ken wrote: Does anyone remember Charles Korvin as the Latin dancer " Carlos " in an episode of " The Honeymooners " ? Ralph & Norton becaome very jealous, as did the other male tenants of the Bensonhurst Apt. Bldg. Wink
Now I do!! I'd forgotten, Ken. Thanks, I'm laughing thinking of it.
Jdb1 wrote: I have to comment that I think Charles Korvin had one of the ugliest faces I've ever seen in movies, and I eventually turned the movie off because I couldn't bear looking at him any longer. I know in some quarters a face like that would be considered handsome, but not in my quarter
.
I wouldn't call Korvin handsome either, but arresting looking, perhaps?
Actually,
Killer's bushel basket full of character actors is one of the main pleasures of watching this low budget police procedural. Some of them even moved up from the small parts, eventually.
I love spotting guys like
Charles Korvin, (one more victim of the black list, btw), who could convey a corrupt sophistication beautifully. My attitude toward him is softened by a first memory of him on film as the understanding but morally pragmatic captain who is the sounding board for Oskar Werner in
Ship of Fools (1965).
It was a kick to see a very young
Lola Albright, the divinely earthy & malicious
Connie Gilchrist as the landlady,
Whit Bissell as the sniveling failure who's a desk clerk in a flophouse & whose self-righteous attitude isn't doing any of his siblings any good,
Jim Backus as a "handy" & rather sweaty nightclub manager, a very young & skinny
Richard Egan as a fed, &
Dorothy Malone before she found the peroxide and big attitude.
One cast member,
Art Smith, (above) as Moss, the jeweler who's also a fence with a conscience is usually a welcome sight in films of this period. Smith, (one more guy whose career was truncated by McCarthyism), is one of those actors who is so grounded in reality that you accept his presence imperceptibly in several movies, and I can't think of any in which he gives a lackadaisical performance. Smith's work as the long-suffering agent of Bogart in
In a Lonely Place, the pursuer in
Ride the Pink Horse, and a Norwegian resistance fighter in
Edge of Darkness are only a few of the outstanding examples of the dogged authenticity that he brings to parts large, small, and too often drastically underwritten.
This may get me dropped from the Actor's Studio Christmas Party list in December, but I actually prefer the relatively unknown Earl McEvoy's
The Killer That Stalked New York over Elia Kazan's
Panic in the Streets (despite the fact that the two and only Paul Douglas
& Zero Mostel are in that cast).
Why? It's alot more fun.
As Judith points out, there are second unit location shots of NYC when the El still darkened seedy Third Avenue, there are glimpses of the harbor, Washington Square, Wall Street, Grand Central and even an old cemetery in lustrous b&w. Sure, other filmmakers caught NY unawares earlier on screen (
The Lost Weekend &
The Sleeping City, for instance), but I love that "lost world" period in the life of the city, even if I wasn't even born then. Maybe I'd feel the same way about New Orleans sights in Kazan's film if I felt a similar connection to the ruined beauty of the Crescent City.
Lastly, the societal structure shown in the film, complete with caring, overworked docs & nurses, earnest public officials and can-do mayors, who worked tirelessly to help the sometimes dim, distrustful public beat an epidemic of smallpox, was quite a reassuring sight. I'd like to believe it's true. I really hope that we never have to put it to the test in actuality.