Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
Re: Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
Not to mention the blacklisted father of Sean Penn.
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
- JackFavell
- Posts: 11926
- Joined: April 20th, 2009, 9:56 am
Re: Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
Oops...knitwit45 wrote:you doofus, wait until AFTER we get there...once we're there, what can he do????JackFavell wrote:I like the aisle seat....
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
- Lzcutter
- Administrator
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- Joined: April 12th, 2007, 6:50 pm
- Location: Lake Balboa and the City of Angels!
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Re: Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
Elliot,
What a great schedule! I can't wait!!! We have an exhibit opening early in your Fest but once that's out of the way, count me in!!!! Looking forward to seeing you and ChiO!
I'll have to see which films offer great location shots of my beloved City of Angels before making out my final schedule!
What a great schedule! I can't wait!!! We have an exhibit opening early in your Fest but once that's out of the way, count me in!!!! Looking forward to seeing you and ChiO!
I'll have to see which films offer great location shots of my beloved City of Angels before making out my final schedule!
Lynn in Lake Balboa
"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves."
"For me, John Wayne has only become more impressive over time." Marty Scorsese
Avatar-Warner Bros Water Tower
"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves."
"For me, John Wayne has only become more impressive over time." Marty Scorsese
Avatar-Warner Bros Water Tower
Re: Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
You know the Noir Gods are smiling when, unlike 99.44% of the time, your gate is right at the escalator to O'Hare's Terminal C. And the flight arrives 15 minutes early in spite of a 20-minute delay in take-off due to loss of auxiliary power…twice. And the apartment Mookryan finds for you is not only ¾ the cost of the cheapest non-fleabag Union Square places of previous trips, it is big…and beautiful…and in a hip ‘hood lined with small Japanese, Vietnamese, Mediterranean, Italian, French, Pizza and Mexican restaurants, a saloon, a bookstore, and a couple of coffee/breakfast places. And it’s owned by a charming woman named Jane Wyatt (over the years I’ll embellish this, maybe with Elinor Donahue and Billy Gray). What movies?
The Roxie remains…and there’s Dewey greeting the multitudes. Just outside the door, I strike up a conversation with a fellow in front of me. He explains how the Roxie Noir series far outshines Noir City. The Roxie, he says, is a real Noir venue, without the glitz, and with the real Bs and obscurities. What can I do but agree? The Dewey Kool-Aid is so tasty (as was the Femme Fatale Blanc craft beer I had at the hipster bar near the Roxie).
It’s Columbia Saturday with two offerings from the Lady Carrying the Torch (and one from Paramount). JOHNNY O’CLOCK (Robert Rossen 1947) marked Rossen’s debut as a director, although he already had the screenplays for THE ROARING TWENTIES (Raoul Walsh 1939), BLUES IN THE NIGHT (Anatole Litvak 1941 – shown at the Roxie on Friday night), A WALK IN THE SUN (George Stevens 1945), and THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS (Lewis Milestone 1946) under his belt. Johnny (Dick Powell) spends 85 minutes deflecting women (Nina Foch, Ellen Drew – who is about insatiably femme fatalesque as they come, and Evelyn Keyes), men (Thomas Gomez, John Kellogg, and Lee J. Cobb), and Death.
The convoluted plot – Powell and Gomez are partners (the brains and the brawn, respectively) in a casino, rivals for a woman (Drew), and suspects in a murder that Inspector Cobb must solve – is explained in classic exposition style as we’re about to close, but one of the Noir Master Cinematographers, Burnett Guffey, helps to keep the interest level high throughout. The relationships among the men is fascinating. Powell, cynical and aloof; Gomez, confident, except for his suspicion regarding the relationship between Drew and Powell; the sycophant tough guy Kellogg, who takes Powell’s psychological abuse as second banana and represses his anger until he thinks he can do better by siding with Gomez (the bizarre psycho-sexual goings-on of Kellogg makes him the most interesting character). And I do believe this little number is coming up on TCM in a couple of weeks.
P.S. An uncredited Jeff Chandler has the best line: (as gunshots interrupt a poker game) Someone must have a bad cough.
Mookryan & Fred appear at intermission, we and Dewey do some catching up, and then settle in for a most bizarre hybrid, THE MONSTER AND THE GIRL (Stuart Heisler 1941), made the same year as, but shortly before, another Paramount Heisler hybrid, AMONG THE LIVING. It’s your standard plot. Philip Terry is framed in a murder and his sister, Ellen Drew, again, testifies at trial that he didn’t do it…he was just trying to save her from her dreadful life (a faux-marriage to Robert Paige orchestrated to embroil her into a career as a…cabaret hostess – but we know what that’s code for – on behalf of a crew led by Paul Lukas, with his nasty boys including slimy Joseph Calleia and slimier nervous Marc Lawrence). Terry is convicted and sentenced to death, letting the Bad Guys know as he’s led from the courtroom that somehow he’ll get them. Right.
But (isn’t it always the case?), the prison allows a doctor (I’m a scientist.), George Zucco, take his brain post-execution and transplant it into a gorilla in Zucco’s gothic mansion (there's never a hospital when you need one). The gorilla (isn’t it always the case?) escapes and starts avenging what the Bad Guys did to Drew. One-by-one the Bad Guys are crushed to death, and each time the coroner tells the police Yes, he’s dead. It’s your job to figure out how. They finally do. And, as the gorilla dies, he gives Drew a look that would bring tears to the eyes of Kong and Fay Wray. But since they are brother (or half-brother or something) and sister, well, I think the technical term is Yikes! Psychotronica at its finest.
