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"I never knew the big son of a b... could act," remarked director John Ford after viewing an early print of August 1948's "Red River" with John Wayne. Ford, who had directed Wayne in three previous movies, was struck by the actor's multi-layered performance in the Howard Hawks' directed film, something he had never witnessed before. Wayne's ability to portray a ruthless, unsympathetic ranch owner supervising a massive cattle drive a thousand miles showed a side of the actor Ford had never seen before.

"Wayne, often typecast, is given a tortured, conflicted character to play," observed film critic Roger Ebert. "Wayne is tall and steady at the beginning of the picture, but by the end his hair is gray and dank, and his eyes are haunted. Wayne is sometimes considered more of a natural force than an actor, but here his understated acting is right on the money." Because of this performance, Wayne received more complex parts, many of them multi-dimensional than his previous flat characters. And he began to earn the respect of both critics and Hollywood insiders, including the cantankerous Ford.

Howard Hawks, in his first directed Western, relied on Wayne for his 'cowboy' expertise throughout the production of "Red River." Even though the movie was released a few months after Montgomery Clift was first seen on the screen in March 1948's "The Search," the actor had previously filmed this Western nearly two years before. A law suit by Howard Hughes claiming the story plagiarized his 1943 "The Outlaw" delayed its release when it was finished in 1946. Hawks had spotted Clift in a Broadway play and knew he would be perfect to be Matt Garth, the teenager who was the only survivor of a wagon train Indian attack. Thomas Dunson (Wayne) and his sidekick Nadine Groot (Walter Brennan) had left the group just hours earlier before it was wiped out to establish a cattle ranch. Hawks arm-twisted Clift to take the rugged role of the adult Garth after the actor was reluctant to take the part after reading the script. Clift, 26, was especially worried about the pivotal fight scene with Wayne, 39, who, through over one hundred westerns since 1930, knew how to throw a punch or two.

Hawks listened to Wayne's advice to hire actual cowboys to handle the thousand cattle seen in "Red River." Writer Borden Chase's 1946 story 'The Chisholm Trail' describes a huge cattle drive of nearly ten thousand head Dunson had raised through the years on his Texas ranch. He planned to take the herd to the rail terminal in Missouri a thousand miles away where he felt he could get the best price. Just before the round-up, Hawks filmed an impressive 360-degree shot of the entire heard. Using fence posts to create an invisible wipe, the director positioned all the cattle he had between two posts. When the camera panned to the second post on the edge of the frame, he repositioned the cattle to fill the next scan, doing this several times. Kicking off the drive, Hawks filmed several close-ups of the ranch hands bellowing 'Giddy up." Each one wore a different hat to separate the cowboys in the viewers' minds. Hawks gave Clift his prized Western hat, gifted to him by Gary Cooper.

Clift, not known for his macho upbringing, received horse riding lessons from Western actor Noah Berry Jr. "The thing he enjoyed most was becoming a hell of a good cowboy and horseman," Beery said of Clift, despite becoming saddle sore from all the riding. Hawks told Clift not to steal any scenes from Wayne. "Don't try to get hard because you'll just be nothing compared to Wayne," warned Hawks. In their first shot together, Clift was understated to the towering Wayne, who later told Hawks, "He's gonna be okay." The cast spent their entire outdoors filming on location in Arizona. Montgomery never got chummy with either Hawks or Wayne, revealing later,"they laughed and drank and told dirty jokes and slapped each other on the back. They tried to draw me into their circle but I couldn't go along with them. The machismo thing repelled me because it seemed so forced and unnecessary." "Red River"paralleled 1935's "Mutiny on the Bounty," where the younger Garth and his allies on the cattle drive rebel at Dunson's harsh treatment. The ranch owner refused to listen to Garth, who was convinced the closer newly-opened railway terminal in Abilene, Kansas offered a far better place to sell the cattle than Missouri. Garth reached the end of his rope when Dunson planned to hang two deserters from his crew, prompting the adopted son to 'mutiny',' sending Dunson along his way. The old man vowed to seek revenge.

Film critics rank "Red River" as one of the great Westerns of all time and was the second biggest box office hit of the year. Hawks' film was nominated for two Oscars, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing. The American Film Institute ranks it the fifth Best Western Ever. Director/writer Peter Bogdanovich had this film as the last movie shown in the theater in his 1971 "The Last Picture Show." It's one of '1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.'

Funny how knowing about dalliances of people in high places can make things possible for controversial content to be seen on the screen. Director Andre de Toth was having trouble with the censors on his script for August 1948 "Pitfall." Its main character was happily married but bored with his job. To spice things up he has an affair during working hours-and gets away with it! In the Hays Office censors' judgement that was a no-no. The director knew a couple of married censors who had affairs on the side. Pressed on their hypocrisy when the office failed to approve his script, the censors' obstacles were quickly removed.

"Pitfall" was Lizabeth Scott's favorite role. Usually the queen of noir plays the manipulative, conniving femme fatale. But here, in a twist Scott, according to film reviewer Chuck Bowen, is "a decent young woman surrounded by jackals." Model Mona Stevens (Scott) attracts John Forbes (Dick Powell), who works for an insurance company investigating gifts she received from her fiancee, Bill Smiley (Byron Barr). Her boyfriend skipped out of his court appearance, forfeiting a hefty bond. Forbes visits Ms. Steven to garnish all her gifts she received from Smiley to make up for the loss his insurance company suffered from the bond forfeiture. A boat ride by Mona gets married Forbes panting, creating one of noir's first settings of a happy marriage in the suburbs disrupted by a passionate affair. Their illicit romance is further complicated by private eye J. B. MacDonald (Raymond Burr), who's hired by Forbes' insurance company to investigate the whereabouts of Bill Smiley. The broad-shoulder detective also lusts after Mona. Forbes' solid marriage to his wife Sue (Jane Wyatt) is suddenly jarred by the convergence of MacDonald, Smiley and Mona.

