sum via check…...

"Louis Jourdan, a handsome, sad-eyed French actor who worked steadily in films and on television in Europe and the United States for better than five decades, as a romantic hero in movies like Gigi and later as a suave villain in movies like Octopussy, died on Friday at his home in Beverly Hills," reports Terrence Rafferty in the New York Times. We also remember Lizabeth Scott, star of films noir in the 1940s and 1950s; screenwriter Stewart Stern (Rebel Without a Cause, Rachel, Rachel and Sybil); media journalist David Carr; actor Bryant Crenshaw (Gummo); and writer and producer Robert Blees (Magnificent Obsession). » - David Hudson...

"Louis Jourdan, a handsome, sad-eyed French actor who worked steadily in films and on television in Europe and the United States for better than five decades, as a romantic hero in movies like Gigi and later as a suave villain in movies like Octopussy, died on Friday at his home in Beverly Hills," reports Terrence Rafferty in the New York Times. We also remember Lizabeth Scott, star of films noir in the 1940s and 1950s; screenwriter Stewart Stern (Rebel Without a Cause, Rachel, Rachel and Sybil); media journalist David Carr; actor Bryant Crenshaw (Gummo); and writer and producer Robert Blees (Magnificent Obsession). » - David Hudson...

Lizabeth Scott, the sultry blonde who epitomized cinematic "bad girls" in film noir productions, has passed away at age 92. Scott specialized in playing hard-bitten, self-confident femme fatales usually from the wrong side of the tracks. Her leading men included Robert Mithchum, Burt Lancaster, Michael Caine, Charlton Heston, Elvis Presley, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis and Kirk Douglas. Her film credits include "Loving You", "Dark City", "I Walk Alone", "Too Late for Tears", "Pitfall" and "Scared Stiff". Her last screen appearance was in director Mike Hodges' acclaimed 1972 cult movie "Pulp", which was a send-up of the film noir genre. Scott's career began to fade in the late 1950s though she did make occasional appearances in TV series in the following years. In more recent years, she occasionally appeared at film festivals to discuss her work and career. Click here for more. ...

Lizabeth Scott dead at 92: Film noir star of the '40s and '50s Lizabeth Scott, a Paramount star in the 1940s usually cast as film noir heroines, died of congestive heart failure on Jan. 31, 2015, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Scott, born (as Emma Matzo) on Sept. 29, 1922, was 92. (See also: Lizabeth Scott photo at recent The Strange Love of Martha Ivers screening.) Among the two dozen film featuring Lizabeth Scott – whose hair-style and husky line delivery were clearly inspired by Paramount's own Veronica Lake (along with Warner Bros.' Lauren Bacall) – were the following: John Farrow's You Came Along (1945), with Robert Cummings. Lewis Milestone's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), with Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, and Kirk Douglas. Desert Fury (1947), with Burt Lancaster. Dead Reckoning (1947), with Humphrey Bogart. Pitfall (1948), with Dick Powell. Dark City (1950), with Charlton Heston. The Racket (1951), with Robert Ryan and Robert Mitchum.

Lizabeth Scott, one of the original femme fatales of cinema, is dead at 92. With star-making turns in the film-noir classics of the 1940s and ’50s, Scott suffered heart failure at Cedars Sinai Medical Center on January 31, according to media reports. In 1947, Scott starred in “I Walk Alone” with Burt Lancaster, and opposite Charlton Heston in 1950’s “Dark City.” Also Read: Stewart Stern, ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ Screenwriter, Dead at 92 Scott often drew comparisons to Lauren Bacall, thanks to her smoky voice, film fans note. Her last credited role was in 1972’s “Pulp,” a sort of parody of the noir genre,...