I see Richard of Woolrich class fame at intermission and he’s grooving on the cinema and anxiously awaiting, as we all are, UNDER AGE (Edward Dmytryk 1941). Seeing the name “Dmytryk” made Mook gasp (perhaps a vision of CROSSFIRE and the Three Bobs?). A group of young women is being released from the Prison for Minor Girls (as an aside, this group of minors certainly matured while imprisoned). A gentleman awaits, offering them jobs as hostesses (there’s that code, again) at a chain of motels, “The House by the Side of the Road”, that caters to the lonely salesmen crossing the country. Sisters Nan Gray and Mary Anderson decide to look for jobs on their own, though one would prefer to be a hostess. Unable to find jobs, they return to take jobs as hostesses. Then along comes the Odd Couple of traveling salesmen, Tom Neal and Don Beddoe (how bizarre is that?). Suffice it to say that, due to their efforts, the racket is brought crashing down because, as we know, Tom Neal always does the right thing with nary a detour. Oh, and in case you were worried, the movie starts with the disclaimer that most motels meet the American standard of decency, but – you know – these things being depicted do happen.
And, as Mook, Fred & I start to leave, there’s Mrs. Dewey sitting behind us. A fine conclusion to a day of the fine Sin-Na-Mah. And a Sunday triple feature of Cornell Woolrich is up next. How Mother’s Day-ish.
The Roxie remains…and there’s Dewey greeting the multitudes. Just outside the door, I strike up a conversation with a fellow in front of me. He explains how the Roxie Noir series far outshines Noir City. The Roxie, he says, is a real Noir venue, without the glitz, and with the real Bs and obscurities. What can I do but agree? The Dewey Kool-Aid is so tasty (as was the Femme Fatale Blanc craft beer I had at the hipster bar near the Roxie).
It’s Columbia Saturday with two offerings from the Lady Carrying the Torch (and one from Paramount). JOHNNY O’CLOCK (Robert Rossen 1947) marked Rossen’s debut as a director, although he already had the screenplays for THE ROARING TWENTIES (Raoul Walsh 1939), BLUES IN THE NIGHT (Anatole Litvak 1941 – shown at the Roxie on Friday night), A WALK IN THE SUN (George Stevens 1945), and THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS (Lewis Milestone 1946) under his belt. Johnny (Dick Powell) spends 85 minutes deflecting women (Nina Foch, Ellen Drew – who is about insatiably femme fatalesque as they come, and Evelyn Keyes), men (Thomas Gomez, John Kellogg, and Lee J. Cobb), and Death.
The convoluted plot – Powell and Gomez are partners (the brains and the brawn, respectively) in a casino, rivals for a woman (Drew), and suspects in a murder that Inspector Cobb must solve – is explained in classic exposition style as we’re about to close, but one of the Noir Master Cinematographers, Burnett Guffey, helps to keep the interest level high throughout. The relationships among the men is fascinating. Powell, cynical and aloof; Gomez, confident, except for his suspicion regarding the relationship between Drew and Powell; the sycophant tough guy Kellogg, who takes Powell’s psychological abuse as second banana and represses his anger until he thinks he can do better by siding with Gomez (the bizarre psycho-sexual goings-on of Kellogg makes him the most interesting character). And I do believe this little number is coming up on TCM in a couple of weeks.
P.S. An uncredited Jeff Chandler has the best line: (as gunshots interrupt a poker game) Someone must have a bad cough.
Mookryan & Fred appear at intermission, we and Dewey do some catching up, and then settle in for a most bizarre hybrid, THE MONSTER AND THE GIRL (Stuart Heisler 1941), made the same year as, but shortly before, another Paramount Heisler hybrid, AMONG THE LIVING. It’s your standard plot. Philip Terry is framed in a murder and his sister, Ellen Drew, again, testifies at trial that he didn’t do it…he was just trying to save her from her dreadful life (a faux-marriage to Robert Paige orchestrated to embroil her into a career as a…cabaret hostess – but we know what that’s code for – on behalf of a crew led by Paul Lukas, with his nasty boys including slimy Joseph Calleia and slimier nervous Marc Lawrence). Terry is convicted and sentenced to death, letting the Bad Guys know as he’s led from the courtroom that somehow he’ll get them. Right.
But (isn’t it always the case?), the prison allows a doctor (I’m a scientist.), George Zucco, take his brain post-execution and transplant it into a gorilla in Zucco’s gothic mansion (there's never a hospital when you need one). The gorilla (isn’t it always the case?) escapes and starts avenging what the Bad Guys did to Drew. One-by-one the Bad Guys are crushed to death, and each time the coroner tells the police Yes, he’s dead. It’s your job to figure out how. They finally do. And, as the gorilla dies, he gives Drew a look that would bring tears to the eyes of Kong and Fay Wray. But since they are brother (or half-brother or something) and sister, well, I think the technical term is Yikes! Psychotronica at its finest.