Scott, 26, was de Toth's first choice to play the innocent femme fatale in "Pitfall," admiring her grittiness under her exterior. "I could have made a different picture, with a prettier girl than Lizabeth Scott," the director later said, "and told the story of that girl, her problems, but that wasn't this movie. That would make it phony, if you cast it with Marilyn Monroe, a type like that. I needed somebody real." Film critics rank this as one of Scott's top movie performances. She did feel uncomfortable with actor Raymond Burr, whose role as a revengeful admirer stalking Mona scared her both on and off the sound stage. Scott said later she was creeped out by his cold demeanor once the camera stopped rolling. It's ironic the movie was partially filmed at the Los Angeles City Hall and the Hall of Records, where many of television's 'Perry Mason' took place. Burr played the benevolent lawyer in that TV series.

"Pitfall" fell into obscurity soon after its release, but its unique stature in film noir gave its historic importance much publicity when a tribute to de Toth in Colorado's Telluride Film Festival highlighted the movie. Those in attendance whom secretly were having affairs were the only ones shying away from enjoying its recent revival.

Throughout his career Alfred Hitchcock was always thinking of new inventive ways to make his films more exciting. In August 1948's "Rope," the first color picture by Hitchcock, the director presented a murder case in one continuous take. It was cinema's first attempt to do so. Even though the director came up short (there are at least four visible cut edits), Hitchcock's movie does achieve the effect of unfolding a real-time event capturing the revelation of a murder.

Hitchcock got the idea from watching the 1939 BBC-TV broadcast of an adaptation of Patrick Hamilton 1929 play 'Rope,' whose title derived from the murder weapon. Hamilton's drama was inspired by the actual killing of a 14-year-old boy by college students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in 1924. The TV play was shot much as early television programs were, with one continuous take by one camera. Always looking for alternatives to deliver his movies, Hitchcock came up with novel ideas such as his 1944 "Lifeboat," where the plot unfolds in a confined space in a small boat at sea. As an owner of Transatlantic Pictures, Hitchcock felt he could easily control expenses by filming inside a studio using just one continuous take, and not spend extra time and money on elaborate reaction or cutaway shots. The Technicolor camera used canisters with 10-minutes worth of film. Hitchcock designed his invisible cuts, such as opening a chest's top to darken the close up lens before replacing the film canister. The shoot turned out to be one of the most complex productions in the director's career.

This experience was stressful for the actors, particularly for the lead John Dall as Brandon Shaw and Farley Granger as Phillip Morgan, two former students of college professor Rupert Cadell (James Stewart). They knew one-flubbed line would ruin the expensive Technicolor film stock. "Rope" opens with Brandon and Phillip strangling one of their former classmates in Shaw's apartment for the thrill of proving their superiority over others, detailed in German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche's 1883 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' The two hide his corpse in a chest in the middle of a room right before guests arrive for their party. With the entire cast gathered in the sound stage's apartment, the actors had to carefully step over thick camera cables strewn throughout the studio floor. Filming one scene, the dolly carrying the enormous Technicolor camera accidentally ran over an assistant operator's foot. Without stopping, crew members gagged the mouth of the pained man and carried him off with a broken foot. In another take, an actress placed her glass on the edge of a table, which began to tip over. An observant stagehand leaped out of camera range to catch the falling glass before it hit the floor. The footage from both those incidents was used in the final cut.

"Rope" was Jimmy Stewart's first movie for Hitchcock, appearing in three more of his movies. Stewart became frustrated at the multiple delays caused by reshooting the 10-minute scenes because of mistakes. The actor said on the arduous preparations, "The really important thing being rehearsed here is the camera, not the actors!" Walls and furniture were on rollers, and had to be quietly moved as the bulky camera made its way around the set. The director was limited to shooting one segment per day. The last four printed film canisters of the production had to be tossed because Hitchcock, after viewing the footage, felt the sunset scenes weren't realistic. "While we were making 'Rope,'" Stewart later said, "I suggested to Hitch that since we were filming a play, we ought to bring bleachers into the sound stage, and sell tickets." Roger Ebert was critical of Hitchcock's novel idea, writing "In an ordinary movie, closer shots indicate more intensity, longer shots are more objective, Camera movement helps establish mood. Closeups punch home dramatic moments. Cutaways, or 'reaction shots,' make it clear who is reacting, and when." Hitchcock trademark cameo appearance in "Rope" was subtle: he's seen after the opening credits walking with a lady on a New York City sidewalk in the distant. Not satisfied with the long shot, he placed his profile on a neon lit billboard outside the apartment's window advertising the weight-loss reducer 'Reduco,' a fake product first seen in the newspaper ad in his 1944 "Lifeboat" cameo. Hitchcock's one continuous format introduced to cinema a series of future movies filmed in unbroken sequences, made easier with smaller high-resolution cameras than the bulky Technicolor one. Most notable are the Academy Awards 2014 Best Picture "Birdman" and the 2019 Sam Mendes-directed World War One film "1917." The American Film Institute nominated "Rope" as one of movie's Most Thrilling pictures while it's one of '1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.'