QUESTION 1: Are there tales or aspects of your McGraw book that were left out due to an editor's "space savings"? The only stuff that got left out was an account of a publicity tour that McGraw went on in 1956 to support the release of The Bridges at Toko-ri . I came upon this information ...

I think the popular renaissance of film noir crosses demographic lines to resonate as a cultural vibe for different reasons. For my parents and the boomer generation, there is the undeniable attribute of nostalgia. We saw the movies during initial release or on commercial television in the long ago....

I have to say that I am personally partial to the 1946 version of The Killers. It is such a seminal film that made so many careers and still holds up beautifully. I did quite a bit of research on it and really love the movie. The 1964 version is a fascinating work that stands on its own merits. Lee ...

Film Noir is not readily identifiable as a conventional genre such as Westerns, comedies, musicals etc. The word "noir" has become a marketing cachet to sell movies,plays, books, perfume and music. Just Google the term, "film noir". There are such an increasing number of films be...

Moira, Many thanks for the invite; it's great to be here. My fascination with film noir is an enduring obsession. My interest was originally piqued while watching movies on television in the NY-NJ area during the 1960's. I grew up in a family of movie lovers; my grandparents worked on the fringes of...

Yes, I am that Charles McGraw guy...

I was saddened to note the passing of Hollywood's honorary mayor, Johnny Grant. He was a resolute, cheerful standard-bearer of an era that has fewer living witnesses with each passing year. I phoned him at the Roosevelt over a year ago while doing research for my book and was trying to discover how ...

I have a bootleg DVD of this film. Really an interesting picture. Lewis elicits convincing performances out of an extremely young Nina Foch, with Dame May Whitty and George Macready as a bizarro Mother and son tandem with unusual habits. Lewis also uses a number of innovative camera techniques such ...

Check out Wheeler Winston Dixon's Lost in the Fifties: Rediscovering Phantom Hollywood for a comprehensive account of Cell 2455 Death Row that is part of an entire chapter on the career of Fred F. Sears. It wouldn't surprise me to see something on the film up on Movie Morlocks in the next couple of ...

I'm curious, did your perception of the film change at all the first time you saw it in all its glorious color? The color and the quality of the Technicolor print made the Ali Baba experience even richer. A curious reaction, because I am a rigid B&W purist. However, Technicolor was how the film...

Reading about your having to go to all sorts of contortions, just to see a couple of movies, makes me stop: how can I leave NYC, after all? What if I want to attend a film festival - say, the oeuvre of Ann Doran, or the late period films of Flame, the Wonder Dog? Or suppose I feel the need for a pi...

This film is one of my seminal cinematic memories from watching WOR-TV's "Million Dollar Movie" while growing up in New Jersey. Although filmed in color, I watched it repeatedly in B&W and didn't see it in color until the days of VHS. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is terrific diversio...

Moxie - every year I lookover the schedule, and every year I punk out because I can't deal with driving around The Castro area looking for parking Parking in the Castro district can be a challenge, but it is really no worse than L.A, New York or any other big city. We actually did employ two venues...

For the interest of the noir-minded folks on the board, I've posted a link to the annual Noir City Film Festival coming up in San Francisco on January 25-Feb 03 at the world famous Castro Theatre. I help produce the festival and it is a fantastic event that gets better every year. The link to the No...

Thanks for confirming an aspect of the booking process with archival prints that is probably the most important of all. We probably both have heard a lot of stories along these lines. As Sydney Greenstreet might have put it, cultivating important working relationships is a matter of "nice judgm...