I see Richard of Woolrich class fame at intermission and he’s grooving on the cinema and anxiously awaiting, as we all are, UNDER AGE (Edward Dmytryk 1941). Seeing the name “Dmytryk” made Mook gasp (perhaps a vision of CROSSFIRE and the Three Bobs?). A group of young women is being released from the Prison for Minor Girls (as an aside, this group of minors certainly matured while imprisoned). A gentleman awaits, offering them jobs as hostesses (there’s that code, again) at a chain of motels, “The House by the Side of the Road”, that caters to the lonely salesmen crossing the country. Sisters Nan Gray and Mary Anderson decide to look for jobs on their own, though one would prefer to be a hostess. Unable to find jobs, they return to take jobs as hostesses. Then along comes the Odd Couple of traveling salesmen, Tom Neal and Don Beddoe (how bizarre is that?). Suffice it to say that, due to their efforts, the racket is brought crashing down because, as we know, Tom Neal always does the right thing with nary a detour. Oh, and in case you were worried, the movie starts with the disclaimer that most motels meet the American standard of decency, but – you know – these things being depicted do happen.
And, as Mook, Fred & I start to leave, there’s Mrs. Dewey sitting behind us. A fine conclusion to a day of the fine Sin-Na-Mah. And a Sunday triple feature of Cornell Woolrich is up next. How Mother’s Day-ish.
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
- Lzcutter
- Administrator
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- Joined: April 12th, 2007, 6:50 pm
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Re: Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
ChiO and Dewey,
It all sounds wonderful! I'll be joining you guys on Friday evening (bringing one of my co-workers, too!). Can't wait to see you!
It all sounds wonderful! I'll be joining you guys on Friday evening (bringing one of my co-workers, too!). Can't wait to see you!
Lynn in Lake Balboa
"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves."
"For me, John Wayne has only become more impressive over time." Marty Scorsese
Avatar-Warner Bros Water Tower
"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves."
"For me, John Wayne has only become more impressive over time." Marty Scorsese
Avatar-Warner Bros Water Tower
Re: Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
I just came from TCM's film festival two weeks ago, where I had a smashing good time...BUT you, Sir, you have just described HEAVEN in your post about Dewey's Noir EXTRAVAGANZA at the Roxie!!! It made a poor Maven weep tears of Joy and Regret!![u][color=#0040BF]ChiO[/color][/u] wrote:...And, as the gorilla dies, he gives Drew a look that would bring tears to the eyes of Kong and Fay Wray. But since they are brother (or half-brother or something) and sister, well, I think the technical term is Yikes!
![cry :cry:](./images/smilies/cry.gif)
I've told a new friend ( who lives in San Francisco ) about today's triple feature and I hope she's checking it out; be my eyes and ears and heart!
What a great write up that was ChiO. I clung to every line, ev'ry word. I look forward to your thoughts on the Woolrich triple feature that I should have sold my kidney and one lung to pay for plane fare to get out west again. Alas & alack. Reading your ( and others' ) accounts will have to do.
Have a great time, out where the West NOIR begins!!! Viva Le Noir!!
Re: Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
Thank you, Maven. Wish you were here.
And the seating was hands-free, if you know what I mean.
And the seating was hands-free, if you know what I mean.
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
Re: Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
I do. But keep your eyes peeled.
( When we're out together dancing cheek-to-cheek... )
- JackFavell
- Posts: 11926
- Joined: April 20th, 2009, 9:56 am
Re: Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
Oh man, it sounds like heaven.... (and you mentioned...gasp... Joe Calleia..... shiver). I would dearly love to see him and Marc Lawrence on the big screen together. I can see them in my minds eye getting jumpy. And Nan Grey, Mary Anderson, and Evelyn Keyes? That's a pretty odd group of gals now that you mention it, not the first ones I'd imagine in a noir film about....sh!.... "hostesses".
Dang, I wish I was with you guys, I'd pay good money to be there, but alas what's a poor vixen to do when she hasn't got the cash to get across the country? Where's Tom Neal when you need him? Oh yeah. He was in San Fran with you.![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
Dang, I wish I was with you guys, I'd pay good money to be there, but alas what's a poor vixen to do when she hasn't got the cash to get across the country? Where's Tom Neal when you need him? Oh yeah. He was in San Fran with you.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
Re: Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
what's a poor vixen to do when she hasn't got the cash to get across the country?
I'm lucky if I make it across town.
I'm lucky if I make it across town.
Re: Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
What a wicked sense of Mother’s Day humor, Mr. Dewey. Programming a triple feature of adaptations from that most Mother devoted and obsessed writer, Cornell Woolrich. A trifecta of neuroses, blamelessness and Guilt that only a Mother can love.
I'd become a sort of a reverse zombie. I was living in a world already dead, and I alone knowing it. – John Triton, “The Mental Wizard”
A marvelous description of the Fear and Dread permeating the Universe of Woolrich and NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES (John Farrow 1948). John Triton (Edward G. Robinson) has a gift…or is it a curse? A theatrical mind reader*, he discovers that he actually has visions of future. With this, he makes a fortune for his partners (Jerome Cowan and Virginia Bruce) and himself. Then, concerned that he’s not predicting the future, but actually causing the future, he secrets himself away (Note to Ms. Cutter: His hideaway is in Bunker Hill next to Angel’s Flight.). He tells three-quarters or so of the movie in an extended flashback (unreliable narrator?) to Gail Russell, the daughter of the now dead Cowan and Bruce, whose deaths and means of death he had predicted, and her fella John Lund (looking for all the world to have been separated at birth from Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.).
