Today's Noir Birthday

[Surly]

but most (if not all his stuff) leaves me cold.. Dark City, Appointment with Danger and Sunset Blvd are the other exceptions.

I find that Webb as a producer/director one of the oddest ducks in Hollywood. His idea of realism and minimalism as depicted in Dragnet is just plain strange. Not that they didn't have interesting stories to tell--mostly on radio--but the mannered execution, the flat reading of dialog, is all just weird. Then add Webb's OCD-ish control on the visuasl for TV and film and it became the most artificial thing imaginable.

[Surly]

If you love love noir, you have to love Jan Sterling. Some of her films are Johnny Belinda (1948), Caged (1950), Mystery Street(1950), Union Station (1950), Appointment with Danger (1951), Ace in the Hole (1951), Flesh and Fury (1952), Split Second (1953), The Human Jungle (1954), Women's Prison (1955), The Harder They Fall (1956), Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1957), High School Confidential! (1958), and The Incident (1967). She also did terriffic work on television on shows such as The Untouchables, Alfred Hitchcock, and Naked City,

[Surly]

Peggy Converse (Apr. 3, 1905 -March 2, 2001) has her noir moment, facing the perfumed bullets in John Ireland's shotgun in a scene from Anthony Mann's Railroaded! (1947). Converse also appeared in The Devil's Henchman (1949), Borderline (1950), and the cortroom crime drama, The Family Secret (1951).

[Surly]

In Julie, with Louis Jourdan

The career of Doris Day almost screams sunny and upbeat, not exactlly the attributes of noir. Maybe "soft-focus-boiled"? But Day was also in some darker-tinged dramas, like Young Man with a Horn (1950), Storm Warning (1951), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Julie (1956), and Midnight Lace (1960). And man, the lady can sing. She turns 88 today.


With Ginger Rogers and Steve Cochran in Storm Warning


Midnight Lace

[Surly]

Before she became television's My Little Margie and starred on The Gale Storm Show, actress Gale Storm stepped into the shadows for Abandoned (1949) with Dennis O'Keefe, The Underworld Story (1950) with noir favorite Dan Duryea, and Between Midnight and Dawn (1950) with Mark Stevens and Edmund O'Brien. She was also the voice on the tape recorder in Walk a Crooked Mile (1948). Her success on television led to a recording contract and several hit records as a cover artist.

[Surly]

The People Against O'Hara

Spencer Tracy found the dark side in the amusement park disaster of Dante's Inferno (1935), in the desire for revenge in Fritz Lang's Fury (1936), and in the terror and despair of The Seventh Cross (1944). He battled alcoholism in The People Against O'Hara (1951), directed by John Sturges and shot by John Alton, and exposed racism in Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). And what about that nightmare sequence in Father of the Bride (1950)?


Father of the Bride

[Surly]

Here's Gale Storm singing I Hear You Knocking in an amusingly sleazy production.

[Surly]

Spellbound

Gregory Peck was too "good" for noir, but he was Spellbound (1945), took on The Paradine Case (1947), got in a shoot out with Richard Widmark under the Yellow Sky (1948), took a chance in Robert Siodmak's The Great Sinner (1949), went for a dip in Cape Fear(1962), saw a Mirage (1965) and zigzagged in I Walk the Line (1970).


With Telly Savalas in Cape Fear

[Steve-O]

Surly: I know you're not getting much in the way of responses to this feature, but I - and most regulars here - love the Birthday features every day!

[Steve-O]

Here's Gale Storm singing I Hear You Knocking in an amusingly sleazy production.

Gale Storm is such a great stripper name anyway!

[Surly]

Surly: I know you're not getting much in the way of responses to this feature, but I - and most regulars here - love the Birthday features every day!

Thanks, Steve-O. Sometimes the crickets can be deafening. Today is Walter Huston's birthday, so here's...



...Huston's walk-on (and drop dead) in The Maltese Falcon.

[Surly]

Gale Storm is such a great stripper name anyway!

There is something odd and incongruous about the wholesome Storm trying to be suggestive.

[Surly]

Happy birthday to James Garner, famous for his television roles as Bart Maverick and private eye Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files. Garner was also Marlowe (1969), and in Twilight (1998).

[Surly]

The Asphalt Jungle

Anthony Caruso's face for villainy first appeared in the 1940s. He started out in uncredited bits, playing a henchman in Johnny Apollo (1940), a hired gun in Lucky Jordan (1942), and another henchman in Whistling in Brooklyn (1943). He got billing in The Crime Doctor's Courage (1945), and in a short by Joseph Losey called A Gun in His Hand (1945), but was back to no credit for Night Editor (1946) and The Blue Dahlia(1946). The pattern continued with The Last Crooked Mile (1946), They Won't Believe Me (1947), The Undercover Man (1949), Illegal Entry (1949), and Scene of the Crime (1949). He crawled up the credits in The Threat (1949) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950), then slipped back for His Kind of Woman (1951). In addition to crime, Caruso was in a lot of westerns, both in film and television--and he did a lot of television. Film work continued with City of Shadows (1955,) The Toughest Man Alive (1955), Hell on Frisco Bay (1955), When Gangland Strikes (1956), Baby Face Nelson (1957), and somehow he was a cop in A Cry in the Night (1956).


Scene of the Crime

[Surly]

Happy birthday to that icon of the nouvelle vague, Jean-Paul Belmondo, 79. Belmondo rubbed his lips and said "Bogie" in Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle (Breathless, 1960), a moment that fixed the new wave's look back at Hollywood and genre. Some of his films are Classe tous risques (1960), Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos (1963), Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965), François Truffaut's second take on Cornell Woolrich, La sirène du Mississipi (1969), and the David Goodis adaptation Le Casse (1971), a remake of The Burglar.


With Fabienne Dali in Le Doulos

[Surly]

99 River Street

Brad Dexter was in The Asphalt Jungle (1950), 14 Hours (1950), Macao (1952), 99 River Street (1953), Violent Saturday (1955), House of Bamboo (1955), Vice Raid (1960), Johnny Cool (1963), and appeared in countless television shows.

[Surly]

The Maltese Falcon

A member of the John Ford "stock company", Ward Bond was also in The Maltese Falcon (1941), Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950), On Dangerous Ground (1952), Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954), a tough western by Joseph H. Lewis, The Halliday Brand (1957), and many other notable films.

[Steve-O]

Another interesting role for Ward Bond is Moose Malloy -- in the first of three films based on Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely -- The Falcon Takes Over (1942). Obviously, the detective is The Falcon instead of Philip Marlowe but a surprisingly large chunk of the story is retained in the Falcon sequel. All three actors portray punchy Moose the same way. But Ward Bond was the first...

[Surly]

Another interesting role for Ward Bond is Moose Malloy -- in the first of three films based on Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely -- The Falcon Takes Over (1942).

Right you are, Stevo-O. Thanks for the catch. It's been a long time since I've seen the film and had forgotten about it. And I see that the IMDb says Bond was uncredited in the role, which is strange for such a major character.

[Dark Corner]

Right you are, Stevo-O. Thanks for the catch. It's been a long time since I've seen the film and had forgotten about it. And I see that the IMDb says Bond was uncredited in the role, which is strange for such a major character.

I remember him as the Brakeman who rapes Sally in Wild Boys of the Road and the Yankee officer that makes Rhett swear that Ashley was Belle's Place in Gone with the Wind and Bert the cop in It's a Wonderful Life.