Film-noir femme fatale of the 1940s and 50s

In the mid-1940s, Paramount described their latest star signing, Lizabeth Scott, who has died aged 92, as “beautiful, blonde, aloof and alluring” and, in anticipation of her becoming another tough-girl siren of the period, nicknamed her The Threat. However, during her 12-year film career, the critics and public never saw her as a threat to the two other noirish dames she most resembled, Lauren Bacall and Veronica Lake, although they rarely played duplicitous dames, as Scott did. Only later, some years after her career was in tatters, was she appreciated for being her own woman.

Scott was strong and sultry, her heavy dark eyebrows contrasting with her blonde hair. Like Bacall, she had a low and husky voice, but she was far harder; in fact, she was able to suggest hidden depths of depravity – the ideal femme fatale of the 1940s. As...

'Cat People' 1942 actress Simone Simon Remembered: Starred in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie classic (photo: Simone Simon in 'Cat People') Pert, pouty, pretty Simone Simon is best remembered for her starring roles in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie Cat People (1942) and in Jean Renoir's French film noir La Bête Humaine (1938). Long before Brigitte Bardot, Mamie Van Doren, Ann-Margret, and (for a few years) Jane Fonda became known as cinema's Sex Kittens, Simone Simon exuded feline charm in a film career that spanned a quarter of a century. From the early '30s to the mid-'50s, she seduced men young and old on both sides of the Atlantic – at times, with fatal results. During that period, Simon was featured in nearly 40 movies in France, Italy, Germany, Britain, and Hollywood. Besides Jean Renoir, in her native country she worked for the likes of Jacqueline Audry...

Too Late for Tears

Written by Roy Huggins

Directed by Bryon Haskin

U.S.A., 1949

Alan and Jane Palmer (Arthur Kennedy and Lizabeth Scott respectively) are driving up a lonely road one evening for a dinner party hosted by some of the husband’s friends. Jane, incessant in her pleads to turn around, has Alan stop the car for a moment at which point another vehicle heading in the opposite direction passes by. One of its occupants tosses a large duffle bag in their vehicle. Upon inspecting its contents the married couple discover hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. A third vehicle fast approaches and gives them chase, and while the duo escape whomever it was that pursued them along the dusty road, it is clear that someone is after the hefty sum currently in their possession. Jane is over the moon with their discovery whereas Alan would prefer to have nothing of it.

By Frank Calvillo

In the midst of all the excitement over the Texas Film Awards and SXSW 2014, another film-related event took place recently: the first annual Noir City Austin. While free of a red carpet and movie stars in the flesh, this festival celebrated its inaugural weekend at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz from Feb. 28 to March 2.

Hosted by the Film Noir Foundation, Noir City Austin screened 10 films straight from the genre’s heyday, and featured many faces familiar to devoted noir fans, such as Shelley Winters, Peter Lorre, Ray Milland and Lizabeth Scott.

Yet rather than screening such noir staples like The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity and The Big Sleep, the foundation chose lesser-known titles that, though unknown to the majority of those in attendance, still contained all the necessary ingredients essential to any noir. More than that though, the movies selected tended to go beyond the conventions of the...

Femme fatale Audrey Totter: Film noir actress and MGM leading lady dead at 95 (photo: Audrey Totter ca. 1947) Audrey Totter, film noir femme fatale and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player best remembered for the mystery crime drama Lady in the Lake and, at Rko, the hard-hitting boxing drama The Set-Up, died after suffering a stroke and congestive heart failure on Thursday, December 12, 2013, at West Hills Hospital in Los Angeles County. Reportedly a resident at the Motion Picture and Television Home in Woodland Hills, Audrey Totter would have turned 96 on Dec. 20. Born in Joliet, Illinois, Audrey Totter began her show business career on radio. She landed an MGM contract in the mid-’40s, playing bit roles in several of the studio’s productions, e.g., the Clark Gable-Greer Garson pairing Adventure (1945), the Hedy Lamarr-Robert Walker-June Allyson threesome Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945), and, as an adventurous hitchhiker riding with John Garfield,...