Now he must save Russell, whose death is envisioned for 11:00 p.m., under a thousand stars. The men in her life – her fiancée and various stakeholders in her Father’s estate – see Robinson as a con man, the man behind the deaths. The cynical cop, William Demarest, sent to protect Russell, especially sees him as a murderer. But she is convinced his visions are real. And they are. But as we Woolrich fans know, not she, but the man with the Guilt – and who is blameless – is Doomed.
We saw a beautiful 35mm studio archive print, which showed off the Paramount cinematography of Chicagoan, John Seitz, whose credits include THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (1921), THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942), DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), THE LOST WEEKEND (1945), THE BIG CLOCK (1948), THE GREAT GATSBY (1949), SUNSET BLVD. (1950) and three Preston Sturges movies.
* Speaking of obsessions, Our Host appears to have a thing for movies with carny-type mind or card readers. How else to explain his cult-like devotion to NIGHTMARE ALLEY, THE LEOPARD MAN, THE AMAZING MR. X and BUNCO SQUAD?
I was so ashamed when I went out of there. All I could keep thinking of in the dark was: Is that what I wasted my whole life at? – Cornell Woolrich in a letter to poet Mark Van Doren after seeing BLACK ANGEL (Roy William Neill 1943)
It wasn’t a waste, Cornell. Like his novel, The Black Angel, there is an adulterous husband, a murdered paramour, and a wife desperate to save her husband. After that, the movie drops the “The” from the novel’s title and twists every other piece of its narrative thread. It, however, still finds a way to maintain the essence of Woolrich’s bleak Universe and, despite Woolrich’s disgust with the movie, it is one of the two or three best representations of the World of Woolrich on film.
Like a few other Woolrich works, the femme fatale is murdered within the first five minutes or so of the movie, but her presence is constantly felt. The poor schlump of a cheating husband, John Phillips, is convicted, of course, because all evidence points to him – a Woolrichian clue that he couldn’t have done it. And his devoted wife, June Vincent, sets out to prove he didn’t do it. She enlists Dan Duryea, the estranged husband of the victim, to help. Nightclub owner, Peter Lorre, seen entering her apartment the night of the murder, is obviously the killer. Except he was in the custody of stick-in-the-mud police captain Broderick Crawford when the murder occurred. Nope, John Phillips is going to get executed...unless Duryea suddenly remembers that he was drunk that night…and went to her apartment…and strangled her…and forgot all about it due to alcoholic amnesia…and confesses to Vincent and Crawford on the night of the execution…and Crawford gets the Governor on the phone in the nick of time.
Obsession, Guilt, blamelessness, and weird psycho-sexual games (the sado-masochistic Freddie Steele, Lorre’s muscle, is worthy of a treatise – watch how he and Lorre relate to each other and, then, the pleasure on his face as he punishes Vincent at Lorre’s behest). That’s our Cornell!
With stellar direction by Roy William Neill, the man who brought us ten “Sherlock Holmes” movies starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce (1942-46). He started directing in 1917 and spent his career directing B-movies. For most of the ‘30s, he was at Columbia Pictures and, for most of the ‘40s, at Universal Pictures. Beyond “Sherlock Holmes”, he is best known for directing FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN (1943). BLACK ANGEL was his last film, dying at 59 under quite Woolrichian circumstances.
And magnificent cinematography by the unjustly neglected Paul Ivano (1900-84). His work is in perfect sync with Neill’s direction and Duryea’s portrayal, with lighting changes and camera set-ups echoing character shifts between night and day, urban and suburban, claustrophobic and spacious. Born in France, Ivano served as a photographer for the U.S. Army, then emigrated to the U.S. Rooming with Rudolph Valentino for a while, his first movie work was with Valentino. He started in 1922 as the second unit director of photography and cameraman, often uncredited. A partial list of movies on which he fulfilled that function: GREED (Erich von Stroheim 1924), BEN-HUR (Fred Niblo 1925), BLONDE VENUS (Josef von Sternbergn1932), GONE WITH THE WIND (Victor Fleming 1939), THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (Nicholas Ray 1948), CRISS CROSS (Robert Siodmak 1949). At the same time, he was the cinematographer, again, sometimes uncredited, on an impressive array of films: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413, A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA (Robert Florey 1928 – an incredible experimental short), QUEEN KELLY (Erich von Stroheim 1929), FRANKENSTEIN (James Whale 1931), THE SHANGHAI GESTURE (Josef von Sternberg 1941), FLESH AND FANTASY (Julien Duvivier 1943) and seven B-movies in the ’50s directed by the extraordinary Hugo Haas. Moving to television in the mid-‘50s, his final work was on Family Affair (57 episodes 1967-69). Another treatise-worthy career.
And finally, from Monogram (A Mark Meaning Quality Noir in my book), and so nice I sat through it twice, FALL GUY (Reginald Le Borg 1947).
It all adds up to Tom being a fall guy for somebody.
