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Paul Henreid: Hollow Triumph aka The Scar tonight Turner Classic Movies’ Paul Henreid film series continues this Tuesday evening, July 16, 2013. Of tonight’s movies, the most interesting offering is Hollow Triumph / The Scar, a 1948 B thriller adapted by Daniel Fuchs (Panic in the Streets, Love Me or Leave Me) from Murray Forbes’ novel, and in which the gentlemanly Henreid was cast against type: a crook who, in an attempt to escape from other (and more dangerous) crooks, impersonates a psychiatrist with a scar on his chin. Joan Bennett, mostly wasted in a non-role, is Henreid’s leading lady. (See also: “One Paul Henreid, Two Cigarettes, Four Bette Davis-es.”) The thriller’s director is Hungarian import Steve Sekely, whose Hollywood career consisted chiefly of minor B fare. In fact, though hardly a great effort, Hollow Triumph was probably the apex of Sekely’s cinematic output in terms of prestige...

Actor often seen in unsympathetic roles

Although she rarely had a leading role, the actor Neva Patterson, who has died aged 90, made the most of the parts she was given. She had a great line in cold, uptight, probably sexually repressed women. In the romantic comedy An Affair to Remember (1957), she played an heiress, Lois Clark, waiting on the dock in New York for a playboy (Cary Grant) to arrive from Europe to marry her. But she had not reckoned that he might have fallen for another woman (Deborah Kerr) on board. Although her character is spoilt and controlling, Patterson elicited some sympathy as Lois gradually realises that she is losing her fiance.

To a degree, Patterson was typecast in the movies. In the delightful comedy The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956), she is Judy Holliday's prim secretary, with her hair in a bun and dressed in a severe suit. Holliday...

Neva Patterson, Cary Grant, Richard Denning, Deborah Kerr, An Affair to Remember Neva Patterson, best known for her role as Cary Grant's fiancee in Leo McCarey's 1957 romantic comedy classic An Affair to Remember, died Tuesday, Dec. 14, at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood of complications from a broken hip. Patterson was 90. A stage, screen, and television actress, Patterson (born in Nevada, Iowa, on Feb. 22, 1920) appeared in dozens of TV series, 15 features, and on Broadway originated the role of The Seven Year Itch's Helen Sherman, played by Evelyn Keyes in Billy Wilder's 1955 film. But despite good supporting roles in Richard Quine's funny Judy Holliday comedy The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956), Walter Lang's Desk Set (1957), and Frank Perry's David and Lisa (1962), Patterson is chiefly remembered for stoically losing Cary Grant to Deborah Kerr. An Affair to Remember, which many find inferior to [...]...