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An American Story: Murder In the Living Room
Left: Gloria Swanson, William Holden, “Sunset Blvd. (1950)Center: Gene Nelson, Phyllis Kirk, Sterling Hayden, “Crime Wave” (1953)Right: David Janssen, “The Fugitive” (1963). By Paul Parcellin The first time I saw a film noir I didn’t know what I was watching. Sure, I could tell that it was a crime film, a detective story, a mystery,…
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Two Couples Who Murder: “Double Indemnity” Faces Off Against “Body Heat” — And It’s Not Even Close
Left, Kathleen Turner, William Hurt, “Body Heat” (1981). Right, Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, “Double Indemnity” (1944). Warning: Contains Spoilers By Paul Parcellin After I moved to L.A. in 2008, I got together with a Meetup group that was going to see a screening of “Double Indemnity” (1944) at the ArcLight Theater in Hollywood. I was…
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In the trenches: deep in the heart of Hollywood the rough and tumble world of bargain basement noir thrived for a while
Joan Blair, John Hubbard, “Whispering Footsteps” (1943). Script’s running too long? Grab a handful of pages, rip them out, shoot the sucker! I’m on a Poverty Row tear these days. As you probably know, many of the films made there aren’t quite as polished as the gems turned out by Paramount, Warner Brothers or 20th Century…
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Alton and Mann: A Partnership in Post-War Noir
Dennis O’Keefe, Marsha Hunt, Claire Trevor, “Raw Deal” (1948). They made only a handful of films together, but John Alton and Anthony Mann’s work threw a new light on film noir, police procedural dramas and documentary filmmaking Silhouettes, fog, great pools of inky blackness — that’s a king-sized portion of the visual drama in store…
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Three Films that Set a Noir Mood: How John Alton Helped Define the Light and Shadows of Film Noir
Lynn Bari, Cathy O’Donnell, “The Spiritualist” (1948). ‘It’s not what you light, it’s what you don’t light.’ — John Alton As legend has it, in the summer of 1923…
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Poverty Row Noir II: Scheming Communists Walk Among Us … and So Does a Future Sitcom Dad
Hugh Beaumont, Frances Rafferty, “Money Madness” (1948). Ward Cleaver as a psychotic killer? Say it ain’t so! Like many up and coming Hollywood actors, Hugh Beaumont appeared in noir B-pictures before he became better known as an all-American TV dad, and he played some pretty despicable characters, too. But more about that later. From the…
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It Came from Poverty Row: Hollywood’s B-Movie Factories Mined Noir Gold
Ann Savage, Tom Neal, “Detour” (1945). Hitchhiking on the road to hell. So many westerns were filmed at the small, independently owned studios near the intersection of Sunset Blvd. and Gower St. in Hollywood that people began calling it Gower Gulch. From the 1930s to the ’50s it was the epicenter of low-rent film production and the gaggle of…
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Lovesick Wanderer Returns … to a Double Cross
Burt Lancaster, Yvonne DeCarlo, “Criss Cross” (1949). This article contains spoilers. By Paul Parcellin The magnetic attraction between Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) and Anna (Yvonne DeCarlo) is the stuff that drives “Criss Cross” toward its dramatic and deadly conclusion. Steve returns to town after two year’s absence and the first thing on his mind is…
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More Than a Gunsel: Elisha Cook Jr. Played Wobbly Tough Guys, Inept Would-Be Heroes and Dyed in the Wool Victims Often Displaying Raw Emotion and Unexpected Vulnerabilities
Humphrey Bogart, Elisha Cook Jr., “The Maltese Falcon” (1941).Just a cheap gunman hanging around hotel lobbies. When he died in 1995 at the age of 91, Elisha Cook Jr. was the last surviving cast member of John Huston’s 1941 film noir classic “The Maltese Falcon,” whose players included Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and…
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How a Real-Life Prison Sentence Added Another Dimension to Mitchum’s Performance as a Woozy Doctor on the Run in a Nightmarish Flight From Justice
Robert Mitchum, “Where Danger Lives” (1950). By Paul Parcellin This article contains spoilers A lot of red flags should go up when Dr. Jeff Cameron (Robert Mitchum) meets Margo Lannington (Faith Domergue). But she’s a real dish and this is noir, so naturally he ignores the many warning signposts screaming at him that he’s about…