Yes, it does. The reference books say it’s adapted from C-Jag aka Cocaine, an early Woolrich noir. And, for each story, Woolrich borrowed heavily from his earlier stories. But I have never seen a Woolrich adaptation that is such a mash-up of earlier Woolrich stories and movies. Echoes of PHANTOM LADY (there’s an unknown woman as bait and Elisha Cook, Jr. as a set-up guy), FEAR IN THE NIGHT (there’s a dead body in that closet that the protagonist only has the vaguest memory of, based on a key and a knife, but his brother-in-law, the cop, will help solve the crime…if there was one) and I WOULDN’T BE IN YOUR SHOES (there’s a police apprehension based solely on circumstantial evidence). Leo Penn (for the later-to-be blacklisted father of Sean Penn, this was his second movie and first credit – and I swear he reminded me of a bit-more-chiseled Farley Granger), while under the influence of a narcotic, appears to have killed a woman at a party and stuffed her in a closet. Now to find the person who took him to the party, the location of the party and other people at the party. All with the help of his brother-in-law the cop, Robert “Call me ‘Carl Denham’” Armstrong, and girlfriend, Teala Loring, who lives with her uncle, Charles Arnt, who we later learn isn’t really an uncle, but just a friend who promised her dead parents he’d look after her and now he (I sense a SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS in the air) really looks after her in a little too loving way. Thank you, again, Cornell.
Le Borg is an idiosyncratic director that I really want to investigate further. A review of one of his films, BAD BLONDE, can be found here. Cinematographer Mack Stengler worked for years, from 1926 to 1949, at Poverty Row studios, primarily Monogram Pictures, and shot 130 feature films. He shot I WOULDN’T BE IN YOUR SHOES (William Nigh 1947), another Woolrich adaptation, at Monogram. In the ‘50s he turned to television and was the cinematographer for series such as The Lone Ranger (78 episodes, 1949-51), Hopalong Cassidy (26 episodes, 1952), M Squad (13 episodes, 1957-59), and Leave It to Beaver (142 episodes, 1958-62). An for the real trivia buff who was a regular viewer of The Merv Griffin Show, one of Penn’s roommates at the police detox center was an uncredited Brother Theodore.
This was Richard’s final appearance at the Roxie this season, but stepping up for his first night was Noir City Don. Good-bye, Richard. Hello, Don.
I'd become a sort of a reverse zombie. I was living in a world already dead, and I alone knowing it. – John Triton, “The Mental Wizard”
A marvelous description of the Fear and Dread permeating the Universe of Woolrich and NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES (John Farrow 1948). John Triton (Edward G. Robinson) has a gift…or is it a curse? A theatrical mind reader*, he discovers that he actually has visions of future. With this, he makes a fortune for his partners (Jerome Cowan and Virginia Bruce) and himself. Then, concerned that he’s not predicting the future, but actually causing the future, he secrets himself away (Note to Ms. Cutter: His hideaway is in Bunker Hill next to Angel’s Flight.). He tells three-quarters or so of the movie in an extended flashback (unreliable narrator?) to Gail Russell, the daughter of the now dead Cowan and Bruce, whose deaths and means of death he had predicted, and her fella John Lund (looking for all the world to have been separated at birth from Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.).
Now he must save Russell, whose death is envisioned for 11:00 p.m., under a thousand stars. The men in her life – her fiancée and various stakeholders in her Father’s estate – see Robinson as a con man, the man behind the deaths. The cynical cop, William Demarest, sent to protect Russell, especially sees him as a murderer. But she is convinced his visions are real. And they are. But as we Woolrich fans know, not she, but the man with the Guilt – and who is blameless – is Doomed.
We saw a beautiful 35mm studio archive print, which showed off the Paramount cinematography of Chicagoan, John Seitz, whose credits include THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (1921), THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942), DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), THE LOST WEEKEND (1945), THE BIG CLOCK (1948), THE GREAT GATSBY (1949), SUNSET BLVD. (1950) and three Preston Sturges movies.
* Speaking of obsessions, Our Host appears to have a thing for movies with carny-type mind or card readers. How else to explain his cult-like devotion to NIGHTMARE ALLEY, THE LEOPARD MAN, THE AMAZING MR. X and BUNCO SQUAD?
I was so ashamed when I went out of there. All I could keep thinking of in the dark was: Is that what I wasted my whole life at? – Cornell Woolrich in a letter to poet Mark Van Doren after seeing BLACK ANGEL (Roy William Neill 1943)
It wasn’t a waste, Cornell. Like his novel, The Black Angel, there is an adulterous husband, a murdered paramour, and a wife desperate to save her husband. After that, the movie drops the “The” from the novel’s title and twists every other piece of its narrative thread. It, however, still finds a way to maintain the essence of Woolrich’s bleak Universe and, despite Woolrich’s disgust with the movie, it is one of the two or three best representations of the World of Woolrich on film.
Like a few other Woolrich works, the femme fatale is murdered within the first five minutes or so of the movie, but her presence is constantly felt. The poor schlump of a cheating husband, John Phillips, is convicted, of course, because all evidence points to him – a Woolrichian clue that he couldn’t have done it. And his devoted wife, June Vincent, sets out to prove he didn’t do it. She enlists Dan Duryea, the estranged husband of the victim, to help. Nightclub owner, Peter Lorre, seen entering her apartment the night of the murder, is obviously the killer. Except he was in the custody of stick-in-the-mud police captain Broderick Crawford when the murder occurred. Nope, John Phillips is going to get executed...unless Duryea suddenly remembers that he was drunk that night…and went to her apartment…and strangled her…and forgot all about it due to alcoholic amnesia…and confesses to Vincent and Crawford on the night of the execution…and Crawford gets the Governor on the phone in the nick of time.