Desert Fury

Written by A.I. Bezzerides and Robert Rossen

Directed by Lewis Allen

USA, 1947

Perception plays a spectacularly large role in how people behave and process information. Everything one does or chooses to do is at least partly a function of one’s perceived reality. Sometimes, one believes to be doing the right thing whereas they are doing the wrong thing and vice versa. It is but one of the many aspects to human cognition that makes life that much more complicated. It stands to reason that perception can influence how one watches a movie and accepts its terms. These nebulous ideas greatly influence many aspects of the 1947 romance thriller Desert Fury, from what the characters believe to be doing to how the viewer ultimately accepts or rejects the film as a whole.

Chuckawalla, Nevada is home to many people from different walks of life. There is the Haller family,...

(Terence Fisher, 1959, Icon/Hammer, 12)

The Mummy

After nearly 20 years of unmemorable programme fillers, Hammer Films found sudden international success with horror movies, first the black-and-white The Quatermass Xperiment, then Technicolor versions of the 1930s Universal classics, The Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula and The Mummy. Made in a sprawling country mansion on the Thames at Bray, near Windsor, all three films featured the same stars (Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee) and the same crew, headed by director Terence Fisher, screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, designer Bernard Robinson and cinematographer Jack Asher. A distinctive style was born, and Hammer became synonymous with horror. The Mummy drew on four Universal movies for its tale of an Egyptologist (Peter Cushing) being pursued back to Britain by the ancient, vengeful mummy of an Egyptian priest (Christopher Lee) that he has roused from his tomb in Karnak in 1896.

Alternately corny and magical, scary and comic, naive and perverse,...

Broadway actress Marta Heflin dead at 68: Featured in several Robert Altman movies (photo: Marta Heflin in ‘A Perfect Couple’) Stage actress Marta Heflin, who was featured in a handful of movies in the ’70s and early ’80s, including three Robert Altman efforts, died on September 18, 2013, after "a long illness." Heflin (born on March 29, 1945, in Washington, D.C.) was 68. On Broadway, Marta Heflin was featured in the musicals Fiddler on the Roof, Hair, Soon, and Jesus Christ Superstar (replacing Yvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene). Additionally, she was seen in Ed Graczyk’s Robert Altman-directed 1982 play Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, about a group of James Dean fans — among them Karen Black, Cher, Sandy Dennis, Kathy Bates, Sudie Bond, and Mark Patton — who get together on the twentieth anniversary of Dean’s death. Marta Heflin movies Along with her fellow Come Back to the Five and Dime,...

Sparrows Dance

Written by Noah Buschel

Directed by Noah Buschel

USA, 2012

Set in modern-day New York City, Noah Buschel’s Sparrows Dance follows the day-to-day life of an agoraphobic former-actress (a drabbed down Marin Ireland, Homeland). Hitting a decent amount of the Mumblecore check points, the film is low budget (an estimated $175,000 production) and uses naturalistic dialogue and pacing. At the beginning of the 82 minute film, a good fifteen minutes or so is dedicated to establishing that the female lead is indeed agoraphobic and that her life revolves around bodily functions such as going to the bathroom (the film starts with her on the toiler), exercising (on a vintage-looking stationary bike) and eating (takeout: the agoraphobic’s choice). Unfortunately for her neurosis and luckily for us, her toilet clogs up enough that she has to call up a plumbing service. To her dismay, they tell her that they can’t...

