Jack Holt (May 31, 1888 January 18, 1951)
In the voodoo thriller Black Moon (1934) with Fay Wray.
Staunch, granite-jawed Jack Holt was a leading man of silent and early talkie films, and is many mysteries and crime pictures in the 1930s. But he stuck around long enough to turn up in Cat People (1942), The Chase (1946) and had a bit as a bum in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).
Today is also the birthday of Clint Eastwood.
Alida Valli (31 May 1921 22 April 2006)
With Joseph Cotten in The Third Man
Alida Valli was in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947), Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), Walk Softly, Stranger (1950), Michelangelo Antonioni's Il Grido, Eyes Without a Face (1960), and many other notable films.
His square jaw was inspiration for Dick Tracy!Originally Posted by Surly
In the voodoo thriller Black Moon (1934) with Fay Wray.
Staunch, granite-jawed Jack Holt was a leading man of silent and early talkie films, and is many mysteries and crime pictures in the 1930s. But he stuck around long enough to turn up in Cat People (1942), The Chase (1946) and had a bit as a bum in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).
Robert Clarke (June 1, 1920 June 11, 2005)
Robert Clarke's only true noir was Desperate (1947), and he's primarily known for his many cult science fiction films, including The Man from Planet X (1951), The Incredible Petrified World (1957), The Astounding She-Monster (1957), From the Earth to the Moon (1958), and The Hideous Sun Demon (1959), which Clarke wrote, directed and produced. Clarke's first film was The Falcon in Hollywood (1944), and he's in The Body Snatcher (1945), A Game of Death (Robert Wise's remake of The Most Dangerous Game) (1945), Bedlam (1946), Criminal Court (1946), Step by Step (1946), San Quentin (1946), Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947), and two films directed by Ida Lupino, Outrage (1950) and Hard, Fast and Beautiful (1951). His autobiography, To "B" or Not to "B": A Film Actor's Odyssey, was published in 1996.
From Republic's crime drama Street Bandits (1951), with Penny Edwards and Roy Barcroft.
Joan Caulfield (June 1, 1922 - June 18, 1991)
With John Payne in Larceny
Joan Caulfield stepped briefly into the shadows for The Unsuspected (1947) and Larceny (1948), then moved into television where she starred on Sally (19571958). She also stars in a film I'm curious about, The Petty Girl (1950), a comedy and biography of pin-up artist George Petty.
With Ray Walker and Fred Clark in The Unsuspected
Marilyn Monroe (June 1, 1926 August 5, 1962)
With Don Haggerty in The Asphalt Jungle
Marilyn Monroe was in Right Cross (1950), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Clash by Night (1952), Don't Bother to Knock (1952), and Niagara (1953).
a very un-noir photo of Joan:
With John Payne in Larceny
Joan Caulfield stepped briefly into the shadows for The Unsuspected (1947) and Larceny (1948), then moved into television where she starred on Sally (1957–1958). She also stars in a film I'm curious about, The Petty Girl (1950), a comedy and biography of pin-up artist George Petty.
With Ray Walker and Fred Clark in The Unsuspected
then again:
Max Showalter (June 2, 1917 July 30, 2000)
Sometimes billed as 'Casey Adams,' Max Showalter played Jean Peters' character's husband in Niagara (1953), and he was in Dangerous Crossing (1953), Vicki (1953), Down Three Dark Streets (1954), and Naked Alibi (1954).
Paulette Goddard (June 3, 1910 April 23, 1990)
Vice Squad
In the apparently forgettable comedy Hazard (1948), Paulette Goddard plays a compulsive gambler who welshes on a bet to marry a professional gambler, skips town, and is pursued by a private eye. She's the madame of a call-girl service in the police procedural Vice Squad (1953), and the wife of an amnesiac in the English mystery The Unholy Four (aka A Stranger Came Home) (Terence Fisher, 1954), based on a book by George Sanders (ghosted by Leigh Brackett). She's also a dance extra in City Streets (1931) and a blonde at a party in The Mouthpiece (1932). Frankly, you can see Goddard to better advantage in lots of other films, including Modern Times, The Women, The Great Dictator, or The Ghost Breakers.
Tony Curtis (June 3, 1925 September 29, 2010)
As Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success
Tony Curtis dances a rhumba with Yvonne De Carlo in Criss Cross (1949). He's also in City Across the River (1949), The Lady Gambles (1949), Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949), Woman in Hiding (1950), I Was a Shoplifter (1950), Winchester '73 (1950), Meet Danny Wilson (1952) (cameo), Flesh and Fury (1952), Houdini (1953), Forbidden (1953), The Square Jungle (1955), Mister Cory (1957), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Midnight Story (1957), The Defiant Ones (1958), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Rat Race (1960), The Great Impostor (1961), and The Boston Strangler (1968).