Obsession, Guilt, blamelessness, and weird psycho-sexual games (the sado-masochistic Freddie Steele, Lorre’s muscle, is worthy of a treatise – watch how he and Lorre relate to each other and, then, the pleasure on his face as he punishes Vincent at Lorre’s behest). That’s our Cornell!
With stellar direction by Roy William Neill, the man who brought us ten “Sherlock Holmes” movies starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce (1942-46). He started directing in 1917 and spent his career directing B-movies. For most of the ‘30s, he was at Columbia Pictures and, for most of the ‘40s, at Universal Pictures. Beyond “Sherlock Holmes”, he is best known for directing FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN (1943). BLACK ANGEL was his last film, dying at 59 under quite Woolrichian circumstances.
And magnificent cinematography by the unjustly neglected Paul Ivano (1900-84). His work is in perfect sync with Neill’s direction and Duryea’s portrayal, with lighting changes and camera set-ups echoing character shifts between night and day, urban and suburban, claustrophobic and spacious. Born in France, Ivano served as a photographer for the U.S. Army, then emigrated to the U.S. Rooming with Rudolph Valentino for a while, his first movie work was with Valentino. He started in 1922 as the second unit director of photography and cameraman, often uncredited. A partial list of movies on which he fulfilled that function: GREED (Erich von Stroheim 1924), BEN-HUR (Fred Niblo 1925), BLONDE VENUS (Josef von Sternbergn1932), GONE WITH THE WIND (Victor Fleming 1939), THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (Nicholas Ray 1948), CRISS CROSS (Robert Siodmak 1949). At the same time, he was the cinematographer, again, sometimes uncredited, on an impressive array of films: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413, A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA (Robert Florey 1928 – an incredible experimental short), QUEEN KELLY (Erich von Stroheim 1929), FRANKENSTEIN (James Whale 1931), THE SHANGHAI GESTURE (Josef von Sternberg 1941), FLESH AND FANTASY (Julien Duvivier 1943) and seven B-movies in the ’50s directed by the extraordinary Hugo Haas. Moving to television in the mid-‘50s, his final work was on Family Affair (57 episodes 1967-69). Another treatise-worthy career.
And finally, from Monogram (A Mark Meaning Quality Noir in my book), and so nice I sat through it twice, FALL GUY (Reginald Le Borg 1947).
It all adds up to Tom being a fall guy for somebody.
Yes, it does. The reference books say it’s adapted from C-Jag aka Cocaine, an early Woolrich noir. And, for each story, Woolrich borrowed heavily from his earlier stories. But I have never seen a Woolrich adaptation that is such a mash-up of earlier Woolrich stories and movies. Echoes of PHANTOM LADY (there’s an unknown woman as bait and Elisha Cook, Jr. as a set-up guy), FEAR IN THE NIGHT (there’s a dead body in that closet that the protagonist only has the vaguest memory of, based on a key and a knife, but his brother-in-law, the cop, will help solve the crime…if there was one) and I WOULDN’T BE IN YOUR SHOES (there’s a police apprehension based solely on circumstantial evidence). Leo Penn (for the later-to-be blacklisted father of Sean Penn, this was his second movie and first credit – and I swear he reminded me of a bit-more-chiseled Farley Granger), while under the influence of a narcotic, appears to have killed a woman at a party and stuffed her in a closet. Now to find the person who took him to the party, the location of the party and other people at the party. All with the help of his brother-in-law the cop, Robert “Call me ‘Carl Denham’” Armstrong, and girlfriend, Teala Loring, who lives with her uncle, Charles Arnt, who we later learn isn’t really an uncle, but just a friend who promised her dead parents he’d look after her and now he (I sense a SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS in the air) really looks after her in a little too loving way. Thank you, again, Cornell.
Le Borg is an idiosyncratic director that I really want to investigate further. A review of one of his films, BAD BLONDE, can be found here. Cinematographer Mack Stengler worked for years, from 1926 to 1949, at Poverty Row studios, primarily Monogram Pictures, and shot 130 feature films. He shot I WOULDN’T BE IN YOUR SHOES (William Nigh 1947), another Woolrich adaptation, at Monogram. In the ‘50s he turned to television and was the cinematographer for series such as The Lone Ranger (78 episodes, 1949-51), Hopalong Cassidy (26 episodes, 1952), M Squad (13 episodes, 1957-59), and Leave It to Beaver (142 episodes, 1958-62). An for the real trivia buff who was a regular viewer of The Merv Griffin Show, one of Penn’s roommates at the police detox center was an uncredited Brother Theodore.
This was Richard’s final appearance at the Roxie this season, but stepping up for his first night was Noir City Don. Good-bye, Richard. Hello, Don.
Last edited by ChiO on May 14th, 2013, 12:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
Re: Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
Let's not forget THIS guy:[u][color=#4000BF]ChiO[/color][/u] wrote:Obsession, Guilt, blamelessness, and weird psycho-sexual games (the sado-masochistic Freddie Steele, Lorre’s muscle, is worthy of a treatise – watch how he and Lorre relate to each other and, then, the pleasure on his face as he punishes Vincent at Lorre’s behest). That’s our Cornell!
![Image](http://i618.photobucket.com/albums/tt270/CineMaven/CINEMAVEN%20MALE%20ACTORS/HUMECRONYNII.jpg)
"You rang?"