Mickey Rooney movie schedule (Pt): TCM on August 13 See previous post: “Mickey Rooney Movies: Music and Murder.” Photo: Mickey Rooney ca. 1940. 3:00 Am Death On The Diamond (1934). Director: Edward Sedgwick. Cast: Robert Young, Madge Evans, Nat Pendleton, Mickey Rooney. Bw-71 mins. 4:15 Am A Midsummer Night’S Dream (1935). Director: Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle. Cast: James Cagney, Dick Powell, Olivia de Havilland, Ross Alexander, Anita Louise, Mickey Rooney, Joe E. Brown, Victor Jory, Ian Hunter, Verree Teasdale, Jean Muir, Frank McHugh, Grant Mitchell, Hobart Cavanaugh, Dewey Robinson, Hugh Herbert, Arthur Treacher, Otis Harlan, Helen Westcott, Fred Sale, Billy Barty, Rags Ragland. Bw-143 mins. 6:45 Am A Family Affair (1936). Director: George B. Seitz. Cast: Mickey Rooney, Lionel Barrymore, Cecilia Parker, Eric Linden. Bw-69 mins. 8:00 Am Boys Town (1938). Director: Norman Taurog. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney, Henry Hull, Leslie Fenton, Gene Reynolds, Edward Norris, Addison Richards, Minor Watson, Jonathan Hale,...

Mickey Rooney movies on TCM: Music and murder (photo: Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland ca. 1940) Mickey Rooney is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" star today, August 13, 2013. According to the IMDb, Mickey Rooney, who turns 93 next September 23, has been featured in more than 250 movies — in shorts and features, in Hollywood and international productions, in cameos and starring roles, in bit parts and second leads. You name it, Rooney has done it: comedies, dramas, thrillers, musicals, biopics, war movies, horse movies, horror movies. (Mickey Rooney: TCM movie schedule.) Mickey Rooney in a horror movie? Yes, in about a dozen of those. Scarier than World War Z, The Conjuring, The Exorcist, and Alien combined were A Family Affair (on TCM earlier today) and ensuing Andy Hardy movies. Creepy stuff. Nearly as frightening are Rooney’s musicals with Judy Garland, one of which TCM presented earlier this morning, Strike Up the Band (1940). Another,...

Charlton Heston movies: ‘A Man for All Seasons’ remake, ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’ (photo: Charlton Heston as Ben-Hur) (See previous post: “Charlton Heston: Moses Minus Staff Plus Chariot Equals Ben-Hur.”) I’ve yet to watch Irving Rapper’s melo Bad for Each Other (1954), co-starring the sultry Lizabeth Scott — always a good enough reason to check out any movie, regardless of plot or leading man. A major curiosity is the 1988 made-for-tv version of A Man for All Seasons, with Charlton Heston in the Oscar-winning Paul Scofield role (Sir Thomas More) and on Fred Zinnemann’s director’s chair. Vanessa Redgrave, who plays Thomas More’s wife in the TV movie (Wendy Hiller in the original) had a cameo as Anne Boleyn in the 1966 film. According to the IMDb, Robert Bolt, who wrote the Oscar-winning 1966 movie (and the original play), is credited for the 1988 version’s screenplay as well. Also of note,...

From Elizabeth Taylor in the 1950s to just about everyone and everything else in the 2010s: The tabloidization of journalism [See previous post: "Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell: Studio-Manufactured Love Affairs."] Despite the sensational coverage of Fatty Arbuckle’s rape/manslaughter trial and of the (still unsolved) murder of director William Desmond Taylor in the early ’20s, the tabloidization of entertainment news would go mainstream only in the ’50s, probably as a consequence of the decline of the Studio Era — at its height from the mid-’20s to the early ’50s — and the emergence of Confidential magazine and its imitators. (Note: Ingrid Bergman didn’t have a studio to back her up in the late ’40s, when she became a Hollywood pariah following an extra-marital affair with Roberto Rossellini.) [Photo: Elizabeth Taylor.] The precursor of today’s vicious online and supermarket gossip rags, Confidential mockingly implied that Liberace was gay, insinuated that hunk Tab Hunter and sultry Lizabeth Scott were also gay (Scott sued...

Screenwriter Robin Swicord Elected to Academy’s Board of Governors Robin Swicord, an Academy Award nominee for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (shared with Eric Roth), has been elected to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors, representing the Writers Branch. The announcement was made earlier today by Academy President Hawk Koch. (Photo: Robin Swicord and ’40s Paramount star Lizabeth Scott at an Academy screening of the 1946 film noir The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.) Robin Swicord will fill the seat left open by recent death of governor Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon). The other two current Writers Branch [...]...