Ellen Corby (June 3, 1911 April 14, 1999)
With Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo.
Upper left, in Caged
Familiar character actor Ellen Corby had a lot of bits and uncredited parts (and she played a lot of maids in film noir). She's in Cornered (1945), The Spiral Staircase (1945), The Dark Corner (1946), Bedlam, The Truth About Murder, Crack-Up, It's a Wonderful Life, The Locket, Born to Kill (1947), The Long Night, They Won't Believe Me, Cry Wolf, Railroaded!, The Dark Past (1948), Caged (1950), Edge of Doom (1950), 99 River Street (1953), Illegal (1955), Slightly Scarlet (1956), Vertigo (1958). Corby worked a lot on television, where she played Esther "Grandma" Walton "The Waltons".
Between Jayne Mansfield and Edward G. Robinson in Illegal.
Dennis Weaver (June 4, 1924 February 24, 2006)
As the "night man" in Touch of Evil
Dennis Weaver is best known for his work in television, including his role as Chester Goode on Gunsmoke, as Marshal Sam McCloud on McCloud, and in the 1971 TV movie Duel. In film he specialized in westerns, but also made Dangerous Mission (1954), Dragnet (1954), Storm Fear (1955), Touch of Evil (1958), and What's the Matter with Helen? (1971). He made many TV movies, including Rolling Man (1972), Terror on the Beach (1973), Stone (also a series) (1979), Police Story: A Cry for Justice (1979), Cocaine: One Man's Seduction (1983), and Bluffing It (1987).
Duel
John Barrymore Jr. ( June 4, 1932 November 29, 2004)
While the City Sleeps
John Drew Barrymore was in High Lonesome (1950), The Big Night (1951), While the City Sleeps (1956), The Shadow on the Window (1957), High School Confidential (1958), Never Love a Stranger (1958), The Keeler Affair (1963) and Crimine a due aka A Game of Crime (1964).
Sheila Ryan (June 8, 1921 November 4, 1975)
With Hugh Beaumont in Railroaded!
Pert and petite Sheila Ryan perked up a lot of B crime films and mysteries in the 1940s. She was in The Mad Doctor (1941), the Charlie Chan film Dead Men Tell (1941), the Michael Shayne mystery Dressed to Kill (1941), Deadline for Murder (1946), The Lone Wolf in Mexico (1947) and The Big Fix (1947). Ryan cracks wise in the nifty B Philo Vance's Secret Mission (1947), played in Anthony Mann's noir Railroaded! (1947), Caged Fury (1948), The Cobra Strikes (1948), Hideout (1949), Ringside (1949), Western Pacific Agent (1950), Fingerprints Don't Lie (1951), Mask of the Dragon (1951), and Street of Darkness (1958).
Robert Preston (June 8, 1918 March 21, 1987)
With Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Gambles (1949)
Music Man Robert Preston was in the prison picture King of Alcatraz (1938), Disbarred (1939), This Gun for Hire (1942), the noirish western Blood on the Moon (1948), and Tulsa (1949).
Alexis Smith (June 8, 1921 June 9, 1993)
Alexis Smith was in Conflict (1945) with Humphrey Bogart, but was not one of The Two Mrs. Carrolls, also with Bogart. She was in Whiplash (1948) with Dane Clark, The Woman in White (1948), Undercover Girl (1950), The Turning Point (1952), Split Second (1953) and The Sleeping Tiger (1954).
Birthday girl Sheila Ryan and Alan Curtis in Philo Vance's Secret Mission. Their snappy low-budget patter is the highlight of this ejoyable B mystery.
Last edited by Surly; 06-09-2012 at 08:58 AM.
Gerd Oswald (June 9, 1919 - May 22, 1989)
Gerd Oswald directed A Kiss Before Dying (1956), Crime of Passion (1957), the westerns Fury at Showdown and Valerie (both 1957), "The strip-tease murder case!" Screaming Mimi (1958), and Brainwashed (1960). Oswald moved into television, directing episodes of such series as The George Sanders Mystery Theater (1957), Perry Mason, (1958-1959), The Outer Limits (1963-1965) and It Takes a Thief (1969-1970).
Robert Cummings (June 9, 1910 December 2, 1990)
In the drama The Lost Moment (1947)
Robert Cummings didn't quite possess the proper gravitas for noir, but he had his chances. He was in Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942) and Dial M for Murder (1954), and in between he made the Woolrich adaptation The Chase (1946), Douglas Sirk's Gaslight on a modest budget Sleep, My Love (1948), The Accused (1949), Reign of Terror (1949), and played pin-up artist George Petty in The Petty Girl (1950).
In a dark corner in The Chase
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