May I please change your name ChiO and call you Scheherazade? I am lovin' the way you weave your thousand and one Noir-tinged reviews!!!I was so ashamed when I went out of there. All I could keep thinking of in the dark was: Is that what I wasted my whole life at? – Cornell Woolrich in a letter to poet Mark Van Doren after seeing BLACK ANGEL (Roy William Neill 1943)
( Brother Theodore?!!! He was the most frightening thing I ever saw in my young life back then! Geez! They let anybody into show business! )
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Re: Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
Oh, how I would love to have been there, Elliot. So much rollicking fun amidst all that film noir angst and tension on display. Thanks for the vivid descriptions, ChiO!
I don't know if this interview with our Elliot was posted anywhere here, but it sure bears repeating as he analyzes the state of archival film programming with Michael Guillen:
http://www.fandor.com/blog/on-curious-c ... rogramming
I don't know if this interview with our Elliot was posted anywhere here, but it sure bears repeating as he analyzes the state of archival film programming with Michael Guillen:
http://www.fandor.com/blog/on-curious-c ... rogramming
Re: Dewey's I WAKE UP DREAMING 2013 at the Roxie
Grand Hotel... always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens.
Yes, we saw GRAND HOTEL…except it was thirteen years later…and half the length…with Cuban musical numbers…in a nightclub…in Havana. From out of PRC comes CLUB HAVANA (Edgar G. Ulmer 1945), a heady amalgam of drama, mystery and crime involving six disconnected couples one night while surrounded by music and dance.
Forget the dramatic details (I already have) -- something about an entrepreneur courting a rich widow for funds, a goofy couple reconciling, a couple splitting up so she takes an overdose of sleeping pills in the ladies’ room, an interning doctor (Tom Neal) on his first date with a swell gal, a crime boss (Marc Lawrence) just released from custody for an alleged murder and his dame, and the club pianist who witnessed the murder and his girlfriend. Sets. Camera. Would Ulmer have done more if he had had the $700,000 available to Goulding? I think not. A few chairs and tables with tablecloths, a wall, a diaphanous backdrop and two cinematographers – old standbys, Benjamin Kline and the uncredited Eugen Schufftan – and Ulmer (for a quarter of that amount – yes, a Big Budget Production for the Thalberg of Poverty Row) creates a world that exists only in the minds of those who are lucky enough to see his Art.
Dewey advertises “I Wake Up Dreaming” as “99-44/100% Noir”. I asked at intermission if this were the 56/100% part. It’s all music and domestic talk until the last, oh, 5 minutes or so. Then…the pianist calls the police to report what he saw the night of the murder, the snoopy club telephone operator tips off Marc Lawrence, he and the operator take a car to knock off the pianist, he gets out to shoot the pianist, she turns the car on him, he shoots her smack in the middle of her head (cool camera shot, too), the car runs him over and, luckily, Dr. Tom Neal is there to pick up the pieces. Pheeeew…. That’s Musical Noir…Ulmer style.
That’s also two Neal appearances this series, and both as a Good Guy – my Noir World is topsy-turvy! And, according to IMDb, John Dehner, making his seventh uncredited appearance of 1945 (his first credit was in 1946), was somewhere in the mix (I missed him).
And, so you don’t have to look it up: PRC’s DETOUR, with Ulmer-Kline-Neal, was released on November 7, 1945; PRC’s CLUB HAVANA, with Ulmer-Kline-Neal, was released on November 23, 1945. I guess Leon Fromkess, in his last year at PRC before joining Sam Goldwyn, wasn’t worried about flooding the market…thank goodness.
It’s Benjamin Kline Night – and few unknown cinematographers deserve it more. He outdoes himself in ISLAND OF DOOMED MEN (Charles Barton 1940) for the Lady with the Torch. Yes, even better than his Columbia work on behalf of The Three Stooges…speaking of which, Kenneth MacDonald also has a key role as a doctor in this tense crime-noir starring, in a return engagement, Peter Lorre.
Robert Wilcox is a new undercover G-Man. As he’s learning about his assignment from his new partner, the partner is killed and Wilcox is convicted (he’s so undercover that neither he nor the Government can disclose his cover). The man behind the killing, Peter Lorre, gets him paroled to Dead Man’s Island, a teeny-tiny island in U.S. territory, but owned by Lorre. It also happens that it was the target of Wilcox’s assignment and Lorre can now keep a close eye on him so the secret doesn’t get out. The secret? The sinister, sadistic Lorre takes paroled prisoners and, unbeknownst to the prison system, uses them as slave labor in his diamond mining operation. He’s aided and abetted in this by the nasty Don Beddoe, merciless Charles “Ming” Middleton, and stentorian MacDonald.
You're wasting your time. There's only one way out of here. Make 'em kill you. Don't die... day at a time. Get it over! Then you can rest. Dead men can't work. Never... get out... till you die. Then you get paroled to a pine box.
Lorre’s beautiful and alluring wife, Rochelle Hudson, is as trapped as the men and despises him as much as they do. She sees Wilcox as a way out…and he sees her as a way to end Lorre’s reign of terror.
When I find a flaw in a diamond I throw it away. It's so hard to remember, it's a long time ago. Everything on this island belonged to me. Everything. And it was beautiful. My wife, beautiful. So beautiful. And then you came and you touched my wife.
With the assistance of Middleton, Wilcox is able to overpower Beddoe and lead a revolt. With the assistance of Hudson, he is able to get into the house and confront Lorre. It is a confrontation that does not go well for Lorre.
