satwalker99-1

One earlier reviewer remarked on the theme - the only music at the opening & closing. I agree with his comment on the studio's invidiousness about the music credits - I have been provoked several times when trying to pin down recordings or sources & failing to find the truth. This theme from "Brigham Young" which coincidentally starred the Canadian Dean Jagger ( one of Hollywood's scene stealers & Oscar winner from another Hathaway winner, "12 O'Clock High") was used again by Fox for the similarly gritty "Yellow Sky". It almost seems the studio favoured repeated themes, possibly the most familiar being Alfred Newman's evocative "Street Scene" was used in several films noires & I think,included in one of a series of LPs in the 70s of compilations from famed classics by Charles Gerhardt & the NPO as well as a promo CinemaScope music short featuring Newman & his full studio orchestra released to support the UK Premiere of "Young Bess". Another theme for which I cannot trace a recording used originally throughout Hathaway's "House on 92nd St" & "Street With No Name" featuring a young Widmark reprising his giggling villain & Lloyd Nolan as Inspector Briggs which I can only call the FBI march ( also used briefly at the close of "13 Rue Madaleine"). I have remarked elsewhere on the iniquity of wrongly crediting Adolphe Deutsch with all the music for Billy Wilder's "The Apartment" when the compelling main theme was one "Jealous Lover" composed by Charles Williams(1949) who has contributed popular themes to several British films of the 40s. (This point is included in the trivia listing by IMDb for this movie.) 8 out of 10 for "Rawhide" which I thoroughly enjoyed & is one of my more memorable westerns.Spunky Susan Hayward remains one the screen's delectably desirous redheads and not just a pretty face as she proved in the harrowing biopic "I Don't Want To Die!" The manner of her premature death was another of Hollywood's tragedies & a sad loss.

As a point of interest, the character of "Dr Morelle" was created for the popular Monday night BBC radio series "Monday Night At 8" that replaced the earlier prewar "Monday Night At 7" (which introduced us to Inspector Hornleigh) that comprised a miscellany of brief lighthearted

items aimed to put listeners into a relaxed state before hearing the latest (censored) grim war front events on the 9 o'clock news - de regeur for the whole nation. The programme usually included a short spoof spy tale and,of course,breezy Ronnie Waldman's "Puzzle Corner" and that deliberate mistake... The film,itself,was another B support of the late 40s that cashed in on popular

earlier radio shows of the time,usually of moderately.if unexciting quality with acceptable production values. Others included Dick Barton,The Man In Black & Hi Gang!

On a point of semantics on its UK release the then censor(? Lord Tyrrell of Avon) decided it was more scary than amusing despite the presence of Bob Hope and clamped the "H" for horrific cert on it. Following the outbreak of war & the general hardening of contemporary attitudes away from the earlier 30s, Paramount reissued "Cat" with the reduced "A" cert( PG)as the support to P Sturges' farce "Miracle of Morgan's Creek" as if to reverse the emphasis & offering a great 3 hrs of fun. This would previously have classed it with such as "Dark Eyes of London"/"Son of Frankenstein"/"Boy Slaves"/ "Monster & The Girl" & Warner's "Hell's Kitchen". And incidentally,to mitigate the childish terrors of some contributors, the cat's hand or claw appearing out of the sliding panel while P Goddard was apparently asleep was grasping for that valuable necklace - not her throat. And on a point of curiosity, in a couple of books with illustrations. I have been mystified by a "still" from this movie, showing P Goddard,on some steps, very apprehensively pointing a torch down one of the secret passages and clearly in the foreground is an unpleasant disfigured cloaked figure grasping a wooden lever that could have been her pursuer. You can look in vain for this frame, it is not in the film. For any fellow historians, a similar cut was made much earlier in the F March version of "Jekyll & Hyde" as he is slumped in a chair staring into the fire seeing the image of his alter ego in the flames. You won't find this either.

"I'm used to empty houses - I used to be in Vaudeville".