Gone With The Wind Actress Ann Rutherford Dies. [Photo: Ann Rutherford as Carreen O'Hara, Evelyn Keyes as Suellen O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.]

Ann Rutherford‘s most notable screen roles were in films made away from both MGM and Wallace Beery. She was a young woman who falls for trumpeter George Montgomery in Archie Mayo’s 20th Century Fox musical Orchestra Wives (1942), and became enmeshed with (possibly) amnesiac Tom Conway in Anthony Mann’s Rko thriller Two O’Clock Courage (1945).

Following a couple of minor supporting roles — in the Danny Kaye comedy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) at Goldwyn and the Errol Flynn costumer The Adventures of Don Juan (1948) at Warner Bros. — and the female lead in the independently made cattle drama Operation Haylift (1950), opposite Bill Williams, Ann Rutherford retired from the screen. (Rutherford would later say that her Operation Haylift experience was anything but pleasant.)

She then turned to television, making regular television appearances in the ’50s (The Donna Reed Show, Playhouse 90,...

Yul Brynner, Deborah Kerr, The King and I Deborah Kerr Pt.1: What Lies Beneath True, you most likely won’t find Deborah Kerr labeled a sex goddess anywhere, but that’s merely because her sexual allure, apart from the beach scene in From Here to Eternity, was hardly obvious. Unlike overgrown little girls such as Marilyn Monroe, Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Jayne Mansfield, or Brigitte Bardot, Kerr looked and acted like a mature woman even in her 20s. In other words, there was nothing kittenish about Deborah Kerr; she didn’t pout. Unlike Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Lizabeth Scott, or Susan Sarandon, Kerr’s seething sensuality had nothing to do with sultriness, come-hither looks, or bare body parts. Unlike Simone Simon, Jane Greer, the latter-day Barbara Stanwyck, and other (French or American) film noir dames, or Theda Bara and assorted film...

Elvis Presley: Double Elvis (Ferus Type) Elvis Presley as a cowboy as seen by Andy Warhol. Warhol's Presley Portrait "Double Elvis (Ferus Type)" will be sold to the highest bidder at Sotheby's on May 9. The 1963 portrait, owned by a "private collector," is expected to sell for anywhere between $30-50 million. As per Sotheby's, this is the first "Double Elvis" to appear on the market since 1995. And to think I had no idea there had ever been more than one Elvis despite his myriad imitators. In truth, Warhol painted 22 images of Elvis Presley, nine of which belong to various museum collections. Presley starred in about 30 films, mostly flimsy musicals (e.g., Blue Hawaii, Harum Scarum, Kissin' Cousins) featuring minor leading ladies as his love interest. Exceptions include the Westerns Love Me Tender (1956), with Richard Egan and Debra Paget, and Flaming Star (1960), with Barbara Eden and Dolores del Rio; the...

Joseph H. Lewis' The Big Combo (1955) and André De Toth's Pitfall (1948, right, with Dick Powell) will be screened as a film noir double bill at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 8, at downtown Los Angeles' historic Million Dollar Theater. I haven't watched either movie, but the Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan's warns: The Big Combo's "big, dark shadows … will eat you alive." Sounds like a must-see. Cornel Wilde stars as a cop in pursuit of crime boss Richard Conte; all the while, both cop and criminal vie for the attention of curvaceous blonde Jean Wallace, Wilde's then real-life wife. (The couple were married 1951-1981.) Also in the Big Combo cast: Robert Middleton, Brian Donlevy, Lee Van Cleef, Helen Walker, and Earl Holliman. Screenplay by Philip Yordan (House of Strangers, Detective Story, Johnny Guitar). In Pitfall, former Warner Bros. crooner Dick Powell plays an insurance salesman who falls for sultry Lizabeth Scott,...