Everything... on this island belonged to me... everything... everything... belongs to me... for as long as I... live....
Charles Barton, with the Alton-like cinematography of Kline, creates an unrelenting tension that isn’t nearly as evident in his direction of the late-‘40s Abbott & Costello movie franchise, Dennis the Menace or Family Affair (ah…a Paul Ivano connection). This was also screenwriter Robert Andrews’ second appearance this week, having also written UNDER AGE. And Lorre reminds us once again that he was a giant of Noir.
Yes, we saw GRAND HOTEL…except it was thirteen years later…and half the length…with Cuban musical numbers…in a nightclub…in Havana. From out of PRC comes CLUB HAVANA (Edgar G. Ulmer 1945), a heady amalgam of drama, mystery and crime involving six disconnected couples one night while surrounded by music and dance.
Forget the dramatic details (I already have) -- something about an entrepreneur courting a rich widow for funds, a goofy couple reconciling, a couple splitting up so she takes an overdose of sleeping pills in the ladies’ room, an interning doctor (Tom Neal) on his first date with a swell gal, a crime boss (Marc Lawrence) just released from custody for an alleged murder and his dame, and the club pianist who witnessed the murder and his girlfriend. Sets. Camera. Would Ulmer have done more if he had had the $700,000 available to Goulding? I think not. A few chairs and tables with tablecloths, a wall, a diaphanous backdrop and two cinematographers – old standbys, Benjamin Kline and the uncredited Eugen Schufftan – and Ulmer (for a quarter of that amount – yes, a Big Budget Production for the Thalberg of Poverty Row) creates a world that exists only in the minds of those who are lucky enough to see his Art.
Dewey advertises “I Wake Up Dreaming” as “99-44/100% Noir”. I asked at intermission if this were the 56/100% part. It’s all music and domestic talk until the last, oh, 5 minutes or so. Then…the pianist calls the police to report what he saw the night of the murder, the snoopy club telephone operator tips off Marc Lawrence, he and the operator take a car to knock off the pianist, he gets out to shoot the pianist, she turns the car on him, he shoots her smack in the middle of her head (cool camera shot, too), the car runs him over and, luckily, Dr. Tom Neal is there to pick up the pieces. Pheeeew…. That’s Musical Noir…Ulmer style.
That’s also two Neal appearances this series, and both as a Good Guy – my Noir World is topsy-turvy! And, according to IMDb, John Dehner, making his seventh uncredited appearance of 1945 (his first credit was in 1946), was somewhere in the mix (I missed him).
And, so you don’t have to look it up: PRC’s DETOUR, with Ulmer-Kline-Neal, was released on November 7, 1945; PRC’s CLUB HAVANA, with Ulmer-Kline-Neal, was released on November 23, 1945. I guess Leon Fromkess, in his last year at PRC before joining Sam Goldwyn, wasn’t worried about flooding the market…thank goodness.
It’s Benjamin Kline Night – and few unknown cinematographers deserve it more. He outdoes himself in ISLAND OF DOOMED MEN (Charles Barton 1940) for the Lady with the Torch. Yes, even better than his Columbia work on behalf of The Three Stooges…speaking of which, Kenneth MacDonald also has a key role as a doctor in this tense crime-noir starring, in a return engagement, Peter Lorre.
Robert Wilcox is a new undercover G-Man. As he’s learning about his assignment from his new partner, the partner is killed and Wilcox is convicted (he’s so undercover that neither he nor the Government can disclose his cover). The man behind the killing, Peter Lorre, gets him paroled to Dead Man’s Island, a teeny-tiny island in U.S. territory, but owned by Lorre. It also happens that it was the target of Wilcox’s assignment and Lorre can now keep a close eye on him so the secret doesn’t get out. The secret? The sinister, sadistic Lorre takes paroled prisoners and, unbeknownst to the prison system, uses them as slave labor in his diamond mining operation. He’s aided and abetted in this by the nasty Don Beddoe, merciless Charles “Ming” Middleton, and stentorian MacDonald.
You're wasting your time. There's only one way out of here. Make 'em kill you. Don't die... day at a time. Get it over! Then you can rest. Dead men can't work. Never... get out... till you die. Then you get paroled to a pine box.
Lorre’s beautiful and alluring wife, Rochelle Hudson, is as trapped as the men and despises him as much as they do. She sees Wilcox as a way out…and he sees her as a way to end Lorre’s reign of terror.
When I find a flaw in a diamond I throw it away. It's so hard to remember, it's a long time ago. Everything on this island belonged to me. Everything. And it was beautiful. My wife, beautiful. So beautiful. And then you came and you touched my wife.
With the assistance of Middleton, Wilcox is able to overpower Beddoe and lead a revolt. With the assistance of Hudson, he is able to get into the house and confront Lorre. It is a confrontation that does not go well for Lorre.
Everything... on this island belonged to me... everything... everything... belongs to me... for as long as I... live....
Charles Barton, with the Alton-like cinematography of Kline, creates an unrelenting tension that isn’t nearly as evident in his direction of the late-‘40s Abbott & Costello movie franchise, Dennis the Menace or Family Affair (ah…a Paul Ivano connection). This was also screenwriter Robert Andrews’ second appearance this week, having also written UNDER AGE. And Lorre reminds us once again that he was a giant of Noir.
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles
Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles